Lurker > ParanoidObsessive

KodyKeir posted...

Edward's sin was just marrying a divorcee.

Edward's sin was being a Nazi sympathizer who married an American Nazi sympathizer shortly before a massive global war broke out where England was going to be on the opposite side from Germany. So there was a HUGE motivation on the part of many people in government to use pretty much any pretext to get him the fuck out.

Though just in and of herself, Wallis Simpson was waaay worse than Camilla. She was an American (!) and a commoner (!!), and if you want to talk about living ex-husbands, she had two (!!!). The whole Nazi thing was mostly just the shit cherry on top of the fecal sundae.

Not to mention that the world is a very different place in 2022 than it was in 1936. The Church's stance on divorce in general has radically changed since then, and the exact context of the problem then (that such a marriage could potentially be bigamous) wouldn't actually apply in Camilla's case today.

The main drawback to Charles getting the throne is that a) he's not all that charismatic and people don't like him, and b) people who don't like Camilla mostly don't like her because she's not Diana (and how dare Charles cheat on Diana?! Waaaah). So people have been talking about him stepping aside in favor of William for years... but he doesn't necessarily seem like he's all that overly keen on the idea, and he has nowhere near the impediments standing in his way as Edward did.

If anything, the main question now is whether or not the British want the monarchy to continue at all now that Elizabeth is gone. Plenty of people have been calling for it to be abolished for a while now, and a massive period of discontinuity is going to spur a stronger push in that direction regardless of whether or not Charles or William are on the throne (though the pushback will probably be harder if it's Charles).

https://youtu.be/kj7n3oFicU4?t=90

Your topic title reminded me of this:

https://youtu.be/uPudE8nDog0?t=18

Then try it with orange juice.

Nah, I've already been to the first two.

Twiroach posted...

I know it's been long established in numerous episodes but it feels wrong

I stopped watching after the show went to shit (so around the mid '90s), but the only thing I know of that establishes their comparable ages at all was the Flying Hellfish episode. And that had Burns being younger because Abe was his commanding officer.

That is certainly something that many people on the Internet believe, sure.

But like most things people on the Internet believe, it's also objectively wrong, and they should feel bad for believing it.

Worse when you realize it's grease and it can stain clothes.

EvilMegas posted...

Your serious answer would be: You don't mind dubs. I just cannot imagine you liking subbed.

The PO answer is that all anime is a mistake.

Okay, to be fair, that's pretty close to my actual opinion (both versions).

But it's slightly more nuanced. If a dub is absolutely terrible (and some are, especially older ones), I might be more inclined to watch a sub instead. And like Kody mentioned, I'll sometimes watch it with both on at once (DVDs with switchable audio/subtitle tracks are great). And for stuff like Excel Saga, I watched it that way with the cultural subtitles on just to understand 90% of the references.

But I'll generally go with dub over sub just because I'm not a weeb, and I don't think we need to maintain the purity of the original sound/meaning/etc to absolute perfection to a fault. I find it perfectly acceptable to have characters use English idioms rather than Japanese ones that most Westerners won't understand, or change localized references (like having Sailor Moon called "meatball head" instead of "dumpling head"), or generally make the story/dialogue more accessible to Westerners. Worst case I'll just watch the dub with the subtitles on and compare the two to see what the differences are.

On the other hand, if the dub is absolutely butchered (like 80s Voltron), or the voices are utterly annoying or incredibly awkward, or if no dub is available, I'm perfectly fine watching the sub (and I did back in the late 90s when I got some tape-trading shows that only had fan translations).

I don't really like anime now, but I definitely went through my phase in the 90's/early 2000's (and I've still got a fondness for older stuff like Lodoss War or Ronin Warrors or Legendary Armor Samurai Troopers for the weebs).

That stuff specifically? No.

Vicks? Yes.

I still use it whenever I have a cough. But I don't rub it on my chest as much as I just huff it straight out of the container. It's a very effective cough suppressant.

EvilMegas posted...

I have a question, do yall prefer sub or dubbed anime(PO need not apply, I know his answer)?

Hey now, I'm mildly offended by that.

And I'm also curious what you think my answer actually is.

KodyKeir posted...

Pokemon got rid of HM's and made TM's reusable for a reason.

Yet it's still a game about cockfighting and animal cruelty.

