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Ember preaching peace and understanding whilst dispensing literal flames of perdition ("Ite, Maledicti, In Ignem Aeternum") makes one distinctly recall a certain scene from <<Mars Attacks!>>

Hey everyone, Thank you all for reporting this to us! We have been receiving a TON of reports about this, and as such, the team has been investigating and think they have a fix. It's expected that this fix will be coming in a hotfix patch soon to help get you all back on track. Sorry for all the trouble this is causing as I'm sure it's much more difficult out in the back yard without those arrows and traps. Thanks again for all your help everyone!

If his post had had a question mark, we could've known for sure ?

Yeah, you know, I'm pretty sure Komi Can't Communicate works much better as a manga than the current anime adaptation works as an anime. It's the same with the Sailor Moon manga (although that one isn't really good in my opinion) and the old vs. the new anime adaptation. Crystal is far too literal and almost everything is taken straight from the panels instead of spending one iota of creative energy on planning something ahead or thinking it through. That's the real baffling thing about Crystal, they were sitting on a manga 20 years finished and adapted it as if going on the fly through the material. The original anime had outlines to go with and a manga issue here and there to serve as drafts, but that comes across as less disjointed and messy. The narration of the episode is a good thing to demonstrate this by, both this and Sailor Moon Crystal have scenes where you can see what is going on, while the narrator tells you the same. Of course you need narration without motion in comics whenever a frame might not be perfectly clear, but there's no real need for that when you can see what's going on. There's a scene in the third season of Crystal that perfectly exemplifies that when Sailor Neptune narrates a sequence where you can see a stormy and and stirred up ocean with "The sea is restless" - yeah no kidding there, Michiru. I would not have known without you telling me that, watching the waves and the wind and the, pardon, restless ebbing and flowing of the ocean. One could argue that the animation of Crystal is so terrible it needs explaining, but that's not the case. It looks bad, but it still shows what's going on accurately enough. It's not that I mind narration as a whole actually, you can look at the opening of Fellowship of the Ring where Galadriel tells you a whole lot of things, and the narration enhances what's on the screen, and vice versa. That opening scene is an adaptational necessity, and it works, just imagine if that entire sequence was made by way of Gandalf telling Frodo about the rings. Works in a book, doesn't work so much in a movie, right? Back when everyone complained about Roz the Exposition Whore in Game of Thrones, I just accepted that as necessity. Leaving her out of the show would have been a detriment to understanding what's going on. You can of course create your entire universe entirely without exposition and expect the reader or watcher to follow along without being able to put the elements together right from the start, like Steven Erikson did with Malazan Book of the Fallen, but that has a whole host of other issues (that not even the author was able to resolve without on the fly retconning), the biggest of which is asking your audience to become engaged in something based on a whole lot of things you don't - and can't - understand. That's a though sell, even for me, and Malazan Book of the Fallen asks a bit too much, and I am a quick reader with an uncanny ability to retain information. I don't even want to know how reading the books is for a regular person. That said I understand why an avid reader of the manga would like such an adaptation. I'm not, however, and with only the anime to judge things by, well, it was a nice try, it had one absolutely brilliant scene (that by no coincidence dropped the entire voice acting for a few minutes), but I'm not too hopeful for the other episodes. See, that scene alone makes me think this works much better as a manga, because by dropping everything but the sound of Komi and Tadano writing on the chalkboard, the anime went and not just adapted, but became its source material: A slightly more animated manga. It worked. It was great, really, but unlike the still movies of yore, why would I watch what could be more easily read? TL;DR: No matter how good the source material might or might not be, that was a bad episode in terms of being an anime. That's the fault of the direction, the disjointed nature is the fault of the writing team (assuming there was one, and this isn't 1:1 just the first issue) and the terrible voice acting delivery is the fault of the voice direction. *sigh* I already feel like I do whenever I get out of a theater with my friends. Except they get an essay like that in talking form. Which is probably even less interesting or endearing. It's a wonder they still drag me along all the time. I mean, when we're not in lockdown, that is.

