Lurker > Thorn

ZeldaTPLink posted...

Also apparently the 3rd is just an epilogue?

Not really. The idea that 3rd is "just" an epilogue or optional is one of the most infuriating misconceptions that has somehow taken root everywhere. (Not directed at you but more how it's become so widespread that you encountered it)

It sets up a lot for the future games.

Fire Emblem Engage: Started. Engaged?

okay nintendo you need to outsource your ops or something.

Played the Prologue and first 3 Chapters and stopped when I got my hub area. Selected Hard/Classic. Huh, lot of new systems here it seems - way more than most Fire Emblems, this could be a bit to get my head around.

Seems like an oversight to have a hub zone that is like a completely invincible fortress and not stash all the rings there and just generally rule from there!

But most importantly can't make Alear run around and jump on the loading screen 0/10 game bring back Three Houses. Unless this is a pro controller thing or I have yet to find the right button for it. This game seems to have a lot of loading but also most of them are short but I might prefer if it just gave me a single long load for some of these.

"You libs are deranged fearmongerers, they're not going to go after abortion and gay marriage"

https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-politics-and-policy/iowa-lawmakers-propose-ban-sex-marriage-rcna72759

Recommending ASOIAF is monstrous. why inflict that pain on another.

...would be interested nonetheless >.>

~~~

DRV3: Agreed that 2 > V3 > 1 feels pretty clear-cut. 3-6 is my second favorite case in the game behind 3-5 so it was a good ending IMO. The "viewer comments" stuff that eventually make up the background during the latter parts of the trial are absolutely amazing too lol.

ZeldaTPLink posted...

Ok recipes are not as simple as I imagined. Apparently you have to eat prepared meals to get the recipes, not the raw ingredients? But how do I get those?

So, eventually when you go to like an Inn when you talk to the innkeeper there'll be an option along with Talk/Rest that is like "Hamburger w/Fries - 500 mira" that you can select and that'll get you the recipe.

SCOTUS hearing arguments about Biden's student debt forgiveness.

Essentially the take I'm getting from reporters listening to oral arguments is:

The 3 liberals think the states have no standing to sue and that the Biden admin has the authority to forgive student debt.

Alito, despite it being a complete 180 from his erosion of Article III standing, is just going "fuck it" and inventing a reason why the states have standing to bring this suit. And obviously thinks Biden can't forgive student debt.

Roberts, Thomas, Gorsuch, and Kav seem opposed to the idea that Biden can forgive student debt but haven't given many tells on where they stand on standing.

Barett appears to think the states don't have standing and hasn't given a tell on whether Biden can forgive student debt.

tl;dr: It sounds like there are the votes there to say Biden can't forgive student debt but it's unclear if there are the votes to say the states have standing to even bring the suit. So it looks like the best we can hope for is that the liberals, Barrett, and someone not named Alito reject standing and dismiss the case on that basis and don't touch the merits of the case.

But this tweet is basically where I'm at:

https://twitter.com/mjs_DC/status/1630615017031712775

Somehow, some way they'll find a way to kill student debt forgiveness.

started from the bottom now we're here

Trails of Azure for sure.

DRV3: LOL here we go.

~~~

Elden Ring: Wow, FROM celebrating my beating the game with an announcement.

https://twitter.com/EldenRing/status/1630478058103734274

hype

https://twitter.com/EldenRing/status/1630478058103734274

"Currently in development"

Literally just beat Elden Ring over the weekend. Super hyped because FROM DLC always delivers. Seeing speculation that that's Miquella on Torrent in the concept art.

Also, since many papers don't print the comics in color it just looked like every person in the comic was white in them. (To its benefit maybe?)

Watched the HBO adaptation of The Last of Us up to where it currently is yesterday. I actually own the game (well the remaster) but it fell into the deep level of backlog hell that I will unfortunately probably never reach.

Been a really good show IMO. Definitely feel like Ellie has been carrying most of it but Joel had a good scene when he broke down to Tommy when begging him to take Elie the rest of the way in Episode 6.

Scott Adams saga reaching M. Night Shyamalan levels of twists

https://twitter.com/bestofdyingtwit/status/1630246562877300737
https://twitter.com/xoxogossipgita/status/1630244585275543555

there are so many layers and levels to these tweets you could probably write a doctoral thesis on them

So he "identified as black for several years" in part because black people never discriminated against him (but whites did) and in part because of "the social and economic benefits" and because he "like[s] to be on a winning team."

Mr_Lasastryke posted...

how is someone as unfathomably dumb as elon musk one of the richest people on the planet

your family owning an emerald mine in apartheid south africa helps with that

We've found someone willing to stand up and take the side of Dilbert in the matter of "calling black people a hate group that white people should get the hell away from" Can you guess who?

That's right, it's Elon Musk!

https://twitter.com/pixelatedboat/status/1629835147095973894

He also deleted a tweet asking, "What exactly are they complaining about?" in direct response to Adams who was quote-tweeting a WaPo article on it.

Leonhart4 posted...

So would you consider Minecraft or Fortnite iconic based on that criteria? Those are really popular games we generally don't care about at all.

I mean it's too early to determine if Hogwarts Legacy is iconic but I think it's popular enough that it'll have long legs and at least one sequel

Minecraft and Fortnite for sure, particularly Minecraft. I've never played either but they'd definitely make the cut IMO.

Popularity/sales is a weird one where I don't think it alone is enough unless you're like... the best selling game of all time. I'd personally probably say sequels are at a disadvantage in general too just because they're usually just tweaks to what the original game started. Like, I don't think each Pokemon game released is iconic. RBY 100%. Maybe GSC (and only then because of what it did with postgame). But after that probably none of them?

I get that it may be too early to definitively declare things with Hogwarts Legacy but I feel pretty confident on this.

Tolkien style elves so:

Leonhart4 posted...

Legolas

was sballen blaming his wife hijacking his account for the Draven/Mewtwo confusion a topic itself or a revelation that got dropped in the middle of one?

Yeah, that's my hangup here - Board 8 definitely has its blind spots in terms of how the general public perceives gaming but I don't think Hogwarts: Legacy falls into it really. Like, sure, it's not a JRPG, VN, or Phoenix Wright but it's also not an FPS released after the year 2004 (congrats Halo 2 I decided you were the cutoff.)

I feel like if it were genuinely good/noteworthy we'd care more? It should be close enough to our strike zone? I dunno. I agree with the take that to be an "iconic game" you kinda have to be considered pretty universally great, groundbreaking, or innovative or a combination of them. And that doesn't seem to be the case? Like if you were to submit games to a museum to represent the history of gaming/landmark games or some shit is Hogwarts: Legacy really on that list?

Breath of the Wild, Elden Ring sure.

...Oh dammit, right, it did. I should know I posted a bit in it. For some bizarre reason I thought it died out at like 140 posts. ....Wishful thinking, maybe lol?

It's tough for me to comment too much on Hogwarts because seeing as how Board 8 is pretty much the only place I hang out online and like... we don't care about it so in that very warped sense it doesn't strike me as "iconic." Like.... Fire Emblem Engage got a 500 topic. That's like triple the discussion Hogwarts Legacy got for a game basically released at about the same time!

...It's got a lot of commercials on TV, I guess?

If pressed to answer the topic question I'd probably say Elden Ring but I dunno if even that feels right since at least to me it doesn't feel like that much of a breakthrough from Dark Souls - though it at least has the prestige and awards that I'd shut up and fall in line behind it as an answer if pushed. Otherwise I might fall all the way back to Breath of the Wild.

NFUN posted...

https://twitter.com/GretaThunberg/status/1608056944501178368

it's definitely this

It's not even the most recent game named in this topic !!

The GOP finally finding a plight in Palestine they demand action on.

Kenri posted...

(Also conservatives fucking hate science arguably more than other subject so I'm not sure why that one's being brought up as potentially safe.)

More hard science, though yeah even then maybe like... chemistry? I get your point though, biology is/was under siege from them wrt evolution, geology a bit less so but still wrt young earth creationism etc.

The other 2 were Witch on the Holy Night and Fire Emblem: Three Hopes but I dunno if I want a VN right now and for Three Hopes I might talk myself into leading up to it with finally doing Golden Deer in Three Houses and I also don't feel like a replay lol.

