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Messages - Kuildeous

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26
Other Games / Re: Deck-Building Games
« on: September 04, 2019, 03:49:45 pm »
My least favorite thing about a few other deck builders is the "your whole hand is automatically played" mechanic. If I remember right; Thunderstone, Clank, and Legendary all use it; though I could be misremembering some. It's just so confusing. Start if your turn, you lay your hand on the table, face up; then add up all the stuff you have. And some things care about other things that are in your hand, so there's confusing rules about how they interact with each other.

Even if you don't have a limited action system like Dominion; it's just so much more natural to simply play cards from your hand one at a time.

I’m generally okay with this mechanic, but it can get really weird when you spend $3 of your $5 on a purchase, which triggers drawing 2 cards, which gives you $4 more so that you can spend another $5 on another purchase, which triggers drawing another card, which gives you $4 so you have $5 left over for another purchase. If there’s a good way to track that, then fine. I know that in Clank! it can get a little bit hectic because you are basically tracking 3 currencies: skill, movement, and fight. You might move some of your movement, fight a monster, and gain more movement. Or gain skill. Or whatever. It’s small enough that it doesn’t bother me, but it can turn into a hot mess.

Generally, the people who dislike Dominion that I mention dislike the set kingdom also dislike the structured action/buy phases. They don’t like that you can’t play more than one action in a standard turn. I guess when you’re used to Clank! or Ascension where you simply dump your cards on the table, then Dominion can feel constrictive. I dunno. It’s like how chess has very specific rules for each piece. They can’t all be queens.

27
Other Games / Re: Deck-Building Games
« on: September 04, 2019, 10:38:23 am »
My friend wanted me to play the cooperative Harry Potter deck builder with them.  I played the first two books then stopped.  It just pales compared to Dominion.  You don't have any control over your deck! You're lucky to trash a few cards throughout the whole game.

Oh yeah, I forgot that one. I’ve only played the first two books as well. It looks like you get quite a bit added on book 4, so I wonder if that improves the gameplay. Like perhaps the first 3 books are designed to teach how the game works.

But there is indeed little control within those 2 books. And as I recall, the common pool of cards doesn’t really have a way to wipe clean if everything is out of reach or undesirable. I think Legendary is the same way. In a cooperative game, this can be especially annoying. It’s also annoying in a competitive game because you have the game of chicken going on. If you break the trend and take one of the undesirable cards, then this gives everyone else a chance to get the new card if it’s good.

Which of course is less of a problem with set purchases like Dominion. It could still be a factor with Knights, and I honestly don’t know much about the last 2 or 3 expansions but probably something in there too. It’s a really small factor.

28
Other Games / Re: Deck-Building Games
« on: September 03, 2019, 11:22:07 am »
Another very common feature of other deckbuilders that I hate is that most cards give points and stronger cards are also worth more points. You don't get any of the interesting decisions around greening or whatever the equivalent is.

That’s a good point. Most deck-builders don’t have the equivalent of Province (except for Trains, which as I pointed out is Dominion+board).

So there is generally not a risk/reward decision to make in those games. You go for the biggest points, which often gives you the biggest effect as well. Dominion has the risk of clogging your deck.

Clank! has some of that going for it. It has a Province-like card that you can buy which clogs your deck. Aside from those, there are plenty of gems worth lots of points that don’t clog your deck because you draw a card when you play them, thus ensuring that you have the same number of cards without the junking effect of Province. But those kinds of cards do have a risk associated with them—mainly that by purchasing that high-value card, you add more clank, which is more dangerous for you. Depending on how well you’ve been managing your clank, this might only be a mere inconvenience.

I know that Legendary has some obstacles that have a cost of adding wounds to your deck. But that’s cooperative, so it’s not quite the same.

Oh yeah, and DC has a deckbuilder. I only played it once, and I can’t fully remember how it goes. I remember feeling like it’s at least more thematic than Marvel Legendary, but I couldn’t tell you why right now.

29
Other Games / Re: Deck-Building Games
« on: September 03, 2019, 09:24:20 am »
For me, one of the biggest flaws of most other deck-builders is that they have variable supplies

I agree with you, but it’s interesting how this flaw is considered a merit by many other people. I’ve seen people shrug at Dominion, but they love the variable supply. It makes me wonder if the divide is between people who plan their endgame in advance and people who wing it with whatever they’re given.

