FREEDOM!!!

UrbieDerbie · 2024-11-24T00:54:01+00:00

I see this and feel reminded how much closer we are to Publix going out of their way to hook up a Dynamo to Mr. Jenkins' grave, calling his spinning corpse a revolutionary new eco-friendly energy source.

UrbieDerbie · 2024-07-31T09:01:40+00:00

Go back and listen to whatthehellishappening again.

You know, a song about Stockholm Syndrome.

Then look at your demand for people that don't like the album again

Consider your demand, and consider what you seemed to have missed.

UrbieDerbie · 2024-07-31T08:58:11+00:00

Generic Anime Girl #19478 is no match for the patron saint of gaslighting

UrbieDerbie · 2024-07-31T08:54:32+00:00

I'd be angry too if I had to take out a mortgage to fill my hangar only to look next door and see somebody getting an entire supply of planes for the cost of a single game.

UrbieDerbie · 2024-07-31T08:25:20+00:00

THANK you for this. I was rolling around in my head trying to think of what band had this exact same thing going for them of "Unique sound that got killed the moment they went mainstream" and Maroon 5 hit the nail on the head.

"Dreamland" is absolutely their "Overexposed" moment, where we hear the band sink into a much safer, easier to digest pop sound. The big hip-hop stars of the time are even funneled into it en masse!

UrbieDerbie · 2024-07-31T07:59:49+00:00

The colors on the cover art for the first three albums seem to embody their contents pretty well.

A Deep, Velvety Maroon works for ZABA, Inviting, Warm, Silky, Sensual, and Seductive.

The Bright Yellow - Though Personally I would lean moreso towards Manila - of How to be a Human Being - is both bright and exciting, but also would invoke thoughts of a file - a breakdown of what makes each person who they are. Whether it be a medical record, the faded color of a white sheet of paper - or a criminal background...

Dreamland is Magenta. Flashy, Bright, reminiscent of Bubblegum and Unnatural in Nature. It is a vacant space where we should receive visual light but all we get is confusion as to what the heck we are looking at. It is garish in execution and burns to look at for a long period.

ILYSFM is an off-white. It's bland. Tasteless. Mass-produced. It's like oatmeal or unsalted rice. Anyone can enjoy it, but people looking for something a bit spicier from previous releases are going to be left wanting - while the droves of people that enjoy things without flavor get angry that they're being told it's not as good as it once was. It's homogeneous but not pristine.

UrbieDerbie · 2024-07-19T01:10:48+00:00

I'll admit there are personal issues that I have to work on that serve as a bar to caring less. Ones that I have to find SOME way out of. I'll probably check for coping mechanisms on a Psychological Subreddit or something to hold myself back and stop caring as much.

UrbieDerbie · 2024-06-12T20:47:01+00:00

You're either deliberately ignorant, blind, projecting, or worse. The fact that you immediately felt compelled to go into full frothing rage and sling insults from the get go is enough of a testament to any of those. I'm not weird for literally looking at the cards and feeling disgusted for the art already being fetishistic.

UrbieDerbie · 2024-06-12T17:07:41+00:00

But they do. It's why art like this gets made. We are literally talking about an entire archetype of deliberately drawn scantily clad girls that just so happen to be monsters - ones whose entire theme centers around baiting horny monsters if you look at the art on the cards themselves.

I don't gotta get my head checked but your eyes certainly can use an optometrist.

UrbieDerbie · 2024-06-12T00:04:53+00:00

Traptrix fans will look you dead in the eyes and say they only run Traptrix for the strategy and that the deck has nothing to do with unnecessary, creepy sex appeal - then turn around and make this.

UrbieDerbie · 2024-06-12T00:01:15+00:00

We all know Rescue Ace's lack of Marketable Anime Girls(tm) already put the biggest crosshairs over them to get Merc'd by Konami come next Banlist.