I never eat at places like Little Caesar's, Papa Johns, Pizza Hut, or Dominos.

I live in the Northeast US, where there are actual pizzerias, with actual worthwhile pizza. It's one of the few advantages to living near large clusters of Italian-Americans.

Same reason why I'd never go to Olive Garden.

ArvTheGreat posted...

Hell Arv still only accepts Jaleel white voicing sonic

That's offensive. He's not even a blue hedgehog. It's completely unacceptable.

captpackrat posted...

There is no non-cat answer.

There is always a non-cat answer.

Always.

Lokarin posted...

Peter Molyneux

He would say it's a great idea to fight me, but he wouldn't show up.

He'd also suggest you should fight in psychic mecha on one of Jupiter's moons.

SpeeDLeemon posted...

as slow as this fucking place is now, how do we have three topics about this lol

Because everyone here is a lazy narcissist.

I will always choose the non-cat answer.

KodyKeir posted...

What happened now?

CM Punk decided to be CM Punk, to the surprise of absolutely no one who's been paying attention.



KodyKeir posted...

Did we get into a argument maybe, cause I'm pretty happy with most of those things.

Not that I remember, but probably not because I really don't go around ranting about how terrible things are as much anymore, as I just sort of wallow in a sort of sad resignation that everything I've ever loved has been taken away from me and dipped in shit. Passion has given way to apathy - you can only beat a man so long before he stops coming back.

I mean, I could probably make an even longer list than the one I posted if I sat down and really thought about it. The world hates me.

Now? Probably no one. The industry has burned almost every ounce of passion out of me, so there's nothing left to get excited or upset about. I just assume in advance now that everything's going to suck, and I'm rarely surprised or disappointed.

Years ago? I remember at one point wanting to fly to Japan to beat up every single person involved in the making of FFVIII. And I occasionally wanted to shank some of the level designers from early Assassins' Creed games for some of their puzzle dungeons.

I suppose if I had a time machine I might be willing to go back and find the guys who invented microtransactions and NFTs and just murder them in their sleep.

Most of the games on that list shouldn't have the word "best" attached to them.

wpot posted...

IIRC just about all of the cells/tissues in your body are replaced within seven years or so...so you're technically older than your entire body. Assuming you're older than seven.

Literally came in to say this.

Conner4REAL posted...

without cars the suburbs wouldnt exist.

Without cars there also wouldn't be grocery stores. Or dating as we know it.

Cars radically altered the infrastructure of the Western world as a whole and the US specifically, in ways that you wouldn't even associate with the idea of cars at first glance.

It's sort of the same multifaceted cultural reset that smart phones are causing now. So much of how people live their lives is likely to change over the next 100 years or so. Assuming we don't all kill ourselves off in the meantime.



Conner4REAL posted...

areas that are suburbs or hicksvilles formally inhabited by hicks. When you go even further out you get hillbillies who live in the styx

It's "out in the sticks", not "styx". The poor rural people don't live in the river in Hades.

It's basically a reference to living on the edge of the forest, at the edge of civilization. The place where you've cut down most of the trees, but haven't cleared away the stumps or smaller trunks yet, so they look like sticks. It's why you'll also hear some people refer to areas like that as the backwoods.

Boondocks/boonies, "the ass end of nowhere", or place names like East Bumblefuck are similar concepts.

"Okay, time to shit out some more market research that we can sell to advertisers."

Nade_Duck posted...

the actor who does the best job for the role they're going for should get it. the jubilee and apu situations were especially stupid.

Personally, I'm outraged that none of the Simpsons voice actors are bright yellow in real life. That seems incredibly offensive to me.

DiScOrDtHeLuNaTiC posted...

The reason women tend to get cast as young boys is because...

Doesn't matter what they sound like, if they don't have a penis it's sexism.

CyborgSage00x0 posted...

@ParanoidObsessive

For the record, I've mentioned this in the past but I never respond to @ notifications. I have them disabled and never see them.



CyborgSage00x0 posted...

Man, miss these topics, despite me not contributing much.

I miss the time when I could actually enjoy being a geek.

Nearly every geeky thing I've ever enjoyed has been turned into something I hate. Comic books, comic films, Star Wars, Doctor Who, Lord of the Rings, D&D, RPG games in general, most video game franchises...

It kind of feels like I angered a dark god about 10 years ago, and they decided then and there "I will spend the next decade slowly destroying everything that asshole has ever loved."

