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Disclaimer: It's called constructive criticism. And yes, I will liberally name people. It's called citations.
Common flaw: Virtually no caster gets suspense right.
There seem to be two kinds of casters, those who call it over when the game goes on for 30 more minutes, and those that continue to hype completely lost games. I've yet to see a caster who's actually spot on with the amount of hype of uncertainty. Let's look at the GSL, Flash' group of death. "Oh hey Tasteless, there's no way soO is going to hold this opening by DRG." -> soO holds. Next game "DRG is absolutely going to die to this, no cahnce he will hold this attack." -> DRG holds (but loses in the end after losing a bunch of festors for free.
But I hear you say "But soO only held because DRG made some small mistakes." or "Mistakes can happen". And yeah, that's absolutely true. soO held due to DRG's indecisiveness. But people make mistakes all the time. "THere is no way soO will hold." even with creative interpretation implies the only way for soO to hold is due to a mistake a progamer won't realistically make. If all soO needs to hold is a mistake that is realistic for a progamer to make, then "no way" is certainly not appropriate nomenclature. These kind of mistakes that lead to these holds happen all the time. If you assume from the start that DRG is not going to make a mistake. You might as well before the game start say "No way soO is going to win, because DRG never makes mistakes, and soO does.", simple as that. An assumption of no mistake is an unrealistic one. Hell, in the event that it kills soO most likely DRG would've made mistakes as well, just not mistakes that cost him the game. This whole "There's not a chance this attack will be held." or "Not a chance he will hold the third." before the attack even starts start to recalcitrate upon me because every time it happens you know it's like 50% chance. Wolf (especially Wolf), Tastosis (well, Artosis, Tasteless' profession is agreeing with Artosis), Apollo. They're all all guilty of this.
On the flipside we have people like TB who create hype where anyone with a brain can see it's actually never going to happen and for it to happen would require a mistake that is unrealistic for a progamer to make. Flash only has 10 marines, 2 medivacs versus a giant colossus army? "CAN FLASH DO THIS?", no, Flash can't.
And this can be done correctly. Big shoutout to RotterdaM for always keeping the appropriate level of hype going. RotterdaM, and in fact a lot of progamers casting like Destiny/Catz have mastered the simple art of speaking in ranges of possibilities. Artosis and Wolf seem to have this fetish with proclaiming with absolute confidence what will happen to then look like a fool when it doesn't happen. If you watch RotterdaM or CatZ cast they speak like "I think this could happen, but this could also happen, and maybe this." RotterdaM's lines are "It's going to take absolutely phaenomenal micro from him to hold his third." (I know, you read that in his voice.) not "He'sgoing to lose his third 100%." which is what Wolf would say in a similar situation.
Common flaw: Foreigner bias
We all know Artosis is a champion of saying "There is no way X will beat Y here" based on perceived skill differences giving rise to the famous "Artosis curse" when he's wrong. But ever noticed how he never does that with foreigners? If two Koreans play and are of a relative skill difference. This phrase typically comes out, but if the weakerly skilled Korean would be a foreigner and the skill difference is the same. Suddenly Artosis will come with all sorts of explanations why our foreign hope has a shot here. Apollo and Wolf are also copious offenders. Especially Wolf who is known to be extremely critical, even ingame about mistakes (and things he doesn't understand). But when casting a foreigner, all his criticism suddenly evaporates. Would be great to actually hear an objectively cast games for once where a foreigner is involved instead of being extra hard on the Korean while sugar-coating the flaws the foreigner makes. Also note that the above rule is influenced when a foreigner is involved. Suddenly people aren't going to lose 100% any more if the person defending is a foreigner.
Common flaw: Metagaming bullshit passed as analysis
Seriously, some of this post-game and during game analysis is basically psychoanalysis, just make something up that sounds deep, accurate or not, to fill space. Some of this stuff is like beyond ridiculous. ToD saying something along the lines of "The reason Flash took so long to find his stride was because he was so good at BW, then it takes longer to adjust.". Does he honestly believe this shit himself or does he just count on the audience to be dumb enough to believe it so he can fill time? If Flash immediately became good after the switch he would have said "When you're as good as Flash, adjusting to a new game takes no time.", Jesus Christ. How stupid does he think we are to buy into that?
