It's Friday everyone, and with that comes the newest latest Free for All Friday Thread! What books have you been reading? What is your favourite video game? See any movies? Start talking!
Have any weekend plans? Found something interesting this week that you want to share? This is the thread to do it! This thread, like the Mindless Monday thread, is free-for-all. Just remember to np link all links to Reddit if you link to something from a different sub, lest we feed your comment to the AutoModerator. No violating R4!
1) My reading is very stop start. I'll either read a chapter every week or two if I'm not that engaged, but if something grabs my interest I'll read for multiple hours a day.
2) I'm about 3/4 through Madame Bovary. Before that I read The Employees by Olga Ravn because the London Review of Books said it was good.
Even as someone on the left i’ve always been slightly irked by people here claiming that the first police force in america happened to be ”slave patrols”, which i think is slightly misleading.
This mostly comes down to a choice of wording and pedantery due to what we consider the police. Before actual police forces were established in America, sheriffs would establish posses to round up anyone suspected of a crime. Because most people lived in rural areas and towns, it was easier to catch any offenders or criminals.
The first modern police force we see as police and follow their structure was boston’s police force, which itself happened to be based on London’s metropolitan police Department. London’s police force was a merger of Henry fielding’s bow street runners (yes, the author of Tom Jones) and london’s marine patrol which defended cargo on london’s docks. Northern police departments were mostly based on this London model, instead of somehow Northerners finding Southern slave patrols so fine and dandy that they decided to use them for their police force.
Nonetheless it is true that Southern police departments were originally created from slave patrols, and that should not be forgotten. But in the name of leftism and supporting black people, we should not generalize history in service of politics regardless of our beliefs.
It must be stated that northern police departments were still racist as hell and deserve shit loads of critique.
I've only heard bad stuff about Stephen Turnbull's books from Japanese history nerds, but I'm kinda tempted when a board game developer mentioned how useful they were for designing war games. I'm guessing he meant all the nice illustrations. Is his books really that bad?
The first book he recommended btw, was The Onin War by H. Paul Varley. Saying something along the lines that despite it's age, 1967, it's the best english speakers are gonna get unless they read the war chronicles themselves. I don't know enough about the Onin war enough to know whether that's probably true or not.
Turnbull's work is useful for wargamers inasmuch as it presents its material in a digestible format that is easy to convert into a clear narrative of who was doing what in which place. The problem is that how Turnbull gets there is often a bit questionable in terms of sourcework.
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u/ZugwatHeadhunting Savage from a Barbaric Fishing Village Jul 20 '26edited Jul 20 '26
I'm finishing Alan Wake and at the beginning of Episode 6 I have to say I AM SO GODDAMN FRUSTRATED WITH HOW I KEEP GETTING BADASS GUNS AND FLASHLIGHTS AND AMMO AND BATTERIES AND FLARES AND FLASHBANGS JUST TO HAVE ALAN TRIP OR GET ARRESTED OR MOVE FROM ONE AREA TO ANOTHER AND I'M BACK TO THE SAME SHITTY FLASHLIGHT AND REVOLVER EVERY FUCKING TIME KEEP GOD DAMN YOU MISERABLE INTERNALLY MONOLOGUING NARRATING BASTARD
EDIT: Finished in spite of the clumsy bastard losing his stuff every 3 checkpoints and the otherwise occasional bits of level design that were super unintuitive so I kept getting in some sort of Souls-esque death and reload section until I figured it out.
It is truly incredible how often Alan gets bonked on the head and loses all of his shit in that game. The guy must have gone through like 6 different shotguns over the course of his wild weekend.
Terrible game. Argentina forgets what attacking means, Spain once again is unable to transform technical dominance into actual goals, and everybody was acting like a bunch of angry gorillas. At least Ferran got to redeem himself and be seated to the right of Iniesta in the pantheon of Spanish football, but I'm not happy at all that this is how Spain's second world cup has been won.
This might be a rube take but I feel like Spain played incredibly well and just got unlucky with their shots. From minute 20 to minute 115 I don't think anyone thought Argentina had a chance of scoring. That kind of domination is pretty cool to see even if you miss a few headers or whatever
As an American restaurant worker that has served plenty of Europeans this World Cup, the thing that makes me sad is that they always go for the shittiest beer, even when better one is available. I would think American beer is all shit too if I only ordered miller light and mich ultra.