So how did my kids become death guards? Well, they were fighting over a toy and I was tired of intervening, and before I knew it...

@Bartimaeus

This build work "easily" with a rogue instead of a beguiler because at tiers 6 you are naturally immune to mental afflictions when below blooded, well you have more amplitude for equipement and food - but anyway, for your interrupting build I suggest to you to equip the skaen robe, with the Armor of flesh upgrade (might immune)!

Hey guys. I’m alone in the house again. I picked G up at the airport Saturday morning and took her straight to the Peabody Hotel in downtown. I had a deluxe room reserved for us with a great view. We spent the whole day in the room just, y’know, enjoying each other’s company. Then in the evening it was dinner at Rizzo’s then champagne at the rooftop bar with live music and the lights of the city below us and the stars above. It was perfect. The next day I brought her back to my place and we spent the day watching the Packers vs Bears and other games. She is a big Packers fan. I don’t think they let you live in Wisconsin if you’re not. That’s something I should probably follow up on. That’s going to be important info soon. We spent four together. I was hoping for longer, but work waits for no one. Plus, she got a little… not sure… hesitant at the end. We got to do some of the fun stuff I had planned but mostly she just wanted to stay at my place. She loved my house and all the stuff. I had hoped she would. She loved the garden and greenhouse and veggies (she is mostly a vegetarian) and the whole thing. But she really liked how much land and the seclusion and privacy of it. My hopes were soaring. I was hoping she would imagine some kind of a future here with me. It was not to be of course. But I knew that. We took a walk down Cold Creek to the river and spent the day talking about us and what our future might be. Her life is not in Tennessee and won’t ever be. She spoke to B on the phone every night we were together. She could never be so far away from her. I told her I knew that, and I’d never ask her to be. I told her I wanted to be part of her life. And if her life is in WI then that is where I’ll go. She was shocked, I think. Then I told her I’d already spoken to a realtor that was handling other stuff for me about selling. I wanted to know how she felt about that. Her reaction was not what I’d expected. I thought that idea would make her happy. It’s not that it didn’t… I couldn’t put my finger on it. We talked some more about it. She has no interest in ever being married again but conceded she might change her mind. I laughed at that comment and told her I had no problem with that. We talked in general about buying land and building houses. How I built my place. She said she would love to have something like that near her hometown. She has always wanted her own horses and a place to board and treat. One thing we haven’t spoken about is money. I got the impression her situation is still not great following what her ex did to her. And B is a full-time student and I’m pretty sure G is helping her. I’ve enjoyed some real financial success following the sale of our business. And I’ve been very careful in managing and investing it. What she is dreaming of is within my means. Especially if I sell my place. I was thinking this but held back from telling her everything. I decided to push that conversation down the road a little way. Something about her hesitation made me cautious. Plus, I’m always wary of the danger of moving too fast. I’m cool with going all in. I’m not sure she is yet. I think it’s best to let her get there on her own. She flew home this morning. She called me when she landed and again when she got home. I’m planning on going up to see her next weekend and spending time up there. Maybe even look at real estate, who knows. But I’m definitely going to slow down a little. I don’t want her feeling pressured.

Boats, a faster way to travel on water. You could put yourself and a pet in. Maybe made of dry grass. Maybe add a chest in the back too.

would be cool to be able to tame and ride a roly-poly

Well I took a break from Samurai Champloo and started rewatching JoJo. JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Phantom Blood episode 1 Dio the Invader. KONO DIO DA!

nicolaus cage ruined the apache for us. we literal walked out o' the theatre after this scene. HA! Good Fun!

I know, I meant after I finished Miyazaki's stuff and fill up on the good vibes I give it a go. It's been on my to watch list for a long time, but I know the story is gonna leave me a wreck so I haven't seen it yet.

Aura of Courage makes you immune to fear, go forth Crusader!

Decided to watch all the Miyazaki movies I haven't seen. My Neighbor Totoro being the first of them. Time well spent. Maybe...maybe I'll muster up my courage and watch Grave of the Fireflies after that.

