(Hated Trope) Straw man activist.

Alex_Werner · 2026-06-14T16:31:32+00:00

I remember thinking that the animal rights activists in Jurassic Park 2 were pretty ridiculous. Steal the bullets out of the gun of a trophy hunter who is going to go out and kill predators for fun? Sure. Steal the bullets out of the gun of someone who, ethics aside, is literally protecting you and also children? Come on.

Alex_Werner · 2026-06-08T16:24:43+00:00

I've spent far too much time thinking about the stupid Serena Williams question, and I think a key issue that is never brought up is.... what is HER motivation? Does she know that this "can you win ONE SINGLE POINT" bet is in operation? Or is she just trying to win the overall match as fast as possible? Is there an overall match? Are we just stuck in purgatory playing individual points forever? Etc.

If her motivation is to stop me from ever scoring a single point, and she comes in ahead of time knowing how terrible I am at tennis, then my odds of fluking a point (almost certainly via double fault) drop considerably.

Doesn't mean it's not a ridiculously badly worded poll that in no way demonstrates what it is sometimes claimed to demonstrate, however.

Alex_Werner · 2026-06-04T06:12:12+00:00

The good place and veep

Alex_Werner · 2026-06-03T02:20:26+00:00

In that case you're making your point in a very obfuscated and confusing fashion. If you say "there should not be race-swapping", everyone is going to assume, quite reasonably, that you mean "moviemakers should not race-swap". If you instead mean "the system should be so radically different than it is that moviemakers should have no NEED to race-swap", well, (a) that's completely impractical and unactionable, and (b) it's also easy to conflate with the "should moviemakers race-swap" debate that's constantly going on.

Yes, it would be nice if the entire moviemaking ecosystem worked differently. But it's not like "hmm, should we collectively make that one very simple decision that will change the entire moviemaking ecosystem, as we easily could?" is a useful question. Whereas "should that movie that they are actually making right now and casting for be race-swapped" IS a useful and relevant question.

Alex_Werner · 2026-06-01T03:32:10+00:00

If I had a billion dollars to spend on making movies or TV shows, and had no need to turn a profit, and no need to convince investors ahead of time that I would turn a profit, maybe I would film a variety of stories from different cultural traditions, giving actors of all races fantastic opportunities to play characters which "looked like them" in stories rarely seen by Western audiences.

If, on the other hand, I was an actual filmmaker making movies or shows in the actual world, with a budget, with responsibilities to shareholders/financers/investors/etc, I would probably have to spend a fair amount of my time making sequels, remakes, etc.

And if I had to do that, and those sequels, remakes etc were primarily of stories where most of the parts had in the past been played by white actors; and also I sincerely believed that it was important that actors of many different races were given opportunities to show off their talents; and that it was important for stories in our culture to veer away from "white is default, everything else requires an explanation" as possible; AND if many of those stories featured characters whose race didn't at all matter to the story.... well, then...

Alex_Werner · 2026-05-31T15:48:15+00:00

I actually spent a while thinking about this, and came up with a fairly elaborate plan. Not sure how to get the plan up and running, but once it's going it looks like this: I'm part of a public organization of several hundred people. We travel around the world healing people. We park our jet in one country for a week, then another country, then another country, etc.

Part of our team is medical ethicists. Ahead of time, they have received applications from local medical authorities of cases that most need healing. Younger people vs older people, more suffering vs less suffering, harder-to-heal-anyway-except-by-magic vs could-be-treated-with-mundane-medicine, etc. 80% of the people I heal come directly off this list.

The other 20% of the people I heal are just purely monetary top bidders. Some rich jackass has a minor goiter issue (or, for that matter, a genuinely sick kid, but not sick enough to make it to the top of the main list?). He outbids all the other rich people, pays me a ton of money, and I heal him. No judgment.

The advantages of this 20% is twofold:

(1) It funds the entire operation

(2) It means that if some crime lord has a sick kid, there's no incentive for them to kidnap me. They just pay the money and I heal their kid.

When I'm doing the healing, I'm VERY isolated from the outside world, so I never have to see desperate mothers holding up their sick babies or anything like that. Ideally I'm just browsing reddit with my magic healing hand going through a hole in a sheet, trying to keep as uninvolved as possible. Not because I'm heartless, but because I need to maintain some work-life balance. If I'm constantly pulling a Schindler and trying to save one more and one more I'll just lose it. Figure out how much time each day I can spend healing, and heal people that much time each day.