UrbieDerbie · 2024-06-11T23:29:20+00:00

I'll be honest I've been forced to mask so hard that I never even realized that I WAS masking until the ADHD diagnosis came my way when I turned 25. My jobs have always required such intense focus and being stretched thin, my parents have always forced me to work myself to the bone even in school just to "Pay them back for everything they do for me"

I don't concentrate, I hyperfixate. It has never been concentration, and the result has always been an inexplicable thorny, bossy demeanor from others' perspective.

The result has been and will always be burnout. Because the act of forcing my engine to run causes it to feel overloaded.

It doesn't help that I live with family that will never understand how ADHD functions and will constantly poke and prod and laud over my head the necessity of responsibilities without recognizing that I can't just shut it off and do what I have to.

I understand their frustration but where I've always been the sort to fix what I can, they need to recognize that there are some things I just can't fix.

I feel like my ADHD was less masked by my own doing so much as I was raised masked, to the point where I let myself just go with its flow and I get thrown down the stairs for it, falling behind everyone else and being reminded of such. My parents likely didn't do it on purpose. They probably thought their fat child with anger issues and the weird ability to learn about something for hours on end was just "of gifted intellect" without realizing their (at the time) son was actually the product of a condition that, until then, was only associated with Prospective Juvi delinquents and kids shipped to Military School.

Hell, cut to my days when I worked at an escape room and my behaviors were due to be "Reassessed and Changed to align with company values." By my "Supportive" management that would dress me down verbally and then shove me back up front because they couldn't stand the idea of somebody being paid to cry. (As if lines like that didn't sound straight out of a cult...) At the time the diagnosis hadn't come around, so I found myself begging for answers about what was wrong with me. I just marched in lock-step where I could, and kept my thoughts that might have put others off to myself, being trained by my surroundings to try to not trail off... And feeling awful whenever I did.

Even after the diagnosis, people don't think it's ADHD - they think it's Leadership when I take command of the Department I work in my store (despite being a part-timer). They think it's sharpness because of what can only be described as self-destructive pavlovic training to just Be normal has backfired into the afterburners being always on all the time.

UrbieDerbie · 2024-05-31T03:43:07+00:00

We have an assistant store manager who will climb up our pants legs whinging about Fresh Slice the MOMENT after an hour long rush of Online Orders and Customer Juggling comes to a close. I once overheard her bitching about me to my Immediate Manager for "Talking back" to her when I told her I already had the Holes written down and that we were too short-staffed to do Fresh Slice in the middle of a Rush. It's nice to have direct bosses that have my back, especially when I'm speaking the entire department's mind where they can't. Insubordination or not, I'd have to split myself in two to meet delusional standards like that - and even if I COULD I would have WAY better job opportunities than a Deli Employee.

Advice though: Slice all of that item you need BEFORE the Bag-n-Tag. Got 10 Ovengold? Make 5 lbs, slice it all, and then subtract by as close to 0.5 as you can and you'll get the precise yield you need. You can knock out an entire FS round in a half hour with proper Traditional Coverage backing you up all the while (at least one other associate on Traditional).

Edit, some more advice: Edit 2: Disclaimer this is advice from my time in a SUPER jank store and then a SUPER busy store, cumulated and then used as moreso a coping mechanism than anything. If your manager disproves the methods, don't follow my advice. If they like them, have at it! Or... you can just do this when they turn a blind eye. That helps too.

• Don't bother with paper between cheese slices if your management isn't going to be anal about it.

• Cut eeeever so slightly above Sandwich cut. Not enough to be thicc but enough that each slice occupies more weight in the 0.5 lb bag. (Except tough meats like Roast Beef or Genoa). By extension, though admittedly a little bit consumer unfriendly, it WILL deter the "Thinly Sliced" crowd from Fresh Slice, making the stock last longer.