Next up at Morgott's Boss Arena was the toughest of these fights for me - Godfrey. Hey, I thought I beat you (though I did call it super weird that it happened with zero fanfare at the time) before! Anyway, he's back for unexplained reasons and he starts off not that bad but then he discovered my superpower - being anime af - and raised me all-in. After killing his lion pal (not cool) he reveals his Bankai-I mean true name as Hourah Loux and pulls out a Metal Gear Rising skillset on me. lmfao I was not expecting to be launched into the air DBZ style and suplexed into the ground. The worst was his giant stomp attack though. I think it hits the entire arena and he liked to spam it and I'd been using dodges as my main defense for a while now and that basically never worked. You might dodge one but then the rest get you stunlocked. I did learn that you can somehow block it with a shield though but this took a few tries.

So now all that remained was the endgame. I gotta say, I really liked the intro cutscene to Radagon. It's pretty minimal but that over the shoulder glance back at you with the Elden Rune firing up was really cool IMO. Radagon was a pretty simple fight but then we get thrown right into the Final Boss - Elden Beast. This was a cool looking fight but a bit annoying to play what with being a melee build and it liking to just swim or warp really far away. Some really pretty looking attacks though, especially the Elden Ring themed ones. This took two tries though, first one I got caught and died one of my more stylish deaths when I got impaled in the air sorta like Marika was. On the runback knowing most of its moveset now and putting on a bunch of holy damage protection it went pretty smoothly.

