TheOtherTed

I had an idea for a tech character that I gave up on, as it was too big for me. Literally. The character was a heavily augmented cyborg from a parallel Earth in which Boudica's forces had overrun the Roman Empire. The timeline that ensued featured much faster technological and scientific development than ours, but reached a point where it was possible not only to destroy the earth, but to shatter the timeline itself. And that's what happened. "Shards" of that timeline were scattered across the multiverse, and my character was to be one such shard who got embedded in the Praetorian timeline. Thus, the idea was literally too big for me. I destroyed a universe to create one character. I even had an uncharacteristically long and soul-searching bio for the character that I lost when I switched computers. Figured I'd throw the general idea out there anyway in case it jogs someone's neurons in a good way. Edited to add the final part of the bio: "It's strange, isn't it, when you have to lose everything you had, and forget everything you knew, to finally realize who and what you were meant to be."

David Lynch - a true genius who could see genius in others. It wasn't until the internet happened that I found out that: And I'm not afraid to admit that it still haunts me to this day.

I'm saying the supporting cast in the Netflix DD did more "heavy lifting" in terms of emotion and real-world consequences than Cox was allowed to do. Murdock may have been the "speak softly" type as InvaderStitch pointed out, but as you say, Foggy and Karen (not to mention Wilson Fisk) were more interesting as characters. Certainly, Jessica Jones and Luke Cage held their own among their supporting casts (like 'em or not) - why couldn't Murdock? I'm not knocking Cox's abilities as an actor - rather, I get the sense that he didn't get the chance to show any range in the NF series. For his sake, I was hoping he'd be allowed to show some emotion this time around, and, no, I don't expect overplayed grim-dark nonsense. Just a little more of the Catholic self-doubt that he occasionally did reveal could do the trick. After all, there is a fundamental contradiction there that cant' be so casually dismissed with his "...but I was also raised to believe in retribution" line.

Not that I'll watch anything on the Big D, but does Charlie Cox's Matt Murdock have an actual personality in this series?

Yeah, it's too bad that Hill got squeezed out of the show because he wouldn't work Saturdays (he was an Orthodox Jew). IMO he was capable of projecting an intensity that Phelps never really could - though Hill didn't really capitalize on that much in the show. This isn't a knock on Phelps - he was as iconic for me as he was for you. I just found Hill interesting and different. Never liked the M:I movies. Probably because I couldn't stand Tom Cruise. At the height of his popularity, I felt like you couldn't swing a cinematic cat by the tail without hitting a Tom Cruise.

... I found out that the original theme for Mission:Impossible is based on the Morse code for M I. Now I can only hear "dash dash dot dot" when I watch it.

I'm not sure that lore means as much in this game as it does in other games. A big part of that is the variety of power sets you can choose with each archetype. Take tanks, for instance - in FFXIV you can start with one of 4 or 5 starting jobs, but here, the Tanker archetype chooses from 11 primary power sets and 22 secondary sets. Thus, there is no "archetypal" tanker, and therefore no official lore that you can tap into. I can't speak for anyone but myself, but I almost never consider the in-game lore when making a character. My MO is to come up with a general idea for the character I'd like to play, and see if I can find an archetype that has the toys that would make it work. As for RP, Everlasting is the official unofficial RP server, but all servers are likely to have some themed super groups ("free companies" in FFXIV-speech) that may or may not have their own internal lore, as well as their own RP guidelines. Check out the Servers section below. Also, don't worry, we were all wrecking balls at some point. Run solo missions until you get used to your character's strengths and weaknesses, then maybe try some repeatable team challenges like Frostfire in The Hollows. Once you pick up the do's and don'ts of teaming, you'll have the experience, and therefore the confidence, to try tougher teamed content.

Yeah, his troubles hit a bit close to home for me personally as well. A few years back, I was doing contract work for a big pharma company. Things were going well, until I came down with the flu for 4 days. Got a call from my contracting agency saying that the contract had been terminated for "attendance related reasons," and that was that. I got some grim satisfaction when the guy I directly worked for told me that the group we were in got disbanded about a month later. I had already known that the project we were on was basically some exec's vanity project destined to go nowhere; I figure a slightly higher exec caught on to that and slapped the clown down. ...huh. That sounded like a rambling life-story monologue from a companion in FO4. No flirt option this time, though. Sorry. In other news, another game has since surprised me - FFXIV. I'd tried playing it several times before, but could never get into it. For reasons I can't figure out, though, I'm kind of digging it this time around. Could be softening of the old brain, or it could be the chocobo porter music. Never used one before this run, and for some reason that music tickles my funny bone.

There's a reason I associate this clip with Xmas... Regardless, enjoy the holidays, stay safe, and stay sane.

Not so controversial. As much as I love the books, I warn potential new readers about two issues. The first is that so much of the work can be summed up by a tour guide saying "...and we're walking, and we're walking..." The second is that The Return of the King has at least one too many endings for comfort. As for the problem of things happening off-scene and never satisfactorily explained, I hadn't considered it before. My immediate take is that it reminds the reader that things are happening in the story outside the narration, which, IMO, adds to the world-building. My second take is that "The Hobbit" movie trilogy was made worse by having Galadriel, Elrond, and the Wizards take on The Necromancer one by one like it was some kind of rap battle. If I ever watch it again, I may have to mute it and play "The Real Slim Shady" just to get through it.

I've been playing Fallout 4 on and off since it's release, and I almost always do the Arlen Glass mission, in no small part because he's a random and quirky dude. Never gave it (or him) much more thought when I completed the quest. Last night, I got sent to rescue a settler from some building in Boston that I had apparently never visited before. Didn't connect the name of the place with anything, until I suddenly started finding security notifications and angry warnings about Arlen Glass, Turns out that... In any case, A.G. got the last laugh. Sort of. He got ghoulified when the bombs fell, and survived 200 years of post-war devastation to finally perfect his craft - with the help of the Sole Survivor. Sadly, we never see the result. So how have old and comfortable games hit you in the face with something random?

For my brothers and sisters who grew up south of the Mason-Dixon line.

I read The First Men in the Moon for the first time about two years ago. Definitely a fun sci-fi travelogue, even if everything about it is pure fantasy. On the spectrum from Jonathan Swift to Arthur C. Clarke, Wells leans a bit to the former IMO, and Verne to the latter. Wells isn't too fussed about the science, but Verne really gets into it - to the point that he practically explains in the book why From the Earth to the Moon couldn't actually work, then gives an unsatisfying reason as to why they should try it anyway. Take that with a grain of salt, though. I haven't read it in mumbledy-mumble years, so I could just be making stuff up.

I haven't read it, but I have to confess that the last book I'd read (in order of publication) was "Around the World in 80 Days" (1873). In contrast, MotW was published the year before his death (1904), and he wasn't in top form health-wise. That said, even in his best years he wasn't exactly afraid of plot holes that one could drive a truck through - "Journey to the Centre of the Earth" and "From the Earth to the Moon" both challenged my suspension of disbelief long before I'd even heard the phrase "suspension of disbelief." Also, I found "Paris in the Twentieth Century" (written in 1863, revealed in... 1989?) to be, well, kind of meh, BTW, thanks for the (unintended?) heads-up that he published about a million billion books that I'd never seen or heard of. Gotta get cracking if I'm going to recover my Verne cred.

Back during the COVID lockdowns of aught 20, EWF, more than anything else (except maybe swamp rock), helped me actually work from home by distracting the most distractable part of my brain. Could barely tolerate EWF before, and now they've got a valued place in my youtube playlist. The following song, in particular, I often kept on a recurring loop. I don't remember even hearing it before the world had changed.