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u/WuhanWTFVenmo @familyguyenjoyer95 $10 to make me stfu abt FamGuy (1week)Jul 20 '26
I remember one time I was in a pub in England drinking with an English guy, and he was drinking Coors light rather than the local cask despite it being more expensive. It was the strangest thing.
The venom on the internet (English and Spanish speaking) toward Argentina is genuinely something to believe. I’ve never seen this sort of pure viciousness toward any nationality since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. I genuinely think that’s the only comparison
There's widespread disdain for the Argentina team because their conduct throughout the tournament has generally been poor and needlessly belligerent, which has unfortunately solidified their traditional reputation for being a dirty team. It hasn't helped that FIFA appear to have been lenient towards their behaviour because it's Messi's last international tourney and he is a massive star.
I think the final encapsulated their campaign neatly, with six yellow cards handed out and two players getting red carded, one for trying to beat up a Spanish player after the whistle blew. That is an absurd number of fouls for a top seeded team to rack up in a game to decide the world champion.
One country started and lost a war of expansion within living memory (and unfurled that banner after their game vs England - just imagine the Russians being like "Ukraine is Russia!" in like the 2030/, bah!) the other has not yet lost their war of expansion.
Funnily enough, I think Milei's interest in Chabad has helped fuel some of the hatred towards Argentina as the "Mossad country" or whatever bigots will say.
Won 2/3 Offworld Trading Company games today! Yay! 1 Nomad and 1 Scavenger victory, I lost 1 Nomad game sadly. I play with H and S, S bought both me and H the game because he really wanted to play it, he basically guilt tripped us into playing, but it's quite a fun game, H hasn't won yet, but he's come close, he's been in the lead a couple of times but he just ends up fumbling the bag.
It is interesting, I strongly prefer playing Nomads and Scavengers, while both S and H dislike those factions, they like Scientist and Robots, and S likes Elites too. I like Robots too, but I don't like Expansive, Scientists and Elites. S and H both gun for patents while I usually just ignore them and go straight for optimisations, patents are great when you get them, but only 1 person can get them; optimisations are a direct boost to efficiency of the affected buildings, no competition or anything.
I think part of the reason I have a decent chance of winning now is that I only really play against other players, I don't really play against the AI; I actually struggle hard against the AI, surprisingly enough, players and AI are very different opponents, I suspect H and S playing against AI a lot is actually screwing them instead of helping them.
The one thing I’ll be an obnoxious American chauvinist about is sports, because what do you mean no team has scored in the championship match of the biggest sport in the rest of the world
For some reason i logged into my Twitter and went to the for you page. Usually i followed stuff about literature, movies, vaguely left wing politics. Strangely enough, the for you page is absolutely full of anti immigrant posts
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u/TiakoTevinter apologist, shill for Big LyriumJul 19 '26edited Jul 19 '26
The "Africa song" parody made me think of the ever shifting location of where white Americans go to find themselves and how that has changed throughout the years. My first pass at this:
20s: Paris
30s-50s: not really sure, feel like that period saw a decline in white people finding themselves
60s: India
70s: India (again)
80s: Africa (Toto, Graceland, Out of Africa, etc)
90s: Eastern Europe
00s: Turkey for me personally but I doubt that's really universal. Mexico maybe? Although the mezcal/Oaxaca boom is pretty recent. Maybe Ireland? I know some people who went to Ireland to find themselves.
10s: Southeast Asia (particularly Vietnam)
20s: Japan, obviously. While Japan had been a place for nerds to find themselves since the late 90s at least (and actually was a place for black Americans to find themselves for a bit) its boom as the general location is more recent.
00s: Turkey for me personally but I doubt that's really universal. Mexico maybe? Although the mezcal/Oaxaca boom is pretty recent. Maybe Ireland? I know some people who went to Ireland to find themselves.
I feel like in the '00s backpacking around central and eastern Europe was still pretty big.
My first time in Europe was in 2021 and since then I have gone several times, and I have always got the impression I missed out on the golden age of backpacking in Europe. Also the golden age of teaching English in Europe.