You always funny Gromnir, but you agree all must watch this movie ? It is entertaining, and their are hot vampires, surly that's great

So much for Ember being a beacon of redemption and goodness lmao.

Yeah, I would've preferred that Arwyn got cut out entirely rather than let her have Glorfindel's part. Not that I particularly like Glorfindel or anything, but Arwyn is the worst character in the entire movie series.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-59018391 Apparently Alec Baldwin was handed a loaded gun with a real bullet in it. The guy who was injured was standing behind the woman who got killed and was hit in the shoulder as it passed through her. Meanwhile, the BBC has obtained a document showing which crew members were listed as scheduled to be on set that day. It names a head armourer, the crew member responsible for checking firearms. Hannah Gutierrez Reed is in her twenties and, according to the LA Times, had recently worked in this role for the first time. Looks like the head armourer messed up on her first day on the job...

Rent a portable forklift and it should make things much easier, unless it's on the second floor.

Komi Can't Communicate I'm not sure yet, but so far I'm cautiously optimistic about the show. It was much sillier than I expected. That's not necessarily a bad thing. It does feel like they tried to transfer the manga rather than adapt it in some scenes. JoJo's Shatner tier overacting would benefit most anime.

classic Dad Guards

Sadly no, just for the mace, I think there is just the spirit frenzy that affect chants and spells..

To be honest, I sometimes fall into that trap myself, although more often the inverse of it: My initial reaction to watching Fellowship was "Thanks, but I hate all the changes" and I said so directly to an audience of otherwise enraptured watchers. Taking a step back and realizing that some changes were necessary to make a good movie wasn't easy, and I still don't like Arwen's expanded role. There's nothing inherently wrong with it, except it smells of token romantic interest and token female protagonist, and the book already has one of the latter in the form of Eowyn, although arguably the idea of a token woman role in books and films didn't exist when Tolkien wrote it, so this is a modern interpretation of a more classic work. One might want to argue that Lord of the Rings is not old enough to be a true classic yet, but it's steadily creeping towards being a hundred years old now and it was written with that as the intent - to be the mythology Tolkien thought the UK was sorely lacking. Part of that might also just be bias against Liv Tyler, but I don't want to turn this thread into a debate about the Lord of the Rings movies. There's also something else, and it bears repeating: Comedy very, very rarely works for me. As such, finding the original Sailor Moon supremely funny or liking K-On! is an outlier for me. It's not that I prefer serious drama over comedy as a matter of course, because I really enjoy the rare comedy that I can heartily laugh to, it's just extremely easy to lose me, or never get me in the first place. I didn't get a single smile (never mind laughing) out of the first episode, to be perfecly honest - and they tried. It's like that Seinfeld clip that Bruno and Guard Dog talked about a couple of days back. I watched that after the two talked about how epicly funny the scene is, and my only reaction to it was: Please make it stop, this is so painfully unfunny. I despise Seinfeld. Well, that's unfair to the show, I more often than not despise sitcoms, and when I don't, it's usually for the episodes and seasons that everyone else hates. We'll see how the other episodes go. For the time being, it seems like an adaptation made primarily for fans of the manga, and that's fine, and I certainly don't begrudge you enjoying the episode. Hell, I like Dark Star and Masters of the Universe, who am I to judge people? Yeah, timing I guess matters too. When I started reading it, it didn't feel so fresh any more, and it just asked me to be entertained based on a whole lot of nothing. I'm still not done reading the series beause the second book managed to break my interest and need to fill out progress bars so hard I actually stopped for a long while, but I'm reading bits and pieces here and there - and that doesn't help much. I pretty much dropped out of my intensive reading phase with rewatching Sailor Moon. It'll be back at some point though.

You very well could be right. I am certainly looking at it subjectively as someone who has read the manga for years. I like it. But it could be for the simple reason that at the point in my life I was over saturated by the Fantasy genre and this was simply something fresh and new. Book one leaves you dizzy and confused as you are simply dropped in the universe and left to figure stuff out for yourself, but by the end of the book you start to get your bearings and connect some of the dots. I personally had issues with the tail end of the series and the harsh plot shifts that some books had. One of these days I will create a manga thread.

