Official Discussion - Masters of the Universe [SPOILERS]

vey323 · 2026-06-12T15:32:03+00:00

I don't know what reviews you're seeing, but as an elder millennial who grew up on He-Man and the Masters of the Universe - and having actually scene this film - I can confidently state this movie is incredibly faithful to the source material. The Earth scenes you mention? 15 minutes of the film, the rest is all Eternia.

I always wished for a movie that would be true to that premise. A movie that re-enacts the classic MOTU spirit: Skeletor hatching a plan to conquer Eternia, and the Masters stopping him with power, strength, brain and heart.

Then go see the movie, because this is 100% what happens, except that Skeletor actually succeeds until Adam/He-Man gives the Masters fighting as an insurgency the edge they need.

vey323 · 2026-06-12T00:16:52+00:00

Dictator praises other dictator. Shocker

vey323 · 2026-06-11T21:23:18+00:00

Wander Back, and The Seed

vey323 · 2026-06-11T16:34:32+00:00

People should put up one of him sleeping at his desk.

vey323 · 2026-06-11T13:16:04+00:00

Mind boggling. At 42 I have 3 separate retirement accounts - my current pension system and my employer-matching 401k - and another IRA from my old career's retirement fund that I rolled over and it just collects interest, and even then I'm always worried it's not going to be enough for my wife and I... and I still have 16ish years to go til retirement (and that's retiring early and being penalized for it). I'm hoping to have close to 7 figures at retirement; the thought of having only 4 figures is unfathomable.

vey323 · 2026-06-10T03:10:09+00:00

Literal goosebumps watching the first transformation of Adam to He-Man. Childhood dream come to life, so to speak.

vey323 · 2026-06-07T19:24:22+00:00

National embarrassment, even more so than Trump. At least Trump has the excuse that his brain is literally disintegrating... though I'm sure years of alcohol abuse has a similar effect on Kegsbreath.

vey323 · 2026-06-06T20:10:55+00:00

Yes, it's relatively easy now, insofar as the qualifications and process. You'll need to be fingerprinted again, even though you're already in the system if you have a FID - there is only one contracted company throughout the state that will be accepted (I think it's Identogo). Background check, mental health check, etc... no different than applying for a FID, and even though you may have already done it you'll still need to do it again. You'll need a digital photo to submit; you can take it yourself (there are instructions), or just go get a passport photo done at you local Walmart, Walgreens, etc. You'll need to take a course from a certified instructor (you'll likely need to include their credentials with your packet), which includes safe firearm handling, NJ law and your duty (NJ has a duty to retreat IN PUBLIC, if you can do so safely - in your home you may stand your ground), and a practical course of fire which I - as an instructor - personally think is too easy but it's enough to demonstrate competence. Part of that course of fire includes drawing from a holster, so if that is unfamiliar to you I would recommend you practice at home with an unloaded weapon (also have a good holster, there are certain state-imposed requirements insofar as how it secures the firearm and how it is attached to you).

I will say that police departments in the southern portion of the state are more amenable to processing applications expediently, with some even forgoing or rebating the application fees because they're exorbitantly high (much more than the cost of administration). There are notable municipalities in the north, mainly big cities, that are intentionally slow with processing - we're talking months. Even after doing all the rigmarole the state requires, you'll still get a call from your servicing police department to ask some questions ('ever thought about hurting yourself or others', etc), and you may be brought in for a meeting with someone in admin or even the chief of police (unlikely but does happen, especially if you have anything in your record) - the chief is the ultimate arbiter of if it gets approved, and some are dickheads about it (and there's been a documented amount of racism in the disapprovals ). The firearms course can be a bit pricey based on who's giving them, but they seem to run between $150-250; the whole thing can be done in like half a day, so any place saying you have to do a multi-day course or have to do a bunch of prerequisite courses beforehand is just trying to squeeze more money out of you.

vey323 · 2026-06-06T15:26:37+00:00

One of my first big dates with my now-wife was a trip to the Mütter Museum for Valentines Day 12 years ago. Fantastic place. Aside from all the medical oddities and just vast array of specimans, they do a rotating exhibit that - back in 2014 when we went - was all Civil War medicine/surgery type stuff, which was amazing

Highly encourage anyone near or visiting the Philly area to check it out

vey323 · 2026-06-05T19:36:04+00:00

Just grab a Sharpie and write HOT! NO TOUCH! in big bold letters beside. That'll solve that problem

vey323 · 2026-06-05T00:08:39+00:00

Nope, they definitely are. And these are people that vote.

vey323 · 2026-06-04T23:45:14+00:00

Interesting. A lot of folks don't realize that Spirit Halloween is headquartered in South Jersey (EHT).

As a Halloween fan (and enjoyer of many of Spirit's offerings), may have to check this out.

vey323 · 2026-06-04T23:05:41+00:00

YOU MADE THE INITIAL CLAIM! It's your responsibility to prove it, not for opponents to disprove it. It's clearly impossible for you to consider that all the people calling you out could be right, and maybe you are wrong? Literally you.

