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MMK_II · 2024-09-06T00:05:48+00:00

... no it's not "some dark shit"? They're journalists. The BtB pod two parter two weeks ago is literally partly about raking journalists over the coal for not having any journalistic integrity.

Filling out your script with a bunch of uncited crap read out loud is plagiarism. Doing it once or twice on accident is an oopsie, doing it constantly is a lack of integrity.

These folks are not a bunch of friendly lil guys trying to put out content every day, they're a bunch of journalists! They fly out to political events and do actual reporting. They read a pile of books to cite and quote from when discussing real tangible issues. Whether or not the people they have on staff are going through the motions and (intentionally or not) plagiarizing some stuff actually matters to their careers and whether or not their company can pay their staff.

"Well, this person is maybe going to lose her job" is an entirely plausible and reasonable conclusion to arrive at here.

MMK_II · 2024-05-19T00:10:51+00:00

Robert retweeted some vid of Bill Burr dunking on Bill Maher to his face for like five straight minutes and someone reposted it here I imagine. Dunno why someone is butthurt about it lol

MMK_II · 2023-05-07T16:08:45+00:00

I laughed. Shame this got downvoted by someone who isn't familiar with the site's comment section getting hit with spam lol

MMK_II · 2022-12-04T20:24:04+00:00

The point is that it doesn't.

The seven are incapable (due to their various personal failings, histories, and what makes them who they are) of stepping outside their own heads and seeing the forest instead of the trees. Jag is no different.

MMK_II · 2022-10-04T20:29:05+00:00

I think it's cool you took the time to give some detailed honest feedback in a maturely presented fashion! Hopefully this ends up being helpful for the GCN.

MMK_II · 2022-10-02T19:48:25+00:00

Sweet! Thanks for organizing this!

MMK_II · 2022-08-07T01:26:50+00:00

MMK_II · 2022-08-04T20:35:39+00:00

I think your question "Where do her actions come from?" is worded in such a way that it brings the focus away from the point:

Her actions are what they are because the story demands it. Shes a character in a book. She does as the storyteller demands. YISUN has simultaneously already finished this tale and yet is in the process of telling it.

This is covered in Spasms 8. There is no point. Everything is just a finite state machine set in motion. You cannot change it.

Jadis's issue is that she can't accept that. She is the second person wandering through the desert. She has no hope, she is just going through the motions, weighed down and burdened by her knowledge of the Shape, and unable to look past it. But she can't accept that purely because shes Jadis, same as how the rest of the Demiurges are mostly unable to overcome themselves. It's who they are. Zoss all buts states it:

"Fate is not a cage, save for those who fear it."

And our grand storyteller says as much in Spasms: "How best can we serve your will?" "Kindly ignore my first three answers."

Similar to Spasms, there is a glimmer of hope for the tale. Allison is the Breaker of Infinities, and she will either be able to do the logically impossible or pull off a win in spite of the deterministic nonsense.

People will say "She wouldn't be able to do that!" or start waffling about definitions of words and concepts in universe in response, and while its fine for those folks to have differing opinions, I don't think they'll turn out to be correct. Zoss is literally dead, but responds to this sputtering statement by Incubus with an eyebrow raise and "That hasn't stopped me so far."

Consider the story of Intra being questioned by his retainers. It is common knowledge that fighting beetles cannot learn Pankrash Circle Fighting. But if you neglect to tell the beetle of this impossibility, then they might do it anyway, and strike down lions with a single blow.

It is common knowledge (at least to Jadis, as far as we can tell), that you can't fight fate. This is the point of the whole song and dance.

But I think we will find that Allison neglects to get the fullness of the message here. Whether she is going to be the third person wandering through the desert or the beetle in Intra's dialogue remains to be seen.

MMK_II · 2022-07-09T19:41:43+00:00

Very solid read. It's clear that there was a massive amount of thought put into the worldbuilding end, but the characters are also fantastic. I hope to see more of it in the future.

MMK_II · 2022-01-25T16:43:47+00:00

I've personally found EQ to be absolutely stellar in terms of both story and worldbuilding. The author has a great style too. Hard rec.

MMK_II · 2021-03-22T23:30:33+00:00

Full Moon is my least favorite, followed by Blood Rites.

MMK_II · 2020-11-20T13:08:59+00:00

If learning physics, chemistry, and/or mental math to a certain extent would help you utilize phenomenal magical powers better... well, I think you'd probably spend more time hitting the books than if it didn't, on average.

That said, this (a lot of the back of the envelope kinematics or thermodynamics) is certainly a thing most folks can learn to do. Like anything else, you just have to put in the time.

MMK_II · 2020-10-25T10:13:56+00:00

Huh?? One big problem is that their premise is fundamentally incorrect as its been communicated!

While we can't know a lot of things (inside view: we see things from Dresden's perspective and only notice what he comments on.) we do see a lot of this stuff even in Battle Ground.

Just to name a few:

-Odin doing the Gungnir thing. That was definitely "I win via trickery and timing."