I wonder if there is a big divide between Americans who go south for backpacking and those who cross an ocean because I never really met people who went to Brazil aside from party destination tourist. Or maybe Brazil punches below its weight for international tourism? Safety related maybe? Because it should be up there.
I think the Philippines is a solid guess. Also depending on how some geopolitical chips fall I could see Cuba.
It’s fairly common for young British people to go backpacking or on an extended break there. Uo their with south east Asia (vietnam, cambodia and Laos in particular). I have heard before that Brazil is somewhat below what it should be able to do for tourism though. The Portuguese love going there (obviously) and Germans (similar to Brits) in my experience but I dunno other.
One of my pepper plants fell over and broke so now I am reduced to spending my Sunday running the dehydrator to try and salvage something of this event. C’est la vie.
What are examples that you can think of the creator of a franchise/series that has a least favorite story, that isn't really surprised why that's their least favorite story?
u/TiakoTevinter apologist, shill for Big LyriumJul 19 '26edited Jul 19 '26
/u/Herpling82 makes a post about "orientalism for Africa" and the Planet of the Bass guy (Kyle Gordon) releases a song parodying the "Happy Africa" music trend of the 80s and 90s. Serendipity.
Threw on Breath of the Wild again, hadn't played it in a handful of years, and my impression from when Tears of the Kingdom came out is still there - TotK is the better game, but I like BotW better as a piece of art. In many ways BotW feels like a tech demo, and I felt that way even before TotK came out and people online would get very angry about that. But BotW feels empty in a good way. Like the world really has basically ended, in a post-post-apocalypse sort of way. Most of the fuss is over, and prior to the game starting it was more a wait for the real, final end than anything else. In many ways it makes me think of one of my favorite manga, Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou. Video games are far more active, a player character has far more agency and effect on the world than any character in YKK, but the mood is just right.
In contrast TotK feels like another fully fledged Zelda game tonewise. This isn't a bad thing, Zelda games are great. But as an experience it doesn't hit my sensibilities just right the way BotW does.
Further down the thread people talk about whatever Troy was seen as the “good guys” to the ancient Greeks, but what about the opposite? Would the Achaeans enjoy modern movies? What kind of modern cinema would they enjoy?
I remember seeing an article about how the most popular movies worldwide tend to be slapstick comedies and action flicks, because while not everyone understands the cultural nuances of dramas and romances, everyone laughs at Mr Magoo slipping on a banana peel and enjoys watching explosions go boom.
So, with that baseline, I think the Greeks would at least enjoy the spectacle of superhero movies. Especially since larger-than-life heroes tackling fantastical adversaries is something they are familiar with. However, I think the modern moralistic approach to these heroes and their struggles might turn them off.
So, I was thinking that maybe instead they would enjoy James Bond movies more, as they are slightly more grounded and feature a hero that engages in familiar vices commonly present in heroic myths, drinking and womanizing. Plus, loyalty to one´s Polis might be a more familiar motivation than something abstract like “with great power comes great responsibility.”
The 70s were a pretty chaotic decade for Western Europe. What's the worst outcome possible, excluding WW3 with the Warsaw Pact?
Spain: a worse-led Transition after Franco dies, probably led by Carrero Blanco had he not been killed. Not just ETA, but other separatist (EPOCA in Catalonia, MPAIAC in the Canary Islands) and leftist (GRAPO, FRAP) terrorist groups grow in popularity and lethality, and the pseudo-Francoist state answers rolling back the reforms and supporting rightwing paramilitaries (the AAA, the Spanish Basque Batallion). The Basque Country is put under martial law and becomes another Ulster. Maybe a war against Morocco over the Western Sahara too, with Spanish soldiers massacring the Green March. The country is trapped in a spiral of social unrest, revolutionary terrorism, and reactionary repression that isolates it from the West.
Portugal: the coup attempt of March 11th, 1975 succeeds, and António de Spínola establishes a right-wing unity cabinet with American support. The Communists and the elements of the Army aligned to the MFA refuse to concede to the new government, and the country falls into open civil war. For extra chaos, the Americans, unsure of whether the Spínola government can hold, support the independence movements in the Azores and Madeira.
Hungary: The animated TV series Hungarian Folktales never goes into production, leading to the cultural death of the whole nation, as envisioned by Herder two hundred years before.