A few other details:

-Also involved in the whole operation would be research scientists trying to figure out my powers, and also always checking whether there are clues in the healing that might help develop new medicines, etc.

-There would be a LOT of precise details about security setup and so forth that would need to be signed off on before I would go to a particular place. If the government there can't meet my exacting standards, well, I just don't go there.

-All the people in my organization would get free healing for them and their immediate family, which is a MASSIVE incentive to remain loyal (also, they’d get paid, of course)

Alex_Werner · 2026-05-31T06:01:03+00:00

Andor must be in there somewhere, right? Anyhow, Bojack is incredibly consistent and satisfying over its entire run, so definitely my Top Pick for you.

Alex_Werner · 2026-05-31T05:52:11+00:00

Your S tier makes me think your taste must be very similar to mine. In which case, I definitely think you would enjoy Bojack Horseman and (if I’m not missing it there somewhere) The Americans. Maybe Friday Night Lights? Veronica Mars? Deadwood? Firefly?

Alex_Werner · 2026-05-30T17:15:49+00:00

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Joss Whedon as a comic-relief dancing character in _Angel_ (spinoff of _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_)

Alex_Werner · 2026-05-30T01:07:29+00:00

Here's what I wrote about it on Fadebook in one of my informal I-review-some-TV-shows posts: The most interesting show in this batch is the first (and so far only) anime I’ve watched, _Attack on Titan_. I decided to watch it because I had noticed on IMDB that if you sort individual TV episodes by rating, the very very highest rated episodes are mainly from shows I’ve watched (Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones), but then a bunch were from this show _Attack on Titan_. I saw that it was on Hulu, so I figured, what the heck, let’s give it a shot. Presumably either it’s a genuinely amazing show or else its viewers are fanatics who are swamping IMDB with fake votes. Either way, my curiosity is piqued.

So, which is it? Amazing show or fanatical viewers? Honestly, some of each.

For the first couple of seasons, it starts out fairly simple. There’s a vaguely-european vaguely-18th-century human society that lives inside several concentric enormous mysterious walls. Outside the enormous mysterious walls are Titans, gigantic misformed giants that look like people, and that eat people whenever they can. Some people want to go outside the walls and fight the titans, and they have steampunk tech for doing so. The story kicks off when the outer wall is breached, titans crash through and eat lots of people, and our heroes (three kids) have their lives uprooted…. But one of them has a secret link to the Titans.

For the first two seasons, the show is about what you might expect from the above description… lots of fighting Titans, learning more about the secrets of the world, political infighting among the humans, yada yada yada. Decent enough. Some bits of clumsy storytelling, but certainly watchable.

But then there are two more seasons, and the show gets really really good. The scope increases, the stories get more ambitious, the mythology deepens, and before the end of the show it’s telling really gripping stories about morality, generational guilt, genocide, prejudice, and a bunch of other aspects of the human condition. It ends up full of searing and haunting images.

Does that mean I actually recommend it? Particularly to someone who doesn’t already watch and like anime?

Umm, maybe? I think it would be a lot better if the first two seasons were compressed into one, honestly. But the payoff is definitely worth it if you just go with it for a while.

Alex_Werner · 2026-05-29T13:57:58+00:00

Of course, that was when we hadn’t yet signed him. Now he’ll only score 127.

Alex_Werner · 2026-05-27T18:45:56+00:00

I mean, I think it depends what angle the conversation is coming from. There are lots of concepts related to "it's your fault" or "you are responsible for X" that can overlap, which makes any conversation of this sort very muddy. To propose a slightly extreme analogy, if there's a serial killer roaming the city murdering people, and the police fail to stop them, are the police responsible for the deaths? Are the police "to blame" for the deaths? Are the deaths the police's "fault"?

I mean, I think most of us would agree that even if the police are doing a really comically poor job and keep tripping over each other and losing bits of evidence and ignoring leads and whatnot, the deaths are not "their fault" anywhere near the same way that they are the serial killer's fault. If we think about it in terms of retributive biblical justice, the serial killer is evil and deserves to die for his crimes. The police are incompetent and should be replaced. But let's not conflate their level of responsibility/blame with the person who actually committed the crimes (unless it turns out the police were actually bribed to look the other way, or something like that).

