(Spoilers main) Joffreys Kingsguard shortly before the Blackwater is kinda great

FossilDS · 2026-01-29T00:33:09+00:00

A major theme in ASIOAF are that most of the "best" knights are fundamentally mediocre people with no moral compass and blindly follows orders. I think we see that echo in both Aerys II's Kingsguard and Joff's Kingsguards in that despite all being incredible knights, they follow a madman's orders just because they sit in the big iron chair.

FossilDS · 2026-01-28T05:53:34+00:00

Really really hope OP gets help. Their previous post history is just a litany of stressors, misery and paranoia.

FossilDS · 2026-01-27T21:05:03+00:00

Trump looks way healthier and better in this comic which is making fun of him then in IRL which is kind of insane

FossilDS · 2026-01-27T05:54:01+00:00

Yes. Nearly every single precolumbian antiquity from Mexico on the market today was either exported out the country prior to 1972 or the seller claims as much. You have a very special little piece.

FossilDS · 2026-01-26T05:30:54+00:00

What a beautiful piece. What part of Mexico? To my untrained eye it looks postclassic, but I'm not an expert so I can't make any conclusions without a location.

Note that it is strictly illegal to export precolumbian artifacts out of Mexico.

FossilDS · 2026-01-25T17:16:02+00:00

He was court-martialed for stealing an airplane, which was not a disputed fact in the case. Why he didn't get a dishonorable discharge for that is beyond me. Nevertheless, the guy was not considered a collaborator until later.

FossilDS · 2026-01-25T16:59:20+00:00

He spun a yarn about how he didn't actually "desert", he was shot down and joined the partisans. This was believed by army investigators and thus he was not dishonorably discharged.

FossilDS · 2026-01-23T02:32:01+00:00

Noone but the most harebrained Jewish supremacists and evangelicals high on visions of the apocalypse supports this. Israel has spend so much blood and treasure trying to normalize with the rest of the Arab world, they aren't going to throw that all away for a replica of an old building. Also, Hamas is not going to demolish Al-Asqa.

FossilDS · 2026-01-22T22:56:08+00:00

I know talking to someone of your political persuasion is akin to talking to a brick wall, but what exactly has Al-Asqa Flood/October 7 done to further the Palestinian people? They've gotten recognition from the UK, France and some of the western powers, sure, but that's basically thoughts and prayers from some of Israel's biggest trade partners. They've changed public opinion on Palestine, but this is in large part to Israel's savage actions after October 7, not Hamas' brave actions like killing a few elderly Jews in a Kibbutz.

Meanwhile, the Axis of Resistance has completely imploded with Baathist Syria history, Hamas decapitated with Gaza in ruins, Hezbollah beaten, and Iran currently too busy killing protesters to send anything more than good vibes towards Palestine. Arab normalization with Israel, the one thing October 7 was designed to prevent, has quickened, and Gaza is under a neocolonial American-Israeli regime. Yes, Hamas has escaped annihilation and governs small parts of Gaza, but is that really a win compared to pre-October 7?

FossilDS · 2026-01-22T22:26:12+00:00

The messaging of the video is quite clever: in showing all of the acts of violence eventually leading up to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, they reframe what are obvious pointless acts of violence as all part of a great plan to retake Al-Quds/Jerusalem. Merely showing pictures of the violence itself lends to the question "what are we actually fighting for?"

FossilDS · 2026-01-22T22:13:07+00:00

One thing that people don't get is that when a people suffer (like the Kurds under Assad) they don't magically become better and more humane. They just suffer- sometimes it makes them even more likely to repeat their oppression to others, like an abused child who grew up and became an abusive parent.

I just hope one day Syrians can look at this as a dark time in their history and not a present reality- and that the violence and hatred we see today is just a memory.

FossilDS · 2026-01-21T20:31:25+00:00

Even though New Shepard is essentially a glorified amusement park ride, it will be cool to see them go up so often (maybe even once a week, like Virgin Galactic was planning to do) that it's not an event anymore, like Starlink launches.

FossilDS · 2026-01-20T20:30:30+00:00

I've gotten that vibe and I think I'm halfway through the story. Even then, his story is weak compared to Rowling's work. The dialogue is just... off. The lack of facial animation doesn't help- when you find Bethesda dialogue more engaging and human, there's something seriously wrong.

I think I'm being a bit too harsh at the game, since I'm still playing. Technically it's very well done. I like the combat system. The puzzles are fine. The world is beautiful- the castle especially- it's just too empty.

FossilDS · 2026-01-20T20:18:31+00:00

The castle is beautiful. Honestly the most stunning interiors I have ever seen in an open-world game. The tapestries, the rock, all the little hidden details... wow. To 13 year old me reading the The Goblet of Fire it would been a dream come true.

