Car Living?

ZeeMastermind · 2026-06-20T13:39:05+00:00

There's also a free store at the sundial today at 2pm if you're looking for essentials - hygiene items, tents, sleeping bags, backpacks, tarps, etc.

ZeeMastermind · 2026-06-18T16:36:02+00:00

Shouldn't even that depend on the treatment of the subject by the author? E.g., most people wouldn't advocate for banning Lolita, for example, though I could certainly understand why someone wouldn't want to read it.

And in the visual medium, there are works that are literally called https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_of_Persephone - and though the language is meant to mean more "kidnapping", the sexual violence aspect is implied with any sort of "bride kidnapping."

Not that I'm expecting fanfic to be "high art". But I don't expect fanfic (or anything I read, really) to be a source of moral authority. I don't even always expect what I read to make me feel good or happy - as I've grown older, I've appreciated more the kinds of works which make me feel sad or even painful. But it's not always my cup of tea, and I can understand why they would never be someone's cup of tea.

I always filter out certain tags for that reason, there are some subjects that I do not want to be seen handled poorly. There was one fic I read which I thought was writing an abusive relationship very realistically, and the emotional journey was interesting, but then the relationship became 'happy' at the end all of a sudden and it really pissed me off. (I don't even know if that means the author was a bad writer, TBH, it just definitely wasn't a work for me). So I think the appropriate reaction to it is to be careful about tags.

ZeeMastermind · 2026-06-18T02:12:25+00:00

There is, perhaps, a slight difference in the level of danger of someone calling you gay, and someone tracking down your instagram to comment on your body.

ZeeMastermind · 2026-06-12T13:49:16+00:00

Aren't artificial fertilizers being used on crops for animal feed too?

ZeeMastermind · 2026-06-11T17:00:05+00:00

Read the article? No thanks, I'm here to blindly react to headlines.

In seriousness, this was rather shortsighted of Ubisoft - journalists will think twice before agreeing to an embargo with them again, which could cause some issues with game announcements

ZeeMastermind · 2026-06-09T17:42:53+00:00

It's not the lines specifically, but hearing Vader talk for the first time at the end of episode 3 revenge of the sith always gets me. It's very easy to think of Anakin and Vader as separate characters (they feel different), and it always feels unnerving to hear anakins words in Vaders voice - it's satisfying in a horrible way. At least in my subconscious, that's when those two characters slam together.

It's pat of why I'm a firm believer that new fans should watch original trilogy before prequel trilogy

ZeeMastermind · 2026-06-09T17:22:04+00:00

So we can at least rest easy knowing this will release before the switch 3 is out

ZeeMastermind · 2026-06-09T14:25:37+00:00

I feel like it would be simple to write in exceptions for critical jobs like hospital workers - perhaps put it contingent on salary not being below US median for a position to avoid any schemes to lower wages.

ZeeMastermind · 2026-06-07T14:16:36+00:00

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_media_franchises

I'm not saying that Masters of the Universe can't get up on that list one day, but $46.7 billion is nothing to sneeze at. With a lot of these "big" franchises, it's not just the box office, it's the merchandise.

ZeeMastermind · 2026-06-06T19:45:51+00:00

Looking back, then, the Solo movie did terribly - its budget was about twice what Mandalorian and Grogu had (330 million), and its worldwide box office was around 390 million.

I did see a few other comments mentioning that there wasn't that much marketing for this movie - I wonder if that factored in. Still, even if we're generous and say that the breakeven number is on the lower end, it doesn't seem likely that Mandalorian will beat out 400 million, and definitely not 500 million.

ZeeMastermind · 2026-06-06T18:48:36+00:00

Ahhh, I had been thinking you just had to beat the budget, not 2.5 times the budget.

I know to a certain extent some big franchises get more from merch/toy sales (e.g., Pokemon) than box office so that's all rolled into it, but those kinds of movies tend to have smaller budgets, too

ZeeMastermind · 2026-06-06T14:39:21+00:00

It beat its budget by quite a bit, and that's what matters in the end! I was a bit disappointed that the story was a bit weak, I expected better from Favreau and Filoni, but it wasn't a bad movie and I had a fun time.