I was going to post: "What about my post looked like a suggestion to watch this?" Ah, I see. Well, don't blame me then... I did no such thing as stated above, and never would have. The cat ears come out while she is listening to something intently, so their meaning is, eh, I think pretty much that. She's just perking up her ears, and she likes cats, however there could be something more behind it. So, about the time when I was tempted to post that I hate this. Heh. Anyway, Back Street Girls, Episode 1: No, just kidding, not going to watch that dumpster fire.

My Switch OLED arrived a couple of days ago and fortune smiled on me today as my route naturally took me up I-85 through the Charlotte area with enough time cushion to drop the trailer at the tank wash (it's less than 8 miles from where I live), bobtail home, grab the package, and bobtail back. Anyway, I got the white variant, as opposed to Bokishi's red & blue variant. I don't have an OG Switch nor a Switch Lite to compare against but I can tell you that the OLED screen looks great; colors are vibrant and almost pop off the screen.

Well, we did run into Berath-worshipping Fampyrs in WM1. If you're a priest of Berath they'll even go fight the ogres for you. My guess is that direct intervention in the mortal realm is something that the gods have mutually decided to not engage in too often, but they are capable of it nonetheless (e.g. Wael stealing all your scrolls out of spite), so vessels that break the life and death cycle are probably not eager to attract Berath's ire.

Konomi Can't Speak, episode 1. ...What can I say? I guess I just want to get shows I know I'll hate out of the way as quickly as possible before I have you rubes telling me I should watch it because it's so great. Hitting me with the DRAMA MODE SOFT PIANO MUSIC within literally the first 30 seconds. This is one of the very few shows where I might actually like the exaggerated emotions style (which I usually despise) more than the regular style: Maybe because it almost looks 80s anime-ish, like Ranma kind of. If all the characters looked like this all the time, I would almost be tempted to keep watching for the novelty. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, I got about 5 and a half minutes in and that was all she wrote. Bye! Now I will read majestic's post. The first 30 seconds seemed to imply something between her and cats, that maybe she likes or identifies with them; it's probably there for a reason but not spelled out quite yet. Beyond that, I ain't got much to say, it clearly wasn't going to work for me, the direction on every level was...you know, very not me, .

