Bay 12 Games Forum

Hour drive in likely inclement weather in a car (full of ants!) that may or may not make the trip, carrying along a cell phone that may or may not function, while on about two hours of sleep (because anxiety, whee), no breakfast, and not really enough spare cash to fix things should something go tits up in the process. Looking forward to this, I am not.

Gonna' do it anyway. Fuck nerves, get mobile.

Ha, yeah, bad writing is bad writing pretty much regardless as to emotional content, and, well, sturgeon's law. Mainstream media isn't exactly exempt from it Massive understatement is massive.

As for the growth... yeah, that's pretty much one of the primary reasons I don't have much tolerance for the more negative media nowadays. I've grown all I can grow from consuming media related to it, near as I can tell*. More positive stuff doesn't have much more in the way of that sort of gains, but hell, if I'm going to be doing something relatively useless anyway, might as well be something cheerful, y'know? Or at least interesting. And outside of the sciences, the world's just... not terribly interesting to me anymore, yeah. Interesting enough to keep at it, and do what I can to make it more interesting**, but not to choose it over something else when there's an option involved.

I do have more tolerance for negatives when there's interesting world building going on. My stomach for non-sci-fi/fantasy stuff tanked years, years ago. Little bit of wiggle room for alt-history stuff, but... I got tapped out insofar as near-reality stuff goes when I was much younger. Being who I am, I still give it a go every once in a while (couple times a year or thereabouts, in regards to various medias), but the pattern's been holding pretty steady. I get enough of the world when I go outside and get involved with it. Media's for other stuff, for me. Generally something more interesting (that doesn't involve craploads of math to be able to comprehend, as most of the interesting stuff we're doing in real life does.).

*And what little gains I occasionally notice myself getting from it, I notice with considerably higher frequency reading philosophy, psychology, or sociology, and with considerably higher efficiency in terms of time investment. They tend to be considerably more direct and to the point.
** It's a fairly fundamental thing. What is more pleasing is more interesting, yes? More attractive. Unless something has gone particularly wrong, or there's some functional benefit from it, we don't inherently seek unpleasantness or less pleasing things -- it doesn't draw interest. Improving peoples lives, helping out, etc., so forth, so on -- just as much as humor and suchlike goes, doing such things makes the world more interesting. Negative emotions are low energy or self-destructive (and thus unsustainable), positive ones high energy or self-reinforcing (and thus sustainable). It follows that enhancing and reinforcing positives makes the world a higher energy place, for a longer period of time. More interesting, yes.

P.S. Past midnight makes my head fuzzy some days. Really should be sleeping

Bleh. Not crap, but unpleasant? Yeah, usually. I've said it elsewhere in relation to classical literature... if I want my nose rubbed in the human condition, I'll turn on the news or walk outside. S'not what I'm looking for when I look for entertainment. I got tired of that when I was in my teens. It doesn't improve my day or otherwise make me a better person when I watch/read/play something that goes to shit. I tried many dozen times when I was younger to get anything but depression or annoyance out of that stuff, and try occasionally still. Doesn't do it for me.

Sufficient excellence in other areas may persuade me to read/play it anyway, but yeah, a down note ending is a negative for me. Most of the time. Occasionally it's hilarious, and I'm down with those.

Ambivalent endings are the best, though, imo. Not only do they tend to be most realistic, from what I've seen, they allow room for the creative space to extend beyond the media in question. You can have an ending that is neither happy nor sad, or, more likely, some combination of the two. Those seem to work out better, for me. More likely to produce decent fanfiction

That's generally my way of looking at it, yeah. For a brawler in particular, the penultimate rewards are pretty lackluster (unless, maybe, you're picking up stone alchemy) -- wild growth, iirc, is kinda' buggy or something and pretty crappy because of it, taint of telepathy is superfluous (you've got track), the invuln pot is a few turns of invincibility but it's a one-shot deal. Lifebinding emerald's pretty great, but a non-stone brawler doesn't really have the means to get much out of it... or the interest. Regen-tank's not really a brawler thing, iirc, and about the only non-regen/heal class that likes the emerald is mindslayers (It's about the earliest tier five gem you can get, assuming you get lucky with ingredients.).

So I'd say aim for the talent points, both sets if possible, then pick up stats as able. If you can manage both talent point pots and even one of the stat pots, that's like two free level ups, which is pretty sexy.

What's on the ground can go up. What goes up, comes down. Sometimes it brings friends!

Presumably. May have just meant once it was on the ground. I'd guess it can get all mixed up and nasty if it sticks around long enough, or something. I wouldn't know, it's snowed where I live precisely once in my lifetime (Around '93, iirc), and that was gone before midday.

Hey, drum up a few million bucks and you might be able to join in on the national level. Local, you just need generally more-than-everyone-else (and possibly suck off [figuratively, literally... eh.] a few of the bigger good-ol'-boys clubs in your area), and maybe a good chunk of land. That never hurts.

If you're poor, or unwilling to blow the local powers-that-be... yeah, just give up. I don't think it's strictly impossible, per se, but practically it's not going to happen. The logistics of running a campaign puts involvement from a leadership position pretty much completely outside of the realm of possibility for someone without the necessary resources and connections.

Which is frankly leaning both toward meta-politics and goddamn depressing, so enough of that from me t'night.

Ohh wait... Hanslanda may not live in Canada or the USA... so yeah they can likely send him to prison and beat him.

Hans is in the US, yeah, but due to the situation he's in they kinda' can toss 'im in prison. You have to remember that the so called war on drugs kinda' shits over a lot of our justice system doing what it does.

Ugh. Pretty much the last intact part of my noise-blocking thingies finally broke. It's now being held together pretty much entirely by duct tape. Also had to finish cutting into it so one of the broken ear-thing's peg-hole... whatsits...'s stump could catch and hold, 'cause I had to tape the newly broken part a further up than it normally sat, resulting in a headset tight enough to kinda' hurt.

General point being I could probably stand to get a new one sooner or later. Hopefully something a little more sturdy. These things have lasted about a year, but maybe 3/4ths of that was with pieces missing and/or tape assistance.