#would've been better as a play

[joshoconnaissance]

GILLIAN ANDERSON as MEREDITH PLAYING BY HEART (1998) dir. Willard Carroll

[media-illiterate]

FOTV'S PLOT MAKES NO SENSE

So since this is going to have MASSIVE spoilers for the new show, I'll put most of it behind a readmore. But, TL/DR: Destroying Shady Sands would not bring down the NCR, because they have at least seven other major cities that could and would take over!

So, lets start with a map:

This is map (made by me) very roughly represents the NCR as it exist circa 2277. All major settlements are labelled, but do note that there are dozens of minor settlements scattered around the whole of California, and into Oregon, Nevada, and Mexico.

Nuking Shady Sands, even if you used the largest nuclear bomb ever made, (The Tsar bomb: coming in at 100 megatons, it is the upper limit of practicality for a bomb, because any larger and the explosion would've vented into the upper atmosphere and reduced the bomb's effect), it would still only destroy Shady Sands. Maybe vaults 13 and 15, the closest settlements to it (given their nature as vaults, however, I think they'd survive).

Notice all the other settlements? WHERE DID THEY GO, TODD?

Now, exploding Shady Sands would still be really fucking bad for the republic, but I think it would be fully survivable. We don't have hard numbers for the population of the NCR, but in New Vegas it is explicitly in the hundreds of thousands, (and rising). So we can substitute the demographics of, say, Alaska (710,000 people). The largest city in Alaska, Anchorage, has ~290,000 people living in it, as of the 2020 census. That's a large chunk of the state's population, but its not even half.

I think Shady Sands would probably be a lot smaller than the Hub or Boneyard (not to mention San Francisco, Vault City, or New Reno) because it started out as a small farming village when the others were already major settlements. So, at most, nuking Shady Sands would only disrupt the NCR, not kill it. Even if the NCR broke up in the aftermath, Lucy's vault should still be smack in the middle of the Boneyard, probably one of California's largest settlements.

But! That's not all! Not only does this show contradict established canon at every turn, it doesn't even do it well, because there is an argument to be made that a few well placed nukes could bring down the NCR!

And its already part of the damn game:

This handsome, gravelly-voiced genius already mathed out how to, as he calls it, "cut the bear's throat": bomb the NCR's trade routes to the outside world, and watch them wither away on their own. His plan is a thousand times more interesting, and more feasible, than how the show brought down the NCR (blowing up one (1) city and acting like that would destroy an entire nation).

In fact, if they really wanted to get rid of the NCR, they could've easily just made that ending to Lonesome Road canon. But, lets face it, this show cannot be bothered to even look at the games for inspiration.

I like almost nothing I see coming out of the show. Its a thin veneer of fallout painted onto a story that bulldozes the very series it claims to be part of. The zombification of ghouls, the centering of the Brotherhood, the badly written raiders playground of a wasteland: its all of Bethesda's worst writing choices, just transmitted to a new medium.

I hate it here.

[platoapproved]

i know this is 100% not how reality works, and obviously they didn't know if a season 3 was going to happen, and who even knows how many factors are at play in casting and the logistics of a tv show! i am not in that field!

but.

i'm going to be honest. i adore ben daniels, i think he's a phenomenal actor. genuinely so talented and with such gravitas. but here's the thing. as a character, santiago... does not compel me. he's just... evil in a boring way. even though ben daniels CRUSHED it with what he was given, and delivered the best possible performance for that character, santiago is such a nothingburger. they shouldn't have wasted ben daniels on santiago! they should've waited, and cast him as marius. like can you imagine? literally feel a bit sick just thinking about it.

[spookythesillyfella]

they should probably have a tea party together methinks

[click the images for better quality i beg of thee]

[laismoura-art]

Ok so, quick question:

Why didn’t Liu make Bi-Han his Champion?

Cause like, Bi-Han whole issue in MK1 was, as we Brazilians say: his ass was on fire! (Ele estava com fogo no c*)

Meaning he was anxious, hyperactive, bored, in a desperate need to do something, ANYTHING!

I mean, just look at his chapter, look how THRILLED he was by kombat!

Bro was like

KOMBAT KOMBAT KOMBAT KOMBAT KOMBAT KOMBAT KOMBAT KOMBAT KOMBAT KOMBAT KOMBAT KOMBAT KOMBAT KOMBAT KOMBAT KOMBAT

And I would expect no less, he made it clear that it has been YEARS since he last engaged in combat!

HIM. BI-HAN. SUB-ZERO. GRANDMASTER OF THE LIN KUEI.

YEARS. AWAY. FROM KOMBAT!

Seriously look at this:

Homie has boredom written all over his face!

And with that I once again ask you: WHY DIDN'T LIU MAKE HIM HIS CHAMPION?

Put him to fight in the Mortal Kombat! Put him to investigate Shang Tsung!

Don't call him last minute as if he's your 2nd 3rd option! Man deserves better than that after years of loyalty!

Honestly the only reason Liu got screwed over was due to his OWN terrible management of his foes' lives!

He made Shang and Quan Chi miserable OF COURSE they would ally themselves to the first person who offers them a way out!

He drove Bi-Han mad with BOREDOM alone! Of course the man will turn his back on him at the first sight of excitement!

Ma mom always says: always wish for other people's happiness cause happy people don't bother.

And honestly someone had to tell Liu Kang that!🤦🏾‍♀️🤦🏾‍♀️🤦🏾‍♀️

[fishofthewoods]

yknow while I'm baldursgateposting I've had another thought. There's a lot to be said about the dynamic between The Dark Urge & Astarion but one level that i haven't seen many people talk about is the juxtaposition between "Guy that can't get away from the gods' influence no matter how hard they try" and "Guy that can't get his prayers answered no matter how many gods he prays to"

[kaiserouo]

ref. https://twitter.com/KrypzYT/status/1738292782152679760

I literally cannot resist that. I might actually play warlock just because of that outfit...

...if not for the fact that I don't even have a single piece of armor or shader on the list. Well anyway let's see how much Xur and RNG hate me.

[blueeyeddarkknight]

Val as king philip II of Macedonia ( Alexander 2004) 👑⚔️ Part 1

From the extra weight to the eye prosthetics and the limp. Val was incredible in this movie.

He's so sweet with the kids 🥺

With Oliver 😊

Resting on set 😆

These cool shots

I love the cave scene

With Eurydice (the actress said he was her best teacher 🥹)

Alexander interview

With Angelina

This iconic moment 😂🐍

Is he on time out? 😂

Sources : kamp Kilmer, planet kilmer, vkn, rosemariemeyer on ig

[everymadara]

Chapter 661

[appleelevengreen]

excellent characterisation of ares in the pjo show btw. absolutely no notes 11/10

[da-riya]

There literally is nothing worse then playing for hours to form a nation just for the map color to be worse

[kumakuma-circus]

i feel like p4's writers simultaneously wanted to address the issue of homophobia and also had literally no idea how to and gave up partway through-

[batsplat]

casey also talks about sepang 2015 what do you think of that

oh in that podcast? uh... lemme listen again...

yeah idk it's not really anything new I'd say? he's said basically all the same stuff in more interesting and extensive ways elsewhere. I think casey inevitably has a very 'well feuding is bad and helps nobody' point of view, has expressed that before in the past, does it here again, and he's also drawn a parallel between himself and marc on several occasions. which... well, of course there's similarities in terms of public discourse or whatever, but the parallel really falls apart whenever casey argues the feuds cost valentino. like, I do think it's sometimes important to just. keep in mind. it's interesting that casey draws this comparison in his mind but that doesn't necessarily means he's right about this. I'm not sure how you'd argue that starting a feud with casey cost valentino anything competitively? you can argue it didn't help him I guess, and then we can have a debate about the ins and outs of the 2008 season. we can also have an argument that in a hypothetical world where casey isn't ill in 2009, valentino doesn't break his leg and casey isn't on a piece of junk in 2010, and valentino isn't on a piece of junk in 2011-12, then actually maybe valentino sparking open animosity with casey COULD have cost him. but we don't know that! didn't happen! I wish we could have found out, but we never got the chance! as it stands, the tally on this is pretty straightforward: casey won the title when things were reasonably civil between them in 2007, and valentino took control of the following season at the exact moment he worsened the relationship between the pair of them in 2008. obviously, it's all more complicated than that and casey would of course argue laguna didn't negatively affect his subsequent performances... but it certainly didn't help them. like, at the very worst valentino escalating tensions in 2008 is a complete net neutral. after 2009, them being bitchy to each other every other tuesday was completely competitively irrelevant beyond maybe affecting how they approached occasionally fighting for a podium position. hey, maybe casey used that feud to fire himself up through sheer spite throughout the later stages of his career, but that doesn't actually support his anti-feud stance - it's basically the exact same thing as what valentino does. they're both quite similar in that regard! always so hungry to prove a point, to show how someone else is wrong. kinda half the point with this feuding business is to get yourself going, get yourself motivated, yeah. he straight up openly admits to using yamaha's repeat rejection of him as a way of giving himself motivation, and at the end of the day that's really not all that different?

anyway, what else does casey say... oh yeah, that him and the other aliens were already kinda prepared for this and had learned vale's tricks. that valentino had only been able to get into the minds of the previous generation. welllllll *wiggles hand* sure, I mean, he did clearly have to change his approach... he couldn't just use the exact same playbook to get to them, either on-track or off-track. but that's why he did change up the playbook... again, whether you want to believe valentino won his final two titles 'in the head' rather than just through pure pace kinda depends on how you assess the evidence, but it is at the very least a debate. and, y'know, it's always worth remembering that valentino's most important mind games with casey didn't happen in a press conference... it was on the track. and the on-track stuff really is just embedded in how valentino approaches winning. speaking of aliens, this is what dani and jorge have said:

