BarretWallace

"My days of not taking you seriously have just about reached their middle."

For my part, my experience of the MCU came to a satisfying close with Endgame. Essentially, I'm an outsider with respect to the post-Endgame stuff. Now, there may be perfectly good offerings available, but I feel like Marvel has barfed out a prodigious volume of content, and just to catch up would take more time than I'd care to spend at present. Maybe some day I'll dive back in, especially if they ever slow down a little. Maybe it's an age thing too. To use an eating metaphor, these days I'd rather savor each bite vs. wolf down every plate as fast as I can.

I reckon that AI is like any other technology in that it's having growing pains right now. Early GPS units didn't always provide the best navigation, for example. They also didn't usurp the work of actual artists, so yeah.

"It's got a wonderful defense mechanism. You don't dare kill it."

I've either never caught it, or had it and never knew it. I've been tested several times and came back negative each time.

Best of luck with everything, @Cancer. If I come up with any better words I'll send them. Sometimes we wrap up some life issues only to take on more, and I wish you (and your wife!) well. My wife and I are fortunate enough to still have our parents, and our own health is decent. As my mother in law is fond of saying, though, "You're day's coming!" For now I'll just enjoy each time with our parents as it comes. Somewhat more on topic, the projects currently in my hopper are: Star Wars fan fiction. This was originally inspired by characters I played in the old--err, classic--West End d6 roleplaying game. The characters and story have evolved tremendously since these stories began in high school. I have a fairly clear idea of the beginning and ending of the series, plus quite a bit in the middle. It takes place during the classic setting of the roleplaying game, i.e. between Star Wars (yes, I still call it that) and The Empire Strikes Back. This is the era I know best, and focusing here helps me avoid the headaches of choosing a head canon from the Expanded Universe (EU), EU 2.0 (post-sequel trilogy), and so on. It follows the story of a small band of Rebels doing their part in the struggle against the Empire. I might have some of the movie characters make small appearances--for example, Admiral Ackbar plays a peripheral role in a couple of stories--but that's about it. The core of the story is the crew of a little freighter. Jurassic Park fan fiction. Several fan fiction bits have started and fizzled. Most were blatant self-insertions. One was the story of a team of mercs sent to recover the shaving cream can dropped by Dennis Nedry. Another explored what might have happened if things didn't go south until after the park opened. As that became the plot of the Jurassic World movies, I will probably never revisit it. What I've got in mind now is a retrospective told by Tim Murphy. It begins at Alan Grant's funeral, where Tim decides to finally write down the events of that terrible weekend at Isla Nublar. The idea grew during a recent family trip to Hawaii, plus 2023 being the 30th anniversary of the movie. Maybe this one will die as the others did, but first I want to run with it a while. Scouting memoirs. I've been involved in the same Scout troop since age 11. I've got lots of stories to tell, and I'd like to write them down before they fade beyond recall. I have no idea how I'd organize all this, so I'm just going to write and see where it leads. Recon compilation. In college, we played a "Recon" campaign with US Special Forces soldiers using the Hero System 4E rules. We had such a blast that our main GM continued writing these characters for over 40 stories. I want to compile these into one whole, make one last round of edits, and then compile it into a final whole. Most likely it would be just an e-book, but if I can find a suitable printing service, a physical copy would be fun too. All of these projects took on more life when I discovered Scrivener software and started playing around with it. The way my brain works, Scrivener makes it a lot easier to keep disparate works organized into some kind of cohesive whole. Much better than managing dozens of Word files. It also allows great flexibility in organizing and compiling everything. Who knows how far any of this will go, but I look forward to the journey.

I hope to dial down other hobbies and spend more time writing. My biggest issue is clearing my schedule and brain to give writing the time and energy it needs. I will probably never publish anything, but might at least finish a project or two that have languished for decades.

Oh my.... (https://www.wsj.com/world/russia/putin-calls-trump-charges-political-persecution-1736c591?mod=hp_lead_pos5) If this isn't a classic example of the pot calling the kettle black, I'm not sure what is.

If I may salvage one sliver of optimism from this, if the snowfall is like last winter, at least we'll get precipitation in winter. It's been a very dry summer here.

I'm remembering a classic movie line: "It's a miracle these people ever got out of the 20th Century!" Yeah, now we just need to survive the 21st. One day at a time!

Ni!! I backed this high enough to get the "Fetchez la Vache" mini game, about which I am only somewhat embarrassed.

I'm getting there...slowly but surely, I'm getting there. Sometimes reality has to club me over the head multiple times (metaphorically speaking) before it truly sinks in. This situation was a doozy, but it is finally sinking in. My mind is sometimes more of a crock pot than a microwave in terms of how quickly it handles certain things. The game is about to enter a new phase, a new "season" if you will. Last session was given over to a group discussion of where we wanted to go. I'm guessing we will stick around the Moonsea region, and let's face it, the Sword Coast gets way too much attention. Regardless, I know that I have a good group of friends (in and out of game) to enjoy it with. A dubious honor of "Season 2" of our game is that I'm starting a new gaming notebook at the same time. I'm a little crazy about taking notes anyway, and this game resulted in an explosion of scribblings, quotes, pasting in pictures, and even minor dabblings back into cartography. That is a good sign!

I tried a couple of times to establish contact, but long story short, NG shut me down. The final "blow" came last Thursday when NG told me in no uncertain terms to butt out. I am not 100% innocent of wrongdoing in this whole thing, and I've tried to admit that as a step toward reconciliation. NG is having none of it. In his words, I didn't just reject the character, I rejected, betrayed, and sabotaged him personally. My arguments to the contrary are of no avail. Never thought I'd see the day when a friendship collapsed over a clash at the game table, but I'm guessing it's because said friendship was already weaker than I thought by the time the clash took place. Thank you all for your patience as I've tried to sort through this fiasco. I've finally accepted in my own head that we are not going to be friends again any time soon, if ever. I also got some feedback from the DM as part of my own mental "post mortem." At least our D&D group (sans NG) is back to rocketing along as joyously as ever. We just finished our first major story arc and are about to start another.

And here I thought WotC might have learned their lesson from the OGL debacle.

I am SO glad that our group is crazy enough to pick abilities to fit a concept vs. min/maxing.