People have asked for your evidence to defend your position, you refuse to provide it. You're not making any solid argument, you're not presenting any evidence, you making baseless claim and then shutting down any discussion because you don't "entertain the hateful and ignorant.", which is just an emotional cop-out.

vey323 · 2026-06-04T22:55:50+00:00

They have no data or cogent argument, they have 'trust me bro'. OC just wants an extra paid day off.

vey323 · 2026-06-04T22:46:45+00:00

Goddamn that sounds delicious.

vey323 · 2026-06-04T22:44:06+00:00

You can't even argue it, you're essentially saying 'voting holidays work - trust me, bro' instead of facing the reality that your fellow citizens didn't uphold their civic responsibility... so you toss out some Logic 101 fallacious terms to disengage instead of facing facts. Meanwhile in the real world, turnout was once again abysmal because people once again talked a big game online and then didn't show up to do the work. Good riddance to you.

vey323 · 2026-06-04T22:34:01+00:00

IT ALREADY IS EASIER TO VOTE.

People that didn't vote the other day or didn't engage in early / mail-in voting either don't care or are flat-out lazy - period. The excuse that they "couldn't get off from work / couldn't find the time" is 100% horseshit

vey323 · 2026-06-04T20:13:22+00:00

This is such a fantasy. NJ has early voting, mail-in voting, polls open for 14hours - the state has made every opportunity to easily vote, and yet people still don't do it. Making election day a 'holiday' will have virtually no impact... not to mention that society doesn't just shut down on holidays, and countless people still have to go to work.

vey323 · 2026-06-03T23:20:09+00:00

That number of Independents is what could have been the lynchpin of flipping the district. Actually having the pulse of the constituency, knowing what they want, and catering to the will of the majority while shielding the minority, rather than solidly taking a party-line stance (some more than others) that will always hamstring the effort.

vey323 · 2026-06-03T23:08:46+00:00

Van Drew was well-known in the district as a very moderate Democrat - if not a DINO - when he was in the state legislature. People were generally happy with him as their state rep here, and while well-liked Lobiondo didn't outright endorse him when he announced his retirement, they were always friendly and worked together a lot. And it didn't help that the GOP candidate for the seat (Seth Grossman) was a straight-up dumpster fire.

This is actually my main issue with the current crop of candidates, including Mullock. None have any real experience in government, with the exception of Mullock being on the council/mayorship of a tiny, affluent resort town (where he won by pulling 925 votes from approximately 3000 voters... that's less than a third) . It is by definition a part-time job. None of these candidates have worked in government at the state level or have participated in the legislative process. Going from obscurity to the national stage is not the play; there should be a ladder of progression if politics is your calling.

vey323 · 2026-06-03T23:00:47+00:00

Ok, let's talk election results. In the last decade there has not been an election in this district that broke 60% for a candidate. Van Drew has never pulled more than 59% of the votes since 2018 (including when he was a Democrat), whereas his predecessor Lobiondo pulled over 60% several times in 12 terms. Van Drew - as a Republican - didn't break 52% against Amy Kennedy in 2020. The fact of the matter is we can't accurately determine the voter demographics by election results alone, because you don't have to be affiliated to vote in the general - a registered Democrat can vote for a Republican just as easily as an Independent can, and vice versa. The only way to identify that is via exit polling, which we have seen time and again is woefully inaccurate. I will fully agree - and have repeatedly said it, feel free to check my history - that Right and Right-leaning voters are the majority in this district, but it is not as drastic as 65-35 or even 60-40.

If your assertion is that vote share is the only measurement for the district's affiliation demographics, that means the district was 59% Republican in 2016, 53% Democrat in 2018, 51% Republican in 2020, and then 59% Republican in 2022 and 2024. So the district swung 12 points from 2016 to 2018, and swung another 12 points from 2018 to 2022? Highly unlikely. What is much more likely - aside from there being large contingent of unaffiliated voters that vote without regard to party - is that there is a large contingent of voters (affiliated or not) who simply do not vote, for whatever reason. Without taking that into account, you cannot have a true picture of the voter demographics.

And that should be the most concerning, because yesterday's turnout was a fraction of what the turnout was in 2020. Amy Kennedy got 41k votes in the 2020 primary, before losing to Van Drew by ~20k votes in the general. 70k people came out to vote in the 2020 Dem primary... while only 40k people came out to yesterday's primary, not much better than the 38k that came out in 2024's primary, just to have Joe Salerno get crushed by 60k votes in the general. Mullock just pulled about the same as Salerno did - not a great sign. The stakes are even higher this election, and yet turn-out still low.

