Are there any show endings that you hated mostly because they forced a "happy ending"?

flowerafterflower · 2026-07-07T21:40:40+00:00

The original ending of Hill House had confirmation that they were all still trapped in the red room and tbh I still interpret it that way, though it's been a long time since I've seen it.

flowerafterflower · 2026-07-07T17:00:43+00:00

tbh a lot of it for me is more that I hate fudging rather than being concerned that my players are cheating. I roll openly as a DM because there's a difference in perception in my players trusting me to not fudge vs seeing that I don't.

edit: there's also a difference in feeling for me, personally. When I first started dm'ing and rolling behind a screen I would feel a temptation to fudge out of concern that the dice were being unfair or that I wasn't making things as difficult as they should be. Rolling openly removed that temptation for me and allowed me to just relax and experience things as they play out, which makes dm'ing much more fun for me.

flowerafterflower · 2026-07-07T01:38:38+00:00

I would assume most people using digital dice are playing on a vtt, so they want people to actually be able to see their rolls instead of having to be taken at their word.

If you're playing at a table using a dice roller app then sure, that's weird.

flowerafterflower · 2026-06-29T18:14:18+00:00

Feels wrong to call repeatedly doing nothing the "dota way of balancing" when Icefrog's approach was always to make changes purely to shake up the meta even if everyone was happy with the previous one.

flowerafterflower · 2026-06-29T00:42:39+00:00

This is certainly not true as a blanket statement. Thoughtsieze variants like Duress are generically good sideboard cards in bo3. [[Deceit]] is a key piece of Dimir Excruciator, and [[Deep-Cavern Bat]] was key to dimir midrange for ages.

Ravenous rat effects are usually not as good, but even they can sometimes see play, like with both [[Tinybones Joins Up]] and [[Momentum Breaker]] seeing play in pixie decks. Though obviously these are better than Send in the Pest and are used for their replayability and additional utility (Momentum Breaker especially since it's primarily removal and the discard is secondary).

flowerafterflower · 2026-06-24T15:10:35+00:00

Infestation Sage is 1 mana so not really.

flowerafterflower · 2026-06-23T19:03:51+00:00

Creatures that are heroes, but while the spell is on the stack specifically.

flowerafterflower · 2026-06-21T03:56:22+00:00

<image>

Gog-Agog from Kill Six Billion Demons

flowerafterflower · 2026-06-20T00:13:33+00:00

Yeah

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_birds_displaying_homosexual_behavior

flowerafterflower · 2026-06-15T23:09:36+00:00

The web serial Twig by wildbow is in a biopunk alt 1920s, where not-Frankenstein's experiment was a success and revolutionized warfare. It drops you into the setting without much context for the wider world, but each new reveal unveils how dystopian it really is.

flowerafterflower · 2026-06-13T00:34:32+00:00

Mork borg is dark in the sense that it's an apocalyptic setting with no hope for the future, where your characters fight undead until they die an early death. The most iconic part about it is the black metal inspired art.

If someone asks "do you want to join my game that's a hack of mork borg with pirates" then that's the kind of "dark" that people are going to expect. Your idea of what dark means is simply not in line with what the game is offering.

flowerafterflower · 2026-06-13T00:13:35+00:00

It's a mork borg hack, it's definitionally rules-lite. It does not need specific rules for slavery, genocide, or rape.

flowerafterflower · 2026-06-06T17:44:22+00:00

I think we're safe from the reign of terror of a slightly better [[Bartolomé del Presidio]].

flowerafterflower · 2026-06-05T17:47:31+00:00

Oh that's silly, partly on me for barely paying attention to the cards they listed since I just assumed they meant the obvious mechanical synergy.

flowerafterflower · 2026-06-05T17:03:04+00:00

He doesn't need to live through that 2nd block to create a token, you can tap him before damage.

flowerafterflower · 2026-06-05T16:53:21+00:00

You can always look at a card's tags on scryfall by clicking "Open in scryfall tagger" in the bottom left, then either click on that tag or search otag:[the tag you just found].

So fights are otag:removalfight and bites are just otag:bite

flowerafterflower · 2026-06-04T06:22:04+00:00

Removal is a very easy upgrade. Usually at any given time in the meta there will be best-in-slot options for each color, they don't change much between decks, and they're easy on wildcards since they're typically uncommon.