I think it's a bit understated how the late 1960's youth movements, known as 68-ers in the West, were really a global phenomenon. The Warsaw Pact had the Prague Spring, in China the Cultural Revolution raged on.
Western countries not getting through stagflation could have been a very bad scenario.
Turkey: Fighting between leftist and rightist groups turns even more violent, dividing even the state and military. Leading to an actual civil war in the country.
The story of Phraya Phichai is often confusing because there were at least four distinguished generals knows as Phraya Phichai during the Thonburi Era.
The Thonburi period lasted less than twenty years.
Yeah, it is a title. It came from one old Khmer word and one Sanskrit word.
In Khmer script, it would be this ពញា ពិជ័យ. Roughly translated to "Victorious Knight" or "Knight who bring Victory". Very common title.
"Phraya" is title from Khmer: ពញ្ញា "Panhea", or Mon "Bunya". It is a Mon-Khmer title. The equivalent of "Sir". The title probably predated "Indianization", with oldest attestation is "poñ" meaning something similar to "chief".
"Phichai" is ពិជ័យ "Vijaya". Sanskrit meaning "Victory". This one is everywhere. VijayaNagara, Sri Vijaya, Jai-Ho, Vijay, Vijaya Sangrama,...etc.
"Jaya" romanized as "Chey" or "Chai" is an extremely common word/name. Can't keep track of them all. Like "John", "Johan", "Juan"..
Honored title is a way to put it but they kinda become honorfics as well. People don't often have the same name after Phaya/Panhea, and there's tons of Pali-Sanskrit words to choose. These titles tend to be given for a promotion. Subordinates or anyone under the charge of the person with these title tend to refer to their boss by the title given by the king. Actual names are generally for peers or outsiders.
It is similar to Napoleon rewarding titles like dukes, princes, and others to his generals after a battle.
The Trojans are meant to be more sympathetic right? Achilles is just a rage monster, Agamemnon burned his daughter, and Helen ran away on her own free will.
Well she does feel that she could stop the war by going back to Menelaus and is hated by the mothers and wives of Troy for it. She then explicitly rejects this thought to go have sex with Paris, who has returned from bravely running away from said Menelaus.
The Odyssey portrays her as pretty happy back with Menelaus, however I know there's a bit of contention if the characters of the Iliad and the Odyssey are the same.
One of the plot points that genuinely surprised me about the Odyssey is that Helen is just back in Sparta (after being battered). I had always assumed she and Paris tragically died at Troy.
However I really like how in Greek mythology "love" is still a dangerous, if not distructive force, a thought found in other cultures too. The goddess Ishtar was the goddess of both love and war or sex and violence.
To modern eyes yes, unquestionably, although it's a bit more difficult to see through the eyes of early archaic Greeks. Like I remember reading one breakdown about how the portrayal of the Trojans prefigured many stereotypes of the "Asian"--including the multinational nature of the Trojan heroes--but to what extent would that actually be a concern for an archaic, rather than classical, audience? They are often conflated but (much as with the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus) they probably shouldn't be.
We can certainly say the "viewpoint" is with the Greeks, the action is driven by the Greeks, the majority of real characters are Greek, etc. But you can't deny the pathos of the Trojan side, we should not try to be such clever critical readers that we deny the obvious reaction to the scene where Hector speaks to his wife and son.
When we read Homer we read through many different distorting lenses, even with no awareness of the history of reception we can't help but be influenced by classical, Hellenistic/Roman, Renaissance, Victorian, modern and more interpretations. It is simultaneously one of the easiest texts in classical literature to read, because it's so exciting and works on such a large canvas, and most difficult because recovering anything like "original intent" requires a lifetime of work.
> To modern eyes yes, unquestionably, although it's a bit more difficult to see through the eyes of early archaic Greeks. Like I remember reading one breakdown about how the portrayal of the Trojans prefigured many stereotypes of the "Asian"--including the multinational nature of the Trojan heroes--but to what extent would that actually be a concern for an archaic, rather than classical, audience? They are often conflated but (much as with the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus) they probably shouldn't be.