Games like Clank and Ascension scratch that latter itch. I really enjoy Clank even though I can’t plan ahead as well as with Dominion. Maybe it’s because the fallback cards are usually pretty good. There’s probably not quite as much synergy to maximize in Clank, so you don’t feel like you’re getting screwed. Conversely, in Ascension, you need to maximize that synergy, and if you buy a faction card in the hopes of scoring big with it, you may be disappointed when you never see that faction ever again.

You can see that difference between my wife and me. I love Dominion and will work out several strategies for my deck in the long run. She prefers the randomness of Ascension, which I cannot bank on. But we both dig Clank! and Mystic Vale. The latter perhaps because crafting the card is a really neat mechanic. I suppose that one could combine the card crafting with the static supply of Dominion, though I feel like this game works better with a variable supply.

Another deck builder that’s almost as fun as Dominion (or could be) is Trains. Of course, that’s because it is almost Dominion. If you take the Dominion base set and change the names and a few numbers then you get the basis of Trains. What Trains adds is an area-control aspect. It’s okay. It’s not great, and you could probably win while ignoring the board entirely. The “Provinces” are devalued, so there’s some incentive to focus on the board. The downside is that focusing on the board usually adds junk to your deck, which is usually less fun. But hey, at least it’s voluntary junking, as opposed to the Witch or Sea Hag.

I felt Marvel Legendary was a really weak theme, but part of that is also that they make it competitive within a cooperative framework. Considering that the loser can tank the game so that nobody wins, this seems like a horrible concept for a superhero game. It was their first Legendary, so mistakes were made. I played the Aliens Legendary, and I felt this was a much more solid game. Each player has a role, so they have cards they may favor over others. I think it’s also fully cooperative with none of the competitive. I’ve not played any other Legendary game yet. I heard that Firefly is pretty poor and that Big Trouble in Little China is really good. Or was it the other way around? Obviously I just need to play both and find out for myself.

30
General Discussion / Re: Random Stuff Part IV
« on: August 07, 2019, 09:04:17 am »
It's interesting because the obelus combines the horizontal bar of the fraction with the colon of the ratio.

I have no idea if that's how the obelus became to be or not. It'd be kind of cool if it did. Actually, since Wikipedia says that the obelus can also be a dagger, the mishmash of bars and dots may be coincidental.

Still doesn't change the fact that it's taught early on and then abandoned, so maybe we shouldn't teach it anymore.

31
General Discussion / Re: Random Stuff Part IV
« on: August 06, 2019, 04:30:32 pm »
Your question comes off like "Is there a reason why my neighbor's bratty kid gets tiny little wheels on the rear wheel of his bike so that he can never fall off, doesn't he know Lance Armstrong would NEVER use those?!!?"
The extra hardcore way to write division is with multiplicative inverse. ab-1 instead of a/b.

Hell yeah!

32
General Discussion / Re: Random Stuff Part IV
« on: August 06, 2019, 04:30:11 pm »
Children like pictures.  An obelus is a picture of a fraction, you imagine the top dot being replaced with a numerator number, and the bottom dot being replaced with a denominator number.  The "/" is a metaphor for that as well, of course, but it's not quite as clear, it has that twist of perspective to it. It's particularly tricky to imagine the left number is somehow above the right number when you're roughly 8.

Surely it's even trickier to imagine the left number being above the right number when writing 12÷4. I'm not sure how that's easier than a slash at all. The obelus acts nothing like training wheels. If anything, it's something to learn while young and then unlearn when kids decide to progress beyond 5th-grade math. This seems highly inefficient to me.

33
General Discussion / Re: Random Stuff Part IV
« on: August 06, 2019, 02:58:33 pm »
Is there a legitimate reason for elementary school to teach division using the obelus symbol (÷) rather than the fractional notation? Or even the forward slash (/) if you must type expressions on a single line?

I see some of those math puzzles on Facebook, and it bugs me because there's an obelus, and nobody who maths for a living uses the obelus. 

And many of those Facebook arguments could be quelled with a properly notated fraction, but then that doesn't generate traffic.