Back at the first boss arena after that was ending select time and naturally I summoned Mio- I mean Ranni. I'm also so mind poisoned that when she did the look back at us with the giant moon in the background and said "Let's go together" my mind went straight to Kingdom Hearts lmao. It was another very pretty cutscene though, these last few were all very good IMO. And that was game!

~~~~~~

Overall thoughts: Very good game. Not GOTY because that's still Xenoblade 3 but would probably be GOTY most years. As for Soulsborne/FROM Cinematic Universe I still would put Bloodborne over it. Probably Sekiro too. I think it's in the same area as Dark Souls 1 and Dark Souls 3 for me.

Honestly it basically felt a lot like open world Dark Souls 3 to me! Thing is, while I wouldn't say the open world was done badly, I definitely preferred the tighter, more carefully crafted dungeons for the most part. Mostly thinking the big places like Leyndell or Stormveil Castle but even some of the mini-dungeons like the big castles or forts on the overworld.

Another thing, and this is very much a me thing, is I definitely had a feeling over the back half that I not only cheated the game, but myself. I didn't learn, I didn't grow. I took a shortcut and-okay you get the meme. Spirit Ashes. I absolutely leaned too hard on them here. Like clearly I could have just... not done so... but like it's there and so while a lot of the fun in Soulsborne games to me has been learning attacks and how to deal with and punish them here it was basically "Summon Mimic Tear, watch it get aggro, annihilate while the boss isn't paying attention to me." I think if I were to play NG+ (or a fresh NG) I might be interested in seriously cutting back the use of them for maybe only fights where there are multiple bosses to even the numbers game. Like, sure it's fun to just crush bosses the way I was tending to with Spirit Ashes but I do feel like I cheated myself of a fair deal of the experience.

As for what's next... You know of the 3 games I had circling my mind this was long the one in last place but I think I may go to Fire Emblem Engage next.

Elden Ring beated.

All right, last I checked I left off after beating Malenia. Now with needle in hand I went to troll the Frenzied Flame. Well, that seemed a more painful transference than it needed to be. Also the Three Fingers died doing this so my gambit might actually rid the world of the flame entirely! Also yikes Hyetta did you really need to burn to death to give me that exposition? I feel like Melina told me *most* of that. Speaking of Melina she really needs to learn to trust the process. It's unfortunate that you can't like... explain you have Miquella's Needle and have every intention of suppressing the Frenzied Flame with it. Like, again, with the Three Fingers gone it actually feels plausible that this is actually the *best* case scenario in that it is the one course of action that permanently rids the Lands Between of the Frenzied Flame. OTOH, in her defense, all we have in-universe to go on here is that one note we found on the drop to this very place and while I trust that the game isn't lying to me that's some metagaming there. Plus, I suppose Melina has no guarantee that I'll follow through on using the needle - either that I'm lying to her now or that I'll be corrupted by the dark side after taking the flame in. So, she decides to leave and promises to kill me if I become Lord of the Frenzied Flame -- again, trust the process Melina! Still, I wish the game could account for the maneuver I'm pulling here.

No one else appears to react to this development except that Shabriri has just vanished leaving his (Yura's) gear behind. Weird, figured if anyone would have something to say about this it'd be the guy who asks you to do it to begin with. Bizarrely we still have to go to the Forge of the Giants to execute the plan even though you'd think I could just march up to the Erdtree instead now. Can't sequence break so easily I guess! Anyway we meditate and then fall into the volcano and wake up in Farum Azula lmfao. FROM not even trying to justify this one. I'd say Farum Azula being an explicitly really weird place where not even time seems to work properly might excuse it but it's like... still a physical place floating in the sky over an ocean quite some distance from the Forge!

Crumbling Farum Azula is a pretty okay place to explore. A few annoying enemies/encounters but I like the giant dungeon-y places so it's all good. I almost stumbled into the Godskin Duo fight on accident and only realized when I walked over a summon sign without realizing it and it made a chime-like sound and I realized "oh." This was pretty rude. I mean I got it first try but something weird happened and after the boss was defeated it was as if they summoned another copy of one of them that persisted so I had to fight a fifth guy after the fight (Mimic Tear died near the end of the actual boss fight but otherwise did his job.)

I get invaded by that Volcano Manor guy and also am challenged to a duel by Alexander and I was like "oh no please don't do this" and it went exactly like I expected. ...Great accessory he dropped tho. Speaking of Volcano Manor and jars. Alexander's fate here brought me back to Jarburg to check on little jar bro and oh whoops they got raided off-screen and the *other* Volcano Manor guy died defending them. Well, kinda defending them. He didn't do a great job I'd say. Not that I told him that. I also gave little jar bro (the only survivor?) Alexander's remains after he was done *eating* that Volcano Manor guy. Jars, am I right?

Oh, right, Roundtable Hold. Let's talk about that. It's on fire now. That's kinda weird. Like I can buy that the real world version is since it's right next to the Erdtree but I thought ours was like literally in another world. Heck on the map we're off in the corner. Gideon is like "Well if it dies, it dies." but Roderika is concerned that Hewg wants to go down with the ship. Neither of us can talk him out of it however.

Back in Farum Azula, as mentioned I found the secret boss here and after beating him, his arena met the requirements in the item description of the needle and lo and behold Frenzied Flame suppressed. From there it was on to the plot boss and oh no, not you too Gurranq. This feels like a double betrayalton where I don't think either of us meant it, does answer the question of where he left to. Also lol first try I didn't realize the spot you start on is a narrow ledge and not just part of the circular arena and I dropped off and died while he was talking. Kinda killed the drama. He was a tough-ish fight though, particularly in Phase 2. However, he falls and once again we just kinda cutscene warp to Leyndell. A Leyndell that has seen better days lol.

Unfortunately this place was now rather deserted and little more than a walk to defeat the last three bosses of the game. However, I did find the corpse(?) of Goldmask with a Mending Rune over it. (A little later after resting at a Site of Grace I saw an item glimmer there and it was his gear so yeah gonna say corpse.) Not too far from him was the scribe who seems to have had a mental break at Goldmask coming to the conclusion the Golden Order is flawed but man I dunno, the description of his mending rune seems on point and you're literally crazy laughing at the fact that the "symbol of perfection" is burning in front of you. Sounds like he had a point. Another rest at grace and he apparently dies too and leaves his gear.

