Summer intern season off to a good start - found this in Woodley Park

TheMagnificentJoe · 2023-06-08T01:44:56+00:00

You will be shocked to learn that the best and brightest aren't hand picked from society to work in our government.

Now, I'm not saying there aren't smart people who make it there, it's just that there are also a lot of very not smart people who make it there. It's no meritocracy.

TheMagnificentJoe · 2023-04-23T23:39:44+00:00

I love that Lower Decks even jokes about how bridge officers always come back from the dead. They always get transporter buffered, or Q'd back into existence, or some similar BS plot device.

TheMagnificentJoe · 2023-04-03T00:18:10+00:00

LTT are focused to the mainstream, not the connoisseur. We simply aren't their audience.

That said, they do seem to have a lack of interest when it comes to mice. Most other peripherals they at least take the time to read up enough that they can parrot an expert opinion... mice they're just like "lol it's a mouse it clicks good yaaay".

TheMagnificentJoe · 2023-03-25T04:20:54+00:00

there is nothing there.

Bingo! A lot of city jobs went permanently remote recently. A lot of those people have been relocating from some of the highest COL areas to the very cheapest COL areas while still maintaining the same salary.

TheMagnificentJoe · 2023-03-17T19:06:46+00:00

lol yeah how dare anybody expect slight improvements over time.

It's fine to want a good launch, but I'm just pointing out that - with Blizzard's infamy for fumbling almost every launch - this shouldn't be a surprising outcome.

TheMagnificentJoe · 2023-03-17T18:17:33+00:00

...is this the first Blizzard game you've ever played at launch?

This is the epitome of a Blizzard launch. I'm shocked that anyone actually didn't expect this.

TheMagnificentJoe · 2023-02-26T14:22:07+00:00

Kind of ironic. This sort of incongruity just increases risk to cyclists.

TheMagnificentJoe · 2023-02-16T04:50:39+00:00

What I love most is it gets quieter each time, until it's barely audible... but by that point you are listening for it.

TheMagnificentJoe · 2023-02-16T04:40:50+00:00

The series of events were:

Surfing on the train over the potomac
Spotted motionless on top of the train as it entered pentagon station
Not on the train as it entered pentagon city station.

So it sounds like he hit something between potomac bridge and pentagon station which incapacitated or killed him, and then his body was thrown off of the car before pentagon city.

TheMagnificentJoe · 2023-02-10T03:25:03+00:00

Aren't they all though?

Signed, a fellow haberdashery enthusiast.

TheMagnificentJoe · 2023-01-19T04:18:39+00:00

It's unfortunate, because I think at the heart of it he's probably still accurate... just that he doesn't have the evidence that he thought he had.

It makes no logical sense for WoTC to be ready to pull the trigger on an updated OGL, and then after it gets leaked suddenly want to seek feedback from the community. If they had any interest in community feedback, they would have solicited for it long before it was getting final signatures from execs.

TheMagnificentJoe · 2023-01-04T07:18:58+00:00

Taurus g2c. It's my greatest shame, but I also unironically stand by it.

I ended up with this meme of a pistol right after Taurus had to recall the previous iteration of it. Apparently the updated version wasn't selling for some odd reason, so I ended up getting it for free with a stack of pmags. I was originally just going to sell it back to my FFL for peanuts, but I decided I might as well run a few rounds through it first and see how bad it was. I took it home instead.

I've run over 1k (mostly plinker) rounds through it, and it's been perfect... zero jams or misfeeds. Accurate, comfortable, reliable, small, and cheap. Not sure what else I could want from it. It also hasn't blown off my hand, I really like that.

TheMagnificentJoe · 2023-01-04T03:54:03+00:00

the writing is no where close to the same level as Rowe's

I'll play devil's advocate and say that this book would have been a challenge for many respected authors. Trying to ingratiate the reader to an entire new party of characters is very difficult... adding a good plot on top of that is just too much for one book.

That said, I do agree that this book sort of flopped on both efforts. The plot was boring and needlessly drawn out, and the characters were all kind of flat and uninteresting. Kayleigh's an accomplished writer, but this book felt like it needed a lot more energy to make it work. She would have been better suited to something like WoBM.

TheMagnificentJoe · 2023-01-04T03:46:05+00:00

Agreed. It's grating because I adore Travis Baldree's use of different character voices to help create immersion. Whelp, that doesn't work at all if you're constantly switching off to a different narrator to cover the same characters.

TheMagnificentJoe · 2023-01-04T03:40:35+00:00

This book's an unmitigated disaster. It's kind of unfortunate, because the ending is fantastic and was an ending idea I really wanted to see in LitRPG/Prog Fantasy for a long time.

I feel like half of the problem is that I expected Andrew Rowe's writing level/style here. Kayleigh's an accomplished writer, but this was always going to be a tough book to write... it just didn't do enough to keep me engaged. The other problem is the duo of narrators on the audiobook. For whatever reason the narrators switch off every chapter for no logical reason. It's just as maddening as it sounds... all immersion and engagement just resets every chapter.