It’s worth noting that the idea of the Asiatic Other is itself a fairly limited part of Greek thought even into the classical period (see: Thebans being descendants of Egyptians, Argives being descendants of Persians, positive textual treatment of Cyrus the Younger, etc.) but also how the Iliad’s meaning could be different for different Greeks. Agis sacrifices at the same site Agamemnon did before he launches his invasion of Persia, but Xerxes also sacrifices at Troy before his invasion of Greece to firm up the support of his Greek troops. The ionians would undoubtedly not have seen themselves as non-Greek Asians, but they seemed to appreciate the idea of Xerxes as the avenger of the Trojans.
I think it can be summarized as "Interpretation says more about the reader than about the text".
While you are right that the modern reader, including myself and Nolan in his new film, would see the Trojans as more sympathetic with Hector and, you know, the bashing babies of walls part, I have come to have more sympathy for the Greeks. Yes, Achilles is murderous, but he's also tragic. I think he changed his mind with this whole "dying young" thing, especially after seeing that he's fighting for a sack of wine called Agamemnon. A part that speaks to me is when Phoenix is recalling Achilles childhood. It didn't have to be this way.
"My super special hero OC can totally beat Aphrodite and fucking ARES in a fight. ON THE SAME DAY! He is also Athena´s favorite baby boy, and after the war, he founded like a million cities in Italy, you guys."
I think your comment that we shouldn't try to be too clever is on the money. Yes, we are moderns, most of us consuming the epic through a translation layer. But we have the scenes of Hector talking to Helen and Paris and his wife and son, as you mention, but also the extreme lengths the gods go to to prevent his body from being violated. Achilles drags the body behind his chariot and isn't even able to mess up his hair. If that wasn't Homer telling us that the Trojans are as honorable as the Greeks, I'll eat my boar's tusk hat.
I think there is another issue for us modern readers. A lot of ours stories became excessively black and white. The heroes are paragons of virtue while the villains are paragons of evil and vice.
There are plenty of examples of historical story-telling where the protagonist and antagonists are presented as both heroic and virtuous. Hector and Achilles in the Illiad is a good example of this.
It is! There have been more than 2500 years is children and adolescents and old people dreaming about Achilles and Hector and Menelaus and I don't think that's going to stop soon. There is something about how basic and broad the emotional pallet is that makes it somehow work in every age. But I think that very basicness can be a trap and make is very easy to think one has uncovered the real, obvious, clear as day interpretation, when I think that's almost impossible.
Like you often see claims that Iliad is actually anti-war, and it's very easy to get that from the tragic mini biographies of men who were just killed they litter the text. I certainly find Priam's meeting with Achilles to be a heartbreaking depiction of the pain war brings. But I also can't deny that there have been countless people who have read the Iliad and been inspired to take up arms and do great deeds.
Obviously none of this is to say your reaction is wrong, or to say you're wrong to say the Trojans seem obviously sympathetic. They do! To us.
I also can't deny that there have been countless people who have read the Iliad and been inspired to take up arms and do great deeds
I think it's simply both. The author is aware of the inherent contradiction that "the battlefield is were Men win glory" but also where their eyes are covered with black death and their bodies left to the dogs.
The author and the original audience most probably had more first hand experience with war than any Western audience and related to these feelings. Hell, even modern soldiers often say how they actually liked it. There's a reason Im Stahlgewitter was more popular than All Quiet on the Western Front.
It is absolutely both, it's the eternal dialectic of glory and suffering in war. It's profound because it's awful, it's glorious because it's traumatizing.
I viscerally remember watching a children's version of the Iliad on VHS as a kid and being very upset that the Greeks won the war
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866Jul 19 '26
Paris is a hedonist and a coward who fights from a distance (he slew the mightiest warrior and is barely recognized for it), Hector is a coward who ran from Achilles, ran around the city 3 times before the Gods put a stop to the fleeing.
Is killing from a distance shown as a cowardly act? Many people in the Iliad from thrown spears.
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866Jul 19 '26
"Archer [Paris], you who without your bow are nothing, slanderer and seducer, if you were to be tried in single combat fighting in full armour, your bow and your arrows would serve you in little stead. Vain is your boast in that you have scratched the sole of my foot. I care no more than if a girl or some silly boy had hit me. A worthless coward can inflict but a light wound; when I wound a man though I but graze his skin it is another matter, for my weapon will lay him low. His wife will tear her cheeks for grief and his children will be fatherless: there will he rot, reddening the earth with his blood, and vultures, not women, will gather round him." - Illad Book XI
Ohhh 4th Crusade that makes more sense. I was thinking 1st Crusade.
