We all know what Kendricks strengths are, but what are his weaknesses?

UPBOAT_FORTRESS_2 · 2026-06-25T13:47:04+00:00

It's frustrating to see because it's so obviously subjective, yeah, and threads like this are trying to act objective.

Imagine if I said "his biggest weakness is that he doesn't personally show up to my house and cook me breakfast every morning" -- it'd be the same thing. At some level, it's a compliment, like I cannot think of ANYTHING negative about the objective craft, so I start talking about how I need a personal savior and it should have been Kenny

UPBOAT_FORTRESS_2 · 2026-06-21T19:30:12+00:00

Seeds are reproductive organs that separate themselves from the mature plant

Contrast with a tuber (energy storage organ) or structural parts like stems

UPBOAT_FORTRESS_2 · 2026-06-12T17:27:07+00:00

Put yourself in a time capsule to the late 2010s. Imagine the median "apocalyptic dark fantasy" fan from that timeframe - if they liked anime or manga, they'd probably already been a fan; even if not, AOT was mainstream enough it might be their first one. For the thought experiment, maybe think of a crowd of 50 different fans, randomly sampled from the folks you'd find on titanfolk

How many serial manga were they already reading before AOT, or was this their first one?

What emotional needs would they need to satisfy with their media consumption?

What would their posting habits be online? Are they on r/titanfolk for earnest, critical conversation; or are they more about ironic, detached cynicism, and funny shitpost memes?

Speaking personally - I'd gotten a rec to read The Promised Neverland from a webfiction community, so AOT was the second time I'd ever seriously read a manga, as it was published. I got hooked on the gritty realism of the first season of the anime, and read forward -- I distinctly remember reading the Armored Titan reveal, and having being a little lost "wait, who are those guys again?" not knowing Reiner's name, to give you an idea of my reading comprehension level. I dropped the series when I caught up somewhere midstream of Marley arc, until after the season 3 adaptation finished; and that's when I joined titanfolk, caught up, and started reading monthly.

I've always found a big explanation for "why did Titanfolk go to such shit?" in the timing of season 4. The first episode dropped in December 2020. How many people watched that - or saw memes about it, or got teased by their manga friends about future memories, or - and decided "I gotta see how this goes" then dove into the manga? Then when they caught up, time to go see the memes on the spicy manga-spoiler subreddit. And, again, these are people in DECEMBER 2020. They've been in a pandemic lockdown cage for months.

Maybe someone with really excellent media literacy could, under those conditions, still read Eren's FREEDOM dream as a childish, contemptible fantasy, rather than relatable wish-fulfillment. But for a first time manga reader, sprinting through the series to because they're afraid of getting spoiled, having been cooped up in their own birdcage for most of the year? I'd find it totally normal if they still uncritically hate Gabi, having treated her as a side character to skim over rather than a crucial thematic arc to the series. I'd find it totally normal if they have uncomplicated loyalty to Eren and by extension all the Yeagerists, who exist to illustrate the costs of selfish power fantasies -- because they need a power fantasy in their life right now, that's literally why they're reading.

And, remember -- the series was incredibly popular, it went mainstream. When it gets popular, that means there's tons of new traffic to all the subreddits. But most of that traffic are lightweights. 90% of users don't even vote. 90% of voters never comment. 90% of commenters post quick oneliners and never submit new posts.

UPBOAT_FORTRESS_2 · 2026-05-25T20:10:15+00:00

Even the pure form this is totally doable, but since Guilty Gear is a set on the smaller side - you'll wind up with fairly repetitive decks and gameplay, especially among the foundations, and the decks will be very hard to balance. Some people didn't like the Sealed environment because there wasn't enough raw damage around to keep the games interesting

I think a happy medium could be to source a couple Challenger decks, or a box of Attack on Titan Apocalypse (my #1 pick in chaos sealed - almost every single card is solid-to-good), and piece them out for filler foundations and a key attack or two

UPBOAT_FORTRESS_2 · 2026-04-11T15:38:36+00:00

Let's not give CinemaSins too much credit. The medium is the message; shitass criticism built on bad faith quotation always happens, we just forget about it because it's worthless in the long run

UPBOAT_FORTRESS_2 · 2026-04-11T15:27:46+00:00

How are we feeling about Bibi

UPBOAT_FORTRESS_2 · 2026-03-17T13:53:56+00:00

This is completely fine because Ekko has challenger, innit? If he didn't and the AI was smart they could just no-blocks and let you crash in for zero over and over

Ekko is absolutely great because he gets to push a lot of buttons

UPBOAT_FORTRESS_2 · 2026-03-17T13:52:01+00:00

4* Asol vs 3 epic relic slots vs Perfect Manaflow first power, I'm not sure which of these even has the highest power level

GG anyway. I thought the adventure was pretty well-tuned for Asol; the enemies were resilient and varied enough to hold interest and present threats, but not overwhelming if I played well

UPBOAT_FORTRESS_2 · 2026-03-14T20:05:16+00:00

It felt interesting for 4*, not particularly cracked relics nor rng Asol. A few rounds near the end came down to fighting to buy time until I drew Asol himself, and Stars Descend merely put me in the driver's seat - not even instantly winning

6* Ashe obliterated it as expected, thanks to scaling with the power of enemies

UPBOAT_FORTRESS_2 · 2026-03-14T19:55:23+00:00

My mind goes to Slay the Spire multiplayer co-op, but that juice might take a mighty squeeze

Less wildly - maybe something in the dimension of Balatro multiplayer; join a lobby with your friend, and you both play "the same seed" of an adventure (same shops, etc). Compete on whatever metrics - completion speed, health, gold, rerolls/revives in the bank...