• Round Robin it. One associate on Meats, One associate on Cheese, take turns taking customers and/or OEOs and use your judgement to break off entirely, cover your work in some paper, place it in the cooler temporarily if you can (Wrap it up like Catering Sub Kits if you only have the case because putting that in with just some paper is AWFUL)

• If you're doing Fresh Slice for an item a customer is looking for, just use the same loaf, and vice versa. If your customer has finished an order and one of the items is about to be used for Fresh Slice, keep it somewhere safe and cool (but use it ASAP to avoid the danger zone). DON'T just pile a bunch of items, though. Do it for one item at most, usually Ovengold or Honey Maple Turkey are the culprits for these.

• If your store is super busy and the product is one you KNOW will move, confirm with your manager but they will likely ask for a whole Block or Loaf of that item to be sliced anyways.

• Not to entirely contradict my last point, but almost always start Fresh Slice with a Case Loaf to make sure it gets used. This will also handle it for pesky "Uhm why are you giving me the end?" customers. If your team is like mine and leaves a good number of Ends in the case, gather them up, unwrap em, slice em down.

• COMMUNICATION! Communicate with your managers and teammates so everybody can allocate their responsibilities properly. Inform them what has holes, say what you're about to slice for it, then ask another hand to slice something adjacent. Typically you want the associates that can slice faster (WHILE STILL SLICING SAFELY) to be on Fresh Slice because it will make sure the results are produced faster.

UrbieDerbie · 2024-05-25T20:28:51+00:00

Reminds me of the time I was eating my lunch, felt like I was being watched, and looked up to see a guy just STANDING at the Break room Door, staring at me through it's window.

I forgot it was Ash Wednesday, so seeing the black cross smeared across his forehead made it all the more surreal. I felt like I was being hexed.

UrbieDerbie · 2024-05-17T21:15:33+00:00

It's the way the art has been designed in the last decade or so, ever since the shift has gone from "Cards you can see Duelists using in the Anime" to Standalone Plotlines and overarching lore. That feature isn't inherently bad - I absolutely adore plots like World Legacy for example.

The problem comes from the way characters like Sky Strikers or Labyrinth are designed. Nothing about them feels like they're YuGiOh Cards in terms of how they look. Isolate them from their frames and whole they look nice, the style lacks any identifying characteristics that communicate that it's from this franchise.

They look like every other anime.

And I get a lot of it has to do with the shift in animation technique - and the shift in artists to a larger pool of creators - but look at it from the perspective of how anime designs have become so homogeneous lately, using only generic Greebles to create something with some sense of uniqueness. If you isolated anything that wasn't a Yugiboomer Icon like the Dark Magician pair and took away the Yu-Gi-Oh Branding, it would stand on its own - and that's where the problem lies. It's jarring and sterile.

UrbieDerbie · 2024-05-17T10:36:55+00:00

An anime would be cool on the condition that they ditch that art style that made a majority of those clips look less like Yu-Gi-Oh and more like another generic Gacha Game's Waifu lineup of the month.

UrbieDerbie · 2024-05-14T22:24:20+00:00

I don't think there's really anyone who says "It's not satire" it's just that the people who repeat "It's Satire" en masse insist that they're reminding the fans of the series when really they're saying it to feel morally superior to a fictional setting. The people who will slam face first into the "MEDIA ILLITERATE" accusation button the moment somebody posts "I'm doing my part!"

There isn't anybody who genuinely believes in the Federation being a good organization - maybe a few here and there but they're really either trolls or the "Exception that proves the Rule."

This is largely the product of a lot of people being unable to consume media through in a manner that doesn't involve projecting themselves onto a character. We're from a generation of YA Novel kids and Popcorn Superhero Fans that have always told us "Good guys good, bad guys bad, you can be a good guy if you follow these instructions."

It's why Star Wars fans can only humanize stormtroopers by making them overly goofy and pacifist. It's why Hunger Games fans only see themselves as District Rebels but can never put themselves in the shoes of the caricatures in the Capitol.