Or Day[9], the king of overanalysis, seeing seemingly brilliant plans in purely random things. One of the things I will always remember is how he said about Ret who went hatch first again after losing to a 2rax proxy last game. "Now, some people after that would mix it up, but what I like about Ret is that he sticks to what he knows and is comfortable with.", okay, sounds plausible. But three months back he said about Morrow. "What I like about Morrow is that after a loss he adjusts his gameplan.", whatever you do Day[9] will find a way to like it and mark it as being genius and awesome.
Common Flaw: Passing your opinions as facts.
Yo Artosis, how's the mech revolution in TvT going? It's the future right? Mech is so much better right and eventually all Terrans will switch to mech right? Oh wait...
I take it that at this point even the biggest believers into that creed who originally bought into it will know it's a false prophecy. Mech isn't bad and perfectly viable in TvT, but it's not the future of it and please don't come with this nonsense of "But if you play perfectly Mech will always win.", how do you even know that? Have you ever seen someone play a perfect TvT? I haven't.
Common Flaw: Underappreciation of Zerg
What I mean with this is that no caster ever seems to spend a single word on any Zerg micro in any engagement. I know there are some people that like to believe that Zerg is just amove. But that's a function of the some-what messy visuals of the race that make it less than obvious that a great deal of control is going on. Banelings actually acquire, like any unit, the enemy that is nearest to them as target. They need to be controlled and directed to go into the right target, split against mines, amoving banelings will just make them run into the marauders up front. As a random player. I find ZvT micro actually extremely stressful with the re-emergence of the mine I have to say. But it visually looks a bit indistingushable. But a trained eye can definitely see the difference between average baneling control and amazing baneling control.
That famous series of DRG vs Inno where DRG was the first to break Inno in a macro ZvT? That was in no small part due to DRG's exceptional ling/baneling control against bio/mine, yet Tastosis didn't utter a single word about it. Did they actually not notice the superb baneling control that DRG was constnatly maintaining? THey were constantly talking about great marine splits. But great ling/bane split apparently don't exist, it's all a red goo right? I can pardon the casual audience for not noticing this with the messy visuals of Zerg. But professional casters? No, absolutely not. It's your job, learn to see it and adequately translate that so the viewer notices it. This just isn't fair to all those Zerg players who micro their arse off in ZvT yet get no recognition for their skill.
Another thing is undertranslation of the ZvZ matchup. ZvZ is a hyper-reactionary matchup where every decision count and people are constnatly making decisions of where to allocate larvae based on what they see. ZvZ is like "Aha, I see you have this ling count and this drone acount at your natural and this much gas mined, thus I know that I can make this mutch drones, have to get my baneling nest around this time and this many zerglings and can be this greedy with my tech to lair without dying.". ZvZ is very cerebral in getting that vaunted drone advantage to eventually get more roaches for the inevitabl raoch vs roach war. But casters seem to basically not at all translate the decision process involved to the viewer. No caster, nor observer, highlights that when an attack comes, the defending player with an overlord sees the undersaturation of the natural which prompts the construction of a spine. This isn't some random guess, this is a reaction. If you can talk about missle turrets going up because you saw a running tech lab, you can do this as well.
Common Flaw: Racial bias
In general, from a lot of casters it's plainly obvious what race they play. Tastosis focusses so ridiculously on the Protoss player's build orders and plan in their commentary. Nathanias' Terran shines through and Bitter, while having fixed some of it still shows he's a Zerg player. Which intersetingly enough makes him one of the few casters who adequately translates ZvZ.
Come on, you're a professional, your livelihood is knowing the game well. Some casters switched to random to improve their casting. Apollo, Day[9] and Kaelaris definitely deserve mention for this and they show no such bias. Is it too much to ask that a caster plays random? Would maybe make Artosis see that mech isn't the answer to everything in TvT if he actually played the matchup he's so fond of spouting bullshit about.
Common Flaw: Language
Okay, this is a cheap shot and if you think this shouldn't matter I think that position is reasonable and I'm just putting it here for the sake of completeness. But some casters, native or otherwise, have an absolutely terrible command of English. One would assume a professional play by play caster would have some better grammar.
- "Colossus" is singular, "colossi" is plural. Both words are basically used interchangeably. If a classical plural is to hard for you, just say "colossuses", no one will hate you for it.
- "Lair" and "Layer" are nor homonyms, Dr. Evil does not hang out in his Evil Layer
- The "Id" in "IdrA" is pronounced like the "id" in "idiot"
- Huge number of Zerglings, not "amount", "Zergling" is a mass noun.
- You can take 10 seconds to learn to adequately pronounce the name of people. For fucks sake RotterdaM, you're Dutch, you had French in school. "Ilyes" is not pronounced the same as "Elias".
  
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The number of grammatical errors in the "Language" section is a bit funny. All in all, I enjoy the work of most SC2 casters. but you bring up some valid points. In my opinion the production and casting of esports is only becoming more professional with time, so I'm not too concerned about it.
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nice read, but if you talk about casters you should mention that tastless is by far the worst of all, no matter what and i agree with your points, but tasteless is just so bad he made me unsubscribe from gsl and watch korean vods instead of english ones
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I agree with some points, disagree with others:
1. I think some casters are doing this "No way he holds this!!" to hype up the player when he actually holds it. Artosis comes to by mind, but maybe it were some other casters.
2. Racial bias is fine imo, let Nathanias cast the terran games, let Tod cast Protoss games etc. Nowadays, we have normally multiple casters at an event (except WCS and PL), so it should be possible that the duocasts cover both races well.
3. Pretty sure many casters used to mispronounce Idra just to fuck with him.
However, I heavily agree with the the Metagaming bullshit passed as analysis part. Like, I have seen collapse rocks being destroyed by baneling splash and the casters hyped the Terran for killing the rocks as a retreat because it fitted their narative. I also chuckled about the Artosis mech revolution comment, I would agree there.
However, my biggest complaint with casters nowadays is the heavy bias to random fan favorites etc. Remember how everyone hyped Flash as THE GOD when he was still stuck in Code A. How everyone overhyped Jaedong, only too see him getting owned by sOs, a guy nobody gave a shit about cause the caster didnt hype him. Like, i get it, Flash was good at broodwar, but he still got rekt by soO and DRG, no need to overhype like mad.
Overall however, I would say that the current casting is pretty fantastic. Most caster have good knowledge, and those who dont are aware of that and do the play by play part. And thats the most important thing imo.
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Germany25657 Posts
It is funny that you called this constructive criticism^^
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Part of this is just you hearing what you want to hear, although some of it is legitimate criticism.
I think a lot of the issues with the casters are actually flaws in SC2's design. It's just a very shallow game right now and there's not a whole lot to analyze. How many times can you actually say "Sick splits!" or "Awesome overlord building!" until you get bored and just act like you give zero shits about the game? In BW, it seems like there were a lot more subtle things and since the battles were slower paced you could sort of analyze them while they went on. Battles happen so quickly in SC2 that by the time a caster can say something, the micro/engagement is already over.
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On September 23 2014 09:28 MtlGuitarist97 wrote:
Part of this is just you hearing what you want to hear, although some of it is legitimate criticism.
I think a lot of the issues with the casters are actually flaws in SC2's design. It's just a very shallow game right now and there's not a whole lot to analyze. How many times can you actually say "Sick splits!" or "Awesome overlord building!" until you get bored and just act like you give zero shits about the game? In BW, it seems like there were a lot more subtle things and since the battles were slower paced you could sort of analyze them while they went on. Battles happen so quickly in SC2 that by the time a caster can say something, the micro/engagement is already over.
see the Zerg part, they could start by actually talking about ZvZ and the reactionary decisions involved?
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Disclaimer: This is called criticism. It sometimes happens when you're wrong.