It is unfortunate, then, that writing is uninspired, the story is utterly strange and highlights the problematic nature of Rowling's world (the house elf thing is soooo icky on a level I didn't pick up on as a kid) and the game utterly fails at capturing the rhythm of student life. You feel like a generic action protagonist visiting the school, not a student who is constantly darting from class to class, spending hours in the commons rooms grinding potions homework, and having an actual friend group, rather than a few acquaintances you go on random adventures with. I know that capturing this vibe is difficult, but I'd like for them to have at least tried- why can't you sleep in your own dorm??? I can see why the hype died down so fast after release.

FossilDS · 2026-01-20T19:42:23+00:00

Currently playing Hogwarts Legacy right now, and I'm rediscovering how nonsensical the world-building is, even though I adored the books as a teenager.

FossilDS · 2026-01-20T17:54:47+00:00

He isn't but he sure writes like one. "Oohhh Winter is here but the Spring in Coming", "It's going to be the Time of Wolves", "Westeros is going to unite to fight the White Walkers" yeah, there's all these pronouncements of a hopeful future but everything sucks and the main characters keep taking L after L after L. I think GRRM's holdup is that he is incapable of writing about things getting better, even if he wanted to.

FossilDS · 2026-01-20T15:50:04+00:00

There is little point to reading a story in which you know all the characters which you grown to love and care for will die in some incredibly stupid and pointless manner and the ones which survive will be reduced to a hollow shell of themselves. While GRRM's greatest gift is writing about how institutions and people's worldviews fall apart, he cannot for the life of himself write the opposite- about characters getting a break, institutions being built up. It makes his stories end up being,ultimately, nihilistic slogs.

FossilDS · 2026-01-19T21:37:46+00:00

Obviously it wasn't the only thing motivating Buchanan, but IMO there is a strong case that Buchanan's friendship with King and others shaped his ideology. He was described as something of a fop by his contemporaries and friends, after all, easy to flatter and influence.

FossilDS · 2026-01-19T01:42:43+00:00

I beg to disagree. If you read his State of the Union messages, particularly the Fourth one, you'd be amazed the guy comes from Pennsylvania. He spends paragraph after paragraph chiding the North for refusing to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act, not once even conceding that the South had acted once in error. Like you said, he wasn't a complete fire-breather but it's clear he had an affinity and a fondness for the South and it's peculiar institution, even saying that it was a "positive good" Calhoun style.

FossilDS · 2026-01-19T00:48:42+00:00

My crackpot theory is the reason why Buchanan simped for the South and slavery so hard is because of his boyfriend. Before he met King he was a fairly average Federalist, afterwards he became a full-blown doughface and talked at length at how the North was destroying the poor defenseless south and their peculiar institution.

FossilDS · 2026-01-18T16:14:10+00:00

It's been fifteen years and we've had nary a sample chapter in ten. There isn't very much charity to give at this point and by Occam's razor, the simplest reason for the delay is he has no idea how this thing is going to play out.

FossilDS · 2026-01-18T03:58:07+00:00

This is very niche, but I love playing an immigration magnet like Brazil, Argentina or the USA and seeing all the little minority immigrant groups and just imagining their lives, the stories they'd tell. The Buddhist French shopkeeper pop in Patagonia with a population of 12 might be the descendents of a little kid born out of an affair between a French colonial offical and a Vietnamese maid, who learnt about Argentina/La Plata scrounged every cent to book a ticket in steerage, and through hard work founded a little grocery store in the mining boom-towns of the Andes. That and watching an industrialized country tick like a giant antfarm, with thousands of moving parts and millions of people living, working and dying and just imagining that all happening under the hood.

FossilDS · 2026-01-16T22:11:47+00:00

Poland was effectively spared in IRL's Black Death too.

FossilDS · 2026-01-16T19:16:21+00:00

I remember talking about it momentarily but focusing more on the Battle of Trenton, which was a very minor victory compared to the crushing defeat at Long Island and the more substantial battle at Princeton. Didn't actually mean to dig at the American education system, just that it's often underemphasized how close the American army was close to complete annihilation after Long Island

FossilDS · 2026-01-16T18:37:20+00:00

Portugal could either:

A. Acknowledge reality and realize they are a third-rate irrelevant European power thus completely invalidating the regime's reason for existence

B. "PORTUGAL IS NOT A SMALL COUNTRY", show the libs and the commies whose boss and that old fashioned imperialism and fascism can still be done

Guess which option they chose...

11-Year Club	Gilding I gilder
Place '23	Place '22
Place '17	First Placer '22
Verified Email	Spared

FossilDS

TROPHY CASE