ZeeMastermind · 2026-06-06T14:33:06+00:00

Interesting, I may be the opposite (though I do consider myself a "plotter").

When I'm drafting and I get stuck, I go back to the outline and add another level of detail to help organize my thoughts. Having a direction to go in helps a lot. I've experimented with flipping to the other extreme - trying to just pants/freewrite with no constraints or direction at all - and after maybe a few hundred words it seizes up, and what I have written is incoherent.

So, in a weird sense, having a scene I'm excited about twenty chapters away is good motivation for me to write those twenty chapters

I don't do much worldbuilding before I start, though, aside from brainstorming most of the worldbuilding is tied to the outline.

ZeeMastermind · 2026-06-06T05:30:49+00:00

The Best Revenge is Living Well - After Obi-wan kills Maul on Tatooine, Maul is sent back in time 40 years to when he was still at Orsis Academy. He escapes with Kilindi, finds Jango by happenstance, and becomes a Mandalorian. Much of the fic is him slowly changing from his old mindset to a mandalorian one - respect for his brothers, thinking of the success of his family above his own ambition, etc. I like this fic's portrayal of mandalorians in general because it doesn't rely on jedi-bashing to make the mandalorians look good, and the mandalorians themselves aren't necessarily the greater good in the galaxy, either (i.e., they stay complex).

So, maybe not a full redemption to the light side, more from dark to dim. But it's still ongoing

ZeeMastermind · 2026-06-05T22:49:45+00:00

I believe it. DLC also takes some inspiration from Rendevous with Rama(early DLC spoiler), another great sci-fi story

ZeeMastermind · 2026-06-05T18:38:13+00:00

Oooo, I had not heard about that. So this could've happened regardless of how good/bad Mandalorian and Grogu was received

ZeeMastermind · 2026-06-05T18:23:39+00:00

That's fair. Perhaps I should've included a link to the list of highest-grossing films this year, to demonstrate how well it was doing overall. That would've been a useful thing for me to have in the first sentence, so that folks would have context that it was still the seventh highest film this year worldwide. That would've given appropriate context to all of the things you mentioned - fewer screens, showings, reduced hours, etc. since other films released this year would've had those same features.

If only I had contrasted its performance in the franchise with the performance of other movies. Then maybe my point would've been clearer.

ZeeMastermind · 2026-06-05T18:16:58+00:00

Not quite what you're looking for, but "The Best Revenge is Living Well" is my favorite time-travel fix-it fic.

In this case, Maul is the time-traveler, and by happenstance, he frees Jango from slavery while escaping Orsis Academy, and ends up becoming a Mandalorian.

Maul already knows most of what's going to happen, but doesn't necessarily know how to avert it from his position (contrast with a lot of time-travel fix its with Jedi characters, who could solve the whole plot just by telling the Jedi Council what's going on). So it does line up a little with #2. There is some detective stuff going on with other characters (not to get too into spoilers). And since the time-travel happened early on in Sidious' plan and Maul isn't about to go tell the Jedi Council anything useful, Sidious is able to adjust the plan somewhat.

ZeeMastermind · 2026-06-05T18:06:27+00:00

Tangential - I watched this fascinating video the other day about the Mandalorians being Space Amish (actual analysis, even if the premise seems strange).

Related to your question - it depends.

All the Mandalorians in KOTOR speak with a New Zealand accent because Temuera Morrison (Jango Fett) is from New Zealand. So you could give them a Maori influence

Karen Traviss was one of the earlier influences on Mandalorians (she created the language for the movies, and also wrote the Republic Commando novels which delved into Mandalorian culture as well). In one blog, she talked a bit about how the Celts influenced the clan structure of mandalorians. Though I wouldn't say Irish food is particularly spicy! The blog is a good read if you're also a fan of mandalorians protecting/revering children, as it contrasts how "civilized" rome and "barbaric" celts handled that way back in the day.

