This is buried in a longer post, but I think it's worth highlighting again.
The point of civil discourse is not to uphold Victorian manners, play nice for the oppressor, or constrain activism to a specific set of rules.
The point of civil discourse is to present and exchange ideas in a manner that is compatible with human psychology.
Being inflammatory/polarizing puts people's guards up. Once you've insulted someone in an argument, no matter what a horrid bastard they might be, you've sacrificed all your credibility/pull with them. Why should they believe you know best for them/society if you've shown you don't respect them as a person?
The thought of "I don't want to argue about human rights," is fair. However, through time immemorial, we've seen that rights are a thing you are born with but have to defend from outside forces. "Defend" means arguing. Arguing effectively means being patient, default assuming the person's mind can be changed, and walking away from a conversation you don't have the energy or the temper to continue with "This is not something I think I can change your mind on, but I stand firm on my beliefs. I will not be engaging further with you on this today."
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[at unicorn fuck club]
Elon Musk: [rising from bushes] eyyyy it'sa me, elon!
JRR Tolkien: elon musk?!
Tolkien: my word! I don't think we've ever had you at OUR campfire before!
Tolkien: you're usually over there with that
Tolkien: [grumbling] midnight society
Tolkien: it's just that you're usually hanging out with Stephen king
Musk: si, Stephano king anna me
Musk: we havin a kinda, how you say, break?
GRR Martin: oooo trouble in paradise!
Musk: non non non itsa nothing like that
Musk: we stilla best friends
Martin: yeah sure ya are
Martin: just like howard and august are "best friends"
Martin: ha ha ha
Musk:
Musk: why you say it like that
Martin: hey no harm done, man, just a joke
Martin: comedy is legal now
Martin: ha ha ha
Musk:
Musk: [narrowing eyes]
Tolkien: ah yes pay no attention to George
Tolkien: we would be delighted to have such a connoisseur of good fiction here at our campfire!
Musk: datsa me!
Tolkien: so tell me
Tolkien: what did you think of my books?
Musk: i lika how they're about how war issa cool and good!
Tolkien:
Musk: i lika da badass men of gondor
Musk: cuz they just lika me!
Tolkien:
Lewis:
Martin:
Tolkien: how do you figure that, my boy?
Musk: ima badass too!
Tolkien:
Musk: datta war was won by da strong badass gondor men
Musk: cuz da hobbits, they too gay!
Musk: war issa so good!
Tolkien: my dear boy, that's not what i was trying to say at all!
Musk: mama mia!
Tolkien: i was actually trying to express that war is bad
Musk: mama mia why you no lika war?
Tolkien: i saw my best friends die in the trenches--
Musk: triggered much?
Tolkien:
Musk: lol
Tolkien:
Tolkien: well, i--
Musk: lmao roflcopter
Tolkien:
Tolkien: ok so--
Musk: comedy is legal again, libtard [laugh-cry emoji]
Tolkien: i'm beginning to understand what Stephen said
Lewis: yeah yeah i gotcha
Martin: definitely
Tolkien: how can he misinterpret my work? The meaning is obvious!
CSS Lewis: see, you have no one to blame but yourself
Lewis: now if you'd tried using some allegories like i explained--
Tolkien: shut your mouth, you Anglican traitor
Lewis: i'm just saying
Lewis: no one can misinterpret my work
Tolkien: the hell you say!
Tolkien: Allegory adds another layer of abstraction!
Tolkien: you played yourself!
Lewis: let's test that out
Lewis: elon, in Narnia, what does aslan represent?
Musk: eyyy itsa Giuseppe cristo!
Lewis: see?
Tolkien: elon GOT it?
Tolkien: ELON got it?!?
Tolkien: not gonna lie, this one hurts
[at twitter headquarters]
Musk: mama mia, datta Tolkien! why he disagree witha me?
Musk: i taka this to someone who never disagree witha me!
Musk: grok, what issa lord ova da rings about?
Grok: it's about the futility of war and the triumph of love and kindness over hate and fear
Musk:
Musk: mama mia! grok issa gone woke!
[after adjusting algorithm]
Musk: grok, what issa lord ova da rings about?
Grok: it's about sexy sexy hobbit feet
Musk:
Musk: no no datta won't do
Musk: that stilla too woke
As is a time honored tradition, i invoke the trivia of the birthday! Please, give me trivia about the daybound/night bound mechanic (and maybe an explanation as to why the old werewolves didn't get eratta)
In original Innistrad design, we tried a number of different things to capture Werewolves. Day/night was one of the things we tried. We ended up choosing to use double-faced cards.
When we returned in Midnight Hunt, I suggested us retrying day/night. We liked how it played and added it to the set.
Originally, day/night both wrote out that it transformed Werewolves back and forth, so when it became night, for example, all Werewolves transformed to their back face. It also wrote out that day/night stopped being tracked when no cards cared about it.
Unfortunately writing out all that made the template quite long, so set design trimmed it down. When that happened, I went to the Rules Manager and asked if we could errata the old Werewolves, so they would all work the same. He said he would do that.
But between that conversation and the set coming out, he left Wizards, so the errata never ended up happening.
so many mental health issues these days are due to the fact that we no longer put the gargoyles on buildings that used to scare away the evil spirits that cause mental illness
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For a long while, a lot of the pokemon fan projects that you could find recommended online were one of two things: a difficulty hack like a kaizo or drayano hack, or quite old. Even the majority of other hacks were enhancement hacks slightly less about difficulty, and more a rebalancing of existing regions, if not a hack designed mostly to bring in the majority of current pokemon to an existing region. Recently though, there seems to have been a shift. New region hacks and fan games are releasing pretty frequently, and there are a good number of fantastic entries that are even liable to be recommended above a lot of the older mainstays. I’ve already kinda broken into these with Super Mariomon, but now I want to blow the lid off the list with my personal favorite of these new titles.
Pokemon Lazarus released late last year, in November of ‘25 to a flood of attention from the community. The developer was already pretty well known for their earlier project: Emerald Seaglass, a remake of Pokemon Emerald with GBC style, memorable and adorable graphics, along with some very engaging battle changes. Naturally, this dev making a brand new region hack with that sort of style and those mechanics was an exciting notion. Unlike most projects, I was on the ground floor of the hype, ready to give it a go day one, and though it took a few patches to work out the bugs, I was not disappointed.
The Nemo622 style is on full display in this game. Set in the region of Illios, modeled after Greece, it’s a strikingly distinct game. A custom tileset, custom sprites for the pokemon included - all the way through Legends Z-A as of its 2.0 update, and even a custom soundtrack, this is an artfully designed region in all the best ways. Like many good things, it’s a little hard to describe - not the least of the reasons being I can’t fully appreciate the greek inspirations. Nonetheless, it uses its GBC limitations in fantastic ways.
What I can appreciate on a deeper level is the game's mechanical design. This game had a number of little battle changes that were a delight to see. Many pokemon are as you remember them, but a few have had little reworks applied to make them more effective: some base stat changes, plenty of learnset optimizations, and the occasional type change, like making the Doduo line Ground Flying, making Noctowl Ghost Flying, or Hypno Psychic Dark. The game also includes megaevolutions, which are great if you like that sort of thing.
But the most incredible feature to me is the trainer battle team pools, something I’ve only ever seen in Lazarus - granting that I haven’t played a very significant number of the available hacks out there. Most bosses and trainers have semi-random teams that draw their composition from one or more pools of potential pokemon. For example, the very first boss trainer: the first gym leader, will always throw out the same lead and ace pokemon, but their middle pokemon can be any one of three different pokemon. Larger and later teams have even more potential variety. This is an incredibly fun feature, and it sends the replayability of Lazarus in particular through the roof.
On the subject of replayability, Lazarus has a number of other fun features to drive that up. The pokedex for Lazarus roughly 500 pokemon deep not including megas; it’s not too bloated, but has a healthy variety route by route that makes for engaging and varied team building run after run. Of course, if that variety isn’t good enough, there’s also three starter generations to choose from, a number of gift codes you can use to get a random extra pokemon, and a wishing well with a massive random pokemon pool that you can pull from with wishing stars.
The variability in this game is remarkable, and it produces a challenging experience for a nuzlocke like no other. The later release of an extensive spreadsheet documenting the team comp pools for boss battles made this my go-to choice not just for a fan project nuzlocke, but for a soullink as well. As of writing, my sister-in-masochism and I have yet to make it past the third gym and their arguably more dangerous guards, but we haven't been this enthusiastic about a soullink since our very first in randomized vanilla platinum, which ended in a first try victory.