Asking for dating red flags.

I think every middle aged woman who voices a teenage or younger boy should be fired. If you aren't the exact same sex/gender/race/ethnicity/nationality/religion/fan of the same sports teams as the character you're playing, you shouldn't be allowed to play them.

Metalsonic66 posted...

Yeah I hear New York was a fun place in those days

People see old pictures and assume they're looking at mud because the roads weren't paved.

It usually wasn't mud, though. It was mostly shit.

And it stank.

When I was in college I passed on joining my school's gaming guild, because everyone in it was way more of a nerd than I was.

By which I don't mean that they were more passionate about any given gaming-related hobby, as much as I mean most of them were socially awkward weirdos with no personality outside of their own narrow sphere. And were the sort of stereotype of the hygiene-afflicted people you tend to see at cons.

When you go so deep into your geekdom that you sort of forget what it means to be a human being, that's a bad thing. And a sad thing. And a thing I really don't want to interact with.

hypnox posted...

I kinda wish other things had cinematic universes other than big name franchise.

Lots of people tried after Marvel succeeded. Most people failed because they did it wrong.



JOExHIGASHI posted...

mythica

A five movie series based on someone's D&D campaign isn't really a cinematic universe, because it doesn't actually tie into anything outside of itself.

DirtBasedSoap posted...

i would be such a chad alpha in the last of us world!!!!

Isn't that pretty much the juvenile power-fantasy of everyone who wishes zombie apocalypses or Mad Max futures were real? Everyone always assumes they're going to be the hero, no one really fantasizes about being one of the corpses.

Metalsonic66 posted...

Think of all the poop-scooping and stablehand jobs that would open up.

Great for the economy and for the environment!

This is a large part of what spurred the adoption of cars in the first place. Cities were absolutely buried in horse shit. To the point where it would liquefy when it rained and you'd basically be wading through a foot-deep river of sewage sludge every time you left your house.

Go back and read early documents from the era right when cars started to become a thing - people were fine with whatever smoke or fumes or greasy messes they'd leave behind because it was still better than what the horses were doing. People were overjoyed that they could finally get rid of the filthy animals and clean up the city streets. Horses were their own brand of pollution.



Conner4REAL posted...

PETA people would freak out.

they Freak out over the horse and buggies as tourist rides.

PETA likely wouldn't exist. They're mostly the product of a world that removed animal labor from everyday life.

In a lower-tech world, people wouldn't give a fuck. It's why casual animal abuse always used to be a thing when everyone was a farmer or owned pack animals, and when "pets" weren't really a thing (you owned a dog or a cat for utilitarian reasons, and they sure as fuck weren't part of your "family"). When you view animals as tools that need to be used, you're less likely to care whether or not someone is beating them or killing them or whatever. They're an investment or a resource (or an impediment), nothing more.

Humans tend to cope better with things we're used to than things that are mostly isolated or rare. It's the same reason why we're so freaked out by death and physical violence in general these days, when people in the past were way more capable of dealing with it. Because you kind of get desensitized to it when you have a huge infant mortality rate and your neighbor could die any day from the plague. But isolate death to very specific places (hospitals, mortuaries), and use medicine and nutrition to dramatically lower the death rate, and people ironically become even more terrified of death. Because it goes from being common to being something apart from our daily experience, and that shit's scary.

Judgmenl posted...

PO continue being you.

I shan't ever stop.

Well no, I'll probably stop when I keel over dead, but until then I'll continue being the eternal rock upon which all storms break, timeless and unchanging.

Judgmenl posted...

But lately, I feel like me (and everyone around me) have basically turned into robots. Do the same thing every week. No deviation. No fun allowed.

This was pretty much cubicle life for the last 70 years or so, so it's hardly a post-Covid thing.



Judgmenl posted...

FOMO is really big and has been for a while. Always some carrot that you HAVE to chase, and not much you can do about it.

And this has pretty much been conspicuous consumerism for the last 70 years or so, so that's not really a post-Covid thing either.



Judgmenl posted...

The fear of deviating from your normal routine is real. It's basically this nonstop tunnel vision.

And this is a getting old thing. It's what people mean when they talk about getting stuck in a rut.

Congrats! You're starting to crest into your midlife crisis. Welcome to existential ennui!

LinkPizza posted...

I definitely already have deception That as a given. But the Arcana thing is interesting

To elaborate:

Wizards choose two out of Arcana, History, Insight, Investigation, Medicine, and Religion for their class skills. Arcana is the one most Wizards are going to take, because it involves magical theory, lore, runes, artifacts, etc. It's basically the go-to "I need to know magical shit" skill. Most Wizards are going to have Arcana.

Bards can choose three out of any skill in the game. A Bard who wants to pretend to be a Wizard will probably want to take at least Arcana (to know things) and Deception (to successfully BS the things they don't know). The Bard could then take any of the other Wizard skills (to better establish their cover), or could go with something else instead.

So at this point, the Bard and the Wizard are essentially equal when it comes to making rolls to check lore or knowledge of magical theory. But at Level 3 the Bard gets Expertise, which allows them to pick two skill proficiencies (and in this case, you probably want to pick Arcana and Deception).

Which means, at Level 3, a Wizard with Arcana is rolling +2 on rolls to identify magical writing, spell effects, etc... but the Bard is rolling +4. All else being equal, the Bard literally knows more about magic than the Wizard does. This only increases over time (at Level 9 the Wizard is rolling at +4 but the Bard is rolling at +8... by Level 17 the Wizard gets a +6 bonus but the Bard is getting +12).

(And the Bard is also getting those same added bonuses to lie about being a Wizard, making it harder to ever actually call them out on their BS.).

The main leveling factor is that the Wizard is going to specialize in Intelligence as their main ability (for spellcasting) while the Bard is going to specialize in Charisma. Which means the Wizard is likely going to get a slight additional boost to their Arcana checks... but the Bard is going to be getting a similar boost to their ability to lie about shit.

Depending on your College, you can tweak this even more. Is someone trying to Insight check your bullshit? Lore Bards (probably your best bet for faking Wizardry) can hit them with Cutting Words to weaken their ability check (in RP terms, you're fast-talking them to shake their confidence). At higher levels, they can also use Peerless Skill to inspire themselves (either to know more magic facts or to lie about it more effectively). And you'll eventually get a couple extra spells to help round out your spellbook. Eloquence Bards can lie more effectively, turning any roll of 9 or lower into a 10 (meaning the lowest you can possibly roll at Level 3 with Deception Expertise is a 14). And Glamour Bards can just invoke effects that make them more inspiring or intimidating to everyone around them (at which point you're aiming for a bit of a hammy performance a la Gandalf).

The other thing to keep in mind is that most people assume all Bards have to use music to cast spells, but that's the basic lazy interpretation of 5e rules. It's explicit that Bards just focus their powers through performance. Which includes stuff like dancing, juggling, chanting, stand-up comedy, telling riddles, storytelling, or recitation of poetry. Hell, you could even play a trash-talking battle rapper Bard and be entirely thematic (it's basically what Irish bards essentially were in real history).

But it also includes acting. In older editions of D&D, this type of Bard was literally known as the Thespian. So the sheer act of pretending to be something you're not (especially if you're staying "in character" the whole time) is itself technically enough to justify Bard abilities. So you're essentially like a refugee from a theater troupe who has gone so deep into method acting and playing the character of a Wizard that you've effectively become one.

You're basically what happens if Ian McKellen had gone "Full Gandalf" to the point that he actually manifested real magical powers while filming Lord of the Rings.

Throw in Arcana as one of your class skills, and once you get Expertise you'll actually be better at knowing magical lore than most wizards are.

Combine that with Deception and your Bard will actually be better at pretending to be a Wizard than actual Wizards are at being Wizards, at least in terms of magical knowledge and theory.

You can't miss something you've literally never experienced in your lifetime.

Metalsonic66 posted...

You mean like fake grass?

"Grass roots" is usually used to describe something that has become popular or powerful because the average people elevated it by word of mouth. A grass-roots political campaign is one where "the people" have pushed hard for a candidate.

"Astroturfing" is the nickname people came up for fake or manipulative grass-roots campaigns, where "the people" are essentially either bots or people paid to pretend to be excited about something. Because like you pointed out, it's fake grass.

BigOlePappy posted...

I am always skeptical of people that don't like dogs.

I always assume they're soulless monsters who have at least a few corpses hidden in their basement.

11110111011 posted...

