My parents were about as far from nerdy as you could get, so they are often mystified how I turned out pretty far from them. My gateway to nerddom was literally Star Wars. I remember the first time I saw Star Wars was the year after Return of the Jedi came out. There was a drive in that was always doing double header movies and they did this July 4th weekend special with 3 movies and they showed all three Star Wars films.

Sci-fi in the form of cartoons, books, and movies pretty much dominated my preferences since then. Though I did expand my reading options while growing up. I had a 3rd-grade teacher concerned that a two-week book report I wanted to submit was on Tommyknockers by Stephen King - something that at the time was not on the recommended reading list for any child in our school district.

Then in early high school I got into tabletop gaming, joined the sci-fi club, the computer club, and all sorts of related things that were not what my parents would have preferred but it kept me out of trouble and away from the rising gang culture in our school, so they were not going to be too put out about it.

But it always came back to Star Wars. Novels, figures, comics - the movies. I consumed everything about that one topic and became so knowledgeable that I knew minutia that most people who called them 'superfans' did not know or remember. I have absolutely 0 friends today that will play the Trivial Pursuit Star Wars edition with me because of this. I even applied at Lucasfilm to be part of the continuity department that handled all of the Star Wars media - from books to comics to cartoons - when I was 20, on the hope that I could turn that love of everything Star Wars into a job. But alas there is always a bigger fish.

I have since tempered my Star Wars love into an expanse of love for other things as a whole. Star Trek, Babylon 5, Battlestar, Red Dwarf, and so on - the whole theme of space opera or things like it just hit my sweet spot for science fiction.

Then my enjoyment of video games came from my grandmother. She bought all the consoles I had as a kid growing up, mostly because she liked watching us play them - but also because she liked playing them herself. She loved RPGs and she played the hell out of every version of Final Fantasy that the U.S. had for NES and SNES. She loved the Phantasy Star series from Sega more though and at the time when 'call in for tips' hotlines for both companies were prevalent she was so well known at the Sega tip line that a lot of the helpline guys got to know her, enamored that some 60-year-old woman was so interested in the games. She became so well known to them that someone sent her a whole printed out 80-page booklet complete with maps for the Sega Master System version of Phantasy Star so she could find the secret ending to the game. When Phantasy Star II was released for the Genesis, someone from the company sent her a copy of the game with a handwritten dedication to her signed by Yuki Naka one of the lead developers, inside the strategy book that came with the game.

From there, things just progressed until I am where I am today.

@JinShei

Stranger Things Season 2, October 27th.

Fuck yeah!

http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/stranger-things-premiere-date-october-27-netflix-1202491839/

• Do not be afraid to tell people no. "No, but" is okay if you have good alternatives but sometimes a bad idea is just a bad idea.

• Do not violate the vision of your game for the sake of others.

@Ghost said in Dead Celebrities 2019:

Marina Sirtis' (Star Trek) husband just passed away at 61.

Bad time for Trek.

My condolences to her but...for a moment my brain went "JONATHAN FRAKES DIED!?" because I'm a nerd.

@Kanye-Qwest
That was a staple for the siege stories too. There was no real element of danger because the NPC badguys that were not just minions were so easily killed that the sense of danger was entirely sucked out of the encountersl. The same thing goes for the attitude of the city - there was no sense of a city under siege. It was 'oh look an attack happened here yesterday, well okay, life goes on'. So by the time the siege itself happened it was pretty much a case of...oh just a lot more of them. Okay. Whatevs.

On that note though I will give super kudos to Apos for running multiple scenes in multiple rooms and keeping up with them all, and making them all interesting and fun to do. That had to be hard as hell and he did a fine job.

ETA:
I will note I am not complaining actually about the danger sense of the scenes during siege stories, I just feel they could have been coordinated or conducted better for a sense of overall danger as a city under siege. I do believe though that they were ran with a 7th Sea kind of vibe to them where the characters were meant to be over-the-top big damn heroes, and that made the scenes in and of themselves fun too.

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

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

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

@insomniac7809 said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

"House" is a play on "Holmes" being a homophone of "homes."

god dammit

Psst.

The Lost Boys was a retelling of Peter Pan, too.

And the original Lion King animated film was simply Hamlet with furries.

And Tropic Thunder was Three Amigos: Vietnam Edition.

This is the most apt comparison for Tropic Thunder to anything that I have seen yet.

@royal I do not know why but for some reason I picture a Danny DeVito Redcap standing at a bus stop and then looking around to make sure no one is watching and then unhinging his jaw and wholly devouring a child. Then walking off like nothing happened with a casual belly rub.

I have recipes for a marscapone based cheesecake, banana maraguto, and a dark chocolate bourbon cake. I mean I can copy the recipes here or I can email the files I made for them. Just message me an email address I'm happy to share.

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

People who are mean, cruel, antagonistic to serving staff at restaurants.

Waiting has been out for 12 years as an example of why you do not fuck with your food servers. They get what they deserve...

Just glancing back the past couple pages, I didn't see Tonikawa: Over the Moon for You mentioned.

Simple slice of life and quite wholesome but it's very well done, I think.

@badger
Well. Fuck.

Frankie Banali

This makes me sad. I even still have vinyl for Quiet Riot.

@Ganymede said in Good or New Movies Review:

This is a gentle reminder that Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is the best Spider-Man movie, and possibly the best comic movie, of all time.

It's awhile off but I'm already eager for the sequel to get here.

Also, I found The Gentlemen pretty damn entertaining. One of Charlie Hunam's best movie roles, I think.

For FTL fans, Crying Suns is an absolutely fun FTL-style roguelike with a really interesting story in the game. I recommend checking it out.

And the Steam sale gives it a good 30% discount right now.

So about halfway through TLOU 2 and...

***=Game Spoiler***

@Ganymede
Yeah keep a box handy. You're going to do that a lot. Lots of feels from the get go.

@Jennkryst
There's some pretty great voice activation mods in the Workshop if you've not checked those out. They make a lot of things for E:D much more interactive and easier to play.

Black Pants Leigon presents Tex Talks Battletech: A Primer on the Clans pt 2

@Sunny
Auspice had it right. It really depends on the game. Some games are best with KB/M. Some are better or easier to play with controllers.

I determine usage based on if the game is a port or not. Some games are still best utilized for controller after porting, for example, Valkyria Chronicles was that way for me.

Others are still best with KB/M; like I'm playing Mount and Blade 2: Bannerlord and that would just be terrible with a controller.

Sometimes using both to try out a game is also a good option, it lets you find what fits right for you based on how the game plays and how you play it, feels.