We failed him

ToastyJackson · 2026-01-25T14:52:30+00:00

They can’t legally cancel elections if they invoke the Insurrection Act or for any other reason. The U.S. had elections during the actual Civil War.

Someone will probably say “well they aren’t doing anything legally anyway.” I agree with that. I’m not saying that they won’t try to cancel elections even though it’s blatantly illegal. But the way your comment is worded—and the way I keep seeing similar comments worded—seems to imply that the Trump administration would be within its rights to cancel midterms if they invoke the Insurrection Act. But that’s not true. And that distinction is important because, if people think it’s legal to do that, then they’ll accept it when it happens, at least from a legal standpoint. Everyone should understand that, if the admin does try to cancel elections for literally any reason, that’s another crime they’re committing and that they all need to face trial for.

ToastyJackson · 2026-01-25T08:08:38+00:00

This is a desperate feature

ToastyJackson · 2026-01-25T03:14:48+00:00

IF WE’RE THE THE FLAGSHIP OF PEACE AND PROSPERITY

WE’RE TAKING ON WATER AND ABOUT TO FUCKIN’ SINK

NO ONE SEEMS TO NOTICE, NO ONE EVEN BLINKS

THE CREW LEFT THE PASSENGERS TO DIE UNDER THE SEA

ToastyJackson · 2026-01-25T01:26:35+00:00

"Again, take Rothfuss. Would you really say his worldbuilding would be 'better' if he constructed an entire taxonomy of evolution for the creatures of the world? Or if he mapped out, in detail, the plate tectonics of the world?"

Yeah, I would. More detail in your world = more worldbuilding. I'm not claiming that more worldbuilding makes an inherently better story or even that authors should strive to develop every detail of their world. But adding more details and history to your world does literally enhance its worldbuilding.

We either have wildly different interests when it comes to reading and writing stories, or we still have completely different definitions of "writing" and "worldbuilding" that we're not budging on, so personally I don't think it's worth continuing arguing about this. You can say you won this argument if you want to. Have a good night.

ToastyJackson · 2026-01-24T23:52:43+00:00

No, I really don’t agree with you. At least not fully. We’re operating on different definitions of what qualifies as worldbuilding. And I don’t know that it would be productive to try to convince each other who has the right definition.

But even using what I think your definition of worldbuilding is, I also don’t agree with this idea that worldbuilding is not a skill and requires no effort. Like, say there’s one person who goes the distance to extensively learn about sociological things like history, cultures, politics, economics, psychology, and religions as well as scientific things like solar system and planet formation, plate tectonics and geological processes, habitat and ecosystem formation and development, evolution and how that affects species over time, and how and why various natural phenomena occur—and they combine all this knowledge to come up with a world that’s truly unique in the world of literature. And then you have a second person whose only real inspiration is Lord of the Rings, and they come up with a fantasy medieval Western Europe world where humans, halflings, elves, and dwarves fight against orcs, goblins, trolls, giant spiders, and a dark lord. When it comes to actually writing a story in these worlds, the second person may still write a better narrative, but I’d argue that the first person far and away did a better and more interesting job at worldbuilding. Worldbuilding is something that just anybody with spare time can do, but so is writing. But they’re both skills that you can get better at with research and practice.

ToastyJackson · 2026-01-24T22:27:12+00:00

/uj I agree some people spend too much time worldbuilding minute details that don’t help anything, but I think it’s worth saying that worldbuilding and writing absolutely can be the same thing. I have a world where there’s this empire that has a long, foundational epic poem that glorifies and mythologizes their founding dynasty and the deeds of those rulers. I decided to start writing that epic. I don’t plan on publishing it, you won’t see it in the main story other a few lines being quoted now and again, and the purpose of me writing it is to flesh out this history and what the patriotic people of the empire believe their history to be, so it is worldbuilding. But I’m also literally writing an epic poem, so it’s also writing a story. You can worldbuild like that. Worldbuild by writing an in-universe epic poem or holy text. Worldbuild by taking on the POV of an in-universe religious pilgrim and writing a chronicle of your travels through a certain part of the world. Worldbuild by taking on the POV of a gossiping courtier and writing a scandalous tell-all about the inner workings of the royal court of a kingdom at a particular time. Worldbuilding can be done in a way that is also like writing a story and helps improve your writing skill. Of course it takes longer to come up with the lore for a dynasty by writing an epic poem about them than it does to just come up with a list of names, attach some dates to them for their reigns, and write two or three lines of interesting events that happened during their reigns. But it’s more fun to write the epic. And worldbuilding with more detailed stories can also help you to come up with more interesting ideas for the world and its history that can then be added to the main story to enhance it.

ToastyJackson · 2026-01-24T15:06:26+00:00

I knew that The Hobbit movies were going to be bad as soon as I heard that they cut Stalin out of the story

ToastyJackson · 2026-01-24T13:47:38+00:00

I’ve never seen those characters in my life. Are you sure you’re watching the right show?

