@rucket said in The Wheel of Time:
@wizz This is and is not a spoiler I guess, it's a weird thing but putting it in tags anyway. Not a book spoiler:
***Mat***
click to show
Yeah, the departure was mentioned earlier in the thread even, but man I didn't realize it was so sudden, like mid-filming for this season. That's wild. I just wonder what they'll do with the character.
I have not had as good and consistent laughter throughout a movie as I did while watching Werewolves Within in quite a while. It's absurd and quirky, and the two leads were fantastic. If you enjoy horror comedy, check it out!
@arkandel said in The Wheel of Time:
One thing I don't yet trust the series to do yet is showcase politics and the Great Game. So far they haven't been able to create much of a three-dimensional world at all; compare it to Westeros in the first season and this is very, very shallow. Even the dynamics between the Ajahs are underwhelming up to now.
I don't mean this as a personal attack but like, it really doesn't surprise me that the first season plot has been so stitched together and rushed because I imagine the fan pressure to get to the popular parts of the setting and plot in the series after so many years in production limbo must be just like overwhelmingly insane.
Eye of the World is a pretty standard fantasy plot in a lot of ways and the reason the elements you want feel thin is they're just not that present until the end. I personally kind of don't like that they're rushing through it, because the first three books are my favorite, but I understand I'm probably among the minority there.
Back to school night, and maybe one in ten of us were masked up. A couple of unmasked fathers in line in front of us before the doors opened were loudly scoffing about counties that had mandated it and a few other maskless parents were generally being passhole aggressholes and making snide remarks juuuust loud enough to hear.
You know, in the middle of a big uptick in cases in the state and the wildfire spread of the Delta variant.
Boy, am I excited for this school year. 
@auspice said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:
I also need consistency and support from my fellow moderators. And there have been (for the sake of transparency) days where I have gone to them, pointed at something, and said: "I want to moderate this." and received a sort of 'eh, I think it's fine.' in return.
That's kind of what we're all trying to say. You guys should be having that conversation once in a blue moon for weird borderline cases, not often enough to dissuade you from taking any action at all. Ark and Gany shouldn't be making a judgement call when you come to them and all that implies (mood that day, different instigators, etc etc) and the way to make it so is to establish what is or is not acceptable and put it in writing so you can turn and say "hey listen, This Person is the third in a row who is just coming down on That Person," (for example,) "I am going to remove it and link people back to the No Dogpiling rule."
I really, really appreciate the advice and the offers. That is so ridiculously kind of y'all. I am trying not to cry into my lunch. 
@jennkryst said in Interest Check: Exalted 3rd ed Mu:
Sure, they can't SHAPESHIFT, but they can get mutations and have SOLAR CHARMS in their Deadly Beastman.
You can take mutations as a Solar, but you don't get them in a neat package deal like Deadly Beastman and the other Lunar charms that build on it, so you have to pay full costs for each of what are essentially permanent disfigurements that mark you as a freakish Wyld-twisted outcast, which you would need to constantly pay motes towards disguising.
You'd likely be dedicating your entire CG merit and bonus point pool and probably some extra XP after just to make this one thing (being a "better" Beastman that...can't change back) barely functional, with the Charms necessary to prevent your mutant ass from being chased out of town, where a Lunar just has to choose one or two charms to get an equivalent form that they're automatically able to shift in and out of.
That sounds like a pain in the ass character concept just to make a completely OOC point.
Like, Solars are still pretty OP, I don't think anybody could really dispute that, but at least they seem to be giving the other Exalts really unique niches that Solars can't just stomp all over this time around.
That one is just going back to Star Wars' roots in Akira Kurosawa's films! I thought it was a cool little nod.
@squirreltalk said in Any Sonic games in development?:
Again, that's not unique to Sonic. Sonic just somehow got more famous for it.
Because what we're saying is that what's unique isn't that there's a segment of the fandom that consists of "horny man children," it's that they make up a significantly larger percentage of the online presence than they do in other fandoms. That's just the way it's gone down, for whatever reason.
I don't think anybody is saying this to discourage you from pursuing making this game if you really want to (it does sound fun!), we're just saying, be aware there's probably going to be a lot of overlap from that particular corner of the internet and you will need to be very clear on your theme and the standards of behavior you expect from your community.
@cobalt said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:
Also fuck you for not tipping. If you don't want to tip then lobby to make it so we get paid better and don't have to rely on tips to make money.
Doordash recently did this big promotion where they removed the "delivery charges" and apparently everyone thinks that means they should opt out of a driver tip as well. It's infuriating when you're obligated to take those orders or risk losing the job because of the mandatory acceptance rate, but essentially wind up paying for the trip yourself because the base pay is so insultingly low.