Or Day[9], the king of overanalysis, seeing seemingly brilliant plans in purely random things. One of the things I will always remember is how he said about Ret who went hatch first again after losing to a 2rax proxy last game. "Now, some people after that would mix it up, but what I like about Ret is that he sticks to what he knows and is comfortable with.", okay, sounds plausible. But three months back he said about Morrow. "What I like about Morrow is that after a loss he adjusts his gameplan.", whatever you do Day[9] will find a way to like it and mark it as being genius and awesome.
Before you think I'm biased, I'd just like to say I totally am because Day[9] is a totally handsome baller, and you are not. So I'm definitely biased. Did you even watch the video of how "he almost died"? Watch that, and tell me you are not charmed by it. I predict by the end, Terrans will all be going mech you will love Day[9]. Now, for someone such as yourself, who is incredibly critical of peoples' pronunciation of various terms and what-have-you, you somehow find a way to create new words by combining two words together that don't actually go together, like: "gameplan", "overanalysis" + Show Spoiler +Yeah. I went there. ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/ySHR178.png)
Furthermore, Day[9] (or anyone) saying he likes consistency and then saying he likes self-adjustment in two different settings is not a contradiction. The circumstances not only change, but the players and match-ups also change, and varying styles of play will arise, and it's not wrong to point out how much you can appreciate an aspect of a player's game that you find to be a strength of theirs.
Common Flaw: Underappreciation of Zerg
This aspect of casting is done specifically to harvest delicious Zerg tears.
Suddenly Artosis will come with all sorts of explanations why our foreign hope has a shot here. Apollo and Wolf are also copious offenders. Especially Wolf who is known to be extremely critical, even ingame about mistakes (and things he doesn't understand). But when casting a foreigner, all his criticism suddenly evaporates. Would be great to actually hear an objectively cast games for once where a foreigner is involved instead of being extra hard on the Korean while sugar-coating the flaws the foreigner makes.
I like my foreigner mistakes like your mom likes her p I like my candy: covered in sugar.
"Mistakes can happen"
Like your spelling? Type this shit up in Word or something so you can spell-check it. Don't give me any of that "English isn't my first language" nonsense, because it's clear you know how to spell, but choose not to do so out of laziness. Let's look at some of your mistakes:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/pv37GPl.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/r6iSExy.png)
I think your blogs have a lot of room to improve, but you don't seem to want to improve upon them at all. The grammar mistakes, I can understand. Nobody knows how grammar works. But the spelling mistakes are an unforgivable trespass, and I hope you repent and accept Tastosis into your heart.
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Most of it is acceptable feedback in my opinion, though you unnecessarily sound like a dick given your tone which slightly takes away from your otherwise legitimate criticism.
Some of the language stuff I would agree with, but some of the pronunciation issues you mentioned are inevitable due to the fact that English isn't the native language of many casters. Even if you know the proper grammar or pronunciation and English isn't your first language that doesn't really give you the right to shit upon other people who haven't studied the finer points of the English language.
I, for example, also had to take French when I was younger and I have no idea how to pronounce many words properly, especially names as there's no surefire way of ensuring you're saying it right without confirmation from said person. Even native English speakers often pronounce my name wrong after reading it...
There's always room to improve; you're definitely right about that, but you make it sound a lot worse than the majority of people perceive it.
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1001 YEARS KESPAJAIL22272 Posts
I actually love the way Rotti pronounces Merry GO Round.
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Damn ninazerg went IN lol
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nina, please marry me.
Common flaw: Virtually no caster gets suspense right.
The games are frequently unpredictable, or at least there's enough room for error that even the best analytical casters can miscall the ending. Think of how important positioning is in a fight; one player could have a huge army advantage going into the fight, but if he attacks into a concave, he can throw away the game. That's not the caster's fault.
Common flaw: Foreigner bias
They're the underdogs, and often times they're the ones we (the viewers, many of whom are foreigners) may be able to connect best with. Country-pride, etc. etc. By hyping these guys, they're doing it right, not wrong. (Obviously, Koreans should also still be hyped, and they definitely are.)
Common flaw: Metagaming bullshit passed as analysis
Sometimes it's your job to justify stuff, and you do it any way you can. Obviously, you can't always interview the player to know exactly what he was thinking, so you take a guess.
Common Flaw: Passing your opinions as facts.
