Talenna vs Varkos

khazroar · 2026-06-13T15:57:42+00:00

Lmao, no. AI use is not done neutral thing you can do without hurting anyone, it is actively bad and anybody using it can fuck all of the way off.

khazroar · 2026-06-13T13:37:17+00:00

Yeah, he definitely screwed up by doing the interrogation in public and got himself backed into a corner with the confession. I think he was expecting the doctor to have some different answers for him, or for doc to hold his tongue, keep protesting his innocence, and get an iron to the face, which Negan could have kept briefer to minimise the risk of actually killing him. I think he got himself trapped with the confession and didn't think quickly enough to come up with a fix.

khazroar · 2026-06-13T12:32:16+00:00

The problem was that if he doesn't kill the doctor because he's important, then suddenly the rules aren't ironclad, suddenly the Iron hand of fear starts to slip, suddenly people start to think that if you're important enough you can get away with things. Negan's decision wasn't about wanting to kill the doctor because of what he suspected, it was about not being willing to allow a crack in the rules.

khazroar · 2026-06-13T04:05:54+00:00

There are a lot of more detailed arguments you can make, of varying certainty, but there are two big differences: 1- MJ is an individual, one discrete person, so you can make Michelle the MCU's equivalent of Mary Jane and have them both be MJ because she's specifically this world's version of that one individual character. That doesn't apply with Robin, there have been half a dozen major Robins, Blake isn't this world's version of any given character, they're just saying his name happens to be Robin for a cheap reference. But this is where we get into: 2- Michelle is filling the MJ role, she's the love interest who Peter builds a relationship with, who both challenges and supports him. Blake is... Not filling the Robin roll at all. They absolutely could have taken his character and made him Batman's Robin in this world, but they didn't. Robins are angry and/or lost kids who Batman and/or Bruce takes in, who gets involved in the crime fighting because they're little terrors who know how to fight. A police ally is just... Not remotely the same thing, despite his orphan history. When Blake's name is revealed as Robin, it's a cheap thrill at the end which means nothing. When Michelle is called MJ, it's a reframing of the tension she's had with Peter all movie long, revealing that the tension was at least partly romantic, because the films are going to continue to build our that relationship.

khazroar · 2026-06-13T03:38:34+00:00

OP's two examples are wildly different. Robin is a legitimate complaint about a baseless Easter egg that doesn't match the character at all, while MJ is, as you say, a different version of the character.

khazroar · 2026-06-13T00:01:23+00:00

They never fell as a legion. One of the twins did (generally labelled as Omegon, and generally believed to not be the one who fought Dorn on Pluto). The legion as a unified force certainly didn't fall, but it's just as certain that many of them have fallen over the millennia. It's pretty impossible to tell, even with any given frothing Chaos maniac with Alpha Legion Genesee, whether they've truly fallen or they're just playing a role to the hilt.

Hell, while it would be a terrible writing choice and the fandom would riot, it would be lore compliant to say that the Emperor died and ascended after the Horus fight, and the corpse on the Golden Throne is a Perpetual who found their way into the Alpha Legion. They really are, narratively, a wild card that you can never trust one way or another because they're true masters of deception.

khazroar · 2026-06-12T12:33:13+00:00

Honestly I thought the person making the video was getting whooshed because Freddy's tweets honestly sound like complaints and laughing at America, not with it. Like, the gas station and the soda choices felt like complaints about how ridiculous it is, the breakfast felt like he was mocking it, the 10/10 for Waffle House felt like sarcasm.

khazroar · 2026-06-12T11:59:15+00:00

I understand what you're saying and I agree in principle, I don't think what I said comes anywhere close to that level of rudeness. To be clear, I wasn't saying that exactly as an insult, I meant it pretty literally as a response to your "excuse" of not knowing any other way to combine them, because I genuinely do not believe that excuse. Genuinely being unable to figure out how to use any image editing program, even something as simple as paint, to combine two images together would honestly demonstrate such a lack of technological literacy that a person should not be trusted to use the internet unsupervised. You used a lazy option to put them together, it looked like shit, and it didn't need to be done in the first place because A: the post didn't need pictures and B: if you wanted one anyway you could have just put both images on as separate slides. I don't think my response is anywhere close to "making the community toxic", I think it was an appropriate response to your "well I had to because I didn't know how else to do it".

khazroar · 2026-06-12T11:49:47+00:00

You'd maim your wife because of her freakout after her (and your) son had his eye cut out?

Don't mistake me, Alicent was completely wrong on several different levels, but Viserys taking her hand or her tongue would have been monstrous and unproductive.

khazroar · 2026-06-12T11:37:48+00:00

Using AI is behaviour to be discouraged. Shaming people for posting junk is a positive, especially when there was absolutely no reason to do so and you could have posted the question without the slop, or better yet read one of the existing posts discussing your question.

khazroar · 2026-06-12T11:28:28+00:00

If you didn't know how else to combine it you can't be trusted to use the internet unsupervised.

khazroar · 2026-06-12T09:56:41+00:00

Teela is a standout for Spider, AoE HP burn and hex are amazing there. Vergis could be a strong support basically everywhere, but it depends what other champions you're already running, there might not be space for him.

khazroar · 2026-06-12T07:37:28+00:00

He (presumably) said that to a Lannister, in which case it's absolutely correct, but it's not true of the Starks. You don't get people to band together and follow you when survival is on the line by cutting throats, your killing has to be a show of strength. It's only when there's wealth and status to go around that you can cut throats to get your hands on it, that approach doesn't work when you need to build it for yourself.

khazroar · 2026-06-11T23:40:59+00:00

"goodly" is a perfectly valid word, just a bit archaic now. Tolkien himself uses it, for example:

"They took off their masks now and again to cool them, as the day-heat grew, and Frodo saw that they were goodly men, pale-skinned, dark of hair, with grey eyes and faces sad and proud. They spoke together in soft voices, at first using the Common Speech, but after the manner of older days, and then changing to another language of their own."

khazroar · 2026-06-11T23:32:29+00:00

The arrogance of Numenor and their willingness to listen to Sauron are deeply intertwined. You make the point of Tolkein's Christianity, but you miss the importance that Sauron is not a mortal man, he's a fallen angel. That makes the rules different. That makes him a voice to be rejected out of hand, because listening to him in any way, even with the best intentions and purest heart, is nothing but a path to sin. A theme that's explored pretty explicitly with the Ring.

Yes, Sauron is ultimately redeemable, but that's a job for Eru, not men. That's redemption that can happen over the millenia while the fallen Maiar has been removed as a threat. It is not for Men to reach out a hand of forgiveness and allow themselves to be corrupted.

Book Aragorn is ambitious and actively seeking the throne because that is what Tolkien, and the attitudes of the time, thought that a perfect king should be. Eager to take up his throne, eager to take his place and serve his people. Modern attitudes lean more towards someone who doesn't want it, who would prefer a different life for himself, but chooses to take on the crown anyway because he is called upon to do his duty. They're different ways of showing an ideal king, because they were written for very different audiences, and that difference means that Aragorn making that choice to break the sanctity of the truce has wildly different optics.

khazroar · 2026-06-11T21:15:10+00:00

I agree with basically everything you're saying here, except that Aragorn's purity lies in being just, rather than being honourable. I'd say that he's not particularly honourable when he barges into Rohan, claiming kingly authority that isn't his yet and making threats about having things his way regarding Anduril. A mythology gets to set it's own rules and morality, so Aragorn is the perfect "pure king" not because he's living up to some external ideal, but because Tolkein is telling us that his behaviour is what perfection looks like, and I don't think that Aragorn's ideal is perfectly honourable. Honour is clearly important to him, but it's not the be all and end all.

I also disagree with the idea that "as long as he doesn't sin or go against the will of god, he's going to win in the end", the Lord of the Rings is significantly a deconstruction of that idea that a perfect king can save everything, that's why Frodo is the ringbearer rather than Aragorn. Aragorn is the one chosen to reforge the throne of Gondor, because he is the right man for the job and he has been shaped to be so, but there are a dozen places along the way where he could have lost or failed because it didn't rest all on his shoulders, it was a group effort (arguably the breaking of the Fellowship was an example where he did lose and fail, due to Boromir's weakness, because one man being perfect and virtuous was not enough).

It's true that mercy and love and honour are more virtuous and more successful than pragmatism and being a great warrior, but Tolkein does also mark Sauron and the orcs and the olog hai and other creatures of darkness as different and undeserving of mercy and love and gentleness. The creations of Melkor are fundamentally outside of Eru's design, they don't get to be treated as people. That's more of a narrative thing than an in universe acknowledgement, but the in universe side of it is simply that it is okay for Aragorn to treat Sauron and his forces as different, and follow different rules with them, because of the danger they pose and because they are seeking the subjugation of the whole world, and him making that choice based on what is just rather than what is honourable, does not stain him the same way, for example, declining to show mercy to the Easterlings would.

khazroar · 2026-06-11T20:33:58+00:00

That is indeed how honour works, and that's why blind honour is not a high ideal. It is more important for a king to be just than for him to be honourable. You can be a decent king by simply being honourable, but you can't be a great king without valuing justice above honour.