34
General Discussion / Re: Random Stuff Part IV
« on: July 26, 2019, 06:50:14 pm »
Were you guys at WBC?  I just came back from there.  Won the Dominion tournament for the second time.  151 players!
No, we crossed our paths at KantCon, which was originally named such by the organizers as they can't go to Gen Con. It's grown considerably since then and obviously doesn't base its schedule on Gen Con's weekend.

Might see each other again at the Midwest Game Fest in November.

35
General Discussion / Re: Random Stuff Part IV
« on: July 22, 2019, 12:01:41 am »
So I was at a convention this weekend, and my wife and I checked out Alien Artifacts because I confused it with Alien Frontiers. As I stared dejectedly at the rulebook and my wife glanced disinterestedly at the many decks of cards, we weren't really much in the mood to crack this game. My wife looked over at the next table and saw a couple of guys fussing with the instruction sheet for Dice Forge in a similar manner. She suggested that I go teach them Dice Forge. So I invited myself and my wife to join these guys so I could teach them how to play.

We chatted a bit, and Dominion came up. Talked some more, including Isotropic. I asked if he was on the forums, and he said his name was DSell. So I told him my name, and we had a lovely bonding moment at our first in-person meet. We played a few more games together, and I also got to teach him Sagrada since his SO is colorblind and will never play it with DSell. Good times. Such a nice guy.

36
General Discussion / Re: Random Stuff Part IV
« on: June 20, 2019, 01:43:24 pm »
I'll take Things-I'll-Never-Have for $800, Alex.

Same, and I utterly don't care. It bothers anyone looking over my shoulder so much more than it bothers me.

The NSA kindly requests that you practice good e-mail hygiene.

But if you're not American, then this doesn't app-- Well, maybe it still does.

37
General Discussion / Re: Random Stuff Part IV
« on: June 20, 2019, 11:06:40 am »
I'll take Things-I'll-Never-Have for $800, Alex.

38
General Discussion / Re: TV shows
« on: June 17, 2019, 11:45:28 pm »
There is actually already a body-less hologram singer who looks pretty good, so that part of the science was pretty underwhelming. I mean, they just did it with a real person doing the movement and the hologram just projecting that and changing her look. That's like super unimpressive. I'd assume we can do that already?

I don't think the sci-fi part is the hologram but how a celebrity's image can be used for your own use. For example, Fred Astaire: In this episode, Ashley put up a good enough front that when she went comatose, her aunt was able to continue banking on her image. The hologram would've been a continuing of exploiting Ashley after she dies. The hologram was neat and all, but I don't feel that was the crux of the sci-fi elements.

39
Other Games / Re: My Origins games
« on: June 17, 2019, 01:50:36 pm »
I played TrapWords about a month ago. Really cool concept; the mind games are fun. But I found it dragged; by the last couple of rounds we were all wishing it had already ended.

I could see that. I didn't have time to play the full game. It sounds like it's intended to be intentionally short. For example, we guessed the first word, and the other team did not, so we advanced a space. Then neither of us got the word, so the monster moved up. Then we guessed the third word, so we advanced another space. We were likely a couple of spaces away from the monster, and the monster comes closer to us if nobody gets it.

But while the game has a mechanic to speed up the game, I don't know if there's a mechanic for speeding up the ending itself. We were facing the dragon, which limits the guesses to 3 instead of 5. In theory, we could've gone back and forth an infinite number of times failing to get the final word. And then there's the first-player advantage, unless there's a mechanic where first player alternates, which would be pretty reasonable.

40
Other Games / My Origins games
« on: June 17, 2019, 01:14:28 pm »
I played more RPGs than board games at Origins, but I got to see a few, so here are my thoughts.

New Frontiers is one of the latest board games from Rio Grande. It literally mashes Puerto Rico with Race for the Galaxy, and it works. You choose your role, everyone does it, the role picker gets a bonus. There are a couple that act like Prospector in that nobody else gets anything, but they're weak roles. You build Developments and Settle planets, but NF adds a new element where you first have to explore the planets before you can settle them. Lots of new developments to replace the basic board, so it has more variety than Puerto Rico (though not more than PR with its expansions).

Roll for the Galaxy has a new expansion called Rivalry. It adds two new game modes, though I only tried one. The simpler one adds a new mega-die that is customizable (like Dice Forge). You roll it with your normal dice and can upgrade dice faces to improve the path you are going down. In my game, Developments were a big deal to me, so I upgraded the die to give me bonuses to Developments. There were other options I could've taken. It adds randomness, but you can build yourself to make that randomness work for you.