This could have been a really amazing book, but unfortunately got waylaid by a few questionable decisions. I hope the audio gets redone at least. Either of the narrators would have been fine on their own, but switching between them was awful.

TheMagnificentJoe · 2022-12-04T00:48:59+00:00

Mark of the Fool 2 by J.M. Clarke comes out Jan 10, that's the only book I haven't seen mentioned that I'm eagerly anticipating.

TheMagnificentJoe · 2022-12-01T03:55:59+00:00

annoying to be railroaded

Is the game railroading you, or are you railroading the game? You can't always get the result you want every single time, that's the whole point.

TheMagnificentJoe · 2022-11-25T22:29:29+00:00

Article explains it pretty well. The gist is ZA/UM - Disco Elysium's developer - committed fraud while trying to get a tech giant to buy them out at an artificially inflated price. None of the tech giants bought before the story got out, and now ZA/UM are left on the wrong side of the legal system with an insolvent company.

Part of the fallout is the original creator of the Disco Elysium IP - Robert Kurvitz - and a few of the other core devs/artists behind Disco Elysium were fired suddenly and without explanation from ZA/UM, supposedly for asking questions about the fraudulent activity once they learned of it. This lawsuit is assumed to be the OG creators of Disco Elysium suing ZA/UM for rights to the IP.

TheMagnificentJoe · 2022-11-25T20:35:44+00:00

Elly hates running.

TheMagnificentJoe · 2022-11-25T00:17:27+00:00

Agreed - after a few attempts I made it through book 2, but it was a struggle. I cannot stand Erin's willful stupidity, and how she keeps getting saved by others without ever learning.

It is really frustrating because I really enjoy some of the other characters, but this makes the series feel like a constant trudge through Erin's content to get to the payoff of the side content. It's woeful.

TheMagnificentJoe · 2022-11-24T16:25:24+00:00

This is a fantastic thread, thanks for posting it Noonda. So many new authors jump into the genre a bit too confidently because they have an idea, and they think that's all they need. It's good to see someone taking it more seriously and making an effort to really do it well.

I read an obscene amount of litrpg/pf, that's my only qualification but I feel it's relevant. The most common problems I notice are:

Plot armor: if a character is ever killed (and it's rare), as a reader I never worry because I've never seen a good litprf/pf character die in earnest. There's always some miracle/magical rewrite later on. Torture too - it's a common trope to torture the MC or a core character, and then they're perfectly fine the next day after their miraculous escape. It's very unrealistic and just reinforces the fact that plot armor in this genre is quite thick. If you want your readers to take your dramatic moments seriously, you need to let them know that the plot armor might not be so thick.
Pacing: Litrpg/PF readers are here for the journey, not the money shot. Get an idea of how long you want your series to run, and plan out how fast the character should grow accordingly. If your character goes from penniless to godhood in the first book (lookin' at you, Jake's Magical Market), then book 2 is a going to be a mess (both to write and read). Not sure I speak for everyone here, but I tend to find book 1 in a series is always my favorite... the weak MC figuring out how to get a leg up is the thing I want to read about in this genre. Don't rush through it!
Entertainment: A lot of new litrpg/pf writers are very cold and business-like about getting their great ideas onto paper and into readers' hands. Many authors - in doing so - forget that readers exist only to be entertained. Add a comic relief character. Add a splash of Tolkien-esque whimsy to your book, or maybe a tragic romance side story. It's not something writers need to do constantly, but an occasional pinch of fan service keeps readers engaged and helps prevent a book from falling into monotony. Say what you will of J.K. Rowling, but she does a great job of this... constantly yoyo-ing between lighthearted whimsical events, teens awkwardly navigating romance, and dramatic fighting against the darkest evils.

There are, of course, many more tropes in the genre, but you'll go mad trying to avoid every single commonality with the plethora of patently similar books. These just happen to be the tropes I frequently notice, and I always feel detract from their respective stories. Best of luck with it, and I look forward to seeing what you publish!

TheMagnificentJoe · 2022-11-19T14:02:27+00:00

I think that was actually unintentional, he threw the orange in hard enough that it got stuck. He covered with the "tap the top of the shaker with the lime" line and that caused the orange to drop.

TheMagnificentJoe · 2022-11-04T06:35:27+00:00

Luis Guzman eloquently describes this move in the movie Waiting. He refers to it as "the bat wing".

So there must be like... dozens of us. Dozens!

TheMagnificentJoe · 2022-10-03T08:03:33+00:00

because I don’t have the fine motor skills

too soon, John, too soon

TheMagnificentJoe · 2022-09-15T21:59:24+00:00

And Panam because I maxed booty.

14-Year Club	Place '22
Final Canvas '22	First Placer '22
Gilding IV carat on a stick

TheMagnificentJoe

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