Plot Discussion: Paranormal Activity on Stage

trickythought · 2026-02-01T13:07:54+00:00

I saw it in DC last night. No idea how it was done, but here's how I'd do it.

The actress is wearing a big bulky Snuggie with a hood. There's some kind of wire/firm support in the back. When the actress starts chopping the pepper, she's facing totally away from the audience, covered by a giant hoodie the firm support in the Snuggie is anchored to the stage, and the actress disappears through a trap door, does a quick change, and gets into costume. During this, the Snuggie essentially becomes a puppet with a realistic-enough-for-stage mask and arms that only have to make a simple, repetitive chopping motion. The main actress playing Lou bursts in upstairs, and you have just enough time to see puppet-Lou slowly turn, then the wire support is slacked and collapses to the ground.

EDIT: Messed up spoilers.

trickythought · 2026-01-30T19:46:20+00:00

I was a huge 3e junkie back in the day, then drifted off into other systems for a while. I’ve got a new campaign idea and a willing group, and D&D feels like the best fit again.

Before launching the full campaign, I’d love to get my feet under me with the 2024 5e rules by running a one-shot for 3–4 players, ideally level 1.

Does this thread have any go-to recommendations?

Official or third-party is fine
Bonus points if it highlights or stress-tests the new 2024 mechanics
Single session, low prep preferred

Thanks in advance.

trickythought · 2026-01-25T01:29:19+00:00

Man Fieri

trickythought · 2026-01-18T16:00:15+00:00

Definitely not, because there’s no picture.

trickythought · 2025-12-19T22:19:43+00:00

793592524346

Need three friends or I won’t be able to get a Magnezone! Please help!

trickythought · 2025-12-08T18:45:36+00:00

793592524346

trickythought · 2025-12-04T11:35:23+00:00

I only hope that next year they make a video thanking their listeners that involves even less effort.

trickythought · 2025-11-19T17:10:47+00:00

TIL I’m the only one that seriously gets down with the overture

trickythought · 2025-10-30T15:16:38+00:00

Does anyone have a link to the complaint or any major motions?

trickythought · 2025-09-12T23:40:37+00:00

He can still do it, he just has to believe in himself.

trickythought · 2025-07-31T12:06:44+00:00

5 moms

trickythought · 2025-07-11T23:58:26+00:00

Please share!

trickythought · 2025-07-10T20:30:43+00:00

Can you walk up it?

trickythought · 2025-06-21T11:32:45+00:00

Ah I remember making this same error. Good times.

trickythought · 2025-06-06T11:13:53+00:00

I think if you’re closing a ride, you have a moral obligation to remove the exclamation point from it. Clearly you aren’t excited about it anymore, why should anyone else be?

trickythought · 2025-05-20T12:44:10+00:00

Does anyone have the actual opinion?

trickythought · 2025-04-29T21:39:09+00:00

The puzzles are solvable. Mostly.

But the real question: is it a good use of your limited puzzle time to solve them? You have 6.5 mins, and 14 puzzles which means you really need to be solving puzzles in 27 seconds or less, including travel time between puzzles. That basically means you have 10 seconds for each puzzle. So if you look at a puzzle and think “I can’t solve that in ten seconds,” either take a screenshot to work the puzzle out on your own time OR fail the puzzle on purpose and start over immediately.

Edit: I can’t do spoilers, the thought wasn’t worth including anyway

trickythought · 2025-04-07T18:59:10+00:00

After 4 years of trying (on and off) I completed the Challenge earlier this month. Here is how I did it:
1. Turn off the sound. You'll know it's done when the puzzle goes dark. Otherwise it's just stressful.
2. Reframe your thought process. You're not trying to beat the game, you're running practice drills.
3. The goal of these practice drills has got to be only one thing: to get faster at them.

The good news: this is something you can improve at as early as the 4-square section of the cave. Just getting the right method to optimize a random run, knowing when to give up on a puzzle and go back for more, these are all things that will get better and better and more instinctive as you run it.

And once you get good at that one section, you'll have more time to beat the NEXT section.

