Posts made by insomniac7809

Let's see...

My default character is usually a selfish rogue sort, if I don't have any other big plans.

The other go-to tends to be grizzled vet types. "War is hell, I've seen some shit" kind of thing.

I don't tend to play happy characters. Mostly, they're deeply unsatisfied with... something. Themselves, their situation, like, society, man. Whatever.

I do tend to play PCs who've been doing their deal for a while, whatever it is. The whole fresh-faced, newly Awakened/Embraced/knighted deal doesn't really appeal to me. That's, like, the backstory.

I also really like playing wiseass sarcastic PCs, but what can I say. That's fun to me.

Oh, and I also tend toward morally grey at best sorts.

As far as other people's PC types... I mean, there's a few things that might get me to give some side-eye. Mostly the "really dumb, vaguely offensive stereotype" sort.

@rinel said in Good or New Movies Review:

@ganymede said in Good or New Movies Review:

@rinel said in Good or New Movies Review:

What I did not like was the feeling of "African American culture bad, fictional Wakandan culture good" that I got.

I can't argue with a feeling, but I think you may have missed what the writers were getting at.

What I got was that Wakandans find African American culture "bad" because it was born out of a history of oppression. What I saw T'Challa wrestling with was Wakanda's part in that history. What I understood was that T'Challa discovered and concluded that Wakanda was as responsible for that oppression as the oppressors because they let it happen when they could have intervened and ended it.

I understand that in the abstract and agree with it. But the viewers' interactions with Black Americans are limited to Killmonger, his girlfriend (who gets maybe two lines?), and an assortment of children. Killmonger seems to go heavy on the AAVE dialect when he is engaging in "thuggish" behavior. At best, the movie is putting forward some sort of "Wakandan man's burden," where a fictional country must elevate American blacks through advanced technology and intervention. I don't think any of this was the intended message of the film. It just seemed like it was sort of implied in the way that the director emphasized certain things.

Going outside the text to things the director's said...

He's commented, for one, that between the hero and the villain of Black Panther, a royal warrior from an Afro-futurist utopia vs a kid from the Oakland housing projects, one of the two is slightly easier for him to relate to than the other.

I think that the central issue in the film, the conflict about intervention... so maybe this is going further afield, but. The notion of Wakanda is a hyper-advanced nation in Africa that avoided colonization by Europeans for the entirety of their history. To the director, on the one hand, this is an awesome escapist fantasy. On the other, when you start to worldbuild from the concept, the central question comes around to "well where the hell were they, what were they doing, why didn't they stop it."

So instead of dodging the issue, he made that the central conflict of the film, both in T'challa's personal sense and as the driving motive for the villain.

The AC doesn't work.

Neither does the back lock.

The dog is unwell, and his medicine is giving him the shits.

An employee to be referred to as Useless Asshole has failed to show up for his shift again.

Fuck this week.

"So the thing about that one... I mean... it's just not, kinda. I think. Y'know?"

NO I FUCKING DO NOT KNOW, USE YOUR WORDS

"@Aria asked me to come aboard."

@ganymede Yeah, makes sense. Like I said, I didn't think there would be anything analogous to the "service for currency" agreement @Auspice was talking about.

@ganymede I would need to check the specifics, but I have seen some reference to some aspects of an EULA being thrown out on legal grounds of "you know goddamn well nobody reads those."

But this is, like, in terms of "we snuck some shady shit in the middle of the giant wall o' text you need to agree to to use the software you already bought," not "disputing the service-for-currency arrangement I signed up for."

@admiral I mean, the whole thing kicks off when Agamemnon takes Achilles' favorite lady love-slave away and Achilles has a big hissy.

@ifrit said in Favourite Quote (Inspirational or Otherwise):

snip

Two of my favorites, also from Sir Terry, one from perhaps his most well-regarded, Night Watch:

As soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didn't measure up.

And from Thief of Time, one of his less-beloved, but one that holds a special place in my heart:

WE MUST DO WHAT WE CAN.
"And if that doesn't work?"[...]
THEN WE DID WHAT WE COULD, he said, UNTIL WE COULD NOT.

@surreality said in Roleplayer's shower thoughts:

@prototart said in Roleplayer's shower thoughts:

idk if it counts but a conversation about underwear for like She-Hulk style characters led to a conversation about the market for super-people clothes led to "there would definitely be shops aimed at superheroines" "yeah but basically nobody would ever be dumb enough to make a char out of that other than me and I'm def not gonna do that"

which led to me making a character out of that

...and clearly this person has not heard of Edna Mode, who is one of the most amazingly awesome characters in a movie in more or less forever. NO CAPES!

(I would totally do this, too.)

@ganymede I agree that advice should be taken on its own merits, and I wholeheartedly agree that magazines like Teen Vogue and Cosmo are doing great work in their coverage.

At the same time, I think it's a bit harsh to assume that skepticism on Cosmo advice has to be sexist in nature, when people might be more familiar with relationship advice like "if he seems happy, it's because he's cheating on you; if he starts taking care of his appearance, it's to look good for the woman he's cheating on you with; if he starts sharing details about his day, it's to cover for what he was really doing (cheating on you)."

@coin said in Real life versus online behaviors:

@thatguythere said in Real life versus online behaviors:

@insomniac7809 said in Real life versus online behaviors:

"The person who's a sweetheart to their date and an asshole to the waiter is an asshole."

I think this is one of the best quotes I have ever seen.

Less a quote, more a maxim. But it's solid life advice (even if the most common place to find it is magazines like Cosmopolitan, which leads to this sort of asshat behavior).

Goodhart's law in action: "when a metric becomes a target, it's no longer a metric."

@admiral said in RL Anger:

I haven't talked to my sister in almost a year because of an incident involving a haircut appointment.

I don't miss her.

...I don't know if I really want to know what haircut-related shenanigans could lead to severing familial ties, or if I'd rather leave that to my imagination.

@coin said in Real life versus online behaviors:

The internet is where moderation and limitations come to die. You wanna see what someone's willing to do, say, and support? Go online.

I don't care if you're a fucking saint in every social interaction offline--if you're a dick online that means you wanna be a dick and think it's funny. The degree to which that's a problem varies widely.

"The person who's a sweetheart to their date and an asshole to the waiter is an asshole."

The lady who is never ordering from the webstore again. No, please don't stop giving money to the webstore and retuning it to my store, what will I do without unsellable inventory and less money for the day...

People who won't accept that, no, they don't get a special discount just because. Never hurts to ask, but I am not going to fucking haggle with you. Buy the shit at MSRP or go fuck yourself.

"So X comes with Y, which is $50 separarely. Or you can upgrade to Z, which normally costs $80, for the $30 difference." "And I still get Y?" "...no, you get Y for free or Z for $30." "But why don't I get Y if I buy Z?" "Because you're only paying the difference from the cost of Y." "I don't understand." How do you not understand.

TFW you're on the line with corporate help desk for the third time, attempting to get across that you've turned it off and then on again and it still doesn't work.

Retail whining:

"I want to return this item." Cool. Do you have the recipt?
"Yes!" Okay, no, that's a packing slip. A recipt is something else. This piece of paper says nothing except that we sent you that item.
"Why can't you use this?" Because it has no information about method of payment or cost at time of purchase. But that's fine, I can look up the purchase by email.
No, of course you wouldn't give an email address when we asked you. Okay, let me see if I can dig up this purchase by name or ZIP...
"I have the credit card!" Of course you want me to have access to your credit card but not your email. For our customers' securiry, I can't access credit card information at store level.
"Target can look up purchases with the credit card!" And Target couldn't keep that shit from getting hacked, and we're no goddamn Target. We barely keep the registers working.
"Why is this so difficult!" Because you didn't keep the recipt or give us any information that would make this easy. I'm gonna need to call the people who can look this up with what wr have-
"Give it back! This is ridiculous!" True 'nuff.

I'm peeved that my laser eye surgery does not mean surgery to get laser eyes like Cyclops.

@ganymede said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

@mietze

Jesus Christ, who are you cooking for, the Gronkowskis?

"3 growing teens"

I still remember this once, the High School marching band was at a restaurant after a game, and the father of one of the girls I was sitting with offered to cover the bill for the whole table.

You could hear him get the bill, but anyone offering eight high schoolers as much free food as they can order deserves what they get.