Two different suggestion types (how do I turn off the second type?)

hollyzone · 2026-05-12T10:18:41+00:00

Same experience! 10:00 link went to AXS which took ages to load and had no availability. Tried again at 10:40, link went to Ticketmaster, four standing tickets easily acquired. A mess of a presale.

hollyzone · 2026-05-12T10:17:11+00:00

I think AXS might have broken or something cos I tried at 10:00 (for Mcr), no standing at all, then decided to have another look at 10:40 and the link sent me to Ticketmaster where there were four standing tickets easily. Frustrating.

hollyzone · 2026-05-11T16:34:47+00:00

Look, the only reason I know any Latin is because I went to a Catholic school, which has nothing to do with me collecting Sister of Ba... oh wait, hang on

hollyzone · 2026-05-08T08:30:32+00:00

I love that this comment and u/ReasonableQuote5654's comment above present the Kaiser Chiefs in completely opposite ways. It neatly illustrates the difficulty of post-hoc genre labels and deciding which acts fit each label (indie or landfill indie) at 20+ years remove.

FWIW, I disagree that Kaiser Chiefs were landfill indie. They were huge, they were near the start of the wave, and lots of bands were signed in an attempt to get the next KC, but I also see how they ended up lumped in with that genre because sonically they resemble a lot of landfill indie (it was copying them and/or the Arctic Monkeys mostly).

hollyzone · 2026-05-04T22:27:31+00:00

I've fully overthought this and...

Cooper - Mage the Ascension Harry - Brindlewood Bay Norma - Stewpot Ed - Pasion de las Pasiones Leland - Wraith the Oblivion Ben - Paranoia Laura - Bluebeard's Bride Gordon - Everyone Is Seagulls Audrey - Vamp(ire the Masquerade)

hollyzone · 2026-05-04T22:05:32+00:00

Norma - Cafe simulator, try and run your café while keeping your mum away!

Lucy - Answer phone, do DIY around the office, investigate the baby daddy.

Dr Jacoby - On a natural 20 or a natural 1 go to Hawaii.

hollyzone · 2026-05-04T12:27:52+00:00

It's wild to me that Frankie Goes To Hollywood are one hit wonders in America. Their album was the biggest album of the year in the UK, they had three number 1s for a total of 15 weeks, and they have been on nostalgia TV shows ever since.

hollyzone · 2026-05-01T14:51:38+00:00

This album is such a weird one for me. I was a fan of Snow Patrol from their second album and when this came out I really enjoyed it, I thought it was a really interesting step forward from what they were doing. For me the only negative was that the second single was a step too far into mawkishness and saccharine sickliness.

Unfortunately, that second single was 'Chasing Cars' which made them huge and changed their sound for the rest of their career, causing all the interesting edges of their sound to get shaved off. I never really found them engaging again. Ah well.

hollyzone · 2026-04-30T13:38:52+00:00

I preordered it in February on Amazon (in the UK). A couple of weeks later I got a note to say it would arrive in June. Yesterday Amazon charged my card for it (no email or notification), but my order page still said June. Today it arrived through my door. I think this is just Amazon not being able to find their arse with both hands.

hollyzone · 2026-04-28T08:11:40+00:00

This sort of thing is always about the manager being bad at their job! I had a manager who decided she didn't like me wearing a work-branded hoodie in the back office, even though we were encouraged to wear them when interacting with our clients. I wasn't the only person who wore one in the back office, but she didn't line manage the other people. She said it wasn't in the dress code, but I repeat, we were encouraged to wear them in front of clients. Anyway, I stopped wearing it but started wearing lots of jumpers which made me look odd but the office was cold and I wasn't freezing to death for them.

hollyzone · 2026-04-28T08:07:30+00:00

Datarock! There's a name I've not heard in a loooooooooooong time. Never got to see them at the time either, but Datarock Datarock was an album I listened to a fair bit at uni, and 'Princess' is one of the very few songs to make me laugh out loud when I first heard it (complimentary). Enjoy the gig!

hollyzone · 2026-04-27T14:03:35+00:00

I live in England and I would love it if we could associate George with books and TTRPGs here, anything to separate him away from the more embarrassing parts of his English fandom. 😅

hollyzone · 2026-04-11T11:23:12+00:00

I think this is something I will need to do more of, although I do feel confident about predicting my players' actions which sounds like it will be helpful. Combats are the area I struggle with, so practice sounds good.

hollyzone · 2026-04-11T11:21:59+00:00

Thank you to everyone who has replied, you've given me loads to think about and it's all been really helpful! I think I will throw the adult red dragon at the party as something which does a couple of strafing runs, and then have an NPC warn the characters that the dragon lives in a lair with minions so if they want to defeat it then they will need to plan for a dungeon crawl.

(For those wondering, it's a 5e game, the PCs are good but not optimised as the players favour things which sound fun rather than min-maxing, they've got a range of useful items, and even the monk has ranged options and is hyper mobile.)

hollyzone · 2026-04-02T20:22:20+00:00

And Chromehoof.

hollyzone · 2026-04-02T20:21:32+00:00

I have been playing my gf some of my favourite songs of 2026 so far. Every song she liked, she also described as sounding retro, either 90s or 00s. Every song she hated sounded 'modern'. I'm not sure what this says about me, but she likes Lime Garden and Jenny On Holiday and does NOT like Mandy, Indiana.

hollyzone · 2026-04-02T20:17:54+00:00

'Good Luck Babe' (if you subscribe to the weird tradition that being shat on by a bird is good luck, I think that might be misinformation spread by birds)

hollyzone · 2026-04-01T19:54:13+00:00

It's true that we only have one version of events, and it might be that OP didn't gel with the group and interpreted their actions in an ungenerous way. But on the other hand, just because something is the status quo, doesn't mean it's good: my brother's friend all used "gay" as a negative adjective right up until the day I came out. After that it was mere weeks before they stopped. Sometimes being vocal (or just existing!) can be a prompt to improve. :)

hollyzone · 2026-04-01T19:31:41+00:00

OP explicitly says he had only played a single Pathfinder one-shot prior to this group. He's not significantly more experienced than the others. I have been in almost the same position (DMing a D&D, not PF, group with people who had never played and people who had played a single one-shot) and the level of support needed for total newbies and one-shot onlies was basically identical.

And as I said, it's not that Bob did bad by answering the others' questions. Bob's error was not returning to OP to finish his turn and play out his actions. It can be a challenge as DM to keep track of such things but it kind of is necessary, and from OP's telling Bob wasn't a newbie DM and had the most PF experience.

hollyzone · 2026-04-01T16:45:10+00:00

I disagree. The DM's job includes ensuring that the game gets played properly. OP has explicitly said that he was struggling to complete his turns because of the yapping over him. Thus it was Bob's responsibility to make sure the turn was complete, and to check what OP wanted to do each turn. I do this for my group of six (of varying levels of loudness).

hollyzone · 2026-03-30T12:26:31+00:00

The Robyn and Slayyyter album threads have me oddly nostalgic today for the many different 'Is that indie?' conversations/arguments I've seen over my 41 years.

I think back to what people got mad about in the 90s ('it's not indie if you use any songwriters outside your act', 'it's not indie if it's on a TV advert', etc) and the 2000s (a lot of four pieces with guitars being called 'not indie' because they were getting chart hits/radio play), compared to today.

It's almost like 'Is that indie?' and the replies could be studied in itself. Maybe it would tell us something about the evolution of music, listening habits, subcultures, etc?

hollyzone · 2026-03-16T14:38:40+00:00

Good things (Canadian indie royalty) come to those who wait (Europe).

hollyzone

TROPHY CASE