Lurker > Paratroopa1

Samus/Mario has completely changed a lot of how I view the upper tier, it's an important match

So the thing is, I actually support Trump pulling the emergency brakes on our involvement in the Syria conflict because Mattis/Bolton/etc have been allowed to escalate pretty much without oversight which is a really big problem

but two things:

1) Trump HIRED Mattis and Bolton and it's not like we didn't know what their positions were on this. Especially Bolton who is a fucking maniac and an inexcusably terrible hire from the start, but he's ESPECIALLY an inexcusably terrible hire if you think pulling out of Syria today was a good idea. Hiring him in the first place was what exacerbated this mess. Trump made this mess and it's clear that he has no real foreign policy goal here aside from "hire people who hated Obama a lot and then ???" because everything he's doing is at odds with each other, he just got scared that Erdogan threw a hissy fit and he's backing down because so much for being a tough alpha male (typically it would actually be good that he's listening to someone for a change but he just legitimized Erdogan, Assad, AND Putin in one fell swoop)

2) Trump did this with absolutely zero communication or planning or conferring with anyone else or... anything. I want to get out of Syria but I don't want to do it stupidly and rashly which is the only way Trump knows how to do anything

Please keep in mind, by the way, that copyright and trademark are two very different things

Disney is not going to lose the trademark to Mickey Mouse any time soon

However, they WOULD lose the copyright to Steamboat Willie, and will start losing their grip on the copyrights of other old things in the future

which is, of course, completely fine, it just means that it's a work so old that anyone can distribute it now and maybe find something that's not 100 years old to make money off of you creeps

Oof, uncharacteristicly bad start for me

Maybe I would have picked army if they weren't a bunch of bird-hurting motherfuckers

Hawai'i -1
Boston College +2
Minnesota +5.5
California -1
Duke +3.5
Wisconsin +3
Vanderbilt -4

I really don't trust Boise State, they got blown the fuck out by Oklahoma State and even though that game was on the road I think they're FRAUDS

Picking Minnesota is a coinflip, half the time they're genuinely good and half the time they're Rutgers-tier. If you predict this game pretending you have any idea what's going to happen you're a FOOL

I'm really worried that I'm doing the same thing I do every year where I put too much faith in the Pac-12 but I genuinely believe they have favorable matchups in most of their bowls, aside from Fresno/ASU which I already predicted correctly against ASU. Cal's not really that bad? TCU lost to Kansas. TCU lost to Kansas. TCU lost to Kansas.

Nobody talked about Duke losing 59-7 to Wake Forest, but it was literally one of the strangest blowouts in college football history. You might think I'm exaggerating but Duke was favored in that game. I'm going to cross my fingers that that was a fluke because Duke's resume is actually really good otherwise - I had them ranked in the top 25 nearly all year because of a nonconference where they beat Army, NW, and Baylor. They deserve more credit than they received UNTIL they got blown out 59-7 by Wake Forest which I mean what the fuck

Miami/Wisconsin is a dumb tossup I can't possibly give a shit about

Vanderbilt being favored by 4 points sure is weird but uh wow Baylor sure did just barely scrape out 6-6.

I'm 2 for 4; "USF sucks" and "just pick the team that did better against Miami" both wound up being correct lines of logic

My WMU pick looked great then fell apart unbelievably fast, holy fuck

Like Maria I personally subscribe to "the burden of good" theory that says to be good you actually have to make meaningful sacrifices to achieve good ends that you won't necessarily be rewarded for, not merely have the intent to be good. the vast majority of people prefer a good society but it's a fairly rare number that are willing to go to great lengths to achieve it - I wouldn't count myself among that group

I also agree that most people are LN or N

MariaTaylor posted...

the physical stats in D&D make no sense either considering in real life someone can go from like 8 strength to 12 strength pretty easily if they just start working out regularly for a while. but in D&D you have to go kill a bunch of dragons and gain hundreds of thousands of experience just to earn the stat points to increase your strength from 8 to 12, and most of the time that's not even a good idea for your build -- someone who starts with 8 strength is probably dumping Str because they don't need it.

meh I'm not gonna get too bitchy about this one

QB: Patrick Mahomes
RB: Todd Gurley
WR: Julio Jones

Bonus

Level 4: Rams 30+
Level 6: New England (-18.5)

I still feel like Skyrim will be the #3 most popular game. The immediate challengers I can think of are like, Super Mario Odyssey and maybe Dark Souls... maybe The Witcher 3. That's about it. I guess Smash 4.

ChaosTonyV4 posted...

Is it that strange when you consider stats and feats exist that specifically measure and define what youre able to do?

yes; physical stats can be vaguely defined in real life too (not charisma, maybe, but the others sure). it's not weird for a character to have 12 strength. it IS weird for a character to be explicitly defined as "good" by magic spells. good/evil and lawful/chaotic being explicitly made non-abstractions is very strange

Paratroopa1 posted...

MariaTaylor posted...

also unlike D&D your beliefs and ideals can change over time

this is probably what the problem with the alignment system boils down to for me - what someone's "alignment" is is incredibly fluid in both the short term and the long term (I don't believe I've EVER played a character for longer than 2 months who didn't have some sort of character arc that made their alignment at least trend in a direction if not outright change it), and not only that but what someone's alignment is is also completely subjective to the opinions of the people and society around them - or the opinions of the gods, I suppose. But then at the same time, D&D makes it absolutely, 100% clear that both good/evil and lawful/chaotic are actual inherent, physical qualities that a person has, something that can actually be scientifically measured, which is really strange

and then on top of this the alignment system just isn't very deep and doesn't describe people very well, it's just kind of... weak. good vs evil is a very boring way to define a person's character

MariaTaylor posted...

also unlike D&D your beliefs and ideals can change over time

this is probably what the problem with the alignment system boils down to for me - what someone's "alignment" is is incredibly fluid in both the short term and the long term (I don't believe I've EVER played a character for longer than 2 months who didn't have some sort of character arc that made their alignment at least trend in a direction if not outright change it), and not only that but what someone's alignment is is also completely subjective to the opinions of the people and society around them - or the opinions of the gods, I suppose. But then at the same time, D&D makes it absolutely, 100% clear that both good/evil and lawful/chaotic are actual inherent, physical qualities that a person has, something that can actually be scientifically measured, which is really strange

btw Maria I kind of see what you mean by the lawful good dilemma; if you have a choice where you need to break your principles or violate direct orders to do the right thing, then you either need to fail to do the right thing and therefore not be good, or you need to fail to follow orders and therefore not be lawful. I don't think it's strictly black and white and there are gray areas that exist here, and someone can still generally strive for being both lawful and good in cases there they DON'T create conflict, but there is a problem here

Maybe I'm just sort of a weirdo in that I don't automatically attach myself to the main characters though

Like I absolutely love the Mario and Zelda series obviously but neither Mario nor Link mean anything to me in particular really. I don't feel any strong feelings about them

I like almost all the side Mario characters more than Mario himself, don't really know why, they all just feel easier to identify with than Mario himself I guess? Like in Mario Party, Mario would probably always be my last choice because I don't feel like I can make Mario "belong" to me whereas you better fucking believe I can own Dry Bones

Ah okay, it is a flexible funding thing

Ah okay, it's not a flexible funding thing

but you can do neither

Also you don't have to do both good and evil to be neutral imo

To me good vs evil:

Good: Sacrifices themselves for others often, almost never sacrifices others for themselves
Evil: Sacrifices others for themselves often, almost never sacrifices themselves for others
Neutral: Doesn't fit either of these categories

So you can do both, or you can mostly keep to yourself, or maybe it's just complicated, because good vs evil is always complicated (if your storytelling is any good)

The True Neutral trope is another thing I super hate

It feels like everyone treats True Neutral as either:

1) Someone who is absolutely committed to neutrality as an ideal
2) Someone who is merely always an opportunist

But there's a lot of other possibilties. There's TONS of personality types and ideologies that fall between good and evil; good/evil and lawful/chaotic are not the only ideologies, nor are they even really ideologies themselves. True Neutral can describe a range of possible things. So can Chaotic Neutral.

I still don't really get why Luigi is so weak

Everyone who knows Mario also knows Luigi, and Luigi consistently outperforms Mario in "favorite Mario character" polls, and I feel like Luigi just generally has a reputation as being cooler because... idk, he's Luigi

and yet, not only is Mario stronger, he's WAY stronger. and this is still true, despite the fact that Luigi's stock has ONLY risen over time

well ok Luigi might be a little closer since he was decently close to Tifa but... I don't know, it really feels like Luigi should be closer to a Zelda-like presence than he is. I don't really "get" why he isn't stronger

Pirateking2000 posted...

Chaotic Neutral: Random. A non malicious trickster. Someone in it for the fun and adventure.

The whole CN "lol so random" thing might be my least favorite part of the alignment system? I've played multiple chaotic neutral characters who aren't "random" or "a trickster" or even "in it for fun and adventure"

I mean the guy's just going to run off with all that wall money anyway right

No Celeste in a top 10 what the hell

Given that they chose to intentionally misconstrue Holdo's motives in a negative light for most of the film and that Holdo herself basically framed it as a gender war, you could honestly make the argument that the film is anti-feminist

though ultimately it's really neither and the culture war stuff surrounding this film is nonsense

"Follows a code" vs "doesn't follow a code" isn't really a character trait either. The closest thing you could probably get is sort of like the J/P distrinction in a Myers-Briggs test

I'm arguing that there isn't really any definition of lawful vs chaotic that is purely internal, which is why it doesn't work

I think pretty much everyone has personal standards that they uphold without really thinking about it and they don't always necessarily exactly line up with society's standards, although frequently they do (but that's true of people who really specifically uphold a code too)

I really just don't think it's something that divides people

I think the best way to divide lawful and chaotic is people who uphold and reinforce existing power structures vs people who subvert existing power structures, but this isn't really an inherent quality to a person, it's dependent on outside influences

Oh plenty of people don't THINK they have a code, but they have a code

Lopen posted...

Lawful is about having a personal code and adhering to it more than "obeying the laws of society"

No see, the books say this but this is where the lawful/chaotic spectrum completely falls apart. Literally nobody is lacking in a personal code

Denver Broncos

Tennessee Titans
Los Angeles Chargers
Cleveland Browns
Dallas Cowboys
Minnesota Vikings
Indianapolis Colts
Miami Dolphins
New England Patriots
Green Bay Packers
Philadelphia Eagles
Atlanta Falcons
Los Angeles Rams
Chicago Bears
New Orleans Saints
Seattle Seahawks

So after over a year of seriously thinking about it and replaying the games, I've FINALLY started doing writeups for all the cases in my case ranking. I've seriously been putting this off for a year just thinking about what I wanted to write without writing anything. feels good to actually start putting pen to paper here

I feel like I need to play some of the cases yet again to solidify my feelings though. I really want this ranking to be airtight

as for TLJ I didn't like it but it was interesting enough for me to not hate it

weirdly enough RLM echoed my feelings of every new Star Wars movie after I saw them - I loved TFA, was very meh about RO/TLJ, and was pleasantly surprised by Solo

I was enthusiastic about an all-female Ghostbusters cast and I thought Ghostbusters 2016 was as bad as everyone said it was. it's ok if you liked it though. that's the part that everyone misses

MariaTaylor posted...

Paratroopa1 posted...

nobody agrees on what lawful/chaotic means

not even the source material itself can seem to define it

it means whatever a person wants it to mean

good vs evil is dumb

pretty much this. also the idea of 'lawful good' is inherently stupid because at some point you have to choose between obeying the law or doing what is right. you literally can't be both.

Wouldn't go that far, you can both obey the law and do the right thing and sometimes find yourself torn between doing one or the other but that one choice doesn't necessarily define you

I had L-Block in the division finals of div 3 in CBX

that feels really dumb in retrospect

nobody agrees on what lawful/chaotic means

not even the source material itself can seem to define it

it means whatever a person wants it to mean

good vs evil is dumb

no

LeonhartFour posted...

handsomeboy2012 posted...

Isn't SPARDA only in English version of the game? If so it won't be in the anime anyway.

The dub has kept some of the jokes from the English version, so I assume at least one of the localizers is familiar with the games.

Or just knows well enough to reference them when necessary

BTW I would say GTA is actually kinda GameFAQsy in that it's a game that people want FAQs for

It doesn't quite 'jive' with the nintendo/jrpg culture we think of now, but I don't think it's as far off as people think

I can't believe we were talking about most imbalanced match pics and it took someone that long to mention 2013 vincent

The idea of Melee failing to break 54% against Vice City is so weird I don't even know how to make sense of it

Like, if that match were run today, I would probably set the spread at like, Melee 71%? Does that seem fair? Am I underrating GTA?

Looks completely fine

The idea to do more live action Disney movies is bad but this looks fine

azuarc posted...

Did it really come out that late? The JP version was '87.

Yep. It doesn't make any sense until you consider Dragon Quest, which was released in '86 in Japan but '89 in NA (as Dragon Warrior, of course). It took time for DQ to really take off and turn into something that they saw as worth localizing overseas, and it wasn't until DW had modest success that they decided to bring over FF a year later.