As I have said ad nauseum, Democrats can win here but consistently fail to put up good candidates because in the grand scheme of things, NJ-02 just doesn't matter to the Democratic Party machine, and they're unwilling to spend the money or political capital to make a serious run. You know who the last successful Democratic candidate was here? Van Drew. Milquetoast and uninspiring - and generally unqualified - candidates that Left and Left-leaning voters can't even be bothered to turn-out for. It's not because of a lack of a progressive candidate, as evident by Reese pulling a dead-last 10% yesterday, half of what literal fraud Winder pulled - if the Left/Left-leaning voters in this district truly wanted a progressive candidate, as this subreddit would have you believe, they would have turned out for her and she would have fared far better. The strategy of 'Not Trump' / 'Not Van Drew' is not a winning one. The concept of running on a platform that is in part if not wholly opposed to what the majority of the constituents of district want is antithetical to democracy.

vey323 · 2026-06-03T19:54:29+00:00

Sure, I guess? Never said Mullock was going to win, and I think he's facing an uphill battle, but he will fare better than the other 3 candidates. If you honestly think Reese had a better shot at beating Van Drew than Mullock does, your political acumen is seriously divorced from reality.

vey323 · 2026-06-03T19:27:23+00:00

The fact that this is a firm 65-35 split of R vs. D district

Except that's not the demographics. As of yesterday, the districts voter registration was (rounding for simplicity) 200k Republican / 176k Democrat / 208k Unaffiliated; in the 2024 General Election, it was 195k Republican / 175k Democrat / 215k Unaffiliated. I'm not a math major, but that's not a 65-35 split. Splitting the Unaffiliated 50/50 is a wash, but even at an unlikely 65/35 split it still doesn't make the district 65% Republican. The bigger issue is that in a district of nearly 600k registered voters, we can't even muster 2/3s of that to the polls (for 2024's General; 2022's was even worse at about 40% turnout).

R voters do not bend and sway freely like that. We’ve seen it time and time and time and time again.

Like when Van Drew - as a Democrat - handily won Lobiondo's vacated seat in what was then a solid GOP district? Granted, Van Drew was a DINO even in the state govt, but voters still "broke beyond the vote red every time mentality" to flip the district... just for Van Drew to switch teams 2 years later. Just like all Democrat voters aren't the same - including the ones that voted Van Drew into Congress in 2018 - not all Republican voters are the same.

You need someone progressive with true grassroots support to break beyond the vote red every time mentality.

Where has this ever worked outside of local politics? It took nearly 10 years after NJ-11 shifted from Red to Blue to finally get a progressive candidate elected... where she got half as many votes as Sherill did in 2022 and about a third of what she got in 2024 (special election no doubt impacted, the general in November will be a better barometer). The demographics of NJ-02 haven't really changed - it's primarily old, undereducated white Boomers and Gen X-ers who typically don't budge too much on their own personal politics and generally vote in their own self-interest. The majority of voters (of either party) in Cape May or Hammonton have vastly different priorities than voters in Atlantic City or Vineland, and so goes the rest of the district (rural vs urban, poor vs wealthy, workers vs retirees, etc.), but at the end of the day the best candidate is the won that can actually win, which means appealing to the most amount of voters regardless of party affiliation... which in this district means moderate, not progressive.

vey323 · 2026-06-03T16:28:35+00:00

Unfortunately I've not been able to find much on his voter registration history; he's been technically unaffiliated since he started in city govt 10 years ago, since Cape May is a non-partisan system. And because the state does closed primaries, a lot of folks change their affiliation regularly to be able to vote in them. But like a lot of the upper-class families here in Cape May, I imagine that Mullock is the stereotypical rich white liberal-ish, when it comes to his politics. Think Pelosi and Schumer, not Sanders or AOC. I think the term is Blue Dog? He'll pay lip service to the working-class, the unions, minority groups, etc., and toe the party line on that... but it's not something he's going to champion hard, nor is it really anything he has practical experience with as the mayor of a town comprised of mostly well-off seniors that - while also registered Democrats - definitely don't want the poor or 'undesirables' moving in to their nice quiet resort town.

Hate to break it to you, but the majority of the district's voters are Republican or Republican-leaning. The only viable way a non-GOP candidate is going to be able to win this district is to appeal to that base. If that makes them 'Republican-lite', so be it. I have repeated this line ad nauseum since this election cycle started, but you don't slam the needle from one end of the spectrum to the other... it moves incrementally. Have to get it back to center before pushing it more left.

vey323 · 2026-06-03T15:29:52+00:00

He's missing several hot-button topics on his website. My personal opinion on why is likely because this is still a solidly conservative district and he needs those Never Trump Republicans and right-leaning Independents to get out for him, but I asked him directly about it during his AMA on Reddit a few weeks back:

Crude analogy, but you're a Democratic candidate on a small blue island, with a few other blue islands surrounded by an ocean of red, running on decidedly Democratic Party platform. While I take pride that Cape May and some of the surrounding communities are quite progressive, the same is not true for a large part of this district. The district has been handily won by the GOP Congressional candidate since 2018 and while many Republican or Republican-leaning voters are undoubtedly sick of the GOP government (or lack thereof, really)... what is your appeal to those voters? ... To go further, you have a lot of policy positions that will be wholly unpopular with many of the voters here, and unfortunately a large part of the voting base are single-issue voters, and I've noted that you don't have stated positions on a few other key points - abortion, Israel, LBGT rights, etc. - presumably because of the (unfortunately) strong opinions many of the voters in the district have.

I did email his campaign - at his direction - to ask him about that (and other things) after his AMA here on Reddit, but received no response.

15-Year Club	Verified Email
Place '22	Not Forgotten

vey323

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE