torlibram

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you bottle Miette??

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This happened to me at work the other day

Me: “What’cha reading?”

Co-worker: “Uh. It’s about a very normal spaceship.”

Me: 👀

People only call it that here and on discord. Your coworker is at the devil's sacrament.

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> Big E and Malcador did exactly that as well... Chaos can't tempt or turn your people if you told them "Don't ask questions, SHOOT THE MOTHERFUCKERS ON SIGHT".

What's the deal between Farsight and the Ethereals?

In the initial lore (from older codexes), it was fairly simple; Farsight saw the merit of engaging in values and tactics that were at odds with the tenets of the Greater Good espoused by the Ethereals, particularly inter-caste knowledge sharing and melee combat specialisation. Things that would allow the soldiery, and thus the wider T'au Empire, to be more warlike and defend/expand borders.

This came to a head on the planet Arthas Moloch, where a war with Orks saw the Ethereals under Farsight's protection killed, implicitly in part due to the squabbling between Farsight and said Ethereals. After this war (during which Farsight found the Dawn Blade and fucked up a lot of Orks) he ended up breaking off from the T'au Empire with those loyal to his views to form the Farsight Enclaves; a more militarily focused take on the base Empire.

Overall, it was a decent look at how authoritarian/inflexible thinking and doctrines could create schisms, even in the milder cultures of 40k.

The Kelly era T'au, of course, added to this in a Kelly-esque fashion. It wasn't JUST that the Ethereals didn't like Farsight's views, but ALSO they were hiding info about CHAOS and DAEMONS from the T'au and doing EVIL MIND CONTROL on the T'au and it wasn't just Orks that showed up on Arthas Moloch but DAEMONS that the T'au weren't prepared for because of the aforementioned EVIL MIND CONTROL and DAEMONS killed the Ethereals and Farsight killed them back with the Dawn Blade. After that he confirms his suspicions about the EVIL MIND CONTROL and, when faced with the choice of revealing the EVIL MIND CONTROL to the entire T'au Empire and destroying it all (because the Empire is held together by EVIL MIND CONTROL) or walking away with his loyalists, he chooses to walk away. Because he cares about the T'au as a whole and is BIG HERO. Not one of those ethereals and their EVIL MIND CONTROL.

E V I L M I N D C O N T R O L

Fuck knows how it'll go if Van Nguyen and his actually good T'au writing are allowed to touch Farsight.

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Choose instead to be the second most annoying creature on the planet, by interspersing annoyance activities with just enough alternatives to make it annoying that you are not full-time annoying.

If I were a cat, I would simply choose not to be the most annoying creature on the planet.

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"Taking the shot, sarge," I muttered into my throat mic. I lined up my shot, took a breath, half released it and squeezed the trigger. The bullet whipped across the intervening space, sparks trailing as the internal propellant fizzed into life, and buried itself in the logs to the right of Lord Evil, completely missing both him and his doomsday device.

"... Poor marksmanship," sneered the hollow voice from inside that ridiculous mask of his. "My freshest recruit can aim better than that."

"Where does the skill go, then?" I reposted, wriggling backwards to relocate. "I've lost count of the stormtroopers that have shot at me and missed." In my ear, Sergeant Makepeace was being as irate as Evil was mocking.

Evil shrugged and continued to gloat. "For that matter, why are you even shooting at me? You must know my armour is impervious to bullets." Behind him, the propellant flared to incandescence.

"Oh, that I know well. It's why I wasn't aiming at you." I watched, waiting to time this juuust right. As the incendiary burnt through the key strands of cord securing the log pile I added: "Bulletproof, yes. Immune to several tons of dead tree, not so much."

Lord Evil flinched. I could feel his brow furrowing from all the way over here. Then he worked it out and turned just as the first log sprang free. A former oak trunk, fifty feet long by two wide, it struck him a glancing blow. The next one caught him square across the gut and knocked him to the floor. The third through about twenty-eighth utterly demolished him, not to mention significant blunt force trauma to the end-of-the-world-inator next to him.

Once all the hubbub had died down, I wandered over, gun held casually over my shoulder, albeit with the safety on and the chamber open. I could just hear the whimpering underneath the cascade of timber. Sergeant Makepeace approached from a different direction, a scowl on her face trying to hide her grin at the chaos I had caused and only mostly succeeding.

"Shot the right one, then sarge?" I asked innocently.

She glowered at me for forms sake. "Wasn't what you were told to aim at, trooper."

I sniffed the air. "World's not ended yet, sarge."

“QUICK YOU HAVE TO SHOOT THE RIGHT ONE!!!” BANG “sinister chuckle You picked wrong.” “No I didn’t.” “…huh?”

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You make a fair point about the character development, but the bit about the pacing contradicts that. The only character that appears in all three of the first three books is Murderbot. Mensah et al get mentions in 2 and 3, but you would essentially be discarding 90% of your cast just as we were getting to know them, to replace them with a new bunch we have to learn about.

In the discussion of the character's competence in the show VS the book, I think maybe it's that when we say "competence" we really mean "sure of themselves".

Like, there's that post going around saying that the show is starting the characters from a less developed point so they can get to where they were in the books. For example, "effortlessly charming, bestie of all Ratthi" being overeager to please in the show. Which is good for character development, it's just turning off fans who really like the self-asuredness of the cast in the book.

Mensah in the books already arrives a confident leader, Pin-Lee is already savvy about the Corporate Rim shady practices... they're realized characters. Which makes sense in a novella, where you don't have time to develop all of PresAux on top of MB, but not so much in a whole season of television.

I just would have preferred they did more than one book per season, rather than stretch out book one, because I rather like watching Murderbot be Murderbot around extremely well-adjusted people.

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Asking because I overheard a physical therapist say that she uses this question to see if she wants a second date with a guy, and if he says more than like 4 eggs at once it's a red flag.

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That was not the chicken dance that came to my mind.

Our neighbors are getting a new driveway poured today. The guys pouring it have been listening to music all morning, which is unremarkable by itself except for the fact that the constant stream of Mexican rock music just got interrupted by the Muppet theme song followed by Paul McCartney's "We All Stand Together."

Which I like to think would make anyone say, "What?" out loud before getting up to look over the fence. Only to find one of the guys showed up with his kid, and now the old guy in charge of the music is playing what I can only define as 'Eighties Kids Music' while the little kid runs in circles in the shade.

I don't know who is having a better time. The kid or the old guy picking the tracks 😂

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I've rarely seen a more validating sentence in my entire life.

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random anecdote for father's day: one time during a long car ride my dad asked me, "you're familiar with Murphy's Law, right?" and i was like "isn't that the one about how anything that can go wrong will go wrong?" and he said "yeah, exactly" and i said "why do you ask?" and he went "well, have you heard of Cole's Law?" and i said "no, actually, what's that?" and he said "it's mostly lettuce and carrots with a little dressing mixed in"

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you can get off the train at any time.

if you find yourself at an unfamiliar station, maybe that’s where you were meant to be.

if you are scared and lonely, remember you’re never alone. someone has to get off at each stop, otherwise that stop wouldn’t be there at all. someone will be there too, just as scared as you.

if no one is there somehow, and they scorn and judge you for being the first to leave, remember you are off the train and they are not. you have left.

if you stay on the train, just remember that the longer you stay on, the more expensive the ticket back will be.

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Nikolay Tolmachev: Wounded II (2020)

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i got these knockoff boots online and instead of the brand name on the tag they have the name of an apparently nonexistent martin scorsese movie??? what the fuck