At least in my worlds, the people who willing reject healing and restoration magic is because it goes against their religion. Instead of “It makes me special and unique!”
Definitely like what I have heard thus far of Ironflame! And thank you for the other options as well.
That is kind of harsh. More like Yankee carpetbaggers coming down from on high to enlighten those weird hicks, since it is so easy after all. Wait, why do I hear Alan Jackson in the distance?
What I want to know is what the hell happened to female country singers? Because we have gone a long way off course from the likes of Shania Twain and Jo Dee Messina.
I dont find as much American metal as I would hope for. A lot of the stuff I find just dredging the depths is almost always Scandinavian.
Although in an ironic, I did have a funny moment regarding two bands I like.
Smash Into Pieces, the first time I ever heard them, I thought was American, with a guess of Seattle or Portland. When I saw one of their music videos where the opening prominently showed off the Golden Gate Bridge, I assumed I was right. Then I finally got around to actually looking them up...and it turns out they were Swedish. And their lead singer even has a fairly thick accent when he is not singing, so that was kind of funny. Of course, this fact I thought made the music video and lyrics for their song Heathens that much funnier. ("Show'em how we do it Down South." You arent from the South?)
Meanwhile, the other band is Starset. When I first heard them, I thought they were British, because while their singer didnt really have an obvious accent, he sounded similar to a lot of other British power metal bands I had heard like Gloryhammer. And I get around to looking up where they were from, it turns out they were from Columbus, Ohio.
Never heard of either. I looked up some of their stuff just to get an idea, and I definitely wouldnt say no to either (although Visigoth seemed more my style out of the two).
To give you an idea of my taste, below are my top 5. Of course, ignoring the obligatory Sabaton and Powerwolf that damn near every Power Metal fan has on their favorites list (with Sabaton being my actual favorite because I am a history nerd):
From what I saw, his wife put out a response to her on Instagram lashing back, and Jason just responded with "That's my Barbie!" (since Morris called his wife "a Barbie doll" as an insult). And then I imagine her agent told her to shut the fuck up because as far as I can find nothing has happened since then.
EDIT: Although looking into it more, apparently his original PR firm dropped him because "How dare you!" Which I am sure hurts him greatly as one of the biggest and most well known names in modern Country music.
I mean, she was recently taking snipes at Jason Aldean for the crime of "Being openly conservative", so she is absolutely working her way down the Dixie Chicks road.
EDIT: Also trying to convince Jason Aldeans wife to leave him, and then implying Jason's wife was a money grubbing whore when she told her to fuck off.
Literally who?
looks up discography
I know literally one song on there and I didnt think it was all that great to begin with ('80's Mercedes). My enjoyment of modern country pretty stopping outside of a few edge cases in the 2010's continues unchanged. People like Chris Stapleton, Brantley Gilbert, Dead Man's Poison, Corb Lund, Jackson Dean, and others? All fine and I still love their stuff.
These radio Barbie's Nashville keeps trying to turn out, as well as the "Bro Country" types? There is a reason I keep my radio tuned to the classics station.
At least with my main genre of Metal, there is a seemingly endless supply of good bands still making great music. At least in the Power Metal and Heavy Metal sphere (since that is my style).
I think the actual creators behind the anime called Rebecca a loli so she's officially a loli
Fair point. Just making a point about the fact that she is also an adult. But Studio Trigger gonna Studio Trigger, so we can run with it.
Nobody really knows who fired the first shot.
Hell, even if we go back to what could be considered the first shot in Kansas, it's even stupider than that.
You want to know what the first shot of Bleeding Kansas was? Two guys getting in a drunken bar fight. It wasnt started over their ideals. It wasnt started over religion. They had had previous beef with each other over a territorial dispute, they bumped into each other in a bar, and a fight broke out that saw one shoot the other.
It just so happens that the shooter was a leader in a local Pro-Slave-State militia, while the victim was a member of a Pro-Free-State militia. And it just so happened the local sheriff was Slave-State, so he just arrested the leader of the local Free-State militia and trumped up charges to execute him for the "murder". At which point the local militia broke him out of jail and it turned into a stand-off that was only broken up after the Territorial Governor sent in the cavalry to break it up.
Even then, while the Slave-Staters fired the first shot, it was the Free-Staters who escalated, specifically John Brown. Since his response to the 1st Sacking of Lawrence (which left much of the town destroyed but managed to only have one person die), and the attempts to deescalate after it, was to go and brutally massacre several Slave-Staters in their homes, execution style while ranting out biblical verses.
Which caused the Slave-Staters to escalate with their own retribution attacks, which caused the Free-Staters to launch retribution, and oh look, now we have Bleeding Kansas, and both the North and South believe the slavery issue is now a matter of literal life and death.
EDIT: Of course, on the other hand, its also worth remembering even before the first shot, the Slave-Staters had used vast intimidation and corruption to run a rigged election to try and force being a Slave-State. But that one was at least met with condemnation by all but the most openly partisan because it was a bit too obvious what they were doing.
Yeah, I wouldnt say that Rebecca is even a loli either, just a very petite woman. I dislike her as a character and think that Luci was infinitely better, but she is still an adult.
Honestly, I think that like many other issues, it is them projecting their own biases and strange delusions onto other things because they cant separate reality and fiction, and they are usually as bigoted as they claim we are (see also: "Orcs are black people").
I realized some of the push around the hating on lolicon was just an attempt to destroy anime and manga when I saw these sort of people calling Uzaki-Chan a "loli."
She is canonically a 20's aged college student, not a child.
She has fairly large tits, which are the last thing a pedo or lolicon would want.
But she is a "loli" because she is short. That was the moment I realized this was another push to try and destroy a medium that still gives customers what they want and is pulling people way from the grip of Hollywood and other "Western" entertainment. The say way they hate video games for generally being fan pleasers instead of message pushers (especially as Indies are on the rise over AAA).
This is the honest answer.
I think a lot of people on here forget that the average Normie is still largely disconnected from the internet and our conversations on here.
So I guarantee that a large part of the reason goes along these lines:
"Oh, Velma? That looks like a Scooby-Doo related thing! That might be neat. Lets just give it a watch and...WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK IS THIS HORSESHIT!?" And then at work the next tell, he tells everyone "Yeah, that Velma show? It's absolute ass! Dont watch it."
Then three weeks later, HBO is asking "What happened to all of our viewers? Well, time to cancel it I guess."
Also worth noting a ton of things there along the lines of "One Season, Canceled", which probably doesnt help for the comparisons.
I also havent seen any of the new Star Trek (Discovery or Picard) directly, just the reviews and video essays on them.
Definitely not disagreeing on anything you said in yours since it is also true. I will say this though about what I have seen of new Trek:
What Start Trek has since become is likely what has happened to many on the Left: they are tired of being a vanguard and now want to be rulers.
Not only does it seem like they have made that change, they have become bitter nihilistic rulers on top of it all. Since it is the one that is fresh in my mind, Patrick Stewart deliberately helped to make the Federation as depicted in Picard into a xenophobic, totalitarians hellscape that oppresses and brutalizes the Romulans despite the fact that they are "refugees" since they lost their planet. And Stewart has made it abundantly clear he did this because he is still salty over Trump and Brexit being things that happened.
But he went further and decided to make Picard himself into a frail old man who can no longer diplomacy his way out of situations because "You are past your prime old man!" and "Why should we listen to a washed up has-been of a Starfleet commander?" and is frequently disrespected by the newer Starfleet officers.
And this is before we get into the fact that New Trek is generally full of much more fighting and killing than Old Trek, as well as frequent depictions of gore, brutal torture, and other displays of violence that would have never flown in Old Trek outside except for the occasional instance to make a point.
EDIT: And oh yeah. The typical Starfleet crew now acts less like professional military and scientific personal and more like emotionally stunted teenagers who backtalk their commanding officers in just about every interaction. I am sure says nothing about the quality of the writers.
Although, I was watching a video recently from a review of Star Trek: Picard that made an interesting observation about the nature of both Star Wars and Star Trek in current culture and what has become of them.
The TLDR being that Star Wars exist within the "Constrained"/"Tragic" view of Human Nature, while Star Trek exist within the "Unconstrained"/"Anointed" view of Human Nature. Both started out with fairly hopeful messages, as both views of human nature usually do.
As Star Wars was subverted though, many of its fans, in keeping with a tragic view, began to adapt so that they would not allow their enjoyment to be ruined, and Star Wars has even seen individuals in key positions attempting to subvert the Subverters, which while perhaps not the intention does map toward the idea of decentralized local control the Constrained say will serve people the best.
Star Trek on the other hand has followed the all too typical route of the Anointed, where when they attempt to bring forth their utopia, and they find the ignorant Plebeians refuse to listen to their betters, they begin to lose the hopefulness in favor of bitterness, misanthropy, and nihilism as they seek to purge all those who will constrain their vision, until there is literally nothing left and they are retconning their own work to make it just as hateful and bitter as they are now, destroying everything they ever worked for. Because, you mindless ape, dont deserve utopia if you are going to resist my will!
Perhaps reading a bit too much into the nature of what is happening, I just thought it was interesting.
I was honestly more taken aback by the "In our century, we've learned not to fear words" bit. Meanwhile, in our currently reality: "WORDS ARE VIOLENCE, YOU NAZI!!"
Might be more likely than you think now. Iger actually had beef with Kennedy near the end of his last tenure before Chapek took over. And there is an insider I listen to who has been fairly accurate and called out the others for just jumping at every rumor when none of his people ever said it was going to happen. But even he is starting to hear that she may be "retiring" (how they are going to frame it) after Indy 5 is done.
But we shall see. And while the smart thing to fix Star Wars would be to put Dave Filoni in charge of Lucasfilm, it probably wont happen. And its entirely possible someone worse could get in charge.
Warning: Mucho Texto below, sorry in advance.
I am sure you will get the negatives from other people who will come into the thread because the game does have quite the hatedom on this side of the internet. But as the resident Vicky 3 simp, allow me to give you my own opinions of it (ironically, I am playing it right this second and paused to make a post).
I will say that you may actually have a little bit of an advantage not being biased by Vicky 2 going into it.
Like you said, warfare was massive change over their previous games. And while I like the concept it is extremely hit or miss. When it works, it works great, but when it breaks, it breaks hard. I actually think it has the good bones of a system that can be improved, and there have already been mods that do just that, but we will see what becomes of it in the long term. But if you dont want to micromanage your wars because you are too busy with your spreadsheets, it is definitely what you are wanting for the most part.
The economic aspect is indeed where the game thrives, with most of your gameplay being around balancing your markets through either domestic production or imports (with exports to drive profits on excess, obviously). Many times, this will be limited by your own domestic situations as well. For instance, I am currently playing as Persia, and I have maxed out my logging abilities while still having a major deficient in my production. So I am looking around at other markets to buy up the logs I need to cover the shortfall.
I will say that it does somewhat misstep in that running a deficient doesnt actually cause direct negative consequences for your people like it did in Vicky 2 (ie: dont produce enough food, your people can starve), but it at least causes enough of a Standard of Living or Industrial Profit hit from extreme prices that it is in your best interest to prevent shortages.
Some people have complained about the fact that Capitalist will not auto-build their own factories in this game, but personally I always thought that them doing that in Vicky 2 was more of a pain in the ass than it was worth for any realism aspects because the AI was too stupid to make smart choices. To that end, I do think they sidestep the issue nicely in this one with the "Investment Pool", where Capitalist will pay into a fund that can only be used to pay for buildings. But when I play as highly Capitalist nations, the fund is usually so well-funded that I am effectively building for free because the Capitalist are paying for it all anyway. This on top of the fact that you can now harvest multiple resources from the same state makes it all worth it to me.
So the TLDR is that I do think it is a good economic sim, and I would recommend watching some gameplay if you are still not sold.
For Paradox themselves, I will stress every time their wokeness comes up: the company is quite aptly named. Because while their employees and their forums are extremely woke, the company has generally done a good job of keep the wokeness separate from their games. You can still shout Deus Vult! in Crusader Kings even after people said that was evil. Stellaris lets you genocide all Xeno scum, and in some builds even makes the genocide the optimal strategy!
In Vicky 3, I have seen some try and say that they gave a "woke" depiction of Africa because they use the same tech tree and are no longer called "uncivilized" by the game (in favor of "decentralized"). However, if this was supposed to be "woke" you would expect to see a non-player controlled African superpower naturally emerge since, after all, they are using the same rules as the rest of the world now. At this very moment in my game, in 1883, the best developed independent African nation is Sokoto, which has all of 2 textile mills and a furniture factory to its name and a literacy rate of 44%. Meanwhile, AI control Great Britian is rocking power plants, vast industrial complexes, and even Synthetic Dye factories (which are usually a late game building). And with about half of Africa already colonized, I dont think history is going to go much different than it did IRL for Africa. So much for those woke buffs.
Sorry for talking your ear off. Just wanted to get a solid argument out there.
I watched the trailer because I had never heard of this thing, and the environmentalism message also seems to be pretty in your face. Literally in the first 30 seconds of the trailer, when it looked like the rig was suffering some sort of geological event, one of the crew said "When you punch holes in Nature, eventually nature is gonna' punch back." And the show seems to heavily imply that whatever is happening is basically Nature taking revenge for drilling oil, and some of the crew seem to think that maybe they deserve it because they said they should have never been there to do the drilling.
Which begs the question: If you are an environmentalist with an aversion to oil exploration....why are you working on an oil rig?!
Which I dont think gets appreciated enough by a lot of people.
You see people show up who look nothing like you, arriving on what for all you know are moving islands, wearing what look like turtle shells of a material you dont know but makes them extremely difficult to attack, with swords made of the same material which is just as sharp as your obsidian without breaking as easily, with sticks that shoot smoke and fire and kill whoever they point it at, as well as much bigger fire sticks that can even destroy a building. And they have come speaking a new language but you eventually gather they want your gold and to have you worship their god.
And your first reaction is to run to them and beg them to kill the Aztecs, and you will worship them as gods if they do it.
Just how bad are the Aztecs to make that happen?
And now we have SJW's and Leftist trying to say that we should respect them and saying that Hispanics should identify with them instead of whatever else they identify with. Which I have found is just another stick being added to the camel that is "Fed Up Hispanics joining lockstep with Right Wing Populist", because they have far more in common with the Conquistadors than the Aztecs (almost like Hispanics are descended from this or something).
It's from the latest DLC I think.
It is. The newest DLC added the three things.
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The Stock Exchange, which I would argue is not nearly as broken as it seems here (Spiffing gonna' Spiffing after all).
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Banks, which will send armored cars to business in your city, and will reduce the overall crime rate for areas they are covering.
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The "Financial Offices" specialization for Office Districts, which will provide a significantly higher amount of taxes (even more if built in a radius around the Stock Exchange) in exchange for a happiness malice applied to people who work in the zone.
Maybe with the "older" crowd, but most people I know of who of Reddit think it is either unhinged to the Left or unhinged, period.
Which sucks, because I like to use it to keep up with some of my hobbies, but the SubReddits that are actually chill and open to discussion are few and far between.
If the list of concessions that has been floating around is real, they more or less have his balls in a vice grip and can squeeze them at will.
Everyone is talking about the return to the Jeffersonian rule on Speakers where it only takes one member to call for a vote of confidence in the speaker. But some of the other rumored concessions (at least showing up in the MSM, so probably with some reasonable inside scoops) are as follows:
- MacCarthy-aligned PAC's stay out of primary races.
- Debt ceiling hikes must be paired with spending cuts.
- Appropriations bills moved individually instead of Omnibus.
- Freedom Caucus members given seats on various committees. Apparently, there will also be 3 FC members on the Rules Committee, which gives them veto authority over a significant chunk of House matters.
- Discretionary spending capped at 2022 levels.
- 72-hours required to review bills before they are allowed a floor vote.
- Make it easier for members to offer amendments to bills.
- Creation of a "Church"-style committee to investigate corruption and weaponization of US agencies, especially, but not limited to, the FBI.
- Restoration of the "Holman Rule", which allows for the defunding, firing, and even outright elimination of bureaucratic positions and departments without having to follow traditional appropriations rules.
If that is true, then the Populist have a huge amount of power because they grabbed MacCarthy by the balls and decided to ride the tiger instead of backing down. But hey, he seems happy since he has his precious little gavel. Which I suppose is the one good thing we have over MacCarthy compared to the likes of McConnell. MacCarthy is just a stooge who will ride with whoever will give him the power he wants. And if that means giving some significant concessions to the FC so he can think he has power, then so be it. And if he starts having second doubts because he has his buttboy Frank Luntz whispering in his ear, just squeeze his balls until he says uncle.
I remember an old story of a guy who played as a Goblin wizard that had absurd INT but abysmal CON. So he was carried everywhere by a gang of goblins, who bore his throne out of either fear or reverence, and while a stiff breeze could kill him, he would turn people to meat slush with a flick of the wrist.
But wheelchairs…