Uhm. Okay. I watched the first episode of Komi Can't Communicate. Immediately after it was over, Netflix suggested I continue with... Back Street Girls: Gokudols. Here's what Wikipedia has to say: I'm uncertain what is more offensive, the fact that this is a thing that apparently exists, or the fact that Netflix thinks I would like to watch this, let alone perhaps enjoy it. Well, there's one nice thing, I no longer feel so bad about liking Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha even though I'm not sure what's that worth, lolicon still frames aren't a lot better than suggesting sepukku and sex reassignment are a similar level of punishment for a real Japanese yakuza (or men, in general). I don't think I need to say it, but I'm not liking Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha for its lolicon content, and it thankfully was short and hopefully will never come back again. The really disgusting part about this is that it sounds like the classic racist defense, hey, I'm not racist, but... sigh. Ah, well, we all have our moments like these, right? Also, in case you don't know what lolicon anime is, then, uhm, don't look it up. Let's just say that it would put Pedosus to shame, or rather, make him really hor... erm, happy. As always with first episodes of a new anime, this post will contain somewhat unmarked spoilers and a general outline of the first episode (unless something imporant and twisty happens in the first episode, which it doesn't in this case). Komi Can't Communicate, Episode 1: The beginning of a beautiful friendship (if you can stand the animation, voice acting and direction of this, which is a tough sell, really) This pretty accurately portraits my face while watching the episode, for the most part. Not sure where to start. This... doesn't look good, but thankfully I sat through 39 episodes and two movies of Sailor Moon Crystal and now have a different perspective on what bad looking animation is, so I no longer mind animes like this. Or rather, it's no longer enough to dismiss it out of hand. Alas, I'm not entirely certain that's entirely a good thing, but it was in the case of K-On!, and that was good enough to stay a net positive for a while though. With that out of the way, we can proceed to the direction and it's adaptational quality. Or lack thereof. This has a very similar problem as Sailor Moon Crystal insofar as that it feels like a manga with animated frames, not an animated show that makes good use of the change in medium. It's filled to the brim with frames that would work as stills in a manga, but don't in an anime, and to make matters worse, a narrator lady and Hitohito take turns narrating what we can see anyway. Please don't run away, Erica edition. The show can't know that I won't run even though I would like to. Curiously enough the best scene in the episode, because there is absolutely no talking. Our two protagonists are Shouko Komi, who managed to get into an elite private high school in spite of not being able to talk to anyone at all, and Hitohito Tadano, a very literal average boy who by all means doesn't even have the grades to be accepted. He even narrates this himself. In good anime tradition, the character name are puns, or at least meaningful. Tada no hito really means "just a guy", as in - well - average dude. If you write Shouko's name in its correct Japanese myoji, then namae form, Komi Shouko, it turns into punny spelling of Komyushou-ko. Communication disorder girl (as mentioned earlier in this thread, "ko" means girl). Hitohito wants nothing more than to not be noticed and average, and Shouko... wants to find friends. Clearly, fate decrees that the join forces to overcome their problems. Being a coward for Hitohito which is an unbearbale trait for any shounen protagonist to have, and Komi really suffers under her crippling shyness. Every now and then Komi grows cat ears for no reason. Maybe she tries to hear the narrator lady. Hitohito brutally overacts his narration, by the way. Shouko says a handful of words, but only when she's alone in the classroom with him while he's asleep. In spite of her not being able to talk, she immediately becomes the most popular girl in the class - maybe even the entire school. Mr. Average Guy is the only person on the planet to notice that Komi is cripplingly shy and comes up with the idea of writing to communicate with her, instead of talking, in a scene which is, not going to lie, absolutely stunning in its brilliance. For a moment, the framing and direction no longer matter, and nobody talks at all, and all of the dialogue plays out by Komi and Tadano writing a heap of kanji at each other on the classroom's chalkboard. It's hard to describe how great this scene really is, and I mean that. Sadly it also leads to Komi eventually running off, and it ends, and the anime goes back to being animated manga frames with a supremely weird outro and a bonus scene after the credits (literally called bonus scene). Tadano asks Komi what her dream is, and she writes down having a hundred friends. He replies that he's going to help her find another 99 then. Yes, by all means, go ahead and help the girl find more friends. Don't bother suggesting she might go to a specialist with her disability. Well, we wouldn't have something to watch then. At this point it goes back to being weird, because the narration suddenly kicks in and tells everyone that this private elite high school only accepts eccentric weirdos, so Tadano is going to have to work really hard to find 99 friends for Komi, who - as I mentioned already - has an enitre school full of people who want to be friends with her, because she's mysterious and beautiful. She doesn't even get yelled at by a teacher when asked to read a page of a book, because that teacher thinks it's a statment that reading is meant to be a quiet and contemplative activity, not a loud one. You might wonder why this post is more chaotic than usual - that's because it's a reflection of the episode. It's total chaos, most of the time the framing and direction doesn't work, the voice actors overact to the point where you could take the dialogue and transplant it to JoJo's Bizarre Adventure without it being weird and the artstyle takes some getting used to. However, at least I didn't totally hate it*, and if the nice scene about the two finding a common ground to start from is any indication, it might get better in the future. It also just might stay that way. We'll see. Assuming it stops trying to be funny, because it really wasn't. I can't explain why this falls flat while something like K-On! works for me. Probably because K-On! made sure that I liked the characters before it made them do funny things or end up in embarrassing situations. I really hope they're going to drop the cat ears thing. Really. It's... it was bordeline not funny in K-On! when Azusa was forced to wear a headband with cat ears (although it made for an immensely funny scene much, much later in the anime), but it's really, uhm, dumb here. *I almost made a post after the first five minutes stating: "I hate this already!", just so you get an idea how much that one scene salvaged this. Things work like that for me sometimes, you can take a sea of terrible and give it one brilliant moment, and that'll be enough. It is, in this case, but it remains a big if for future episodes.

