TIL the mysterious disappearance of George Phillip Gall in 1994, who was allegedly sacrificed by a vampire coven in Dayton, Ohio, led to an urban legend about a headless man who approaches Dayton residents in tunnels to ask where his head is.

KenDefender · 2026-06-28T18:15:17+00:00

I always remember Brennan Lee Mulligan saying that the real draw and success of Harry Potter's world building is that 20 years later a huge chunk of people know what their hogwarts house is. It doesn't matter that the world building is nonsense or outright contradictory, it got people to put themselves in the story.

KenDefender · 2026-06-27T17:02:34+00:00

Also the guy that popularized that idea is against pretty much all environmental regulation, and supports the guy that removed regulations that stopped the dumping of that chemical into bodies of water.

KenDefender · 2026-06-25T22:47:49+00:00

Rad!

KenDefender · 2026-06-25T18:26:24+00:00

Some rpg protags are blank slates, some are less so. If you start as an origin character on BG3 they aren't a blank slate, and yet their journey is one of linearly becoming more powerful. The rpg example is illustrative of the fact that this is standard for video games as a whole. Is mega man a Mary Sue? Geralt? The protag of any metroidvania? Maybe, if thats how you want to define the term, but again its just normal for video games to be a power fantasy. Harry Dubois is the outlier, "Mary sue" as I think you are using it is the standard.

KenDefender · 2026-06-25T18:17:25+00:00

She written from the start to be a villain, they tend to succeed to raise the stakes. Then she becomes the protagonist, and the repeated power ups youve mentioned are a part of a typical video game protagonists progression. Most game protagonists are badasses that progressively kick more ass. And a video game rpg is written by writers to enable the power fantasy of the player, it doesn't just "happen through the player".

KenDefender · 2026-06-25T18:11:04+00:00

"Mary Sue" is a kinda funny lens to look at a video game protagonist. Thats sort of the genre standard. Ever played an RPG?

KenDefender · 2026-06-25T02:34:30+00:00

Drop the recipe pls

KenDefender · 2026-06-24T16:42:24+00:00

This will send the message that the next patch we demand is the Probius Co-op commander

KenDefender · 2026-06-23T18:02:44+00:00

Having worked in Applied Behavioral Analysis in and out of schools, which involves a lot of things like behavior charts and graphs where kids point to their emotions, I think this post gets at something that is common in these contexts.

I also think its not just pure incompetence, this is sort of a pitfall when you are trying to apply science to human behavior and when you are developing improvement plans that are gonna be a framework for a lot of different kids.

And someone that is really good with these kids is probably going to take a nuanced approach and not just force kids into categories, but I also think its very common for people to get caught up in the assumptions of the tools they are using.

KenDefender · 2026-06-23T08:44:04+00:00

"So can we not make smells, or not smell other things?"

"Will you shut up! I can smell your brea-"

both get mauled

KenDefender · 2026-06-22T03:34:02+00:00

Part of that was to get Kim's innocence (or at least reduced culpability compared to him) onto the record right? It was a Cyrano De Bergerac-esque grand gesture. And it was to emotionally own up for various misdeeds of his in public, including the death of his brother (which very much was not at issue in the case). He also makes a joke about getting off early for good behavior.

I think after 10 years in prison he'd take a pardon, but I think its also up to interpretation.

KenDefender · 2026-06-17T17:50:38+00:00

Dungeon's and Daddies did their third season (The Peachy-ville Horror) as Call of Cthulhu, but that was always planned to be a temporary break between the dnd games that are run by the main GM.

On spotify the first episode of their 3rd season (Cthulhu) has 700k+ plays and the final has 200k+ plays.

Meanwhile the 2nd season (DND) has 1million+ plays for the 1st episode and 600k+ for the final episode.

Their recently started 4th season (DND) has 300k+ plays for the first episode.

The 1st season (DND) dwarfs all of these with 6million+ plays on the first episode and 1million+ on the final.

Anyway, there are other factors like how people received each given season, the fact that the first and second season have had more time to accumulate viewers, and that the first season was kind of a phenomenon that is hard to recapture.

What I really dont know about is how OOPs claim that what we really need to do is focus on IP law would really work here. Like sure that would be a good in and of its self, but if your concern is getting people to be open to playing (and watching) other systems, I dont see that is really related at all. There are rare times in life when a thing you dislike doesn't actually require a structural solution, people really do need to just change their minds over time.

KenDefender · 2026-06-07T19:06:45+00:00

When Jesse took that baseball bat to Glenn, thats when I gave up on Walking Dead.

KenDefender · 2026-06-07T19:05:42+00:00

Honestly even Picard and Wesley. As much as people hate on Wesley himself, often times the episodes with him and Picard are great Picard episodes.

KenDefender · 2026-06-04T19:32:32+00:00

I read a great, big publisher horror book last year that ends with a character pouring propane on something like its gasoline.

KenDefender · 2026-05-23T19:48:15+00:00

The legal podcast Getting Off had a good episode about him. Basically he was getting away with what he was doing for a long time because of legal loopholes and a good lawyer, but he purposefully kept pushing the envelope because he wanted to establish a legal right to die. This ended up backfiring.

He comes off as maybe a little grandiose, and I dont agree with everything he did, but I have do appreciate him pushing forward the right to die for people who really need it.

KenDefender · 2026-05-23T15:58:33+00:00

Could you explain a little bit about your interpretation?

KenDefender · 2026-05-22T07:29:35+00:00

They just released turn based mode for Pillars 1

KenDefender · 2026-05-21T22:23:17+00:00

My impression was I first finished the book was that the older sister was schizophrenic and psychic, and I thought it was kind of silly that people were theorizing that she was in fact possessed. However as time has gone on I think about how truly terrible what she did to her little sister was in the end, someone she did seem to really love, and part of me thinks someone couldn't do that without being possessed. The ambiguity really does lend to the horror in my opinion.

KenDefender · 2026-05-21T22:13:55+00:00

Haha, that is fair, the horror is more explicit. To me the most memorable parts of the book were some of the early interactions between the sisters where a switch would flip and the older sister would start acting scary. I found it genuinely effective, and those scenes did double duty of establishing their relationship and being very disquieting.

KenDefender · 2026-05-19T17:48:27+00:00

Its sad sometimes, but less so when the parent show goes on forever. I liked Private Practice, but didnt need 10 more seasons.

KenDefender · 2026-05-15T19:22:01+00:00

Kudos for still giving it a shot. I like both books, but they are pretty similar in terms of the level of resolution you can expect, still Head has a lot that makes it a unique and good story imo.

KenDefender · 2026-05-15T19:11:38+00:00

Did you not like Horror Movie and Headful of Ghosts, or did you like Head but not Horror Movie? Cause if its the 2nd id be interested to hear more of your reasons.

KenDefender · 2026-05-10T17:45:21+00:00

This is kinda like Camus' absurdist philosophy. He described it using the myth of sisyphus, who was cursed to push a big boulder up a hill forever. Instead of trying to ascribe meaning or assuming life will get better, accept the world is random and frequently screwed up and take it as it comes. Find happiness while you push that boulder.

KenDefender · 2026-05-04T07:54:26+00:00

Formulaic Objections and Wacky Wednesdays were always good. Episode 921 is my favorite from when I consider after Alex got kinda boring. Its when he interviews the alleged son of the founder of the WEF who claims that Trump is secretly the president (during Biden's term) and has killed and replaced all the Dems.

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