Puerto Rico is an old classic. I already knew it, but I saw three guys staring exasperatedly at the rulebook, so I offered to teach them and play the game. I lost to a newbie, but I also purposefully didn't take the Hospice. Then again, the winner didn't either, so clearly Hospice didn't determine the winner; I just didn't play that well.

Deadly Doodles was a cute drawing game where everyone has the same grid dungeon with spaces containing weapons (labeled A through G), monsters (also A through G), loot, and a dragon. You "navigate" the dungeon by flipping over a common pool of four cards and drawing them on your dungeon. You get points for crossing loot spaces, for crossing weapons spaces, for crossing monster spaces corresponding with a weapon you have (and you lose points if you cross a monster without the weapon), and for crossing the dragon to increase your loot value. It's mostly a solitaire game, though there are a couple of trap cards that you can put in the dungeon where you can't cross them. Any players who cross that space on their own map lose points, so it's a very tame "take that." Cute, short game that may be fun for a couple of plays before you move on to something more interesting.

Trapwords was a recent announcement that interested me. It's basically Taboo where you give clues to a teammate without using any forbidden words. Where this differs is that the other team chooses that list. If you're being particularly clever, the other team may try to anticipate your chicanery. For example, my word was DWARF. The other team put "vertical" on the list with the hope I'd say "vertically challenged." Nice one, other team. Fortunately I didn't fall for that trap and instead described musically inclined miners where one is embarrassed a lot and another is always tired (my partner was like 8 years old, so you know). From what I understand, you can't put "the" and "a" on the list, but you could add "person" or "someone" which can be pretty dangerous.

Letter Jam is my jewel of the con. It will be released at Gen Con, but it was fun to play the prototype. It's like Hanabi in that everyone has a letter in front of them, but you can't see yours. You have to guess your four letters based on someone spelling a word with the visible letters. Numbers are placed in front of people to show how the word is spelled. So I might know the word is TH_NN_NG and conclude that my letter is I. You have to be careful in giving clues because something like BID isn't going to help any of those players narrow down which letter they have. I learned in this game that you want to be clever but not too clever. My very first word was THRESH. It helped many players, but when I saw the E player choose to guess right away, I knew that he thought I was spelling THRASH. Oops. Also, leave your ego at the door. I wanted to spell out awesome words all the time, but I had to let others give clues because I need to guess my four letters.

41
General Discussion / Re: TV shows
« on: June 06, 2019, 02:05:56 pm »
So I got an e-mail about Black Mirror Season 5, and I went straight there. I had intended to spread out my viewing, but I ended up bingeing the whole season last night. This sounds impressive (or sad), but it's only three episodes, albeit longer than an hour each.

This was perhaps the least Black Mirror season of Black Mirror. Why I feel that way will hopefully be obvious in my episode recaps.

Warning: Spoilers ahead.



Striking Vipers – This started off slow for me, but it gained some speed. Then slowed down again. This isn't the type of story to rush, so I get why they paced it the way they did. I still found myself wanting to get on with it though.

So the short of it is that two best friends play this Striking Vipers fighting game in their 20s. They liked it enough to stay up all night and suffer the consequences of going to work exhausted. Fast-forward 11 years, and the two buddies have taken different, successful paths. Karl gives Danny a birthday gift of a new Striking Vipers with a VR attachment. They play the game and choose their favorite, hot characters, and they end up stopping the fight to have sex.

This episode reflects a lot in our society. I remember people saying that cybersex isn't really cheating, and that discussion came up in their arguments. Danny neglects his family in order to have this torrid virtual affair with Karl in a woman's body. I think this relationship made me nervous because I was expecting some transphobia or homophobia. It turned out my fears were unfounded. When Danny asked Karl to meet IRL in the middle of the night, I was expecting murder, but he wanted to know if the spark would remain outside the game. That was a pleasant twist away from the usual tropes.

In the end, they all work it out. Danny's failing marriage is strengthened once they opened up communication. And this communication allows them to explore passions outside their marriage. I've seen some marriages try going the open route in an attempt to save it, but the problems lie deeper than that. I've also seen marriages succeed at being open, and this episode shows them being pretty happy with embracing the openness, as Theo, Danny's wife, also craved something new. It ends sweetly, which reminds me of San Junipero.

Smithereens – I saw this described as a bad PSA about texting and driving, and I can't wholly disagree with it. It was filmed well, though. They laid out the clues early on with his obsessively looking at the passenger side of the car and him stalking the Smithereens headquarters. Christopher's reaction to smart phones seems over the top, though it does show how traumatized he is.

The short of it is that Christopher kidnaps an intern from Smithereens, a Facebook clone. He was hoping for someone higher up the food chain because the intern was sharply dressed like an intern who really wanted to move up in the company. Christopher is spotted by the police, and he is trapped in a hostage situation. All he wants to do is talk to the president of Smithereens and tell his side of the story. That story is that Christopher was driving his fiancée one night when he was distracted by a Smithereens notification, which caused him to crash into a drunk driver. The other driver was blamed for the accident, but Christopher knows it was his obsession with social media to blame.

It's all a sad tale, though Christopher's methods are rather extreme. I expected this episode to go into some shadowy conspiracy or a revenge tale, but it's really a man raging against himself. He casts some blame on Smithereens because the company has been putting a lot of focus on making their app more addictive. The whole message is as subtle as a brick.

The end is ambiguous, which bugs me. I like some ambiguous endings, like whether Inception ends with Cobb in a dream or not. This ambiguity is a bit sloppy though. We know from everyone's reaction that someone dies, but we have no idea if it was Christopher or his hostage. I'm fine with the ambiguity surrounding the touching subplot of a grieving mother getting into her late daughter's social media account to learn more about her suicide. I would've liked something more definitive with the sniper shot though.

Rachel, Jack, and Ashley Too – Probably my favorite of the season, though it is not without its problems. It's an interesting juxtaposition of two stories. Ashley is a pop sensation with super positive songs, including a saccharin take on NIN's Head like a Hole. Meanwhile, Rachel is a fangirl who is thrilled to receive a gadget infused with an AI download of Ashley's persona—at least her poppy, fun façade.

There are two stories going on. Ashley's aunt/manager is really pushing the positive veneer of Ashley and getting rich off it. Meanwhile, Ashley is dying inside and wants out from under her aunt's control. She wants to explore darker music. I don't know that much about the career or Miley Cyrus, but I get the feeling that casting her as Ashley was definitely intentional. Her aunt learns about Ashley's true intentions of breaking the contract and puts her into a coma in order to keep banking on Ashley's popularity, including unveiling a holographic version of Ashley to keep the money flowing.

Meanwhile, awkward teenager Rachel is obsessed with Ashley and treats the AI doll as her best friend. This embarrasses and annoys her older sister, who's more into the Pixies than anything poppy. Through a series of convenient events, Ashley Too goes nuts upon seeing a news story about the original Ashley in a coma. The girls hook her up to a computer and deletes a strange piece in her code. This was a limiter that allowed Ashley Too to only say happy, fun stuff. Now unhindered, Ashley Too becomes the foul-mouthed angry woman that Ashley always was and convinces the girls to break into her home to find proof of her aunt's duplicity.

After a remarkably unlikely infiltration, the three of them manage to wake up Ashely from her coma, and then all four of them drive to the stadium to stop Ashley's aunt's evil machinations. This is a goofy, light-hearted episode, though it does visit some of the darker themes of enslaved AI personalities. In the end, Ashley is now singing Head like a Hole with the proper lyrics.


So not my favorite season. It was still a joy to watch, though it wasn't quite as Tales from the Crypt as previous episodes had been.

42
General Discussion / Re: A Song of Ice and Fire [spoilers version]
« on: May 21, 2019, 09:38:23 am »
It's not that she executed evil people that's the problem It's that she did it so heinously. That should've been a red flag for us. It certainly should've been a red flag when she chose to burn the Tarleys alive rather than simply behead them. Even hanging is a preferable method of dying (if done correctly, that is).

Compare Ned's approach to capital punishment to Dany's approach. He took it as his duty that those who break the law should be punished, and he owned up to the awfulness of it. Her approach was vicious. Hers was less about justice and more about vengeance. We were able to excuse the slavers' deaths because they probably inflicted pain on others too. But the Tarleys were given a terrible sentence simply for refusing to bend the knee. They were prisoners of war, and they died a torturous death. The Lannisters in the streets of King's Landing received better deaths at the hands of Grey Worm.