Decided to punish my self by watching Your Lie in April. It's no longer on netflix...Guess I'll go and sleep.

You need the knife to cut eelgrass

LOL no. Two glasses of champagne each in the context of the evening it’s not what I would call drinking. That’s actually the first alcohol I’ve had in… I guess a year. May be a bit longer I don’t remember exactly when I stopped. i’m in pretty good shape. Not just for my age but for any age. I’m 6 foot four and I weigh 215 pounds. Just a bit under 2 m tall and 98 kg give or take. So when I went to the doctor last year I found out I was pre-diabetic. Well I eat very little in the way of carbohydrates. My biggest sugar intake was whiskey. And that made me realize I was drinking quite a bit of it. It’s not healthy. It was making me unhealthy. Plus my self-control was not all that could be desired. So I just cut it out. My A-1 C is back to normal and I’ve lost 20 pounds.

Something kind of funny happened last night. I get a call from my brother. I’ve told you guys a little about him he and I are not real close and don’t speak very often. In fact I talk to my niece and nephew more than I do him and my sister in law. Anyway he is shopping on gunbroker.com. And I told you guys I listed a couple of my firearms on there for sale. He recognized one and called me about it. He asked if it was mine. I told him yes. He said why didn’t I call him because he’s always liked that one. I said I did. Two weeks ago! Left you a voicemail and you never called me back. Then I laughed and I said you never call me back! We had a chuckle about that and end up talking for over an hour. It was good to catch up with him. He’s a good guy he just has a lot of demands on his time. Since our parents passed away we’ve gotten out of touch. he invited me to come down for Christmas. I hated to decline but I don’t know if I’m going to have plans or not. I’m kind of assuming that I will. But I told him definitely maybe. I asked him if he wanted the rifle and he said yes. I told him he could have it. I wasn’t taking his money.

I guess he's worried that if BLM succeeds it will give South Africans the wrong ideas and they'll come knocking at his door with pitchforks and torches, demanding their wealth back.

I've been playing The Crew 2 on PS4 and I've been very pleasantly surprised. I have Assetto Corsa Competizione for when I get a wheel & pedals rig set up at home, but I wanted something more arcadey, but not too arcadey to play with a controller on the road, The Crew 2 fits that bill nicely. One of the biggest anxieties I had going in was the live service model and the dreaded microtransactions. They are in the game, but I haven't found the game to be overly grindy in an effort to get you to spend money. Sure, if you want to get a Bugatti Chiron it will take you quite a while to earn enough in-game currency, but it's a freakin' Bugatti, you don't just give a car like that away. The game gives you some decent vehicles gratis to get you started. I wanted an Acura NSX as my main get around vehicle and saving for it took a very reasonable amount of time. I'm probably going to buy one of the packs in the game as a thank you to the devs because I got the game super cheap on sale and I honestly feel like I robbed Ubisoft given the amount of content I got for my money. The amount of content in the game is ABSURD. The map (it's a condensed and not completely accurate United States) is absolutely littered with icons, even by Ubi standards. Unlike in other Ubi titles, the vast majority of said icons are worthwhile and fun activities, rather that copy & paste collectibles and repetitive outposts. The amount of vehicles in the game is overwhelming, with something like 500 cars, motorcycles, trucks, planes, hovercrafts, and speed boats. There are so many different tracks and racing disciplines that it will make your head spin and the vast majority of them are really fun, including some goofy stuff like racing a Delorean against 50s hot rods. Ubi have steadily been adding content since the game released some 3 years ago and continue to do so still. The driving model sits roughly halfway between sim and arcade. Different vehicles feel decidedly different and you can upgrade any of them. This is where my biggest gripe with the game comes in, the upgrade system. You can't just buy parts, you get loot drops, which is stupid. You get loot drops very regularly, though. I suppose if you want to squeeze the last 1% of performance out of your car because you are trying to get #1 on the global leaderboards it could take excessive grinding to get the absolute best stat drops, and that's probably where they get you with microtransactions. If, however, you just want to casually have fun (that's me!) and make your car really fast (but not the absolute fastest) you will never feel the need to spend a penny. I was very relieved at how mild the rubber banding is in the game. I hate aggressive rubber banding, which thankfully is not in this game. There is rubber banding but you can absolutely pull away with a fast enough vehicle and good driving and absolutely get left in the dust if you suck. I am also happy that every vehicle has a schlongpit view, which is sadly missing from far too many racing games. A really cool feature is the ability to switch vehicles on the fly. You can be ripping through Miami in a car, hit a jump, swap into a plane in mid-air, fly over a lake, then swap into a boat and drop into the water. If that sounds awesome that's because it is. There are even some super fun races where you switch vehicles mid-race. They are rad as ****. You can fast travel to any icon from anywhere or drive or fly there yourself. It takes roughly 40 minutes to drive from Seattle to Key West. Amusingly, there is a really great dynamic weather system, but it doesn't respect geography, so you wind up with a snow storm in Key West (proof that global warming is a hoax? 🤔). You can stay on the roads or rip through forests (preferably in an off-road vehicle). There are all sorts of activities to do just cruising around. If you are online other players will be on the map. You can group up with them if you wish, do events together, have impromptu races, or just mess around. I'm just blown away by this game; the sheer amount of content and how fun most of it is, how not overly greedy the microtransaction economy is, and how much sheer joy I've gotten from it. Ubisoft did a good?

