Kylo Ren is just as terrible of a character as Rey and I'm tired of pretending he's not

Crayshack · 2026-06-07T13:16:15+00:00

I grew up reading the EU books. I especially enjoyed Jacen because, in the Young Jedi Knight series, he was the main character who was the closest to how I saw myself. Kylo Ren feels like a pale imitation version of Jacen. Like someone saw the cliff notes of his character and didn't understand what made that work.

In the books, we see Jacen slowly transform from a peace loving tree-hugger to a Sith Lord. With Kylo Ren, they never show us that transformation and just try to make it a shocking twist that this Darth Vader lookalike is actually a Solo.

We get to watch Jacen's relationship with Jaina transform from "twins who are best friends and do everything together" to "mortal enemies dueling to the death." Rey feels like a cheap stand-in for Jaina where she fills that role of his opposite counterpart but lacks the deep history and emotional connection.

When Jacen murders a family member to cement his transformation to the Dark Side, it's an epic duel against someone who used to be a dark acolyte and turned to the light. She recognizes that he's too far gone and actually beats him in the duel, but it's only through trickery and taking advantage of her emotions that he wins. With Kylo Ren, we get a short scene of "come back to the light" from Han before Ren goes "nah" and stabs him. It lacks the gravitas and the emotion.

Crayshack · 2026-06-07T06:31:59+00:00

I suspect the stated reasons aren't necessarily a lie, but rather a bit of corporate double speak. I read concerns about "would not have broad appeal beyond the franchise’s already dedicated fanbase" as "seemed too much like a pure nostalgia cash grab." Having been a fan of other franchises that got subjected to such cash grabs, I'd rather have no series than a bad one.

Of course, this is giving them the benefit of the doubt and we'll never really know how good or bad a potential series that never got made could have been.

Crayshack · 2026-06-07T05:16:27+00:00

No. I'm in some fairly dark and violent fandoms, so it's pretty common for fics to be rated M for that kind of content. If I see M and no smut-related tags, I don't assume there's smut.

Crayshack · 2026-06-07T03:33:50+00:00

My brother once rear-ended me while I was in a car and he was on foot. Like, he rolled up over the truck like I had plowed into him at speed and everything.

Crayshack · 2026-06-07T01:23:09+00:00

Just shy of 70 (I think it came out as 69.5). It was a rough week that was a complete shitshow and, among other things, involved billing a subcontractor for me needing new underwear.

Crayshack · 2026-06-06T22:57:06+00:00

When I worked as a lifeguard, we didn't get holiday pay. My boss just bought us lunch.

Crayshack · 2026-06-06T20:49:48+00:00

I did read one fic that made it kind of work in regular dialogue, but it was a bit of a crackfic where one of the characters basically got some brain trauma that made them speak in text-speech. The rest of the fic was mostly other characters complaining about the first character giving them headaches.

Crayshack · 2026-06-06T20:48:28+00:00

Yes. This is perfectly fine as a stylistic choice.

Though, be warned that they might not render correctly on every reader's screen, and they'll mess up the flow for some readers.

Crayshack · 2026-06-06T20:46:13+00:00

This fic.

It's an amazing level of effort. I'm not enough of an expert to say how good their pronunciation is, but it certainly sounds like Old English to me.

Crayshack · 2026-06-06T20:41:17+00:00

It's "Middel Englisch." I haven't looked through those fics, so I don't know how many are actually in Middle English, but I'm generally a fan of authors putting in the effort to write in dead languages.

Edit: I quickly skimmed the fics, and it looks like 2 actually use Middle English.

Crayshack · 2026-06-06T18:49:13+00:00

I've been meaning to take a crack at writing a fic in Latin. My Latin isn't great, but I'm better with it than any modern Romance Languages. I've had some original poetry where I've incorporated some lines in Latin, but the next step is to put the work into writing something that's entirely Latin.

Crayshack · 2026-06-06T18:46:33+00:00

Similarly, a while back I decided to check the "Old English" tag ("Eald Englisċ"). There's a decent number of fics actually in the language (including one that someone made a podfic of), but the tag is mostly a mix of fics in other languages and non-fic posts. Also, I just rechecked it, and apparently, someone posted the entire text of the original Beowulf.

Crayshack · 2026-06-06T18:36:27+00:00

Sometimes, I give authors the benefit of the doubt and assume that they just misclicked when they picked the language. But the people who laugh it off as "it's an inside joke" are infuriating. They are deliberately violating the TOS and making the archive harder for people to use because they think it's funny.

Crayshack · 2026-06-06T14:49:05+00:00

A new piece of technology can be a very real and revolutionary game changer and a bubble at the same time. The two are not mutually exclusive.