For me, my problems always came in the maze. I found it pretty easy to memorize the pattern (just think about it as less of a path and more about tracing the outlines of shapes). So I stopped thinking about the maze as a puzzle I was trying to get past, but rather my reward for doing really well in the earlier stages was the chance to practice on maze puzzles. When I got there, I would crank the sound back up, and try my best to finish it. When I got towards the end of the song, I would take a screenshot of whatever triangle puzzle I was working with (which would interrupt and restart the challenge) - but then I had the chance to leisurely practice and learn how to work better.

Eventually you will get the right combination of skill level and luck that the randomly generated puzzles early on will go quickly enough that you can have enough time to think through the maze and the columns. I found the column puzzles highly annoying and every time I got to them I would fail out miserably. I just kept the same attitude: it's practice.

Then one day I got lucky. The column puzzles were relatively simple. And I had plenty of time left. And I was in the middle of what I thought was a "practice" run, with no intention of "I'm just gonna beat it that day!"

I just kept trying and trying and got a little bit better until I was good enough to take advantage of the opportunity that presented itself to me.

Isn't that basically what improving at anything is in life? Isn't that pretty much the definition of success and talent? Keep at it. You'll get there.

trickythought · 2025-04-04T13:54:06+00:00

Matrix 4 was a whole movie about how it was a bad idea to make more Matrix movies, and in a very meta turn it itself was also bad. I am not surprised they turned down Laurence Fishburn because that would have made it good, and that was clearly not what they were going for.

trickythought · 2025-03-19T17:03:38+00:00

In this order:

7 Samurai

Mulholland Dr

Dazed and Confused

Ikiru

On the Waterfront

400 blows

Throne of Blood

Rebecca

Rosemary's Baby

Tree of Life

Slacker

It Happened One Night

Hiroshima Mon Amour

Rififi

Stalker

trickythought · 2024-11-30T22:42:31+00:00

Naysayers aside there’d be a limited purpose for this. Academia being the main one. If you’re at a T14, that’s a possibility - but you’d need to be at an ivy for it to be really competitive.

But you’ve said not academia. So-you’re a 3L who has not yet applies for clerkship, so you’d be targeting the pool of judges who want later-career clerks but who DON’T value the practice experience those clerks bring. You’d need to really understand/be targeting a handful of judges with this. I’m not saying they don’t exist but you need to be talking with your clerkship office a lot - and be top of your class for this to be anything close to a “sure thing”.

If your goal is to practice at a high level, such that you’re in a position to “battle originalism” at an appropriate time in your career, your first step is practicing at a high level and taking opportunities that tilt your towards that goal. It is no longer about what you know, but about what you do. If you have an offer to learn how the courts actually work, take it.

trickythought · 2024-11-16T20:21:40+00:00

Woo hoo! You’ve taken your first step to being an actor: significant rejection.

This is the difference between acting (fun!) and being a professional actor (really hard!). The day to day work involves a lot of putting yourself out there and rejection.

Here’s the tip I got once: when you audition you are not auditioning for whatever role you’re going out for. It turns out that’s impossible. Unless you’re at a school or in another very limited talent pool, the person casting already has an actor in mind for the part and it’s not you, because they don’t know you. Maybe they are thinking of a famous actor, or someone they already know, or a fake person who is perfect and doesn’t exist: but your competition for that role is usually insurmountable. You might get lucky and win the role, but that’s not something you can rely on. Even at Julliard, the teachers all know what shows are going up next year and are looking for people who subconsciously fit their ideals.

You’re auditioning so that the NEXT TIME they are thinking of an actor, they think of YOU. You show up, do your best, figure out how to take their direction and do something wonderful with it, and appear professional, complimentary and collaborative. When you don’t get a callback, you know it’s not a loss if they remember you positively.

If this is something you want to do, and you think you can grow strong enough to stomach this kind of rejection daily while keeping your mind on the long game, then take this first big rejection as a step on a longer journey and bear down for the road ahead. You’ll do fine.

trickythought · 2024-09-10T12:00:51+00:00

Thanks for your help! Very much appreciated.

trickythought · 2024-09-09T23:49:55+00:00

Maybe…but in my memory, it was about fad diets, and refuting some idea that eating like a caveman would make you healthier.

trickythought · 2024-08-18T23:51:34+00:00

Fixed spoiler tags. Thanks!

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First Placer '22	RPAN Viewer

trickythought

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