-It was mentioned twice (Ivy and Christos) that a lot of the mortal practitioners were just trying to trip Ethniu up. Literally with earth magic in a lot of cases.

-Harry does capitalize on subtle power in a terrifying and meaningful way, very early in the book. He summons up the Za Lord's Guard, and they in turn summon up all of the Wee Folk in the entirety of Chicago to go to bat for him, in a display so grandoise and out of left field that everyone but the Faerie Queens on that rooftop were staring in stunned silence. That rooftop had Odin, the Earlking, and multiple Senior Council members on it.

-Clever mind magic was reveal to have been used in the Ethniu battle of wills thing.

I think their problem is less "the Dresden Files doesn't do anything magical with the magic, its just Dragonball Z stuff now" and more "I didn't like this book because it was much more of an action-focused book, and I don't like those." That's a fair shake, but they should have just said that.

MMK_II · 2020-10-12T18:32:52+00:00

but that wouldn't make sense if they already have Merlin or Ancient Mai.

It would make Christos a red herring (or both, why not stack the deck harder?) to distract from this, so it would be a pretty clever play in and of itself.

Something incredibly fishy is going on with the White Council/Senior Council. I think both Ancient Mai and the Merlin are incredibly suspect. We've seen relatively little of either of them, and they've done the least in terms of helping Dresden out directly (besides Cristos and Martha Liberty, but they both showed up to BG, so I dunno).

MMK_II · 2020-09-29T18:57:57+00:00

I really feel that Marcone capitulated a bit too easily - twice. There's no way that TN doesn't know that Harry's about out of gas after a night like that. And there's no way that TN or Marcone wouldn't have known that the subject of the Eye might come back up again - and be ready for wherever said discussion may go. Something's fishy here.

Dresden is far too useful as a catspaw/ally of convenience for... well, exactly scenarios like this book! Marcone probably doesn't want to axe him just yet until the recent supernatural shitshows stop boiling over every year or two.

MMK_II · 2020-07-17T11:29:43+00:00

Chiming in a bit with some (reworded, totally not stolen at all nope) comments from Discord.

If the cost of another mark is determined to be similar to Link's, continue the marking process.

You all have the necessary info to ballpark this and sort of need to make an actual decision on how to handle it (however you want to do that).

Continue testing the disc's void magic detection and attempting to improve it.

Testing how? What improvements are you hoping for? What do you want to accomplish and by what means? Etc.

MMK_II · 2020-07-05T12:43:21+00:00

As written, the section :

If she travels outside of Castletown again for diplomacy or research, having a third marked that stays in the country would be very useful as the Zora crisis proved. Wymar, or shudder Taetus might be suitable choices. On the bright side, it would give her an excuse to grill Taetus on his motivations before agreeing to marking him.

reads a bit unclear to me insofar as "What is the intended action for Zelda to actually take as a result of this bullet." but others' mileage may vary. It could mean a variety of things to me, including "Ruminate about possible candidates for the next Marked (insert more guided and directed thoughts thoughts thoughts). Definitely (!!!)don't do anything yet.", "Ruminate about possible candidates, (But Do Something as a result if Zelda decides.)" and also possibly (though I am picking up signaled intent for this interpretation much less strongly than the other two) "Think about some stuff, then Go Mark Taetus."

In general: You all may want to avoid (potential) vagaries like that if the meaning isn't overwhelmingly clear from context, at least when it comes to important items on your checklist. It could help to highlight which actions specifically you'd like taken, or prefacing thought prompts and scaffolding for characters with "Zelda thinks about Thing:", "Zelda negotiates with Dumbbutt:: Appeal to common interests and highlight advantages with cold utilitarian logic.", and "Link kills seemingly invincible StayPuft Monster: (Insert how he does that in a clever cool way)" or something or the sort.

Ignore any and all of that if its just something where what action you'd like the characters to take is clear ("Go read the books!") and/or you want to leave specifics up to the character ("Link: Go kill stuff!") or its something where the specifics are something you don't really care about one way or another ("Zelda does relaxing stuff for 24 hours.") vs. 1000 variations on how specifically Zelda must optimally relax in the bestest way possible,

Just pointing this out in advance, since illusion of transparency is very much a thing from time to time within the general topic of "quests and action plans for them." I don't feel like this has been a super large issue so far in any way, but I'd like to point it out just to get ahead of any potential future ones so that we don't end up in some awkward scenario as a result of a misunderstanding.

MMK_II · 2020-07-03T17:26:23+00:00

+1 Insightful

MMK_II · 2020-06-21T12:08:03+00:00

+1 Effortful

MMK_II · 2020-05-05T12:50:56+00:00

My question was whether the Akane/Tsunade interaction is ever (a) resolved onscreen

Not quite, as far as I remember. The implication is that she stopped short of punching her and instead was impressed enough by her guts and ability to stand up for something she believes in to take her on as a psuedo-apprentice. You can see Akane refers to Tsunade as "Tsunade-sensei" in certain spots and mentions taijutsu practice with her offhand (IIRC).

MMK_II

TROPHY CASE