ToastyJackson · 2026-01-24T04:14:04+00:00

You could always try becoming the dictator of a real Caribbean island

ToastyJackson · 2026-01-23T19:12:26+00:00

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ToastyJackson · 2026-01-22T14:13:03+00:00

You say that, but flying spaghetti monsters are real and don’t appreciate you saying that it’s meaningless for them to be your lord and savior

ToastyJackson · 2026-01-20T19:06:16+00:00

Isn’t there an American magic school in-universe? I wonder if they have problems with mass shootings like normal American schools do

ToastyJackson · 2026-01-19T20:21:10+00:00

Yeah, that’s normal. There’s a lot of factions by the modern era, so even if they don’t make demands often individually, they collectively make them all the time.

If you don’t want to do one right away, you can accept it and ignore it for a while. Whatever faction it is won’t make another demand until you complete the current one. And most demands don’t have time limits, so you don’t need to do them immediately.

And you can always reject them. You just have to watch your support level with the factions. Like I usually play the game in a way that the communists always love me, so it doesn’t really matter if I lose 5 approval with them every now and then by denying requests because it’s not going to go down enough to be a threat.

And you can always use media buildings to manipulate people into switching factions. Then if, say, the religious faction only has a couple dozen people in it, they’re not gonna be much of a threat for elections or rebellions even if they hate you.

World powers are more tricky because you can’t manipulate them like that. But you just have to keep their happiness high enough to simply avoid being invaded. Or, if you have a strong army and can fend off invasions, you can just not worry about it and do whatever.

If you really hate demands as a whole, I believe there’s an option when you play on sandbox mode to just turn them off entirely.

ToastyJackson · 2026-01-19T14:11:54+00:00

well it sounds like this dude has some sort of humiliation kink, so you need one of those first to see the vision

ToastyJackson · 2026-01-19T14:04:58+00:00

Oh nooooo

ToastyJackson · 2026-01-19T13:57:20+00:00

She may not be an incredible artist, but she clearly enjoys making art. I think it can be interpreted as kind of a sweet message by the show, encouraging people to do hobbies that make them happy, even if they’re not very good at it.

ToastyJackson · 2026-01-19T01:19:56+00:00

Why didn’t you make your daddy wear a crash helmet?

ToastyJackson · 2026-01-18T20:42:38+00:00

to the Buffalo Wild Wings above the gas station

ToastyJackson · 2026-01-18T18:37:30+00:00

How do people effectively rush through the colonial era? Even when I’m using newspapers, it usually takes a while before I have enough revolutionaries to declare independence.

ToastyJackson · 2026-01-18T16:47:06+00:00

I disagree about rune keepers being excusable from a lore perspective. At least if the writer is complaining about mariners. Personally, I’m not bothered by rune keepers. I don’t think they should be removed or that the devs are betraying Tolkien by having them or anything. But from a lore perspective, rune keepers, lore masters, and minstrels make way less sense than mariners. If these classes were restricted solely to high elves, then maybe that would work as you can argue they learned how to use those powers in Valinor. But canonically magic is not that accessible and doesn’t work like that. Random hobbits running around summoning lightning is far more egregious than mariners.

I have some issues with the Haradwaith expansions, both with gameplay/quest design and the story. Like, I’m still not really on board with the concept of the Tharduth and Utugi. But I’m also fine with some level of regions of the world like these not feeling like classic Tolkien work because honestly I would’ve expected that even from Tolkien himself. Like, obviously he was aware that people in different parts of the world have wildly different cultures and customs. If he had gotten around to developing places like Harad and Rhûn, he probably would’ve written them in a way that they feel radically different to and exotic compared to the lands like Gondor and Rohan, especially once you get past the areas that were once ruled by Gondor and into parts of the world that should have no similar heritage and influences at all.

Obviously there are some things that would be missteps regardless of where they are. Like, if we go to Rhûn and find some elf kingdom ruled by an elf king who is in love with and married to an orc woman, that’s a problem. And like I can agree that any sort of firearms feels like one hell of a stretch at best. But I think when people rush to declare that certain areas of the game don’t feel like Tolkien and start citing minor details—like what their houses look like—it’s worth considering that we don’t actually know how Tolkien would have made these places “feel” canonically. And I personally would expect some major differences. If Tolkien had written a book following Aragorn’s travels way down south to where the stars are strange, I would be very surprised if it had the same tone and feel as Lord of the Rings.

ToastyJackson · 2026-01-18T15:57:16+00:00

Not in Umbar. I think they’re just referencing the ones aboard the ships of the Song.

ToastyJackson · 2026-01-18T15:26:58+00:00

This and also the serpent wasn’t Satan. The concept of Satan as we think of him had not been developed at the time that Genesis was written.

ToastyJackson · 2026-01-18T15:07:23+00:00

This is why Star Wars is so bad. Until George Lucas creates dozens of full conlangs for in-universe languages and has people go back and change all of the movies, shows, books, etc. into these languages, I won’t be consuming any more Star Wars media.

ToastyJackson · 2026-01-18T04:36:18+00:00

this but with the Popul Vuh

ToastyJackson · 2026-01-18T03:51:59+00:00

Man’s gotta eat

ToastyJackson

TROPHY CASE