I love these new kittens we got to death, don't get me wrong.
But the little sister both wants to be held and also doesn't like being held for long, and somehow, SOMEHOW, every single time she starts flailing to get down, she hooks one of her little claws directly into my nipple. Every. Time.
And for that split second of infinite pain I want to HURL HER INTO THE SUN. And then I set her down and she's like "mew" and I am like, oh my god you are my world please sweet creature I just want to rub your little face.
And how they will handle training in the One Power in general or audience exposition to its many, many, many, many, many intricancies.
WoT's magic system is still one of my favorites in fantasy, and I think it translates particularly well to a visual depiction. They have already done well with that imo, so as long as they don't try to dumb it down or stumble hard this actually isn't one of my concerns personally!
Utah's infamous for (among other things) new parents spelling their children's otherwise common names like they just suffered a severe head injury, and I wanted to present my new favorite that I saw today: Jaush. JAUSH. I think you're legally obligated to pronounce it with a nasally twang, like that Tiger King guy would?
It also must be short, one can reasonably assume, for Jaushooah.
"JAUSH! GO UNLOAD THE GAT DANG LAWNDRY!!"
I don't see a chop doc as being out of place on Tatooine, the exposed part is questionable, but other cyborgs have been on Tatooine in the cannon and covered up as much as Fennic does.
I don't disagree with you that he belonged on Tattooine just for being a cybernetic technician, cyborgs seem relatively common in Star Wars and he or someone like him would obviously be needed there. Again, it was purely the aesthetics that bother me about him. He's in a little shack in the middle of absolutely nowhere, mostly doing these like highly stylized prosthetics for...rich kids? What?? It's just silly!
ETA: I know there is mixed criticism, but from me, one of the older folks that saw SW in the theaters during its first run back in the 70s, Boba Fett has left me excited to see some of the upcoming star wars.
I get that Star Wars in theaters was a formative experience for so many people and completely changed the way we make sci fi. I do.
It was a formative experience for me too, even if I first saw it on VHS instead.
If I seem over the top in my criticism about it that's probably fair. 
It just really bothered me that for such a beloved character they often left directing in the hands of a goofball like Robert Rodriguez and made so many questionable or outright nonsensical choices in the writers' room. We have proof that they could have done better because they already did!
@Derp said:
See, I'm going to have to call bullshit on this. Being a white dude has never, ever given me any sort of special advantage. If anything, it's been detrimental to me in a number of ways, because I don't qualify for some of the things that I otherwise would if I were of a different race, gender, or ethnicity.
The whole thrust of your argument is "Affirmative Action is bad!" Yeah, maybe. It's a gray area. You had to struggle a little harder to get into school? Aww man.
But please, prove me wrong. Tell me how being white has bettered me in some way above and beyond my peers?
I'm not financially better off than anyone else. I fall well below the poverty line. I'm not academically better off than anyone else, save in situations where I've worked my fucking ass off to get there, devoting upwards of sixteen hours a day to school, and everything I've managed to do has been on student loans and pell grants, plus whatever I can scrape by working the minimum-wage job for the school I managed to land because I work my ass off academically.
But yeah, I'm just ballin' based on nothing more than the color of my skin. So go on, show everyone how.
I am going to 100% guarantee you that no one has thrown a bottle at your head or screamed a racial slur at you for just trying to buy groceries. Or just for walking down the street. No one has denied you fucking housing, or told you or your partner to leave a public area because you held hands. This is DAILY for some of the people in my life.
EDIT: This originally ended with an insult and that's not appropriate. I am really sorry.
@surreality said in Good TV:
This is why I keep harping on everyone re: 80s game.
Dork.
YASSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
I am slowly making my way through Stranger Things, roughly an episode a night due to my new schedule, but holy god I think I am enjoying it more for not binging straight through. About to start episode 4....TONITE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
I have maybe fifteen friends and literally hundreds of people I'm friendly with. That's an important distinction. Still, I've been there dude, that blows.
@Arkandel
Goddamnit dude, fuck me for opening that at work.
Kinda funny how I never used to have like a strong external emotional response to articles like that, but now that my kid lives with me I can't even make it through the headline without spraying around like broken faucet.
It totally is.
Doesn't change how disappointing it is that there was a bullet to dodge, though.
If you're looking for good non-fiction audiobooks as well, Astrophysics For People In A Hurry is actually narrated by Neil deGrasse Tyson, and it's very cool. Covers a lot of ground, and he has a way of speaking about the subject matter that is very engaging.