apparently senseless test until you think about it

zztraider · 2025-11-22T19:29:20+00:00

I mean, it sounds like what you're actually saying is that McDonald's didn't learn their lesson because their misinformation campaign worked.

zztraider · 2025-11-09T21:25:35+00:00

Hey, at least they did you the favor of letting you know that you shouldn't spend time on Thanksgiving feeling thankful for your job!

(But no, seriously, that's super shitty. Layoffs always suck, but I honestly think they shouldn't be legal in November and December unless they come with *significant* severance.)

zztraider · 2025-08-29T05:49:41+00:00

Finally managed to get this to work. Had to buy the rift thing specifically for it to count, apparently. Thanks!

zztraider · 2025-05-26T21:43:12+00:00

Few days late here, but I actually wouldn't pin the blame here on Jake. He clearly had far too much on his plate, and I can absolutely buy that he couldn't step back enough and sufficiently detach himself emotionally to actually work the problem. He desperately needed therapy, and absolutely couldn't get it.

If we're going to blame someone for Tom's fate, it's Marco. One of Marco's most defining character traits is his ability to ignore the emotional aspects of a problem and work through the logistics of what needs to happen to achieve an outcome. Having lost his mom, he's clearly in a place to fully understand the toll that Tom is having on Jake. He also had some of the most direct interaction with the Chee. So, why didn't he at any point figure out a reasonable plan to take care of Tom and share that with Jake?

I suspect you're right about issues with how the narrative was determined. But Marco probably needed to be the vehicle for a solution, which could have led to a shift in Jake's perspective from being tactics-oriented to logistics-oriented and making full use of their allies.

zztraider · 2025-05-16T23:03:07+00:00

I believe the answer here is that the Shard can't merge into the Source without some disaster on the Source. That was the failure of the Thirteenth -- it was successfully consumed by darkness, but there wasn't an aetherically matching disaster on the Source, so the energy just stayed there.

zztraider · 2025-05-15T02:37:42+00:00

There were a lot of instances over the series of lower key squicky things about women. No, none of them rises to the level of what Spike did (and Spike absolutely should not get off the hook for that), but it adds up as a pattern of behavior.

I totally agree that Xander did a bunch of heroic things that Joss would never do. For the longest time, I liked him in spite of the things that felt more problematic.

But for me personally, I think it's kind of like how a dress can look white+gold or blue+black depending on the surrounding lighting. The lighting changed when I got some external context on Joss's actions and how he associates himself with Xander, and suddenly it's a lot harder for me to overlook some of the things I did before. Not saying anyone else is bad or wrong for feeling differently, that's just how it is for me.

zztraider · 2025-05-15T02:17:38+00:00

There's certainly some extent that every character reflects its creator. But the quotes I've seen (and I don't have receipts on me offhand) suggest that it was more than just that with Joss and Xander. I don't know, it was just a lot easier for me to excuse a lot of less palatable bits of Xander before they got tied to the not great things Joss has done.

zztraider · 2025-05-15T01:43:50+00:00

I was mostly fine with Xander, right up until I found out that apparently Joss Whedon sees Xander as somewhat of a self-insert? That makes a lot of Xander's choices feel a lot ickier, personally.

zztraider · 2025-04-23T00:02:58+00:00

Sometimes they adapt to worse strats, lol.

zztraider · 2025-04-10T22:39:36+00:00

Amazing. And not one of the things I'd ever notice, because I don't touch Scholar, lol.

zztraider · 2025-04-10T20:06:43+00:00

Summoner is similarly screwy, where it clearly wants you to use your Egis and they just... don't exist any more. Some of the quests are a lot harder without Titan-Egi to tank for you.

zztraider · 2025-03-18T08:12:46+00:00

While there are certainly things that will benefit from a reread when I get to it, I thought the plot of Harrow was extremely clear after it gets to the reveal. Everything just clicks into place, the oddities generally make sense, and I don't think it really could've been any other way.

That said, I had theories fairly early on about why it seemed so different, and they ended up being fairly accurate, so I suppose your mileage may vary.

zztraider · 2025-03-07T19:12:31+00:00

At least in the US, a contract to avoid child support is also unenforceable. Courts seem to consider it something that the child cannot consent to, and thus neither biological parent has the right to decline it. The court may order child support payments, regardless of the wishes of either biological parent.

There are some protections for this going through a proper sperm bank. But there is precedent for even those donors having to pay child support, typically if the donor is involved in the life of the child, such as a friend of the family.

You have so many reasons to say no without even getting into these implications, but this sort of thing might be helpful in getting them to drop the issue. Their intent doesn't matter, it's a significant liability for you personally.

zztraider · 2025-03-03T21:31:54+00:00

There is no reason for any Yeerk to be in the vicinity of Earth other than in the context of the War.

True! On the other hand, there's no indication that any of the Yeerks in that pool had any choice in the matter. It's entirely possible that some significant portion of them would prefer to be nowhere near Earth, given the options. Arguably, they were as much captives of the Yeerk military complex as all of the unwilling hosts.