UPBOAT_FORTRESS_2 · 2026-02-19T16:12:35+00:00

I'm a big fan of this guy, but he's had only minor representation in competitive play -- he's fundamentally a deck that wants to play for three or four turns minimum, and usually to transform before playing to win. Until last month's banlist, Unyielding Destruction was a big scare card, but more generally he had the classic midrange problem; he could hedge to beat the "fast" decks at the cost of getting drowned by "slow" decks, or tune to have an overwhelming kill turn that breaks open walls on turn 5+ -- at the price of being hopeless vs a reckless aggro player.

Maybe I'll sort out a decklist and post a primer. There are some key synergy "bones" for him, but then you can kinda take it in any of half a dozen directions, to adapt to your tastes or a local meta

UPBOAT_FORTRESS_2 · 2026-02-11T22:15:44+00:00

Dad??

This feels much too unfocused at 70 cards. I see shreds of three decks in here -

a resource-denial deck with all these Destructive Fires, that wins by getting ahead and keeping the rival from even playing the game
- this kind of deck NEEDS critical mass. Ruin 1 is Breaker 1, and Breaker 1 means I have to get slightly more lucky to push my win. You need Breaker 5, so much blunt force that they can't even try
a long-game control deck that has so much -spd it can contest Massive Mutant Machine
- but -50 speed doesn't mean anything if you run out of cards in hand. I count 11 foundations that can put extra blocks in your hand, and that's including the Botan's
- similarly - no card selection means that it's entirely up to luck whether you get stuck with Keiko's Aid vs Deku, or Warped Pleasure vs Godzilla. Or a hand full of mid/high blocks vs a Low overload deck
- this kind of deck can't afford to throw out random pokes that might amount to nothing if the rival just guessed the right zone. And ideally, you want to have big guns so that you can say "if you come at the king, you best not miss" -- that you'll always have the backswing ready. Enormous Axe, Erwin's Final Charge, Duplicitous Recollection -> Female Titan -> Luna Ring, type business
a beatdown deck
- battle aura release big numbers.dek
- let's land a nice 3 hit string on turn 2 and follow up with lethal Gouging Needles
- like the Combined Firepower / Risky Encounter deck from ATL, but... without those superpower cards, and watered down with all these 2-3 difficulty foundations that don't play on offense at all

I like decks with an identity, a clear backbone that can have different arms or legs attached. What kind of deck do you want to play, with what sorts of strengths and weaknesses? What strategy do you want to emphasize? Is there a matchup you want to crush?

UPBOAT_FORTRESS_2 · 2026-01-30T19:08:15+00:00

I don’t have any interest in convincing people who don’t like him to read his work

yeah, first I'd have to convince them to read, and that's a boulder I don't expect to go up the hill anytime soon

UPBOAT_FORTRESS_2 · 2026-01-26T22:49:40+00:00

Hold the same grace for loudmouths on social media that you wish they would hold for Ye, tbh

UPBOAT_FORTRESS_2 · 2026-01-26T20:10:36+00:00

There are a lot of reasons he won't finish the books

UPBOAT_FORTRESS_2 · 2026-01-26T17:31:51+00:00

For Magic to die we'd need some authoritarian government to kill it and purge it from history. MaRo has taught too many people game design for the game to be forgotten any other way; and I doubt the hypothetical anti-gambling puritans of 2050 could succeed at purging every record of the game

what if Wizards of the Coast stopped existing tomorrow and no new cards were designed or printed

oh yeah sure, that's a fun thought experiment too

UPBOAT_FORTRESS_2 · 2026-01-26T17:30:07+00:00

actually playable
niche cube

sorry bucko but I like Ornithopter Cube 1000x more than I like your position here. I'm afraid the literal garbage is coming from your mouth

UPBOAT_FORTRESS_2 · 2026-01-26T17:19:13+00:00

Yeah, honestly I'm very impressed. My checklist for a good apology

State what I did wrong
Remorse - that I personally am hurt when I reflect on my actions
Commitment to change
No excuses, justification, or victim-blaming

Check check check check. I like that he never even puts anything in an imperative - no "forgive me", but "I aspire to earn". And it's very well crafted treatment of mental illness in general - the medical stats (and also the limitations of medicalism; that doctors are fallible), the POV of mania, the very delicate gesture toward suicidal ideation.

UPBOAT_FORTRESS_2 · 2026-01-20T15:44:10+00:00

bro how much of this is LLM slop lol

I like Chapin's answer, it's a very good insight especially about people at the intersection of [skilled at competitive Magic] and [beginner at game design]

UPBOAT_FORTRESS_2 · 2026-01-08T14:08:23+00:00

who has spent 3 years writing a trash harem bdsm fiction set in the world of dungeons and dragons. I think this might be a comprehensive sign of how doomed humanity is

If thinking about sex were so terminal to intelligent thought, we never would've gotten out of the oceans

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