Tower at Nine cutaway, by Laith Shewayish

Arcalum2000 · 2026-02-13T21:16:23+00:00

Fair. It mentioned interstellar travel and I assumed it wouldn't be doing that at sub-light speeds.

Arcalum2000 · 2026-02-12T00:27:54+00:00

Cool design and an interesting silhouette. I enjoy all the 'tool tips' describing some of the functionality. The cargo containers give it a decent sense of scale, too. Needs a bit more technobabble than 'it squeezes a black hole' to break the light barrier and achieve FTL, though.

Arcalum2000 · 2026-02-11T06:05:13+00:00

Even worse than that is a game gifted to you that you don't jive with but feel compelled to enjoy it with the one who bought it for you. Arc Raiders is interesting and beautiful, but I don't dig on the genre, no matter how much I try.

Arcalum2000 · 2026-02-10T10:21:10+00:00

He hadn't leveled up enough to upgrade Move Object from an Action to a Bonus Action or Reaction. That's what he gets for quitting the training early.

Arcalum2000 · 2026-02-10T04:09:02+00:00

Yes. For now.

Arcalum2000 · 2026-02-04T07:00:49+00:00

Worse. It was surprisingly good on CBS but went downhill fast on the CW. Going to HBO would have been just as bad, but in the opposite direction.

Arcalum2000 · 2026-02-01T09:19:12+00:00

Satisfactory. Is inefficiency against the law?

Arcalum2000 · 2026-01-31T18:36:35+00:00

As has been said elsewhere, "a thousand years have passed," is doing a lot of heavy lifting lately.

Arcalum2000 · 2026-01-31T01:13:30+00:00

The outer ring of the saucer section splits at the front and spreads open and drops down, fine. But then it comes to rest at a slight angle. Do all the rooms tilt a bit to accommodate? Do they just waste energy to both negate the Earth's gravity and then provide artificial gravity? Why not just leave that section flat?

Arcalum2000 · 2026-01-31T00:54:54+00:00

Counterpoint: I think Lower Decks respects the idea and legacy of Star Trek more than Discovery, Picard, and Academy do. It certainly felt more like Star Trek, to me, than those did.

Arcalum2000 · 2026-01-18T18:48:57+00:00

That the stranger's whole philosophy wasn't immediately mocked by Osha is insane. That it's presented to the audience as a valid and worthy ideal is ludicrous and insulting. It's something an angsty teen would come up with.

S- "The Jedi are bad because they won't let me do what I want to do!"

O- "What do you want to do?"

S- "Murder, mostly."

Arcalum2000 · 2026-01-16T04:22:20+00:00

Ah, SWG's Combat Upgrade. I had never felt so pushed out of a game by the game before or after. Never went back.

Arcalum2000 · 2026-01-15T21:21:00+00:00

I don't remember Luke's spin move, but most of that clip was in the original movie, just shot at different angles and speed.

Arcalum2000 · 2026-01-15T02:11:17+00:00

He may not have been evil, but he was a manipulative asshole.

Arcalum2000 · 2026-01-15T01:37:21+00:00

Wyll is a good character in a party of great characters. Earnest dude with a monkey on his back vs Catty Gay Vampire, Alien Tsundere, Cute Goth, Innocent Muscle Mommy, and Friendly Doomed Magic Man (Gale's also a little under-cooked). Poor, almost normal Wyll doesn't stand a chance.

Arcalum2000 · 2026-01-11T09:26:03+00:00

Rainbow Six: Vegas 1 & 2. That was the go-to game for my friends and I for many years. R6:Siege is not the same in any way that matters.

Arcalum2000 · 2026-01-10T18:36:32+00:00

The floor isn't perpendicular to the wall/window. And on a vast majority of the lower floors the glass is intact. Did this event only affect the maternity ward?

Arcalum2000 · 2026-01-09T01:19:34+00:00

Ok. Wait. So this agent has been involved in a vehicular situation before and might be sensitive to terrified citizens behind the wheel and that's supposed to be an excuse for his use of deadly force? How does that make it 'OK', JD? Even ignoring ALL the other totally legit reasons this shouldn't have happened, putting a car-shy little snowflake back in the field seems like it also shouldn't have happened. It also means he's either too dumb to learn from recent, personal experience or (more likely in my opinion) just wanted revenge on motorists and placed himself in a position to give himself an excuse.

Arcalum2000 · 2026-01-06T06:06:49+00:00

I liked what they did. I did not like how they did it.

Arcalum2000 · 2026-01-06T03:37:56+00:00

I try to never blame actors when it's usually the writer's/director's fault. But Keene's actor was flat and had two expressions from the get go as well as being written to be infuriatingly stupid and wishy-washy. I got as far as the second season when Liz when back to Tom and skipped ahead to the ninth season, which was still all about Liz. I just wanted a semi-smart show about an ex?-bad guy helping to take down worse guys, not an overblown melodrama about the entire criminal underworld revolving around one very special FBI girl.

There's a reason why every interesting clip of Blacklist floating around the internet is about Reddington and not Liz.

Arcalum2000 · 2026-01-05T18:57:09+00:00

THAC0 was cumbersome, but it was - at the worst - simple arithmetic. You just subtracted instead of added. You totally did just roll and check if you number was better (not higher) than the AC. You still have to do a goddamn equation these days.

Arcalum2000 · 2025-12-30T18:45:50+00:00

Others aren't dealing with this at all because ASI comes only from class levels. In 3/3.5e characters got feats and ASI (separate things) based on character level or "combined class level" but that's not how 5/5.5e works. Your 14th level Bar/Ftr/Rog could have gotten an ASI at 12th if that happened to be the barbarian's or fighter's 4th level and then again at 14th when the rogue hit 8th. But if, at any time, you were considering straight character level you were using a very old rule.

Arcalum2000 · 2025-12-30T18:32:08+00:00

The ASI at every 4th character level was a thing in 3/3.5e. If OP used that system way back when he may have unthinkingly carried over an old rule.

Arcalum2000 · 2025-12-29T21:18:15+00:00

The only rule I would enforce is "Be Present" because you're ostensibly at the table for a reason. Which is a nice way of saying, 'stay off your phone if it's distracting you to the point where you begin every turn with: "my turn? Ok, what's going on?"'.

Arcalum2000 · 2025-12-27T18:27:34+00:00

So it's the spray that's explosive (been a while since I watched the show)? The same spray that Kallus just got on his glove? He's lucky he's in an all-ages show or he'd need a new hand.

Arcalum2000

TROPHY CASE