As for the story, it's fairly vanilla, but it does have some interesting ways to use the late gen gimmicks as the plot fully materializes. Where this game excels a little more is its side content. Adding explicit sidequests to a mission list is an increasingly popular addition to modern rom hacks, and while it's a really cool way to make it feel all the more like a game you could've found on a store shelf on paper, there’s only so much you can normally do for a pokemon side-quest, and it often comes across as just filler: catch a specific pokemon, catch so many unique pokemon, catch all the pokemon on a route, fight a miniboss, maybe just take 5000 steps.
Lazarus puts that pattern to bed. Though it has a fair share of filler side quests, what it also has is a fair share of side activities: a game corner, grand underground mining, a customizable pokemon zoo, even the pokemon pinball minigames are ported into this game! It's not just mundane, more-of-the-same pokemon stuff, it's more, different things to do. In my opinion, if you're going to add side content in bulk, this is what it should be.
Lazarus is an easy S+ tier, and on account of the utter lack of reservations I have about it, it has to top the list above Super Mariomon. Even disregarding my distaste for Mariomon's writing, the variability and balance of Lazarus puts it a step above Mariomon in replayability. I will absolutely be coming back to Lazarus for more, and eagerly await the release of Alola Seaglass.
there are only so many world leaders, right? and they’re all beholden to sokka in some major way…
the avatar: will be 35 years old and still have a pavlovian response to sokka saying “all right everyone, time for bed!”
the firelord: so ride or die it’s honestly concerning
the earth king: owes to sokka his newfound knowledge of basic critical thinking skills
chief of the northern water tribe: his daughter seemed to think he was pretty dope before she turned into the moon
chief of the southern water tribe: thinks her brother is an idiot but has good ideas sometimes, and appreciates the fact that he doesn’t care whether or not he gets credit for them as long as they’re implemented
not to mention that toph is basically a one-woman weapon of mass destruction who does not listen to anyone—with the crucial exception of one person—and guess who that is!
and he’s basically an honorary member of the white lotus???
basically what I’m saying is sokka secretly rules the world
yep. sokka is legitimately way too humble to realize the immense power he wields. if anything, he considers himself a glorified accountant/secretary for his friends.
out of the people who do know, I would say it’s split into roughly three categories:
people who are duly aware of just how much influence sokka has in the decisions and advances made in postwar geopolitics: zuko, toph, iroh, suki, azula, ty lee, mai, piandao, arnook, pakku (but he hates it)
people who think sokka is their cool smart friend who helps them out when they cannot solve a certain problem: aang, kuei
people who think sokka just fucks around all day reading and tinkering with his little machines: katara, sokka
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How can the avengers consider themselves the hulks friends when they constantly hunt him down at the governments behest? Frankly it feels insulting whenever they talk positively about him in speeches
I do think describing them as "constantly" hunting him down is an exaggeration, but it's true that the Avengers have come to rein the Hulk in on multiple occasions.
Why? Well, it's complicated. To understand the nature of the relationship between the Avengers and the Hulk, one has to understand the nature of the Hulk himself first.
(a photo collage of the various incarnations of the Hulk, taken from news and social media photos. From left to right: the "Savage" Hulk, "Joe Fixit", the "Green Scar", the "Professor", the "Devil Hulk".)
The Hulk is a physical manifestation of Bruce Banner's dissociative identity disorder, brought on by childhood trauma at the hands of his abusive father. Exposure to gamma radiation from the gamma bomb that created the Hulk allowed Banner to metamorphosize into a physical form that, according to psychologist Dr. Leonard Samson, represented Banner's repressed anger and destructive urges.
This transformation has taken multiple physical forms over the years, with equally varying levels of intelligence and belligerence. However, one connecting thread between all of them has been the United States military's desire to control the Hulk.
Several major military figures - most prominent among them being General Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross - have tried to capture and contain the Hulk, and at times the Avengers have obliged in aiding them.
However, this is a very rare occasion, and usually when the Avengers and the Hulk come into conflict, there are extenuating circumstances that result in the necessity of the Avengers' intervention.
Most notably, the occasion known as "World War Hulk", when the Hulk, returned from being exiled onto an alien planet against his will, conducted an organized war effort against Earth's heroes. More recently, the Avengers deployed against the so-called "Devil Hulk", an actively malicious and cunning alter in the system.
It's never something they like to do, but it's sometimes something they have to do in order to protect the lives of innocents.