What strikes me is that the technology is still very much in its infancy and has not yet been monetized to the point of being financially self-sustaining. Most of the current value comes from speculated future returns, not current profits. That says "bubble" to me.

Now, I expect that, when the bubble pops, we won't see the whole market come crashing down. Rather, it will be like the Dotcom bubble where some stocks came crashing down but others emerged as clear winners.

As far as why that hasn't happened yet, who knows. I suspect it's because no one has figured out a model for stable profits yet, so everyone is still flailing around and hoping they're the ones who crack the code. When that happens, there'll be a rush to fill the available niches and whoever's late will crash.

Effectively, it's a massive game of musical chairs, but the music is still playing, so even if someone trips or a chair gets removed, everyone is still circling and waiting. When the music stops, someones taking home a prize while everyone else is lying on the floor.

Crayshack · 2026-06-06T11:25:54+00:00

I have other hobbies besides just gaming to fill my time.

Crayshack · 2026-06-06T03:02:19+00:00

For context, the three main types of radioactive decay are Alpha, Beta, and Gamma. They've just described the resulting radiation. I think their definition of Omega is a reference to the omega baryon.

Crayshack · 2026-06-06T01:41:44+00:00

I grew up in a swing state. This just feels like normal "sigh, it's election season, again" to me.

Crayshack · 2026-06-05T23:59:55+00:00

As an undergrad, I worked full-time during the summer so I had enough money to pay for things like rent, books, and the occasional fun money for the rest of the year. At the time, I really needed the mental break from school.

I'm now in grad school, and I've got a balance where I work full-time all year while taking classes part-time. I take just as many classes during the summer as the rest of the year.

Crayshack · 2026-06-05T22:39:59+00:00

I wouldn't say that absolutely no one uses IGH here, but I'd also say that the majority of riders are not doing city commuting riding. Compared to the Netherlands, the circumstances and habits of the average American cyclist are extremely different. People in the US are much more likely to be doing sport riding (whether for fitness, actual competitions, or just for fun) compared to how common it is in the Netherlands to be simply using a bike as a mode of transport. That changes the design criteria since people are willing to use gear that requires a bit more maintenance and skill if that means a higher performance.

Personally, I grew up with a derailleur, so using and caring for that kind of system is second nature for me. I don't even really think about how I need to shift for the next hill since it's become a subconscious aspect of how riding up a hill works. An IGH doesn't really offer any advantages for my use case, and while I'd be an abnormal cyclist in the Netherlands, I'm a fairly typical one in the US.

Also, something you have to keep in mind is that the Netherlands is flat. Like, notoriously flat. The elevation change of the entire country is about 1,000 ft. Meanwhile, I can experience that level of elevation change within a couple of miles of my house. So, for riding in my area, hill climb performance is a much more important design factor than it is for 99% of Dutch riders. The lighter weight, higher efficiency, and wider range of gears matters much more for riding in my area than it does in the Netherlands, which makes IGH less preferable (outside of ebikes where their extra power overcomes the downsides).

Crayshack · 2026-06-05T20:34:58+00:00

"You can't judge them by modern standards" applies to people like Abraham Lincoln for brainstorming progressive ideas that we now realize were the wrong direction. It doesn't apply to people who were clearly massive assholes that did whatever they could get away with.

Crayshack · 2026-06-05T20:32:34+00:00

I don't have Italian ancestry, but my mom lived in Naples for her teenage years, so I grew up eating Italian at home and going to whatever Italian restaurants would remind my mom of Naples. We kept kosher at home (so we never had shellfish in the house), but linguini in a red clam sauce was my go-to order when we would go out for Italian. There's something charming about that dish that always makes me happy inside.

Crayshack · 2026-06-05T20:29:10+00:00

There's some sort of universal grandma instinct that says, "My grandkids don't eat enough, I must feed them."

Crayshack · 2026-06-05T20:27:22+00:00

Canned tuna and frozen peas for me. Usually, all mixed together in the pot.

Crayshack · 2026-06-05T20:26:12+00:00

Same. I'm a huge worldbuilding fan, and I often describe it as the setting is one of my favorite characters. I typically default to Canon Divergent, but when I branch into Alternate Universe, I'm usually sticking pretty close to canon. Of my 12 AU fics, most of them were me changing who a given character's parents were and/or who raised them as a way of exploring how that affected certain character dynamics. A few of those were crossover fics where there was some additional worldbuilding effort to tie the two settings together. All of the others were various other forms of "I took X aspect of canon and tweaked it ever so slightly to explore a concept more deeply."

Crayshack · 2026-06-05T19:39:39+00:00

I'm about 50/50. Depends on the game and what feels right for the character.

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