Ah, I was worried she murdered you or something as you weren't posting. Well, then again, maybe she did and is using GD's account to keep up appearances. Hm..

Mucking about in the other Skyrim:

Since the update I have found that none of the thistle plants have any needles to harvest for making arrows. Is anyone else experiencing the same problem?

I actually thought about not using hellfire ray on my angel run but there isn't a good functional replacement so I just ignored the RP aspect

The way I see it you can do two things with Ember that justify her party slot. You give her Red Salamander, go full Spell Penetration and Improved Criticals: Ray line of feats, complete with Ascendant Element: Fire, throw her a Cross-Blooded Sorcerer level with Gold and Brass dragon bloodlines, one Loremaster level for an extra feat (use the Sorcerer level for the needed Skill Focus) and top it off with a Second Bloodline: Red mythic feat. Spell Focus: Enchantment and copy it to Evocation through Expanded Arsenal: Evocation. Or the other way around, whatever you fancy. That leaves you doing acceptable damage (all those bloodlines provide a nice fire damage bonus per die roll) and you can fill the metamagic gaps through rods, while still going what you'd take her into the party for - hexes and crowd control. Evil Eye is a nice debuff, Restless Slumber amounts to a spammable instakill against mook level enemies and Protective Luck and Fortune are also not the worst things to have, and with the setup you can get the occasional Feeblemind to stick against annoying casters. That leaves you with a few feats to play around, you could take Selective Spell for an easier early game (Web) and easier AoE crowd control. The other is dropping the occasional fire damage in favor of Spell Focus: Conjuration/Enchantment and focus on more crowd control and augmented summoning (Swap Gold and Brass for Fey and Undead, don't bother with the Loremaster level). Selective Spell also gives you a decent milage out of a lot of spells that would otherwise not just crowd control your enemies.

I now feel like the big dumb that I am. Or US politics are so consistently dumb it's hard to keep up with. I'll go with that to feel better about myself. It's still there for me. Maybe I'll go Hellraiser and watch it. This makes me want to watch it more. Don't make me bust out the Ludovico.

Sorry to hear that for both of you. My wife has had an injured pancreas for about 8 years now. She has to take enzymes to keep it working with every bite of food she takes. But that is better than being diabetic and trying to survive without it. Pancreases are so bizarre.

Sorry majestic. I lost my mom to pancreatic cancer back in 01. **** cancer.