like, valentino's entire approach to his riding, even to the way he's setting his bike up, is deliberately about directly fucking with you... he's not actually always trying to be faster than you as much as he's trying to give himself the tools to make your life miserable, to pressure you into mistakes, etc etc... and again, especially with casey (if anything because he was so mentally sturdy), the off-track stuff was really just window dressing. (I know they bicker a lot after 2009 but it's just so fundamentally irrelevant to actual on-track competition.) so you can be aware of those tricks, but it also doesn't necessarily help you when someone's being nasty to you on-track in a way you just fully do not enjoy. which is what it was like for casey! for casey, a lot of this comes back to the truly unpleasant context of how he was perceived by the public, how he was treated as mentally weak or 'broken' or whatever partly because he had the misfortune of coming up against a bloke who had the reputation for breaking rivals. I think it's quite natural to end up with a bit of a hardliner 'actually I've never been mentally affected by a result in my life' stance - and of course casey is a lot tougher than a lot of people give him credit for. that being said. sometimes your rivals affect you, shit happens, it's part of the game. it's fundamentally a nice idea to think that valentino's tactics weren't just morally wrong but also ineffective, which is kind of the appeal of this narrative, right? you want to believe you're above that, you want to believe you were adequately prepared and wise to valentino's tactic. it's unsurprising and understandable that casey does tend to tell the story that way, but again it's *wiggles hand* also hard to describe it as completely factual

uh. what else. oh I'm thrilled casey does canonically know valentino and marc were friends, he has said he wasn't following motogp too much during that time period so you couldn't be sure of that. does this mean anything? does it tell you anything? well, no, but it's just a pleasing thought to me. I like that. oh also 'provoking particularly aggressive riders isn't a good idea' is kinda a funny take from casey? like, he of all people would hate the idea of being cowed by someone's reputation like that... casey's right that provoking fast riders can potentially be dangerous, but y'know I do think that's probably not news to anyone almost nine years later. um. that's all I've got I think

[cdroloisms]

Yeah that moment kinda shows how he can make c!discduo listen to him and even the way how this is not healthy. I also think he might be participate in comflict bewteen cdiscduo if he didnt leave but more as an motivator but not him causing it on porpuse. At the end cdream was trying to make him by his side to have laverage, ctommy was still really depend on him and the disc that cdream have. It was a a disaster that was coming but he leave so he did not caused a new conflict but was a factor that played in a resolution

i mean ? "participate in conflict between c!discduo" he is like the foremost reason why the conflict between c!discduo even looks the way that it does honestly. it wouldn't have been about heroes and villains without lmanburg, full stop. when dream and tommy had their first disc spat, they didn't need to be handheld into figuring out a solution, yk? they had their fornite battle, tommy and dream both got their shit back, they did a trade of a stack of diamonds for a netherite chestplate, and i'd go as far as saying that both of them kinda had. fun ???? like c!tommy is reminiscing about those times IN THE LITERAL FINALE, a consistent trend with him throughout the server (he did the same during november 16th, where he had been downright excited to go back to the disc war and was ribbing c!dream about how he's never in the walls no more) and while c!dream honestly has a terminal stick in his ass and always saw the whole thing as more serious than c!tommy (hence why c!tommy was sitting there going i never realized how much that hurt you), i think it's hard to look at the way c!dream acts with c!tommy pre-vassal and really say that he hated the kid's guts over a stupid surprise attack the whole time lmao. they liked each other! they were friends!

c!wilbur being able to make c!discduo listen to him (and um, give his words the weight of the world) isn't just an inconsolable differences thing, it's really smth that stretches as far back as that first discussion about lmanburg that they ever have. it's something that applies to the duel, to vassal. c!wilbur participating and fanning the flames of conflict between c!discduo (and quite literally prying them apart in vassal, which was kind of the beginning of the end) is something that happens throughout the server, and i'd argue that inconsolable differences -> boundless sands is his clumsy attempt at fixing that. shutting the damn book on lmanburg as the one who penned the story, say youre a tyrant dream and put it in writing and burn the discs, you two can't play nice so the game's fucking over. tommy, stay in your place, dream, do as i say, etc etc. c!wilbur has to leave because of who c!wilbur is to c!dream and especially to c!tommy, it's just things were too fractured for him leaving in itself to Completely Fix Everything

[inkperch]

Just saying, a lot of Edelgard's White Clouds interactions with TWSITD are a hell of a lot more forgivable when you remember its not just an Emperor and the devil she made a deal with, it's also a deeply traumatised teenager forcing herself to continue to interact with her abusers because she's trying to convince herself that her suffering at their hands meant something.

(with a side of a very clearly displayed implication that they won't hurt her while she's useful to them-)

[fairybluedreams]

Vote HTTYD!!

Hiiiiiii, back on my campaigning bs. Here's why you should vote for How to Train Your Dragon in the @book-was-better tournament!

Disclaimer btw I'm not saying the first movie is a bad movie or bad story as it's own separate thing -- I'm saying it's a bad Adaptation of a book series -- in that it does nothing to Adapt the book series into a film series, just uses the name and goes off to do it's own thing. Other explanations and analysis of this aspect under the "how to train your dragon propaganda" tag in the tournament itself.