+
Common Flaw: Racial bias
+
Common Flaw: Underappreciation of Zerg
= lol
Common Flaw: Language
Not every caster is as fluent in English as Polt is  Dialects, second languages, and speech impediments all hinder perfect fluency and pronunciation. That's life. Deal with it. I'm sure you still understand the commentary.
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On September 23 2014 10:09 ninazerg wrote:Disclaimer: This is called criticism. It sometimes happens when you're wrong.Show nested quote +Or Day[9], the king of overanalysis, seeing seemingly brilliant plans in purely random things. One of the things I will always remember is how he said about Ret who went hatch first again after losing to a 2rax proxy last game. "Now, some people after that would mix it up, but what I like about Ret is that he sticks to what he knows and is comfortable with.", okay, sounds plausible. But three months back he said about Morrow. "What I like about Morrow is that after a loss he adjusts his gameplan.", whatever you do Day[9] will find a way to like it and mark it as being genius and awesome. Before you think I'm biased, I'd just like to say I totally am because Day[9] is a totally handsome baller, and you are not. So I'm definitely biased. Did you even watch the video of how "he almost died"? Watch that, and tell me you are not charmed by it. I predict by the end, Terrans will all be going mech you will love Day[9]. Now, for someone such as yourself, who is incredibly critical of peoples' pronunciation of various terms and what-have-you, you somehow find a way to create new words by combining two words together that don't actually go together, like: "gameplan", "overanalysis" + Show Spoiler +Yeah. I went there. but this is the English language, not German. Knock that shit off. Furthermore, Day[9] (or anyone) saying he likes consistency and then saying he likes self-adjustment in two different settings is not a contradiction. The circumstances not only change, but the players and match-ups also change, and varying styles of play will arise, and it's not wrong to point out how much you can appreciate an aspect of a player's game that you find to be a strength of theirs. Is this supposed to actually be an argument? You're not actually answering my points or anything.
Also:
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/overanalysis
Common Flaw: Underappreciation of Zerg
This aspect of casting is done specifically to harvest delicious Zerg tears.
[/quote]Ahh, sarcasm, the common way to avoid having to actually get into the point.
Show nested quote +
Suddenly Artosis will come with all sorts of explanations why our foreign hope has a shot here. Apollo and Wolf are also copious offenders. Especially Wolf who is known to be extremely critical, even ingame about mistakes (and things he doesn't understand). But when casting a foreigner, all his criticism suddenly evaporates. Would be great to actually hear an objectively cast games for once where a foreigner is involved instead of being extra hard on the Korean while sugar-coating the flaws the foreigner makes.
I like my foreigner mistakes like your mom likes her p I like my candy: covered in sugar.
Like your spelling? Type this shit up in Word or something so you can spell-check it. Don't give me any of that "English isn't my first language" nonsense, because it's clear you know how to spell, but choose not to do so out of laziness. Let's look at some of your mistakes:
- "to recalcitrate" is a verb, look it up: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/recalcitrate
- "phaenomal" is an acceptable, albeit archaic spelling: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/phænomenal
- That you can't start a paragraph with a conjunction is ridiculous, you can even start a conversation with a conjunction. You walk into a room and ask "And just what the hell is this noise here?"
- "weakerly" is a perfectly acceptable adverbial form of "weaker". Like with any adjective, you can turn the comparative into an adverb.
- "underappreciation" is also a word.
- "undertranslation" is also a word.
Do you think words don't exist if you don't know them or something? You could, you know, google the word to make sure it's not just your lack of knowledge of it?
I think your blogs have a lot of room to improve, but you don't seem to want to improve upon them at all. The grammar mistakes, I can understand. Nobody knows how grammar works. But the spelling mistakes are an unforgivable trespass, and I hope you repent and accept Tastosis into your heart.[/QUOTE]
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This is getting pretty heated. In the end this entire argument is based on opinions, which make debate extremely silly because neither side can really back up their points with facts. That said I think, SiskosGoatee, that many of your opinions are not as widely held as you think. I tend to agree with most of what ninazerg said
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You're failing at your own point: underappreciation of ninazerg.
1/5
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Hong Kong9153 Posts
sometimes, just sometimes, ninazerg posts wonderfully
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On September 23 2014 10:44 Yorkie wrote:
I tend to agree with most of what ninazerg said Such as with what? Ninjazerg said one thing which I can see as an actual point. That people get suspense wrong to create hype. Okay, I can see that, the other "points" were heavily sarcastic responses which don't actually go into anything. I may assume you don't agree that casters underappreciate Zerg micro to cause Zerg tears right?
And the language. That's 50% pointing out typos, which exist, and I honestly don't care much about but hey, I concede, those are errors. And 50% claiming that words which have entries on Dictionary.com and Wiktionary don't exist. Don't blame me if you never heard of the verb "to recalcitrate". I can assure you it exists.
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I sense an epic internet argument that is going to go absolutely nowhere.
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On September 23 2014 10:33 SiskosGoatee wrote:Apart from the obvious typos which I concede because they're obvious typos: - "to recalcitrate" is a verb, look it up: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/recalcitrate- "phaenomal" is an acceptable, albeit archaic spelling: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/phænomenal- That you can't start a paragraph with a conjunction is ridiculous, you can even start a conversation with a conjunction. You walk into a room and ask "And just what the hell is this noise here?" - "weakerly" is a perfectly acceptable adverbial form of "weaker". Like with any adjective, you can turn the comparative into an adverb. - "underappreciation" is also a word. - "undertranslation" is also a word. Do you think words don't exist if you don't know them or something? You could, you know, google the word to make sure it's not just your lack of knowledge of it?
The word you're looking for is "Recalcitrant".
"Phaenomal" is missing an entire syllable. The word is Phen-om-min-al, not Phen-no-mal.
And improperly used.
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090413160418AAyfRO2
I feel like what is most ironicalized about this debachle are how aggressivized your postdefense is rather than confessionating that yourself may be wrong. The problemicity in Englishspeak is that you can't simply inventicate new words out of nowhere. If you're going to pick on casters for small nuances you see as flaws in their casting, don't get all defensive when someone picks out the small critical nuances that you exhibit.
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On September 23 2014 13:24 ninazerg wrote:Show nested quote +On September 23 2014 10:33 SiskosGoatee wrote:Apart from the obvious typos which I concede because they're obvious typos: - "to recalcitrate" is a verb, look it up: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/recalcitrate- "phaenomal" is an acceptable, albeit archaic spelling: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/phænomenal- That you can't start a paragraph with a conjunction is ridiculous, you can even start a conversation with a conjunction. You walk into a room and ask "And just what the hell is this noise here?" - "weakerly" is a perfectly acceptable adverbial form of "weaker". Like with any adjective, you can turn the comparative into an adverb. - "underappreciation" is also a word. - "undertranslation" is also a word. Do you think words don't exist if you don't know them or something? You could, you know, google the word to make sure it's not just your lack of knowledge of it? The word you're looking for is "Recalcitrant". That's the adjective, to recalcitrate is the verb from which it was derived. "Starts to recalcitrant upon me?", no, not really, it was a verb in that context.
"Phaenomal" is missing an entire syllable. The word is Phen-om-min-al, not Phen-no-mal. Fine, I concede another typo.
Great, you can cite a yahoo answers, I can cite a blog:
http://www.dailywritingtips.com/can-you-start-sentences-with-“and”-and-“but”/
Even the King James Version, the most authoritative and defining work of modern English uses the style.
I feel like what is most ironicalized about this debachle are how aggressivized your postdefense is rather than confessionating that yourself may be wrong. The problemicity in Englishspeak is that you can't simply inventicate new words out of nowhere. If you're going to pick on casters for small nuances you see as flaws in their casting, don't get all defensive when someone picks out the small critical nuances that you exhibit. I could see this point if "to recalcitrate" wasn't a word that had citations and is simply used.
It has citations on Dictionary.com, The Free Dictionary, and Wiktionary amongst others. "To recalcitrate" is a word, that you didn't know of its existence doesn't make it less of a word and if you had simply taken the time to google it you'd find out it's a word listed in dictionaries.
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EPT