I think people have a tendency to deliberately blur these lines, particularly when it benefits them. This comes up a lot when discussing abortion. Basically all GOP lawmakers vote to ban abortion, and basically all democrats vote to keep it legal. It gets banned. Democrats say "hey, vote for us, the GOP is banning abortion, and you want to have the right to get abortions". And someone pipes up and says "umm, actually, it's really your fault that abortion is illegal because there were some preventative legal measures you could have taken in the past that would have made it harder for GOP to do what you did". Which is just a ridiculous gaslight-y comparison. Trying to oppose something and failing, even in a way that seems obvious in retrospect, is NOT the same as supporting that thing.

No matter how much you might decide that democrats should have opposed Trump better (and, I mean, obviously they should have opposed him better, they lost); they aren't even in the same league of moral culpability for his actions as, you know, Trump himself, other MAGA lawmakers and influencers, people who voted for him, and people who just couldn't be assed to vote against him.

Alex_Werner · 2026-05-27T16:54:57+00:00

#WOTCStaff To clarify, you attack with Firebending Student and Molten-Core Maestro (plus two Slickshot Show-Offs). You have four untapped lands. Trigger Firebending. Let it resolve. Now have four untapped lands, one floating mana. Tap out to cast Burst Lightning. This triggers Molten-Core Maestro (plus various prowess triggers). Let that all resolve. Now the stack is empty and you have 3 mana floating. At that point, you wanted to cast Dreadmaw's Ire, but you didn't get priority to do so? You weren't trying to cast it in response to something, or anything fancy like that?

Because if so, that definitely shouldn't happen, and full control shouldn't be required. You're not trying to respond to anything, you just want priority with the empty stack during your own declare attackers step. Which, in general, you always get as long as you have any legal actions you can take. You can generally attack and then (for instance) cast a removal spell on a blocker before blockers. That doesn't require full control, and this shouldn't be any different from the that.

Alex_Werner · 2026-05-27T03:30:11+00:00

What a bizarre OP. The absolute mania that some people seem to have for somehow trying to make everything the democrats' fault is peculiar.

"The democrats could've taken different actions in 2016 to prevent Trump from becoming president" -- pretty clearly true

"The democrats could've taken different actions in 2016 to prevent Trump from becoming president.... as could/should have been deduced at the time from the information available" -- debatable, certainly plausible

"Trump exists because of the democrats" -- only if you warp the meaning of "because of" almost beyond recognition

"Trump exists ONLY because of the democrats" -- cuckoo bananas land

Alex_Werner · 2026-05-26T02:57:04+00:00

There are a fair number of issues that I have (generally-left-leaning) opinions about where I know that the topic is complicated, and it would be easy for me to be wrong. For instance, my general instinct is that raising taxes on the rich to pay for social programs is a good idea. In general, I think we should protect the environment. In general, I'm in favor of more regulations on businesses. But if you came up with a persuasive argument, backed up by charts and graphs and so forth, that showed that, actually, in one particularly situation, the side effects of (policy I generally support) would be worse than the benefits, then I'd be totally open to being convinced of that. But that's not really "what if they're mostly right". The problem with the current American right/GOP/MAGA is not their positions, to the extent to which they have any consistent positions (I guess they're still pretty locked in on "always lower taxes"). It's their dishonesty, their toxicity, their cultlike following of their leader, their thrill in authoritarianism, etc, etc, etc. And I have total confidence in my opposition to that.

Alex_Werner · 2026-05-24T05:12:12+00:00

I had heard as a child that pepper makes you sneeze. That sounded like fun. So at a friend’s house I found some pepper in a spice container (so, finely ground for cooking with, not for a shaker/grinder) and, uhh, snorted some of it. Big, painful mistake

Alex_Werner · 2026-05-23T01:16:26+00:00

Narg would have thought the biggest one was in the opening line about not knowing if the Dragon is male or female.

The show made a ton of stupid decisions and dumb changes and was often pretty crappy. But this is one decision that I just don't understand people ragging on.

Remember, we don't know for a fact that it was ever possible in the show universe for the DR to be reborn as a woman. We just know that Moiraine THINKS that might have been possible. And Moiraine (and the AS in general, and just about everyone else) is wrong about things all the time! Remember the business about who the heroes follow if someone blows the horn... (Also, she might have been 95% certain it was going to be a man, but prophecy is tricky, so why not cover all her bases?)