I find it interesting (and horrifying) that I was perfectly willing to go along with her war crimes simply because she's a "good guy." Think about how this compares to real life. How many people have supported the atrocities committed by a world leader because they want him/her to be good? That makes viewing Dany's war crimes really uncomfortable because many of were rooting for a tyrant; we just hadn't really seen it.

The Tarleys should've been the red flag for me, but it wasn't. I did come to come my senses when she chose to give Varys a similarly terrible execution. After she had done that, I was not surprised that she would wreak her cruelty on everyone else.

And yeah, it was within Jon's character. I still face-palmed, but it was mostly because of his action and not because I thought it was a bad writer decision.

43
General Discussion / Re: A Song of Ice and Fire [spoilers version]
« on: May 20, 2019, 04:21:12 pm »
Are we doing spoilers? I figured anyone checking out this thread has already seen it. I may be accustomed to the RPG.net discussion where that's assumed.

A lot of people wanted that scene to go differently. So many possible candidates. While I probably would have cheered at any of them, I'm kind of okay with it having a pathetic end.

I hadn't considered Jamie, but that may be because I already blew my prediction by thinking Qyburn was actually Arya with the stabby-stab. Once that turned out to not be the case, it hadn't even occurred to me to go with your suspicion.

Though how awesome of storytelling would it have been to set up a red herring for my suspicion only to have your suspicion take place?

Ah well, I can think of a dozen ways each character could've done something. I can't be mad just because my pet prediction didn't happen.

The memes are getting pretty funny, especially the angry chair.

I have to say that Facebook GoT fans are awful. They're spoiling things left and right, while I've seen very few Avengers: Endgame spoilers. I suppose it's easier for a television show, since aspiring meme creators can easily capture scenes to caption. That's not so easy with Endgame.

44
General Discussion / Re: A Song of Ice and Fire [spoilers version]
« on: May 20, 2019, 12:14:23 pm »
I watched it. I'm okay with it. It wasn't anything spectacular. It pretty much set out to wrap up the story, and it did just that. I know some people weren't happy with it, but I didn't see anything too offensive.

Some minor gripes I have:

How did anyone know that Jon killed her? Obviously he told people. Should've let Arya do it with her ninja magic. She knows how to keep her mouth shut. Or maybe he ran away, and people concluded by his absence that he was the culprit. Jon sucks at deception. Bran probably knew, but I doubt he would've narced on Jon. If he was interested in doing that, he would've just located him when Grey Worm was hunting him down.

Making Bronn the Master of Coin? You know, in case the audience decided that Tyrion would have given up making bad decisions.

Man, so slow. But that is kind of typical for season enders. It's just that previous seasons had some story to look forward to, and we don't have that here.

Arya deciding to be Columbus was a little strange. Did she feel she experienced all that could be done in Westeros and decided to go find sea monsters to the west? I must admit I didn't see this coming.

Time continued to be wibbly-wobbly in terms of how long it takes to travel. At least they're consistent in inconsistency.


Some bits I liked:

Tyrion reminding us that Dany's always been pretty cruel. We just went along with it because nobody cared about the victims. It was when she turned that cruelty to others that we realized what she is.

Dany regaling Jon with tales of how she envisioned the Iron Throne.

Tyrion's newfound humility.

Sansa making herself Queen of the North. 6 > 7

Ghost.



I had some ideas of how the show could've gone, but I'm fine with the decisions they made.

45
General Discussion / Re: Random Stuff Part IV
« on: May 15, 2019, 09:46:33 am »
Puzzle foul. Solving the puzzle was a lot harder until I realized that they consider 1 to be a prime number. I felt vindicated in my inability to figure out what the solution was, but that was replaced by nerdrage.

46
General Discussion / Re: Random Stuff Part IV
« on: May 14, 2019, 11:41:21 am »
That e-mail was not high priority. Stop abusing the priority system.

#emailfoul

47
General Discussion / Re: Random Stuff Part IV
« on: May 08, 2019, 01:25:03 pm »
Thanks to Facebook memories, I am reminded of a rather heated exchange I had with a friend who turned out to be a toxic narcissist. It was such a stupid argument, but I'm reminded of just how self-centered people can be.