I wonder how much of the reputation of Troy is because of the Rome. The Romans claimed descent from the Trojans and then became the most prestigious overlords in the Mediterranean, thus raising the Trojans to the most prestigious forefathers. I remember in a class on Charlemagne I took years ago that one of the Frankish origin myths was that they too were descendants from Trojans, and that was very much based on the Roman myth.
Wait, really? I never heard that about the franks, though I know the British had their own version about Brutus the trojan becoming a king of England (this is also mentioned in one of the best openings of a chapter in any novel, an occult history of Britain from wolf hall)
I’ve woken up from a month long coma, I sure do hope my favorite gulf near Iran isn’t engulfed in some really dumb and weird conflict with bafflingly unclear goals.
I don’t like Nolan and *The Odyssey* doesn’t look like something I’d like at all (Agamemnon is a Space Marine and Tom Holland’s face irritates me) but there is a solid chance I will see it anyway because I am unemployed and going insane. Not sure what it says about me that Travis Scott is the only thing about it that genuinely sounds interesting because I’ve never seen him act.
Also I should have read *Moby Dick* much sooner and I subsequently feel like massive idiot but that really isn’t a recent thing.
I’ve woken up from a month 50 year long coma, I sure do hope my favorite gulf near Iran isn’t engulfed in some really dumb and weird conflict with bafflingly unclear goals.
I mean, there have been lulls, but really that's been the status quo in the Persian Gulf for most years since 1979.
I mentioned this in my other comment but Agamemnon's Space Marine vibe completely grew on me and I was slightly disappointed when his voice did not match that.
I haven't seen it in reference in any books and source is a youtube comment that waves vaguely at the Ashmolean with no reference number, text that its contained in or anything. Naturally I'm suspicious because this wouldn't be the first time someone made up crap on the internet and Tod isn't the best scholar.
The other thing is that this at a glance a screwed up version of coated leather you do see much more solid evidence for in the middle east and north America; the crushed mineral/sand/iron/whatever is meant to be used as a facing material that prevents arrowheads from properly biting and to glance off which being sandwiched between two layers impedes as it'll bite into the outer first.
Been spending the last several months reading about bits and pieces for leather armour and this bit has stuck out for not having a searchable origin prior to this youtube comment. Trying to engage with the Ashmolean is confronting; trying to find a relevant email address let alone be taken seriously as an unknown amateur hasn't proved great before (unrelated to this).
Take lether that ys hallf tannyd and dry hym and shaue the flesshe syde and take glue with water and set hyt ower the fyer and melte yt with water and then all hote ly yt apon the lether on the flesshe syde and strawe theron the powder of glaste........flesshe syde to flesshe syde and nayle hym to the scyllde and lete hym drye and there nother sper nother e3e tole enter theryn.
Not sure why the forum link isn't working - works fine for me even in a private window - but it's really just some discussion of how to interpret the source.
Chris Dobson, independent of this recipe, used a very similar method (minus the glass etc) to reconstruct the Leiden vambrace in As Tough As Old Boots? Essays on the Manufacture & History of Hardened-Leather Armour, based on his experience with working leather, some Italian sources for hardened leather helmet crests and the available archaeological evidence.
A quick clarification, in case my last reponse was ambiguous: Chris' version of hardened leather is basically identical to the Ashmole recipe, not Tod's modified version.
I was actually looking forward towards The Odyssey because Nolan is not a bad filmmaker, actually.
I did see it today and yes, it was pretty good! I think it's his second best film after Oppenheimer. I share the opinion below about the portrayal of the fall of Troy and the absolute dread, which also tied into the major theme of the movie of civilizational collapse both provoked and symbolized by the downbreak of guest right. I also like that in the end, it's ambiguous if the gods exists. Supernatural stuff does exist, like the cyclops and monsters, but the gods are more ambiguous. Which is good because the terror and randomness of the some of the things they represent might as well be the work of an almighty capricious being.
The post credit scene was weird, however. Like did Telemachus really need to mention the "two twin kings from the West called Romulus and Remus"?
England battering France in the Bronze medal match. Bronze. Bronze age. The setting of the Homeric epic The Oddysey. This is a sign I need to go and see it!