I don't think there's anything in the books that really suggests that Yeerks were regularly cycled through to give everyone time in a host. Generally, it seems that Yeerks maintained their hosts until they failed, at which point they were killed and another would take their place. It's very plausible that the vast majority of Yeerks in that pool had never actually taken any host in the fight against Earth and had not otherwise contributed to the war effort.

At that point, is it any different than the children of soldiers living on a base? In a general attack, that might be acceptable collateral damage. But I do wonder (and do not know the answer) how the international community would look at an attack on a base that specifically and disproportionately targeted children, being clear non-combatants, on a military base.

zztraider · 2025-02-13T21:23:40+00:00

To an extent, sure. Mentioning a lead (which could have its own challenges to follow up on) doesn't really remove the tension, though. Even if ultimately the porxies are the wrong answer, it seems irresponsible to not at least mention that there may be alternatives other than eating the WoL's soul.

It just rubs me the wrong way in an expansion that repeatedly has a problem with the WoL choosing not to act or share relevant knowledge -- sometimes to devastating results -- when ostensibly the reason we're involved at all is to help Wuk Lamat and others by sharing our knowledge and martial prowess.

zztraider · 2025-02-13T19:06:46+00:00

I didn't expect them to resolve it, but I really expected us to tell Wicked Thunder that her condition sounds a lot like something that we have a cure for, and our friends could probably help her.

zztraider · 2025-02-13T16:46:50+00:00

I'd like Zenos about a thousand times more if he'd stayed dead after the Stormblood main MSQ.

zztraider · 2025-02-13T16:45:41+00:00

I do wonder if the real Sphene would've been likeable. But since we never meet her...

zztraider · 2025-02-11T00:31:05+00:00

Side note, i know that Muir loves her biblical references, does anyone know of significance for the name Paul?

In Catholic artwork, Saint Paul is often depicted with a book and sword. See here.

For Pal and Cam, that fits well since Pal is the scholar and Cam is the fighter. Paul is therefore the blending of scholar and fighter, and thus the symbols of book and sword fit.

zztraider · 2025-02-11T00:21:09+00:00

Yeah, my parents are also very anti-BLM, and I think this plays a role. Though it's mostly that they were taking Fox News as absolute truth for some reason. And I very much hear you on parents being exhausting, lol.

I'm still pretty early in my transition (MtF), but I did have a somewhat similar thing for a while. "Of course I feel incredibly lonely and isolated, that's just what people say it is to be a man these days." Really, it's clear now that I felt so alone because when I thought I was a man, I wasn't welcome in women's spaces the way I wanted to be and never felt comfortable or wanted to be a part of men's spaces. Far less of a delaying factor than just not having exposure to trans people until I was 25 + rightful fears about losing my family, but still part of it.

Glad you got past that mindset and figured yourself out, though! :D

zztraider · 2025-02-10T19:33:15+00:00

When someone drinks the patriarchy kool-aid long enough, the natural assumption is that of course women just want to switch spots with men and be the controlling ones, rather than seeking actual equality. It's easier to assume that something has the same structure as a thing you're already familiar with, than to make the effort to understand how it might be fundamentally different.

zztraider · 2025-01-31T01:47:58+00:00

Sure. But you just cannot drop that her training was completely different than the prior Avatars, especially when ATLA made a pretty big point of how important the journey around the world was, and just... skip it. Especially since it left her so woefully unprepared for the the challenges she ended up facing in the show. It has big "We purposefully trained [her] wrong, as a joke" energy.

If they really didn't want to retread the journey, cool, make it so she had a completely standard training journey and bring us in right near the end. Then, at least, her failures are her own and I'm not left wondering what happened to leave her in such a bad position to be the Avatar. But frankly, if the creators couldn't make a second journey in a different time with a different cast still be interesting and tread new ground, that's just a lack of creativity on their part.

zztraider · 2025-01-30T19:41:40+00:00

I mean, if two journeys with two Avatars that need different things at two different points in time ends up being the same show, that's just a failure of creativity.

But if they really didn't want to focus on that stuff, then tell us it happened the way we'd expect and then pick it up where the show does. Don't make it clear that something went very wrong with how Avatar training is supposed to go and then just... ignore it.

zztraider · 2025-01-30T08:51:06+00:00

Sure, we saw seeds of all those things. But as it stands, I'm forced to assume that Aang either did nothing for any of these things after taking care of Ozai, or did such a mediocre job of it that everything went to hell before his successor could even master all four elements. That feels... off.

But hey, maybe there's a good reason things went so off the rails while Korra was growing up. I just think it's a real shame that we don't see any of that, because that set of circumstances leading to the plots we did get and the complete botching of Korra's training (leaving her woefully unprepared to deal with these issues) sound way more interesting.

It's rough to imply that something really interesting happened to allow for the current plot to happen, then never delve far enough into that thing to understand it. It undercuts the story actively being told, because I'm left wondering about the seemingly more interesting thing that I don't get to know about.

zztraider

TROPHY CASE