The topic was simply me letting others know that wishing a stranger a happy Mother's Day may be insensitive since you don't know if she's barren or lost a child. That could be a painful thing to say to her. Even if the woman has a child with her, that might still be painful, though statistically, you're probably safe wishing her a happy Mother's Day if there's a child with her.

And this guy went off the rails griping that I want to stifle free speech and that people get so easily offended and how other people's feelings are more important than his freedom to be nice to people.

I was tempted to delete that conversation because of how ridiculous it got, but I like to keep as a reminder to stay away from other people's bullshit.

48
General Discussion / Re: Movies: Any movie buffs?
« on: May 06, 2019, 10:15:51 am »
So I finally watched Shazam! over the weekend. That movie turned out much better than I expected. The marketing did not do this movie justice.

It was really just a fun movie, and I wouldn't have placed it in the DC universe if I didn't already know it was there—well, and all the various references to DC lore, which was part of what made it so fun.

I'm not a kid person, but even I found the foster home to be utterly charming. If this movie doesn't create a bunch of new foster homes because of how it's been portrayed, then I'll be surprised. Of course, maybe some people will try to host foster kids who shouldn't, but that's a different matter. It was a really heartwarming piece of the movie.

It pretty much was Big but with a Superman-like character. That comparison was not lost on the filmmakers as they inserted an homage to Big.

And I liked how they resolved the ending because the movie avoided the trope of the hero being outclassed but then inexplicably gets good enough to defeat the villain.

I highly recommend this film. It's a bit of a YA escapist fantasy, but then again, many comic book stories are.

49
General Discussion / Re: Movies: Any movie buffs?
« on: May 06, 2019, 10:09:10 am »
They certainly undid some bits from previous movies. Those are pretty glaring plot holes.
Excuse me? The whole point of time travel in Endgame is that it creates diverging timelines and you can't undo anything from previous movies. I thought they made that pretty clear.
 

Well, no, I wasn't referring to time travel undoing anything. I just mean that the movie undoes some of its own internal consistency, mainly Giant-Man lasting longer than usual and the Infinity Stones being wielded in a mundane gauntlet.

Which you already addressed.

For the former, there could be a nebulous period of time off-screen where he practices this mode and is doing better at it. And I suppose one could argue that the latter wasn't really that safe to begin with, which is why we have that ending. I could concede that point.

As for the rat, I think it's fine. The whole movie is predicated on lucky events. Actually, just about any movie is predicated on luck. Raiders of the Lost Ark would've gone differently if Marion's medallion didn't fall into the fire. Star Wars would've gone differently if that R5 unit hadn't malfunctioned. Back to the Future would've gone differently if Marty hadn't been carrying that clock tower flyer with him (though that opens a whole new can of worms on that plot hole).

So a wild animal stepping in the right place at the right time doesn't really bother me, especially since given a long enough time, such an event was likely to happen anyway. It's just the timing that could be questioned, though not by me. I was cool with it. At the very least, it resulted in some pretty funny movie posters with the true hero of the story.

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General Discussion / Re: Movies: Any movie buffs?
« on: May 03, 2019, 11:19:23 am »
They certainly undid some bits from previous movies. Those are pretty glaring plot holes.

As mentioned, Scott seemed to handle being big for a long time a lot better than before. One could conjecture that part of the time period when they were improving his suit and skills while he was harvesting healing particles in the quantum realm, some modifications were made either A) to the suit or B) to Scott so that he could stay big longer. But that's a stretch to assume.

And also, the gauntlet was such a big deal. You had to go to this race of dwarves to harvest the power of a star to forge it. Or you can be Tony Stark and make your own damn glove. While Tony Stark is not completely a Mary Sue, the fact that he can solve just about any problem puts him pretty darn close.

And of course, time travel weirdness, but that's not really an inconsistent part of the movie. It didn't contradict other rules they set up. How it interacts with the rest of the rules is a different story.


And yes, I agree that there was a remarkable number of survivors (like 100%) at ground zero of such a cataclysmic explosion. I mean, yeah, it's a superhero movie, but that explosion was pretty major, and there are a lot of characters who aren't Thor, Carol, Hulk, etc.

It would've been a pretty good scene if they had something akin to Violet Parr from the Incredibles. That would be a pretty good plot explanation.

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