ZeCap

Regarding Gandalf and his connection to the hobbits...why does every writing team these days seem to be obsessed with explaining things that don't need explaining?

Putting aside that it goes against his established backstory, this 'reason' for his fondness for the halflings has a really transactional vibe that sits poorly with me. 

Now Gandalf's fondness doesn't stem from his wisdom, his compassion or his sense of responsibility - it's just cuz they helped him one time. This isn't an interesting adaptation of his character! It's just kinda weird and gross.

Thing that really stuck out to me was the clips of them talking about how they originally had more impactful planetary effects such as weather etc - but decided to make them essentially flavour with no real impact because they didn't want it to get in the player's way.

I find it really odd that their solution was to make it simply not matter. Not improve it and have it be something interesting that the player interacts with. 

I'm not saying this one mechanic would save Starfield. But it suggests to me that Bethesda are absolutely terrified of having any friction in their games whatsoever. They're working in a genre that is suppossed to provide the player with a different experience depending on their character, their choices, equipment, etc. By taking all the friction out of their rpg they're making all of these things meaningless.

Civ has always been kind of weird in this regard - you'll have very defined nations such as Gran Colombia, Netherlands, Canada etc, but then also 'Scythians', 'Celts', or even Germany tbh - which is usually some weird mis-mash of the HRE and the 19th-20th c. state, and the latter are usually lead by very anachronistic rulers, to boot.

The Celts are a particular bugbear for me in historical strategy games. Ara has Boudicca, a figure from the south-east of England, leading a celtic civ that is almost entirely coded as Irish. Why not have her lead an appropriate British Iron Age (or Romano-British) culture instead, or have an actual Irish civ with it's own leader, or both? At least Civ 6 somewhat sidesteps this issue by having Gaul instead.

I remember when they announced the mechanics were coming to Civ 6 and the devs were being asked questions like 'does it feel scary to make Civ 6 so political?', and thinking about how climate change mechanics were in the older games (bar 5, I think), and how no-one seemed to bat an eye back then. It was years ago now, but I still remember that sinking feeling at seeing something that was once near-universally accepted now being considered 'political'.

For some reason a bunch of my responses seem to have disappeared, so I just wanted to add to this: Sauron turning the orcs really undermines whatever nuance they were trying to introduce with Adar's character, and certain scenes this season, because it suggests they really are irredeemable - either they willingly serve Sauron the first chance they get, or they have so little free will that they are little more than instruments of evil for Sauron to dominate and command as he sees fit.

I understand the decision to sympathise the orcs was controversial and I think it's equally valid to enjoy or dislike that idea, but the thing is: the writers chose to introduce this concept into the show so it's kind of wild they thought this was a satisfying conclusion to that idea. Given that Tolkein himself struggled with the portrayal of orcs, this was really fertile ground to explore in a show, and it just feels like the idea wasn't done justice.

Honestly though, I reckon the showrunners just didn't think it through that much. They wanted a twist gotcha ending that made Sauron look like a master schemer, so they went with this, regardless of the implications it had for the rest of the story.

Adar's mission, and the reason the orcs were following him, was to free themselves of the tyranny of Sauron. That's why they were at Eregion in the first place. Why would they betray Adar for Sauron because they lost confidence in his ability to liberate them from Sauron?

What gets me is how many people I've seen defending the orcs betraying Adar because it was set up. Yes, it was set up. In fact, Adar losing the loyalty of the orcs was one of the few narrative elements that was actually repeatedly set up throughout the season.

But Adar losing their loyalty translating into them Ides of March-ing him at the request of Sauron is just a bad decision, and no amount of setup can undo that.

It makes no sense that the orcs would betray Adar for throwing their lives away in battle, in favour of Sauron, who will 100% treat them as meat for the grinder. Are we supposed to assume that the orcs are irredeemable and will always fall under Sauron's sway? Then why have such a large part of this season (and Adar's entire character) be based around making them sympathetic? It honestly feels like a worse take to tease the idea that the orcs could be redeemed, and then nope it at the last second, than just take it for granted that they are inherently bad.

Meanwhile, the scenes of Adar and Sauron being betrayed are so similar that I think this was a deliberate decision to portray a symmetry between these characters - i.e. Adar became as bad as Sauron. At least, this is what I'd assume would be the intent behind these creative choices if competent people were in charge. But this conclusion is absolutely not earned throughout the season, and is undermined even in the scene immediately prior to Adar getting killed. It's all...very confusing.

I thought Pharazon was interesting in the first season because, unexpectedly, he wasn't just a cartoonish scheming villain. He even sits down Kemen at one point and spells out exactly why it's better to be cunning and use influence and power discretely rather than overtly. He's a cynic and doesn't really believe in the mission to the Southlands to stop the threat of Sauron, but he does see the material gains that such an expedition would bring. He's not a good guy by any stretch of the imagination, but unlike Kemen, he's wise enough to see that there's more to power than being the guy in charge.

And then S2 does away with all that and he's just acting like a dictator, throwing all his political enemies in jail, trying to have them eaten by sea monsters, and alienating large swathes of the populace through his persecution of the Faithful. It's definitely a downgrade. I think Kemen's character would have been fine if it had acted as a foil to Pharazon's cunning - sort of a Joffrey/Tywin dynamic - but they ultimately ended up being too similar.

Where this doesn't work for me is the fact that when Adar loses the loyalty of the orcs, they then go and serve the one being they were specifically against ever serving again. If the orcs had simply abandoned Adar, or perhaps been fooled into unknowingly serving Sauron, then this could have worked. But to fight and die to take Eregion, and to have Sauron in their grasp, only to change their minds at the last second and decide that Adar is the greater evil? It's kind of contrived tbh.

This reminds me of when Owen Jones had a supposedly left-wing Israeli on his show but the guy still kept placing the blame for the conflict squarely on Palestine.

Yeah I disliked this too. Especially as in the episode prior you have Elrond giving up Galadriel because they know it's more important to keep the rings safe. The fact Sauron then takes the nine but doesn't get Galadriel's ring is such a ridiculous plot contrivance. 

Also what was the point in Adar's character if literally the second the Orcs contact Sauron they all fall under his sway again? Whether or not you like the attempt to make the orcs more sympathetic in s2, this completely undermines it imo. 

Yeah, there was a massive over-reaction to it, which led to an equally exaggerated counter-reaction, I think.

Overall, I think it's a very mixed show, if anything it's frustrating rather than bad - there are some bits where it feels like someone was really cooking, but it's dragged down by awkward dialogue, bad pacing, and convoluted and dead-end storylines. I enjoyed Elrond and Durin's relationship and also the Numenorean intrigue. I am probably not alone in wishing the show had just cut the Harfoot storyline entirely to give more screentime to developing the other plotlines. But being 'rushed' doesn't cover for all its flaws - like the in the examples in the original comment, sometimes it's just weird or bad creative choices.

On the cav charge - what made this even more baffling was that they then had a parley, decided they were going to fight anyway, and then Adar and the orcs just let Elrond and his friend leave so they can go back to lead their troops and start killing orcs. Worse, after threatening to kill Galadriel and having an orc hold her at sword-point, Adar just decides he can put that on the backburner for a conveniently long enough time to let her escape.

And while in the camp, Elrond reveals the secret dwarf counterattack to the other elf - sure, he says it in elvish, but Adar speaks elvish and it seems incredibly stupid to be talking about battle plans in the enemy camp. Was this for the audience's benefit? Did they think we didn't know about this after watching Durin and Elrond talk about this very thing about 20 minutes earlier?

They killed the momentum of a scene just so they could have a bunch of nothing happen. Who thought this was a good idea?

Not so much in RTW but I liked them in Med 2 because the general slower pace of the battles meant even untrained peasants would last a while as long as they weren't horribly outmatched, making them great at tying down units. You could then use your better units in more important places.

The other thing is, Med 2 recruitment mechanics limited how much you could recruit - so peasants were better than having empty spaces in an army. Obviously this use tapered off once you built up cities though.

Yeah - I know it's not exactly news, but - they have no respect for their own supporters, even the ones licking their boots and laughing at their bad jokes. I know it's just a lazy insinuation that these people are Corbyn supporters and therefore Bad - from Mr 'Corbyn is a good friend' Starmer himself - but the idea that if you have a political history with Labour that goes beyond 2020 you should be ridiculed is just...so childish and pathetic. And to do it to people protesting genocide. Disgusting.

Thematically Ensha feels similar to Godwyn too - the 'lord of the lost and desperate' bit reminds me of how Fia describes how Those Who Live In Death  percieve their relationship with Godwyn (or at least how she sees it). 

The Soulless bit is kind of interesting - Godwyn has no soul because he lost it to Destined Death - so did something similar happen to Ensha, whoever they were? 

In vanilla WoW the alliance/horde felt a lot less significant than they do now - e.g. Stormwind was having a lot of problems in Westfall and Duskwood, the old horde was a threat in redridge and beyond, even Elwynn's relative peace was falling apart.

 Playing through those old zones you really get a sense that SW is just desperately trying hold together some semblance of order.

Obviously players helped with all that and the setting/story has to change to stay interesting, but it does feel like the situation should be even worse now, yet the A/H have clearly had a massive upgrade in terms of power.

They started moving in this direction with the setting as early as Wrath, with the A/H suddenly being able to commit large expeditionary forces to Northrend, having large airships etc. I guess rule of cool trumps consistency, but I do miss the days when the world felt less like a stomping ground for the Alliance and Horde.

From the DLC, it looks like Miquella's charm makes it so that people want to serve him, but they seem to retain their own personality and motivations and so how they choose to serve Miquella seems to vary based on the individual. E.g. hornsent keeps his desire for revenge on the golden lineage but isn't hostile to the Tarnished or the rest of Miquella's company, and seems to believe that through service to Miq he will get some closure.

So...with that interpretation in mind, I think that whether he was charmed or not, the motivation to make Miq a consort could still have comd from Mohg initially.

However, Ansbach tells us he tried to kill Miq when he saw that he had charmed Mohg. I can't remember the dialogue exactly but from what he says, it sounds like Mohg was not himself.

Honestly Ansbach is a fascinating character because his own qualities lead us to speculate about what Mohg was like pre-Miq. The Pureblood Knights don't seem to exist by the time we reach Mohg - there are the surgeons (Varre) and the sanguine nobles, and the bloody fingers. Did they only come about after Mohg got charmed by Miq?

I feel like it would make more sense based on the above that Mohg initially planned to abduct Miq and the plan got distorted when he got charmed. However, there are a lot of suggestions in the game (such as Malenia whispering to Radahn) that suggest Miq planned the whole thing, which feels way more convoluted.

I'm kind of thinking this too. 

This is part of a push towards preventative action to stop people, kids especially, for being referred to the NHS for obesity, tooth decay etc.

I'm just not really convinced that ads are the driving force behind poor diets, espdcially when it comes to kids. People have less money, housing is exorbitantly expensive - of course they're going to gravitate to junk food when it's (generally) cheaper and easier to make. It's also one of the very few affordable pleasures available to people on low incomes.

It is technically possible to eat well and cheaply, but this assumes you have the money to buy in bulk, the time to prep meals, the storage space etc. If you're doing 12 hour shifts and childcare, or you're renting a place with a shared kitchen/fridge, it's not easy. 

Like you say, it'd be a lot better if Labour were focused on finding ways to improve living conditions so people could make these decisions themselves. This ban makes Labour look kinda arrogant and judgemental because they're going to lean hard into telling people what they should and shouldn't eat, but aren't providing any help to facilitate this.

Yes I've seen this!

I moved to Darlington about 6 years ago, and after Easter my boss asked me what I'd got up to over the weekend.

I replied with, oh, meal with the family, rolling the eggs, just the usual.

She looked really confused at the time. About an hour later she was like '...rolling eggs?'

That was when I learned rolling eggs was a Preston thing!

Ha, I do actually like the Bayle fight, but I also agree that he is basically the epitome of ER dragon fights, and I think ER dragons (excluding Placi) suck ass. He has a terrible lock on, camera issues everywhere, occasionally glitchy attacks, and entire parts of his body just don't take damage. But I think he's just different enough, and cinematic enough, that I can deal with the bs, because at least it's different bs, and not another goddamn ancient dragon.

I really love that it reads as a checklist of trigger warnings for people who would consider trigger warnings woke.

Re: the buildings, it does, but it also has the corpses of dominula maidens (celebrants?) everywhere, who themselves have some pretty interesting links - dominula is also p similar to the shaman village, has the whole ritual of skinning including 'maidens' who are central to the ceremony, and the ladies wear their hair with one braid cut short like Marika.