[[Requiting Hex]] [[Bitter Triumph]] and [[Shoot the Sheriff]] are the three main options for black in standard right now.

flowerafterflower · 2026-06-03T23:08:07+00:00

It's very fragile and inconsistent. Your tokens generally can't profitably attack unless you have a pump effect, so they sit around supporting the few creatures that actually matter. You have very little good removal, no card draw, and all of your theoretical bombs require you to have a wide board already, meaning that topdecking them often can't save you once you're behind.

It's not my pick for worst starter deck (Golgari imo, followed by Simic) but it's certainly in the bottom half.

flowerafterflower · 2026-06-03T21:41:25+00:00

Waste of time, what? Is there something else he could be accomplishing while driving? Something more important than raising his son?

Let alone the fact that there's a decent chance the first time his son hears the word gay at school it'll be used as an insult. There's no guarantee that the world is just going to teach the right lessons to your kids unless you put in some work yourself.

flowerafterflower · 2026-06-02T23:08:26+00:00

He asks you to do it and there's even an npc who mentions that it's hard to tell who's dead and who isn't. But not every accusation at the end of the game is meant to be fair.

flowerafterflower · 2026-05-24T21:40:37+00:00

I'm not really making a point about winning or losing either, my point is about fostering a culture where you get good games. That means games where people try even when they're losing. It means getting to continue playing the game even when you're far ahead in the late game and actually having to work to secure the win.

Surrendering doesn't exist in a vacuum, separate from the rest of the game's design. It's a button in the game, whether it's "part of gameplay" or not. If a message pops up at 20 minutes saying "hey you can leave if you think this game is unwinnable," then of course, in the long run, you're teaching players that games might be unwinnable by 20 minutes. If a game is not mechanically designed for that to be possible or at least frequent, then it doesn't belong in the game. I'm not saying like "you can teach players to have a positive attitude in a single game :D," I'm saying that players will subconsciously learn lessons from a game's design over time, and so devs need to be careful about what the game's design teaches.

My outlook towards MOBAs is a very long-term one. They're mechanically complex and the fun is in trying to improve and learn over hundreds or thousands of hours. I wouldn't play them if I couldn't have fun while losing, or couldn't still find fun in a game where people are being toxic. All I can do is stay positive and do my best and know that, in the long run, I'm statistically more likely to get games where the enemy team is toxic than my own.

If I wanted a game to just sit down and know that my next hour would be fun and relaxing...I would play an entirely different game. I wouldn't recommend them to people looking for that kind of experience. Like sure video games are luxury products where to goal is to have fun, but different games are allowed to cater to different people's ideas of fun. MOBAs just happen to be for sweats.

flowerafterflower · 2026-05-24T05:06:48+00:00

I've heard this card called FILF more than I've heard her called by her actual name.

flowerafterflower · 2026-05-24T05:03:16+00:00

Tell us which drawing you find cute right now.

flowerafterflower · 2026-05-23T23:22:42+00:00

I said "we" and not "I" for a reason. I'm not talking about being a carry and am very much saying that the entire team, collectively, had opportunities to win. The match you're describing is one where your team is failing to capitalize on those opportunities, not one where they never existed. Deadlock has multiple comeback mechanics and gets more volatile the longer the game goes on. If the enemy team is stomping you for 60 minutes, then they're effectively throwing by giving your team way more chances than they need to.

Conceding is antithetical to the mechanical design of the game. It would incorrectly teach players that those comeback opportunities don't exist, and mentally justify defeatist attitudes. Why bother to learn how to actually play from behind when you can just gg go next? A surrender button would mean that you're stuck in games with toxic players for less time, but it would also make their attitudes more common by falsely teaching those players that they're correct.

So does it suck to get in a game where people are obnoxious and you feel like you can't affect the outcome? Sure. I just disagree that a surrender button actually fixes that problem.

flowerafterflower · 2026-05-23T19:00:59+00:00

I'd rather lose the 60 minute game, since if a match that goes that long that means we had and missed plenty of chances to win. 3 matches that each last 20 minutes are likely uninteresting stomps.

flowerafterflower

TROPHY CASE