This thread just made me want to go and watch Red Sonja.

That movie was such a disappointment.

Metalsonic66 posted...

Nah I hate driving in silence

SilentSeph posted...

Nah I hate driving in silence

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucIv-sMta7I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGSKrC7dGcY

Grendel_Prime posted...

https://youtu.be/QrGrOK8oZG8

Was wondering if someone was going to reference that.

I'd originally capitalized "Too Many Cooks", then went back and changed it to try and make it slightly less likely. Didn't work!

FatalAccident posted...

Whats a machine shop?

A shop that does machine work.










Depending on the context, it could be a shop where they machine car parts, like grindind down rotors and flywheels, shaving engine heads, cleaning pistons, and so on. Or it could be a shop that machines out metal for other projects, like HVAC or certain types of manufacturing.

The key point is that machine shops tend to have a metric shitload of different types of tools, all of which can be used to break into vending machines.

Revelation34 posted...

I kinda want to play but I don't think I could stay in character or play them as they're supposed to. Plus I'm not really that creative.

It depends on the group you're in. Not every group needs to be like online streamers where they try and stay in character 100% and do character voices and stuff. Most groups are a lot more lenient with that sort of thing, and it's usually fine if a player (especially a newer one) just gets stuck in the mindset of "My character does this" or "My character says this" rather than being fully in character.

As for playing characters "as they're supposed to", definitely don't worry about that as plenty of games involve players who are terribly sub-optimal who are just looking to have fun. Unless you've got a strict GM (or a bad one), they should tailor the threat level of the enemies to how you're playing, and not just an arbitrary standard of how powerful you "should" be at any given level.

Getting into a tabletop RPG can feel daunting if you've never done it before, but it can also be a lot of fun, especially once you get into it. If you can find a good group (ideally a group of friends IRL and not online games, because those can be really hard to quality control for), you can probably have a blast playing.

Was he ever cancelled? I don't really pay attention to either sports or the stupidity of cancel culture on Twitter, so I apparently missed it.

Or are you just talking about back when he cheated on his wife years ago and people kind of made fun of him for it? Because I don't really remember that ever having all that major an impact on his career.

Mensis posted...

its a risk vs reward situation. Hell do what he wants either way.

Yeah, but it's also a judgment versus impulse situation.

Once people break up, they tend to over-romanticize the good times out of nostalgia and because they miss the dopamine hit from being together, while forgetting about all the things that led to break them up in the first place. So they go into it thinking "Oh, well this time it will be different", but it's almost never different. All of the reasons why you broke up in the first place will still be right there, sitting like landmines, waiting to blow up in your face all over again. And then you'll break up again, be miserable again, and probably stupidly want to get back together again.

Constantly chasing after old failed relationships is a pretty good formula for never being able to move on and actually develop new, worthwhile relationships. It's not a healthy mindset, and it will almost never pan out for you in a positive way. Just because you've idealized a relationship after the fact doesn't mean it was "meant to be" or you're somehow obligated to spend the rest of your life trying to recapture it or fix it. Not letting go is the thing that makes you miserable, not the mere absence of that specific relationship.

And there are other negatives involved when you're coming back into a relationship that has already broken (depending on the specific people involved). Short of a relationship that broke up entirely due to causes beyond the control of either person (like, say, both people have jobs/college halfway across the country and they decided they couldn't make a long-distance relationship work, but now circumstances have changed and they can get together again), you are almost ALWAYS better off not getting hung up on past failures. Move on. Be happy.

Count_Drachma posted...

I had overlooked Conan since it kinda bombed. Now I'm disappointed it didn't get any sequels.

I feel like it mostly bombed because the average person has the indelible impression in their minds that Conan = Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The Jason Momoa film is probably closer to the actual Conan stories in terms of how he's presented and the sort of story being told, but that doesn't matter because the average person/moviegoer doesn't actually know anything about the original stories. Sort of similar to the thing that hurt John Carter when that came out (because the director was an idiot and assumed everyone today grows up reading Edgar Rice Burroughs, so they didn't bother to advertise it effectively).

Though it also kind of suffered from being a "too many cooks" situation that got stuck in development hell for a while and never quite gelled the way it was meant to. A more streamlined production probably would have resulted in a better movie (though it still likely would have bombed, because again, Arnold).

Revelation34 posted...

Wat.

Helly gonna helly.