I turn out to be a pretty bad DM, and not that great as a player: I'm essentially an actor who can't act.

Meanwhile, I came back because one big project wound down, and my spouse has decided that the best use for my Copious Free Time™ is a large woodworking project. I'm only 90% sure that isn't because of anything I've posted here.

I had a dream last night that you all challenged me to turn a tetris piece into a planeswalker.

Stigmatized and maligned for ages, the 's' Tetromino finally ignites in furious indignation.

Happy birthday, TPmanW. I hope you're having a good day.

Not too bad. I got a free diner and desert. Also it turns out I'm not as old as I thought I was. But I am now that age.

On the one hand, I feel like that shouldn't be something you can say, but on the other... you get to a certain age and ya just kinda stop counting...

Can you planeswalk on a micro-scale? Is every planeswalker theoretically Nightcrawler?

Not anymore. Oldwalkers could slip in and out, but walking has become really strenuous in the post mending era.

We just had this conversation in another thread, but I can't remember where. But I'll try out a new metaphor here. You could use a space shuttle or a supersonic jet to go to the grocery store, but it wouldn't be very safe, nor efficient. And chances are that you would overshoot your target significantly. So maybe it's best to stick to more conventional methods of transport.

It was in the bubbled ideas thread.

Re Tevish's Machina Anesthesia: [Peter Boyle]Holy crap![/Peter Boyle]

I knew exactly where that was going as soon as I could understand what the ruler did (due to different terminology, I'm basically having to use your descriptions as a dictionary to understand the cards), and I am at once impressed and appalled. I understand that similar strategies were/are rampant in competitive Magic, but I've long hated tribal archetypes, mostly because I never build for the same kind of power. I'm sure the fact that I've only ever casually bought packs of cards (for CCGs) and almost never had a full playset of ANY card can be attributed to a lot of it, but similar meta shifts towards extremely fast combos in other games has typically rubbed me the wrong way, as well. I just never spec toward a min/max playstyle in any game.


I initially found out about Helltaker via the seemingly HUGE amount of NSFW art that's been invading some of the sites I visit, and I am intensely curious about it. Indie games that game traction are usually pretty good, but I've been burned before by investigating popular opinion and that makes me leery.



Looking good! Let us know how it turns out.

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I want to mention RWBY because of a video I watched last night, by the guy who apparently did a RWBY parody song for hbomberguy's massive critique video. Now, I want to be clear that I haven't seen said critique video yet, but even so there's something I want to say: the more I hear about the production of RWBY, the less I think of it. In the video I linked (and I've yet to verify, but I'm inclined to believe given some of the other things I've heard about RWBY's production) said that the lyrics for RWBY's songs were literally just hodge-podges of cool words and phrases from the scripts, with no real meaning or relevance to the plot.

As I recall, last time I brought up RWBY, I mentioned how the show felt like it lost its direction, though the more I hear about what went into the making of the show, the more it seems like it didn't really have a direction to begin with. I was even listening to something a while back pointing out that they directly show us in season 2 that the main 4 girls don't even have motivations, as the teacher asks them why they're huntresses and they're all at a loss for reasons.

And, like, I want to be clear that I don't dislike RWBY, but (and I'm getting the nagging sensation I've said this before) it feels like there's a lot of wasted potential.

Oh yeah, I didn't encounter that size of saucy fan-made content, but I saw a few pics. Well, if you put the name "demon girl harem" in a game description it'd be weird finding nothing of the sort, Rule 34 or not. Anyway, the game itself took me less than a hour to complete by skipping a stage and bashing my head repeatedly against a wall in another, so it wouldn't be a huge time investment.

I may have to look up Helltaker. I like puzzles

RE: Machina. Surprisingly, it's not as degenerate as it may seem. Machina flips t5 at the earliest without diluting the deck with green to ramp, many others may have built up massive board and life advantage by then that make the March of the Machine Lord OTK non-viable. He still hits the board like a 700 pound gorilla if your hand is primed, but it might not be enough unsupported. In my experience, it's the strong end of what's casual, and would probably have been a low-tier to rogue deck if taken to a tournament, possibly able to perform only thanks to not caring too much about Black Moonbeam that preyed on most of the stronger plays of the time.

Your comments also remind me of one of the facts that endeared me most to FoW, though: its card distribution. FoW sets are very small in number of cards (norming at about 100 unique cards), commons and uncommons can pull a good deal of weight, and precons can have important, powerful cards as playsets. For instance, the Lightning Bolt and Llanowar Elves equivalents, Thunder and Sacred Elf, were found at 4 copies (half foil) in the red and green precons of their block, and showed up as playsets in most decks that contained their color. There have been expensive, rare-focused archetypes but staples have also been hugely accessible throughout my time with the game.

I may be overstating the severity of the invasion somewhat, and I'm most likely lumping the safe, cutesy fanart I've seen with the NSFW stuff, but I just keep seeing it everywhere, in places I never expected. I believe it took over the front page of one of the anime memes subreddit one day, even. I'll keep that in mind, though, since I'm usually down for a quick game session but am always reluctant to start one with a lot of time investment.


That's just... the difference in experience is apparent and kind of baffling to me. I started my Magic collection with a big box that had a 9th Edition 40-card black deck, the Boros deck from the first Ravnica block, and some boosters. I bought the Sliver deck from the Time Spiral block not long later, and never bought another preconstructed deck until the first Dragon EDH Commander deck came out (though I was gifted Jace vs. Chandra at one point), and that was a concession on my part. If I ever bought more than 5 packs of a single set, that was a lot for me. The vast majority of my collection is singleton, and I can't really wrap my head around the way you casually talk about the "availability" of certain cards.

I finished up all of Umbrella Academy, if anyone was interested in talking about that, btw.

I wanted to drop a few kind words in here that have been rattling around in my head for the last week or two. They're paraphrasing things I heard elsewhere, but I think they may give some people solace, like they've been doing me.

First, find your red balloon. An old axiom in psychology is that if you're told to not think about an elephant, the first thing you do is think of an elephant. Even concentrating on specifically not thinking about an elephant is difficult, because the way the human brain behaves, the more you think about a certain thing (such as when trying to get it out of your mind), the more it will keep coming up in your thoughts. What the key is, is to think about a red balloon instead. When you focus on only the red balloon, the elephant can leave your mind, and it becomes easier and easier to ignore. For some people (I imagine a lot of us here), writing is that red balloon, for others it might be music, or something else. Find your red balloon, and let yourself be happy with it instead of concentrating on the elephant.

Second, it's okay that you're not where you want to be right now, or doing what you'd rather have done. For a lot of people around the world, this is a big, scary time, and Maslow's hierarchy clearly tells us that all the energy that's being taken up worrying about how safe you are, is being taken from your "loftier" goals like being motivated to start on or complete projects that would normally bring you happiness. I can attest myself, that I have caught myself browsing social media thinking "what the hell am I doing right now, wasting time like this?" when I'd rather be doing things, but this is normal. A lot of us are in a state right now that we don't know where we're going to be when all of this around the world finally blows over, and that's taking its toll in ways we may not always be aware of. It's okay if you're not doing what you'd rather be doing.

As always, I love you all, and stay safe.

Speaking of doing things we'd rather not be doing, I have to go back to work next week.

Ooh, is it going to be bad? Like, do you know if anything's changed since you've been off? Or maybe they're going to make you install all the stupid safety things that none of the customers are going to follow anyway because anyone sensible isn't going to go to the movie theatres during a global pandemic.

Sorry, it's hard not to get worked up at all the stupidity going on right now.

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So, I didn't want it to take away from my message yesterday, but there's something I've had on my mind recently.

It's a bit about how in the past, I've delighted in the nitty-gritty discussions and arts that come from focusing on really narrow slices of media. Things like the pony fandom, where due to the uniquely intense competition that artists had against each other, a lot of great pieces of art, writing, music, and other things came out of it. The problem I think I have is that I quite possibly could have fallen into the ridiculously ill-fated Onceler fandom had I been considerably younger. Apparently after the 2012 Lorax movie came out, a lot of teens on tumblr attached to the milquetoast villain of the movie via a massive collective failure of media literacy, and as I've been reflecting on my reactions to some well-regarded pieces of media, I fear I may be just as bad.

Like, I can't recall if I ever shared publicly here, but I couldn't really get into the issues of Concrete which I read (the comic Barinellos recommended to us collectively ages ago). I think, reflecting on the stories as I remember them, I can appreciate them for what they are and respect them for it, but in the moment, I didn't feel that, and I remember getting hung up on things like page layout. Then there's the case of Haruhi Suzumiya, which I dropped (after Endless Eight, I might add) because I wasn't enjoying it. On a more extreme end, I got actively mad at the anime Welcome to the N.H.K. when I watched it, and I'm not sure how much to blame that on my mood at the time, or if it's truly something that would irk me normally, or if it even deserves such ire.

I just... I've railed before about how the anime community is so... I fit the word "incestuous" in there somewhere... about what makes for a "good" anime, and in the last few weeks I've realized that I was right there with them, just in a different way and still getting mad at them for it.

I just started replaying Botw 10 days ago. Now all 120 shrines down and working on the dlcs! Anyone want to talk about that game?

Zelda be fiiiiine.
Okay, I have that out of my system, yes, I'd be pleased to. There's such a wealth in the topic, from nonlinear storytelling to the actual elements of the characterization, to how geography establishes characteristics of the world. About the only thing I don't want to entertain is the idea it somehow bridges every timeline.


I find I've grown ill suited to holding my tongue over matters. I've redeveloped my sense of worth so I'll likely be unable to tolerate the load of corporate expectation to flagellate myself for the good of the profit margin.
If corporate finds my performance lacking, corporate can do it their damn selves.

I'm quite over worrying about job security at the cost of being cowed.


Speaking of incestuous and the Onceler fandom... they shipped him with HIMSELF. Gonna let that sink in.

Also, when it comes to criticism in terms of anime fandoms, you'll never hurt them as much as Miyazaki did.