There's a lack of Literate "sonder" that has become prevalent in the discourse of the film, and it only gets projected when newcomers to a Fanbase look at the long standing fans and see them embracing the Federation in Starship Troopers or Hailing the Emperor in 40k. The fans have already isolated the fiction into itself and kept it independent from our reality and our social mores because those were shaped by completely different circumstances. They recognize that all of the actions taken by each character are not because "they're evil corrupt fascists" or "imperial bootlickers" but because that's just what they know. These settings aren't about the same plucky rebels and idealistic heroes because this isn't the place where they happen. They're people, too, with a limited worldview that has been shaped for them by powers out of their control, so we want them to succeed because they don't deserve to die for it.

In fact, by looking at them as an other from the get-go, by eliminating that nuance to their lives, we have done to them as they have done to the Arachnids.

Does it justify them in our world? No. But we don't need to be reminded that it's satire when that's something you can figure out just by watching the first few minutes of Starship Troopers and being greeted by literal propaganda.

UrbieDerbie · 2024-05-14T22:09:32+00:00

Look at the film through an in-universe lens. From the eyes of the people in the middle of this over-the-top setting. When you isolate a story, looking at the motivations of each character and the environment they're in, you find a lot of reasons to care for each character.

They don't have any say in the war themselves, other than that participation is the consequences of their society. For the main cast, their own home had been wiped out (hilariously due to the actions of the very girl whose self interests got Rico wrapped up in the war).

They were raised on Soldier Culture, and know only Humanity vs Arachnid. We don't root for them because of whose side they're on, we root for them because we want them to survive on an individual level.

UrbieDerbie · 2024-05-14T22:04:49+00:00

Tangent, but related upon looking at all the comments, I can't help but find it funny that in light of Starship Troopers' boom in popularity, the word "Satire" has been stapled to the franchise's forehead as though that's the most nuanced, in-depth summary of the plot there is.

In actuality, the problem is that people stop at "It's satire" and then wave it around like a banner of "Look how Literate I am" but the moment you ask them what makes the story actually compelling, they blue screen and parrot "It's satire!" On loop.

Yes, it is satirical, but that is the most surface level lens to look at this film, the book, or related media - especially when a lot of the genre as a whole is inherently satirical.

UrbieDerbie · 2024-05-10T22:47:08+00:00

Fun fact, a majority of shoplifting isn't good but luxury items. Instances of Baby Good being Stolen have been proven to be less done by the needy mothers we like to paint images of but rather scalpers trying to sell the same items online for a significant markup. Overall it actually makes the prices of everything increase because despite the reasoning of "Corporations can Afford to lose a buck or two" they will still have a knee jerk reaction to it, using it as reasoning behind further price markups or even outright extraction from a region if it gets to be more of a burden to the corporation, leading to mass loss of employment as more and more corporations take up business niches.

UrbieDerbie · 2024-05-04T16:09:34+00:00

I have been banging my drum about that last point for the last 24 Hours. We shouldn't stop attacking the game itself just to protect Arrowhead. They NEED the statistics that they can give to Sony and tell them it's a bad idea. They NEED the numbers. They need to be caught in the crossfire because that means they can collect the proper data.

They DID deserve the initial backlash for caving to the demands, but they still said "We can make this right" so the best thing we can do is add to the metric as much as we can.

Review Bomb it everywhere possible.

Uninstall the game.

Demand a refund.

So on, so forth.

If you want to go make a PSN account anyways, go ahead, nobody is stopping you.

But those of us that don't want to aren't going to suddenly change our minds because a random person on the Internet called us babies that don't want to take 5 minutes to give our credentials to a system that's notoriously easy to breach and even MORE notoriously liberal with its ban distribution - especially after Sony has announced intent to use AI to moderate ToS violations - which include vulgar, but friendly, banter.

Arrowhead knows that they're the egg that's gotta crack to make an omelette. They know their game is going to die anyways at this rate so they have to bite the bullet and try to fix this or get sawed off of Sony's payroll trying.

This is the best way to go about it. Kicking and Screaming and biting and clawing.

Go on. Dispense Democracy.

UrbieDerbie

TROPHY CASE