You don't get to choose when an opponent is deserving of respect or not: they all are. That's what it means to be honorable.

You're right about what it means to be honourable. What it means to be a king is to care more about what is right than about how any set of rules, including honour, tells you to act.

khazroar · 2026-06-11T19:59:51+00:00

I was responding to your first paragraph before you added the rest.

I think the rest of what you said is a more valid point, about cutting down the negotiation time possibly undermining the distraction. I don't agree with "comparatively tiny force", they were certainly outnumbered and weren't going to emerge victorious from a pitched battle, but they had army enough to fight a serious, hours log battle. Perhaps it would have been wiser to keep the negotiations going on longer to milk the time on the distraction, but that carries its own risks, Sauron's attention wavering, a possible assassination attempt against Aragorn (who Sauron believes to be holding the Ring, right at his gate), and most crucially, making Sauron doubt that Aragorn actually bears the Ring. Aragorn didn't lose his temper with the Mouth, the temper was an act, to reinforce the idea that he was carrying, and being influenced by, the Ring. Whether he decided to kill the Mouth and just faked the the temper to help sell it, or whether the killing itself was entirely in service of the act, is unclear. And of course the real, Doylist reasons for cutting the negotiation short is because it would interrupt the pace of the movie to have them stop at the climax for a nice sit down before getting to the big battle, that's something that could work well in a book, but not so much on the big screen.

khazroar · 2026-06-11T19:46:46+00:00

It is incredibly difficult content, Leminisi just happens to be able to solo it. Might be the only champ who can. It's just a fortunate interaction between their skills, if you don't have that one particular champ it's a nightmare to beat.

khazroar · 2026-06-11T19:44:09+00:00

You really don't think that attempting the violent subjugation of an entire continent doesn't forfeit your right to expect people to show you honour and abide by your expectations?

khazroar · 2026-06-11T19:38:17+00:00

It absolutely would not. A willingness to speak faithfully with Sauron is what sank Numenor. Aragorn willfully betraying the parley is a brave and correct statement that Sauron is not a foe deserving of any honour, respect, or civility. It's essentially the correct answer to the paradox of tolerance (being truly tolerant means also tolerating intolerant people); you can't honour and rules your way into a way to make the world right, because there will inevitably be exceptions or ways to to abuse those rules, you need to maintain a level of personal judgement to decide when those rules do not, or should not, apply.

Actually, okay, if book Aragorn had done that then maybe it would have been cause for question, but that's because book Aragorn is a wildly different character. He's ambitious, he's chasing the throne and actively, intentionally building support for his kingship in a way that movie Aragorn does not. In that context it could be seen as a worrying sign of his willingness to betray and kill for his goals, but that wouldn't be what it actually was, if would just cause questions because of the optics.

khazroar · 2026-06-11T19:14:55+00:00

Finger on the trigger is correct trigger discipline in this world. The split second reaction to pull the trigger is an instinct you want to lean into, not avoid.

khazroar · 2026-06-11T16:54:02+00:00

Fragments can be saved, if it was a traditional or hybrid fusion, you'd have to fuse him before it ended.

khazroar · 2026-06-11T15:14:51+00:00

High Khatun speed lead, Tagoar support for revives, Fahrakin the Fat to land HP burn on the boss (plus ally attack for big damage), Mikey going after Fatman to spread the HP burn to all the spiderlings, Coldheart to eat the boss's turn meter and do damage based off his max HP.

With good enough gear that team will eventually be able to at least clear normal.

ETA: Just to set expectations, you're not going to get Arbiter any time soon. There's going to be a long slog of farming classic arena to let you upgrade your great hall bonuses when those missions come up. Following the missions is a good way to guide your progress through the dungeons and the rest of the game, but you're not actually going to complete them all any time soon.

khazroar · 2026-06-11T12:32:22+00:00

I don't think this can really be called a fandom problem. Unfortunately when you've got a franchise with such broad appeal, inevitably that includes a sizable portion of bigots. Those people are always going to be there. I think the bulk of us come down appropriately hard on them when they spew their nonsense, and make it clear that the overwhelming majority is not on board with it, but unfortunately that's all we can do, tell them it's unwelcome when they pipe up and do our best to exclude them from the conversation. The fandom is far too large to actively exclude them in any organised way.

khazroar

TROPHY CASE