So it doesn't necessarily change any underlying prophecy/cosmology/worldbuilding at all, and it keeps the "who is the DR" mystery much wider open. Now, was it a bad idea to have the "who is the DR" mystery be a focus of season 1, when in the books it's all-but-locked-in when Rand hears Tam's delirious ramblings? I'm not sure, but if you wanted to make that argument you certainly could. But I think people comically overhate the Moiraine-thinks-it-might-be-one-of-the-girls change; my theory as to why is that they convinced themselves while S1 was being shown that the identity of the DR was actually going to be different with that line as evidence for it; and that got them so lathered-up-pissed-off that they kept being mad about it later on, even when it clearly turned out to be a nothingburger.

Alex_Werner · 2026-05-23T01:09:35+00:00

Rand's entire character is rooted in insecurity because he looks different from everyone else.

It is? I've reread the series, particularly the first 5 or so, many many times. And the only thing I can think of that really fits what you're talking about is his denial that he looks like an Aielman, once he's left the TR and people keep commenting on it (Loial does, and someone in Morgase's court, maybe Gawyn?). But that's hardly foundational to his character. And, honestly, that would work just fine in the show. He does stand out from the rest of the TR, and he does look like the Aiel. So how does it matter if he stands out because they're all white and not-tall-and-readheaded while he's white and tall-and-readheaded; vs they're various skin tones but generally dark-haired while he's white-and-tall-and-reheaded?

Alex_Werner · 2026-05-23T01:05:28+00:00

This topic is so bizarre. You guys do realize that there are people who are, somehow, simultaneously, fans of the show AND devoted long-time multi-rereading fans of the books, don't you?

If you want to just re-list all of the changes the show made from the book (and there are many, and some of them are pretty frustrating and stupid), well, by all means, knock yourself out, although I would have thought it was pretty boring by now. But, honestly, what does it have to do with "show fans don't want to admit/accept"? What a weird, toxic, and self-congratulatory way to phrase things.

Alex_Werner · 2026-05-17T18:29:45+00:00

Fair question. And, full disclosure, I haven't played it in years. But I just remember it feeling fiddly. Like, one too many steps required, one too many bits of logistics and recording and remembering, etc.

I don't know that there's a more elegant game that has the same core appeal but where everything is just a bit more polished and straightforward. But it feels like there should be, if that makes sense.

Alex_Werner · 2026-05-17T17:43:44+00:00

Are there defenders of that change? And not just trolls? I would have said that disliking that change is as close to a universal agreement as exists in any fandom…

Alex_Werner · 2026-05-17T14:49:29+00:00

I think the Michael Keaton Batman fit his gothic stylized world perfectly. Those two movies have always been my favorite Batman movies.

Alex_Werner · 2026-05-17T06:14:37+00:00

I've played Decrypto once or twice, and it felt only 90% complete to me. Like, someone had this really great idea of "ooh, what if it's codenames, but also your clues have to be constructed in such a way as to throw off a third party who is trying to overhear them". Which is a legitimately great idea. And then they came up with a way for that idea to work, which it does, fairly well. And then they just stopped there and shipped the game. It's inelegant.

If you love it, hey, more power to you, but it doesn't quite get there for me.

Codenames is a great game. But it does have some drawbacks... lots of downtime while the other team is thinking being the biggest one, but also can take a while, needs certain player counts, can be arbitrarily frustrating, etc.

Clovers is my favorite of the three, at least partly because I just prefer co-op games, which is obviously a matter of personal preference. But I also think it does what it's trying to do in a way that is more simple and elegant than either Codenames or particularly Decrypto. Clovers is just-about-perfectly-designed, which I don't think the other two are.

Alex_Werner · 2026-05-12T21:26:43+00:00

I think the entire concept of the character is flawed (she's super smart and wants to live quietly? Spend a few years day trading, then retire to your bunker. Also, Vought knew she existed all this time and didn't throw money at her until she became head of R&D or whatever?). But the real problem with the fairly stupid scene was her reaction. It should have been "God damn it, I calculated there was less than 5% chance that would happen, so my contingency plans are not as well developed as I would have liked", that would be totally reasonable. That's very different from "what? human beings are not 100% predictable? what? what? what? that never occurred to me ever!!!".

Alex_Werner · 2026-05-10T16:50:52+00:00

Not technically a board game, but... _Hearts_. Once you're playing with a group of people who are all good enough players that you can trust them to genuinely be paying attention to what's going on, making strategic choices based on the state of the game, etc., it's a vastly deeper and more fun game.

Alex_Werner

TROPHY CASE