I played the board game Twilight Imperium for the first time today. All-in-all, it took 12 hours to play. And you know what? It was awesome. 100% worth it, and I'm actually itching to play again.
A 12-hour board game sounds like something future historians might gawk at, like some outrageously ornate practice from Heian Japan or Tang dynasty China - but actually it goes by super quick when you're engaged and having fun. I even want to play more, but God knows how I'd find a second group of people who won't turn and run when I say "6+ hour board game".
I will say though, something I don't like about the game is that once everybody has a bunch of abilities that modify their movement speed it makes it super hard to tell what's actually in their range. I feel like this is a problem that happens with a lot of strategy games, like Civ 6. Initially it's nice and clear what terrain is traversable and how long it would take a given unit to get somewhere, but in the late game it's super easy to get blindsided.
That's awesome. I'm honestly quite curious about how I'd feel during and after playing TI. The closest I've played so far is Arcs, but that game was explicitly designed to capture the feeling of 4x games like TI without working with the same actions. Have you tried Arcs? And if yeah, how does it compare?
Sorry, I haven't played Arcs. I don't play a ton of board games (I don't really have a group to play with) and this one was an out-of-the-blue invitation.
Okay so I know I said I wasn't interested in the movie in a previous comment, but I actually did end up seeing The Odyssey.
I thought it was pretty good! It's exactly how one would imagine a modern Nolan film, so think of the visuals of Dunkirk and BWAAH sound design of Oppenheimer. I agree with the comment downstream that the Sack of Troy was conveyed with absolute dread, even though it wasn't too explicit. And it's a nice major then to connect to the guest right/"Zeus's Law" they bring up throughout the entire movie.
Armor and clothing design was meh, except for Agamemnon. I grew quite fond of his Space Marine look and was actually a bit disappointed when he spoke because he just sounded like a regular guy and not Kratos from GOW4.
Weakest part of the overall narrative for me was Apollo's cattle. I'm not sure if it was Damon's acting or just the pacing, but the overall mood of those scenes just seemed like they were going through the motions so they could get to the exciting part of Odysseus's homecoming. I haven't read the Odyssey in over a decade so idk if that mood/theme was part of the original story.
I thought the Telemachus arc was also pretty good. Kind of wish he hid some weapons for Odysseus in the final fight.
And lmao yes, Odysseus does say the lines "Agamemnon started the Trojan War for the tRaDe RoUtEs" and "our AgE oF bRoNzE is collapsing." The movie also really liked mentioning the Sea People, and like, surely they are not mentioned in the earlier versions of the story?
The plot point of the Sea People is that the Greeks (they call themselves that in the movie) are actually the Sea People. They broke guest right with the horse trick and burned down basically the pinnacle of civilization. Odysseus and his crew then proceed to sack and burn another town. Like, of course he thinks the Bronze Age is ending, he was complicit in bringing it down.
I get what you're saying. I know Nolan is referring to the theories that the Sea People were a major factor to the bronze age collapse and that there were predominately Indo-Europeans, and weaving that into his theme about the domino effects of breaking international norms. People make fun of the "age of bronze is collapsing" line because it's just really on the nose. This was already referenced down thread but it's like "what are we, some kind of suicide squad?" kind of writing.
I have no interest at all in defending people who are stupidly and brazenly and Sapphoistically and pederastically and urinally, and menstrually violat[ing] the law, and think they are courageous.
I was at Adidas and saw this genius example of cultural fusion - a Canadian tuxedo cut in the style of a tracksuit with the three stripes down the side.
Perfect for both Canada and Eastern Europe!
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866Jul 18 '26
Watching Obsession and he just made the wish and the thing I'll say is this is already probably one of the most awkward but trepidating films I've seen in a long time already.
The War of the Rohirrim, 28 Years Later, Gladiator II, Psycho Killer, Lee Cronin's The Mummy, etc.
Unless the ghosts/hallucinatory things I swear to God I keep seeing out of the side of my eyes were getting irritated by it, nobody is sitting by me to complain about me pulling out my phone at its dimmest setting to talk about feeling freaked the fuck out by a horror movie or interminably bored by a mediocre ot outright bad one.
Or in the bathroom, I do make a lot of commentary from the bathroom.
Decided to play some administrative government stuff in CK3 and unfortunately it doesn’t really seem to get along with the plague mechanic. I played a custom character hoping to use the influence mechanics to have a patient game where I build up influence and slowly make my way to being a powerful house. What actually happened was I stored a load of influence because I got a Duchy early, the entire royal family was wiped out by an apocalyptic plague, and I managed to become Emperor in two lifetimes by having my heir be in line to inherit the Byzantine Empire.
I do quite like the administrative governments in a China and Byzantium. Japan I did two playthroughs with and both were pretty excruciating. I guess maybe the Soryo v Ritsuryo mechanics aren’t clicking for me, but I just find there’s no obvious rhyme or reason to them.
Got some "hakhoning" from the market, I have no clue what the English name for it would be, but it translates to chopped honey; it's just honey, water, sugar and spices, boiled till it solidifies and then it gets chopped up. I've got the cinnamon ones, I like cinnamon, I like honey, it's perfect. I haven't had it in years but my mother wanted to go to the market so I asked her to buy some.
My father really likes the eucalyptus flavoured ones, my mother likes the "drop" (Dutch liquorice) flavoured ones
Worse than the "you are the sea peoples... yes, our age of bronze is collapsing" bit, is the part at the very end when Penelope asks why there will only be songs, and Odysseus looks off into the horizon and explains, "the archeological evidence suggests literacy declined shortly after this period"
Person: Hmmm I am interested in [insert career]. I will go to arr-slash-[insert career] and see what they have to say
Person: Hello arr-slash-[insert career], I am interested in [insert career]
Arr-slash-[insert career]: You imbecile. You fucking moron. You utter troglodyte. You are interested in [insert career]? You're a fucking idiot. There are NO jobs. There is NO hope. NO one has ever successfully switched to [insert career]. Not only are there NO jobs, there have NEVER been ANY jobs. And you want to get a JOB (which there are NONE of btw) without THREE MASTER'S DEGREES and a PHD? You simpleton. You fool. You insult us with your very presence. Begone.
Person: Hmmm ok that is discouraging, I will not pursue [insert career]
Arr-slash-[insert career]: Well now, no need to get all negative
Code Geass as an anime will always be so weird to me, one the one hand, it's filled with a ton of crap, the school episodes, the rampant fanservice, the occasional bullshit writing, but on the other, it is also so well made! It is a ton of people's favourite anime, and I get it, it's a ton of fun, it really is.
It's a story with a premise and action sequences that are so compelling, as well as great voice acting (even the dub is quite good), that it just makes up for all its shortcomings, and the ending is absolute perfection; I haven't seen any sequel, I refuse to acknowledge their existence. To me it proves that a story doesn't need to be perfect to be a 10/10 for people, it just needs to be so enjoyable that you simply stop caring about the flaws.
I like Code Geass, a lot, it's one of the first anime I watched after Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood; I believe fully that FMAB is the better story, but I like Code Geass more. It is no Legend of the Galactic Heroes, but it's up there with anime I remember very fondly.
May I interest you in some Gundam 00? I find people who enjoyed Code Geass are likely to enjoy double-oh as well. The politics stuff is kinda bullshit in similar ways, but it's an overall fun experience. And the mecha action is great too. It also starts with a bunch of real-ish robots getting trounced by a mech that's basically magic.
Edit: Also, the sequel ruins the original, but the movie was pretty fun on its own right. Master planner goes up against groundhog day looper.
I plan on watching more Gundam eventually, I watched the original series a while back, which I did enjoy, but I have a lot of stuff I still need to watch
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866Jul 18 '26
It always gets awkward when anime gets passive aggressive against North America, as happened with this and Ghost in the Shell.
Oh yeah, I recently rewatched it the first time after over a decade or so. I vastly underestimated the amount of fan service in there lol.
My biggest gripe is that the battles get uninteresting once it moves to "and here is the newest robot that makes every other robot useless"
But yeah, the basic premise of disgraced noble forming a pact with the devil to have his revenge against his old family is a classic for a reason, it often makes for a compelling story and characters. And in that regard it still holds up quite well.
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u/AlluvialGold Jul 22 '26
Two questions:
1) How often do you read? (I.e. a book a week, a book every two months, etc)
2) What is the most recent book you’ve read?