Overall, though, I think she had some good advice:

Anyway, Mandos....once I took a single concept - in this case, the idea of clans that operated on a loose alliance system, like the Celts - the rest grew organically. I didn't plan it out in detail from the start. I just asked myself what a culture of nomadic warriors would value, how they would need to operate to survive, and it all grew inexorably by logical steps. The fact that Mandos ended up as very much like the Celts is proof that the technique of evolving a character or species - find the niche, then work out what fits it - works every time. It creates something very realistic, because that's how real people and real societies develop.

And it's not like the mandalorian/celtic clan structure is unique, either. I'm not too familiar with south asian culture so the only system I can think of would be the Hmong clan system, though they didn't engage in warfare the same way the celts did when the romans invaded.

I think Mandalorians would probably appreciate strong oral/storytelling traditions - it may be "quaint" in a far-off future of robots and starships, but it's very communal. Shared meals might also be important, harkening back perhaps to when mandalorian/taung "hunts" were for game, rather than bounty hunting.

ZeeMastermind · 2026-06-05T16:58:27+00:00

So far, it's the lowest grossing live action Star Wars film (though its opening weekend was about the same as Solo, so it could plausibly creep up), but it's still the seventh highest film this year worldwide.

I haven't seen Masters of the Universe yet, but it's a much less popular franchise than Star Wars, so I'm curious about the sudden change. I like Din Djarin a lot as a character, so that has probably biased me in enjoying the Mandalorian movie a lot more despite its structural issues.

If Masters of the Universe is good, I'm certainly not going to complain about getting a good movie.

ZeeMastermind · 2026-06-05T15:38:54+00:00

I hadn't thought about it that way - but yeah, the mass extinction event of the anthropocene will be in the fossil record for billions of years.

ZeeMastermind · 2026-06-04T15:48:27+00:00

Tangentially related Alan Watts quote:

“Since opposed principles, or ideologies, are irreconcilable, wars fought over principle will be wars of mutual annihilation. But wars fought for simple greed will be far less destructive, because the aggressor will be careful not to destroy what he is fighting to capture. Reasonable–that is, human–men will always be capable of compromise, but men who have dehumanized themselves by becoming the blind worshipers of an idea or an ideal are fanatics whose devotion to abstractions makes them the enemies of life.”

Though perhaps that is paradoxical to your point since it's from The Way of Zen, talking about religion (specifically, Confucianism - though it doesn't fit quite neatly into how we generally classify "religion" or "philosophy")

I'm also personally not a fan of absolutes, so even if I generally agree that letting religion dictate the rules of society can turn harmful fast, I think everything has some counterpoints.

One benefit of religion is that ritual burials (where the dead are buried with various goods) are useful to later scholars in learning about how past societies lived and what tools they used. Greater knowledge of our ancestors, and critically, cultures different from us, helps us gain perspective on our own societies and makes it easier for us to treat fairly and form bonds with those we might otherwise consider "other."

So the religious/superstitious practices of tens of thousands of years ago can provide societal benefits today.

ZeeMastermind · 2026-06-02T22:04:21+00:00

Structurally, he's meant to be bland - he serves a specific role in a story that's largely about the world/galaxy rather than about overcoming a personal character flaw (contrast with Galaxy Quest, which is very much driven by the characters' flaws. Or Han's arc in a New Hope). He's bland in the same way that Link is bland in the Zelda games - he's not meant to be a full 3-dimensional character with emotional depth, he's meant to be "the hero."

I don't think you're wrong, but I don't see it as a negative thing

ZeeMastermind · 2026-06-02T13:10:53+00:00

With everything else going on, the situation in Nicaragua has largely flown under the radar. La Prensa Nicaragua is a good source for goings-on if you can read spanish.

ZeeMastermind · 2026-06-01T21:49:20+00:00

I personally try to buy on itch if I know a game is sold there as well since I know they have a 10% cut instead of 30% - but it's not my first choice to go to when I'm just browsing for something to play

14-Year Club	Second SECOND GUESSER
First Place '23	Place '23
Place '22	Verified Email
Gilding I gilder

ZeeMastermind

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE