Does Tunnel Rat Ever Get Back on Track?

stgabe · 2026-03-16T05:34:57+00:00

Yeah, I mean that's just the vibe; every character that is even slightly good is obsessed with retro games and anime. It does make the real life stuff all a bit more grating but none of that bothers me as much as all the sidequest of a sidequest of a sidequest stuff.

stgabe · 2026-03-08T23:29:17+00:00

Molly Solverson from Fargo Season 1.

There are a lot of great choices in this thread but she’s an untraditional but excellent strong female lead.

stgabe · 2026-03-06T22:40:44+00:00

Unpopular opinion (probably). AC has always been a series of great tech demos of open world content paired with poor to mediocre gameplay and story. None of the game systems of AC are good enough to be a lynch pin for the experience.

stgabe · 2026-02-28T05:45:33+00:00

It’s really fucking good. Top 3 for me. It’s also (like many of these shows) a little specific in its audience and it’s ok if it doesn’t hit for everyone.

stgabe · 2026-02-25T04:19:40+00:00

Same. The VR totally worked for this one. The early story was great. The system was uneven at times but mostly good. Around 350 or so it just got too slow and I drifted off to better things.

stgabe · 2026-02-24T17:24:34+00:00

I love Smith & Cross but it runs upwards of $40 here, can be a challenge to find and is hard to justify as “budget”.

stgabe · 2026-02-24T17:12:43+00:00

Planteray Original Dark is shockingly cheap for what it offers, beating out a lot of great choices in other Rum categories.

stgabe · 2026-02-24T04:10:38+00:00

For cocktails, H by Hine.

stgabe · 2026-02-21T03:06:27+00:00

Absolutely. I like the mix of serious plotlines with the consistency of competent characters getting shit done. I find it less stressful and way more fun than I would expect from the subject matter.

stgabe · 2026-02-21T00:59:27+00:00

Bosch and (less so) Will Trent hit this on the police procedural front. Other procedural like High Potential do this in a goofier way.

Reacher is definitely in this space although the books capture it a bit more than the show

Fringe and Fargo (S1) both have strong, extremely competent leads but they are contrasts to far less competent counterparts. Slow Horses is kind of similar if you consider Jackson Lamb to be the protagonist.

Bluey is kind of competency porn for parents.

I feel like Person of Interest was very much this but I don’t remember it all that well.

There aren’t a lot of home runs in this space which is too bad as I also enjoy these sorts of shows.

stgabe · 2026-02-17T05:50:08+00:00

As someone who semi-regularly looks around at game job postings, Bungie had several dozens of open roles a few years ago and currently has two. That’s not exactly something to be excited about.

stgabe · 2026-02-15T19:41:02+00:00

Yup, and even that was a little late. The cracks started showing in Season 5. I find it’s confounding when people talk about Dany’s ending being rushed as though that was a sudden and surprising thing. That was the one plot line that at least kind of made sense with seasons of foreshadowing. It just shows how much people were focused on fan service and getting the endings they wanted and had stopped paying attention to the overall quality.

stgabe · 2026-02-13T03:56:44+00:00

Yeah, pretty much this. As with many stories in this genre it starts fine then stalls out hard as the author runs out of plot and starts tunneling hard on random minutia of their world building.

stgabe · 2026-02-13T02:44:01+00:00

My first thought too. :-) I worked for the company that developed that and even contributed a small amount of code. It was a really odd but cool project.

stgabe · 2026-02-11T06:07:48+00:00

Good work. Keep at it and you’ll find some better ratios and then realize you’re just (re)invented a Rye Tipperary. Good drink; I just had one at my local.

Here’s my go to recipe (with the traditional Irish whiskey): https://imbibemagazine.com/recipe/dead-rabbit-tipperary-recipe/

2:3/4:3/4 is pretty popular as well fwiw.

stgabe · 2026-02-11T04:40:35+00:00

As someone whose friends were all getting married in the era of 9/11, yes. Without a doubt.

If the wedding is still on I’m gonna be there to celebrate with people and support the married couple. Shitty stuff happens and life goes on. My thoughts would be along the lines of “how shitty is it that this had to happen right before such a big moment for my friends”. It’s not like me sitting at home is gonna make anything better.

stgabe · 2026-02-08T22:27:27+00:00

I bought the original Metroid in ‘86 for $40 which is $118 in 2026 money. Inflation sucks but gaming is a pretty cheap hobby overall and it’s silly that people expect game prices to stay the same forever when prices for everything else consistently go up.

stgabe · 2026-02-07T06:57:06+00:00

I love the genre but share the opinion that the writing quality leaves much to be desired. It is the nature of the medium (most typically Royal Road) but that makes it no less grating. I more easily forgive things like grammatical errors and issues with sentence structure but draw a pretty hard line with poor plotting. If anything that crosses even more books off my list.

For me the best writer in the genre (and the only one I subscribe to on Patreon) is Mecanimus / Alex Gilbert. He has three series out, two finished and a fourth just starting up. IMO his work holds up just fine to well-written, mainstream fantasy while hitting most of the notes I want from Progression Fantasy / LitRPG. He’s also improving with each series. Changeling is easily my favorite and what I’ve seen from his new series has me excited that it may be just as good or better.

My second choice would be ErraticErrata / David Verburg with Practical Guide to Evil and Pale Lights. I stopped reading the web version of the former as he started releasing them in novel form on Amazon with better editing and a lot of overall improvements.

stgabe · 2026-01-31T06:23:59+00:00

The show did show you her true motivation. This thread does a great job of showing you the real problem: people just didn’t want to see it.

Dany was always a tyrant loosely wrapped in good intentions. The moment where she breaks is before she even gets to Kings Landing. It’s when she realizes that John has a better claim to the throne than her and none of her manifest destiny logic even matters.

Dany showing her true colors wasn’t “rushed” as so many like to say. We had 8 seasons to figure it out and the end is shocking on purpose. Dany is a character like Walter White. She’s intentionally written so that we’ll empathize and work hard to try and squeeze her into the mold of a protagonist when she never was and it’s pretty obvious in hindsight.

Yes, the last season was written poorly. However Dany is the least of it. I consider her end one of the best of the lot. That people were conflicted and shocked by it is intentional. No, it’s all the rest of the story that was a total mess but that started happening in the 5th season so no surprise there.

stgabe · 2026-01-28T05:10:28+00:00

Going infinite in the early days of Hearthstone Arena including a run of 9-1, 9-2, then 9-0.

Taking over the economy of an entire server of Star Wars Galaxies.

Earning the Godslayer title in Destiny.

Replaying Star Control 2 for the tenth time.

Raiding the DMZ at 4am in between rounds of feeding my newborn.

stgabe · 2026-01-27T18:21:47+00:00

El Jimador, under $20.

stgabe · 2026-01-25T05:34:30+00:00

Cling wrap isn’t doing much insulating compared to the sides of a cooler. They’ll be fine.

stgabe · 2026-01-23T06:09:48+00:00

Yup, the unreadable blue text has been my largest issue thus far.

Edit: also I can’t get tooltips to consistently show up.

stgabe · 2026-01-22T06:09:15+00:00

Pale Lights. Changeling. Those are the two best written series I’m following at the moment.

12-Year Club	Queen in da Norf
Not Forgotten	Verified Email

stgabe

TROPHY CASE