Back at Roundtable Hold, Hewg is losing his memories and Roderika points out we probably *could* convince him to leave now but decides to respect the wishes he had while he was still himself. She also becomes Punished!Roderika (she's sounded so done with this since the place started burning tbqh) and asks us to just kill Marika for putting all this shit into motion. Gideon is also AWOL (he *did* say he would leave earlier once he was done reading some things) so they're the last two left here because even the Finger Reader is dead. Well, the talking one. I guess the silent one who acts as a generic shopkeep is still alive too.

So all that's left is to boss rush here. First up, at the place where we fought Phantom Godfrey is... oh goddammit Gideon. Not like this, bro. You're embarrassing yourself here, you're less a boss than a mid-tier invader. Also I know that you always kept acting like we were competing for Elden Lord but I figured that was just pride bullshit after I literally took down every single shardbearer myself. "No man, not even you, can kill a god." my guy I have arguably already done so we didn't have to have this fight. The item description on his gear is intriguing though, suggesting that his abrupt mental shift was because he figured out what Marika was trying to do and just couldn't deal with it. But that is, yet again, something I've got handled - really should have talked this one out. First Malenia, then Melina, now him. Being a silent protagonist wracking up an impressive casualty list tbqh.

[Conclusion next post]

Forceful_Dragon posted...

Right, it will only be used to enforce restrictions on things they deem to be objectionable, but that criteria is so broad that it could be used to eliminate nearly any subject from being taught.

Yeah. Basically it's "feels over reals" applied to legislation.

Like I said, I don't expect them to enforce this to ban the teaching of math and physics. However, the wording they're using in legislation is such that if enforced by the letter it should be. But the whole thing is just theater because they know, and their base knows, and anyone who is following what conservatives have been doing around the country (and especially in Florida) knows that what they're really doing is trying to come up with an innocuous rationale to ban the courses they really want to ban like Gender Studies, African American Studies, an accurate teaching of American History and came up with "Well let's just call it 'unproven and theoretical' and ban teaching of that, that'll probably sound okay enough for the average person who doesn't follow politics." But that criteria demonstrates such an ignorant understanding of... well, everything, that it ends up broad enough to take down entire fields of study in areas where the layperson might thing "Oh, that's fact" and like actually no it technically isn't but that's how math and science operate.

Basically, it's the continuation of legislating/ruling/dictating by the "common sense" of the right-wing zeitgeist rather than a system of written law because when you write laws this broad when everyone fucking knows you only intend to enforce them selectively against the things you're ideologically opposed to (because you proudly declare in public that's what you're going to do!) rather than what the law literally says you're inherently undermining the rule of law. I get it, only political nerds like us who will discuss it even on a contest board might actually care about that distinction but I still think it should be important.

The bit about requiring that general courses "promote the values necessary to preserve the constitutional republic" is the same damn thing. Hell, it even has the bonus (to them) of letting them smugly go, "b-b-but i thought you libs wanted to protect democracy? hypocrites!" when you call this out as chilling. Because who is deciding what these "values" are? DeSantis and his appointees. And given that the conservative belief is that progressive values are destroying that (despite the bald hypocrisy this takes from the party that attempted an insurrection two years ago) well I just fucking wonder what values they're going to mean must be promoted by this law. Hell, the legislation gives an interpretation of the founding of America and then prohibits the teaching of any interpretation that rejects theirs so you don't even have to look far.

masterplum posted...

Ok no

By the letter of the law it should be. I mean, it won't (well math will probably make it unscathed at least - edit: actually NFUN reminded me you can probably take down math too by the letter of this) because this law is about a fascist takeover of education and they'll only use it shutdown whatever the fuck they decide is "woke" but you tell me how science doesn't fall under "theoretical content."

Florida gearing up to eviscerate higher education now. CNN's article singles out Gender Studies as a banned course under this but the legislation prohibits general courses "with a curriculum based on unproven, theoretical or exploratory content" so science and math are basically about to be illegal. It also requires that general education courses "promote the values necessary to preserve the constitutional republic."

https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/24/politics/ron-desantis-florida-universities-gender-studies/index.html

Nah, while it's not something I'll do immediately, I wouldn't mind running NG+ (or NG++) to get those. Did it that way in Bloodborne.

As for the secret boss in Farum Azula, I found and got him before I fought the real boss but almost on accident - in that something caught my eye in a "I think I can get there" sort of way but I think it might have been a coincidence and the path to him was there instead LOL. Or maybe I really did see it because that'd be a heck of a coincidence.

From memory (god this was like yesterday I should remember better) from the last Site of Grace before Maliketh ("Beside the Great Bridge" iirc) I think you would reverse direction as if you heading backwards a bit - you get jumped by some beastmen guys in the partially flooded room but you can get the jump on them since you're coming from behind them this way. Then you emerge outside on a cliff edge and if you peer over you should find a drop somewhere along it. Once you do the path is pretty straightforward, you keep dropping down until you end up on a shattered disc platform at the bottom and there's a prompt to "lie down" that teleports you to his arena.

Elden Ring mini-update: I'm pretty sure I've all but beat the game. I defeated Radagon and the Elden Beast but activated the site of grace and peaced out to redeem the remembrance. Now I'm literally just checking item descriptions for any lore I may have missed (since like normal enemy drops aren't stuff I typically read immediately so they can get lost in the shuffle unlike boss drops/equipment.)

But I stopped most of the way through that because I had real life stuff to do and now I'm tired but will probably wrap things up tomorrow so probably ~finale~ post then.(Including everything I've done since I left off because it's actually quite a bit to write about even if gameplay-wise it was pretty short relatively speaking)

Leonhart4 posted...

The darkness retreat ends for Aaron Rodgers

Will he begin another one by joining the Jets? Stay tuned!

please just let us sign carr and start a dynasty of wild card weekend exits

Huh. Makes me wonder what other tight dialogue windows there have been that I've missed. I've mostly confined my NPC rounds to whenever I beat one of the main 5 shardbearers unless I was actively running someone's questline and thought there might be something from a related NPC like on Ranni's.

~~~

DRV3: 3-5 is probably my favorite case in the game and Top 3 in the series. The motive is pretty unique and makes for an interesting case. It's not 2-5 but it's a worthy successor.

It feels like it could have some interesting and cool applications but we're already fucking ruining it and we will continue to do so more and more as time goes on and capitalism works its magic.

Well, it's the only version I played so I can't really say if that's the case. I never experienced the vanilla placements.

Oh, missed this.

andylt posted...

For DS2, I believe someone told me to get an OG 360 copy unpatched as apparently the Scholars version has worse enemy placements or something? But that would come without the DLC of course, so Im open to any opinions on that.

I only played Scholars (bought the Trilogy pack like two-three years ago) but I'd say the DLC is definitely worth it. I feel like that's the case in all Soulsborne games though? I guess I'd say it's least important for DS2 but IIRC it still had my favorite fight in the game.

13 Sentinels > Tales of the Abyss >= Dark Souls II > Triangle Strategy > Type-0

All great options though.

That must be a short window then because I actually bounce between them a lot because I noticed that Gowry tended to have things to say about Millicent's quest but after talking to her at the beginning of Elphael he didn't bring it up (but did comment on her revelations there) and then he was despondent after Millicent and I won.

Guess you have to check on him right after the summon signs appear but before dealing with them?

Unless I was backed up on dialogue for him and needed to rest at a site of grace to advance it after the first bit. I find it annoying to have to ride over from the nearest one so I don't bother with micromanging it that much.

Elden Ring: Miquella's Haligtree and Elphael, Brace of the Haligtree beated.

Second area a lot more fun than the first which continued to have platforming and those summoner snail guys. Whereas the second had some pretty fun fights. Although I'm salty how bad I handled the Putrid Avatar, his knights, and his goddamn ballista unit. Dying once, sure, I didn't realize just how much backup he had there at first. But it shouldn't have taken like four more tries argh. Also damnit one more (please be the last) scarlet rot mini swamp for the road I guess.

Only one NPC quest here really and that was the grand finale of Millicent's. We chatted at the entrance to area two and she dropped some LORE on me. Then over in the scarlet rot swamp, after I took down a rude field boss (he killed me like twice for reasons I still don't quite understand. It's like my HP was way lower than it should have been when the killing blow landed and I don't know when the damage even landed on me until it was way too late) another CYOA pair of summoning signs appeared. The option to invade and "challenge" her seems like it comes out of nowhere though. Helping her was the real boss fight of this zone tbqhhhh. Thankfully dying simply puts you back at the signs and you don't even drop your runes but man a lot of times I just got blown the **** out lol. Eventually we win and yet despite that she's dying? That's some BS considering her dying in the fight is literally a lose condition that gets you thrown out of the summon sign because it happened to me one time! but oh well. She gives me the needle back Well, her corpse does, that's kinda dark. And it was on to the real boss.

Malenia was a fun fight, took a number of attempts but lasers are once again the ultimate power. Does feel a bit weird you can't just be like "Wait, hold up!" I have a needle for you from your sister/daughter/clone/really those were all pitched by Millicent as ideas. Oh, also, I found Miquella - also killed Mohg so you can just head on over and collect him. Anyway, looks like she had some serious regen if she could land attacks so blitzing her felt like the best option. Although that whirlwind blade storm move she had I just kind of prayed when it happened lol. Sometimes I could block/roll out of it and sometimes I could not - with fatal consequences. Afterwards, resting at the site of grace made the scarlet rot flower come back so I could give the needle to it. Feels a bit too late for that but uh... I now have Miquella's Needle so looks like I can cheat the Frenzied Flame now. The item description on the needle says it can only be used in Farum Azula. I know one of the warp points in Liurnia sent me there so I wonder if just being in the zone counts or if I have to be there "for real" which... I guess I'll be going there soon-ish Not sure how that's going to work because that doesn't appear to follow logically from what our plot objectives are but eh.

I guess next time I'll become the shortest tenured Lord of Frenzied Flame in order to save Melina. And also to screw that faction over. Don't think there's anything else to do at the moment at least.

https://twitter.com/newsservicefla/status/1627715498031939584

"You can't sue me for breaking the law because I changed the law after I broke it to say what I did was fine."

3-5 hype

Biden is in Kyiv now.

https://twitter.com/myroslavapetsa/status/1627606601057050624

Heck of a show of support. Like just fucking imagine Trump. Like, the air raid sirens are going off in Kyiv - it's a hell of a statement.

https://twitter.com/ASLuhn/status/1627610520533495808
https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1627611370051993602

lmao OldFAQs not letting me down with the NES blowout.

OoT for me. SNES/Genesis was my first console generation but never played LttP until the GBA (I think) port.

Can't Green Lanterns do like anything? Even accounting for your extra-tier restriction it's got like a universal translator, right? That automatically makes it high tier. Though Jedi might have that too with force shenanigans? Pretty sure at least some of them explicitly did in the old EU.

Not familiar enough with Star Trek to say how great that option would be. Like my understanding was it's more that the society is mostly post-scarcity than anything about the individuals themselves.

Elden Ring: Didn't get a chance to play since last time until today and only a bit, but enough for Consecrated Snowfield beated. At least there's a bunch of runes out here, though the place isn't so bad outside that initial snowstorm zone. I at least like the idea behind the puzzle to enter Miquella's Haligtree with the Evergaol being a "light the torches" puzzle but man they decided to be as annoying as possible with the enemies and their placement, huh? I actually had the torch that dispelled invisibility in an equip slot for a good chunk of the game but had recently taken it off because it basically saw one use for a single enemy and it weighs like as much as a sword. Whoops. And Souls archers still in typical form. Maybe not as aimbot as the Anor Londo dudes but firing triple magic arrows with tracking is just very rude. Kinda feel like I missed an obvious path or hidden wall or something because my platforming solution for the last spot felt off but it worked so whatever.

Also poked around in the dungeon that led to the Snowfield some more since the Deathroot radar went off when I first arrived here but I never found it (or the boss) and like I guess there's circumstantial evidence suggesting there was an invisible floor off that drop, I mean, I surmised that was the most likely scenario after ruling pretty much everything else out but never a fan of those because determining their dimensions is such a pain. LOL at the boss fight though. Another Mimic Tear... but this time I could summon my Mimic Tear so there were three of us.

Made it to the Haligtree but didn't advance very far, just to the second Site of Grace.

I'll say XIII and XIII-2. X definitely way up there however. Type-0 has some hidden gems as well for lesser mentioned ones.

Sorry for a bunch of tweets here but rather than just go "you should read the thread" (which you still should do!) I tried to grab the parts of it I thought stood out most.

https://twitter.com/JStein_WaPo/status/1627328220721823744
https://twitter.com/JStein_WaPo/status/1627330517707153408
https://twitter.com/JStein_WaPo/status/1627421907548098561
https://twitter.com/JStein_WaPo/status/1627425230233690116

Trump's OMB director is an influential figure in the GOP's debt talks and his plan is coming out now - basically destroy the anti-poverty programs of the government by labeling them all "woke." Loan Forgiveness for Public Service? Woke, must be eliminated. HUD? Woke. The VA? Woke. NASA? Woke.

And the obligatory reminder that under Vought's tenure as Trump's OMB the debt and deficit basically exploded because they don't actually give a fuck about any of this and will raise the deficit to record levels to give the rich tax breaks.

Yeah, that's probably a better idea. Otherwise a team at 3rd/4th & Goal may be incentivized to intentionally fumble through the endzone to get another shot at a TD, especially in end of game situations.

Though you could have it be spot of fumble (and the down counts) in situations where the ball can't be advanced on a fumble like end of halves.