May as well start a new thread for a new year (because I can't be bothered to dig down and find the old one).

The Ottawa forecast for tonight is for 60km/h winds with gusts to 90km/h - Beaufort 9 - and snow followed by freezing rain. Good thing I haven't put the shovels away yet, and I still have some ice melter.

(Kingston, Ontario is expecting gusts of up to 100km/h tonight - Beaufort 9-10. Being at the east end of one of the Great Lakes is a mixed blessing.)

So, a couple weeks back I found out that one of my coworkers is an avid reader of Harry Potter fanfic.  She and I have traded some emails, and she's promised me a rundown on what she's already read from a list of recommendations I made for her, and what she hasn't.

I very deliberately left Drunkard's Walk VIII off that list, partly from modesty and partly from not wanting to point her at a stalled story that will be some years yet before completion.  However, last week I reread all of the released chapters from the perspective of a first-time reader of anything in the Walk and realized -- I bobbled Doug's introduction.  DW8 completely assumes you already know who Doug is and what he's about.  It doesn't even give as much info -- or hints -- as DW2 had at the same point in its story, and in DW2 I was very deliberately playing a tease-and-tidbit game with Doug's backstory.  DW8, though, reveals almost nothing.

I'm thinking I have to change that, if only to make the story more accessible to those coming to the Walk for the first time through it.  So I'll be adding little bits here and there -- nothing huge or dramatic (I think), but definitely informative.  And I'm starting a thread about it because I want to start a bit of a debate about the mistake, as I see it.  And I admit, if anyone comes up with a good idea that I can use, I'm definitely going to steal it.  And also just to alert people to the mistake so folks will be aware, and call me on it if I do it again.

Maybe I am becoming a luddite, but I have a bad feeling about this:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/01/techn...mazon.html

And its not only the jobs issue, which is a big part of my worries with these "advancements", but also the reams of information which will be collected.

Post them if you spot them! EDIT: Links, not re-posts - as usual for the threads here.

Wikivoyage's latest travel guide entry

(02-22-2018, 08:47 AM)robkelk Wrote: Guessing is one thing, but the freebie wiki is actually becoming the trusted source of information about 3D-art freebies. I need to do better than just guess.

alright, i'm going to open a general "I need help with [this] thread, that way things like @Jinx999 's request for a quick once over for mistakes or in my case a beta for a particular situation/scene.

Author Needs Assistance:

 

 

I need someone familiar with psychiatry and psychology to Beta read a section that discusses character’s mental states. I ask this because while I have a layman’s understanding I am in no way overly familiar with the subject matter and need my current antagonist to at least have a jurist’s understanding of the mental state.

 

In short, I need her arguments to at least make sense against the main character. Can anyone help me?

 

anyone that is interested in helping please PM me and i'll send you a GDoc link once i have the section finished

John "Boom" Scalzi (I knew him before the butter dripped off his noodle) would be sharing the Hugo shortlist even if he weren't on it, because he's just that nice a guy by nature:
https://whatever.scalzi.com/2018/03/31/2...finalists/

Also, the Nebula nominees are up, and there's the usual level of overlap:
https://nebulas.sfwa.org/award-year/2017/

So this movie happened.

First off, if you're the kind of person who finds a three second visual cameo by a popular culture reference to be the lowest most despicable kind of trite corporate mass market appeal... don't go see this movie. Because you will be spending 90% of the run time hating it.

On the other hand, if you are the kind of person who likes the hero suddenly busting out the hadouken on a bad guy or someone summoning a Gundam to fight Mechagodizilla... go for it.

The movie is very different from the book. Where the book is about memorized fan trivia the <i>movie</i> is about how all that is just window dressing and the true connections we have are with each other and to that the secret to understanding each other is empathy and decency. The climax is also much more climactic, in a way only Speilberg can do.

Plus, you know, it was kind of cool seeing squads of Master Chiefs and the Iron Giant blowing shit up. Yeah, all the VR stuff was ultimately 'a game' but the point of the movie is that the game is a way to connect for all these people so they're fighting for something and their are stakes not in who lives or dies but who wins and loses. If you can like a sports movie you can like this movie.

On the bad side they kept some of the more... cliche bits from the book. The female leads big secret being that she is Hollywood Homely rather than a stunning anime elf girl with technicolor hair and skin was not handled well. Though they did make her into more of a character with agency in the film with an actual motivation rather than just a rival/love interest. Also, the above mentioned references per second quality and they kept in some of the smugly superior 'characters showing how up on pop culture they are'.

Also, the entire second key sequence was... gratuitous. And bad.

I was kind of put off that they didn't kill a major character, but I guess this movie is firmly aimed at the under 16 crowd.

Overall, a firm 'rent' movie.

The thread for bad jokes (SFW, please) that are not photoshop memes.

Q: Why did the wizard build an edible clock?

A: I don't know, but I bet it was a very time consuming endeavor.

Arya froze. The guards on the storehouse where they'd taken Gendry remained in place but others were pointing towards her. For two heartbeats she thought she'd been spotted, then realised they were pointing to a strange figure rounding the brambles. She froze, not wanting to draw their eye by moving. The figure walked forward, into her view In the afternoon light she could see that it was a woman, holding one hand to her cheek and muttering to herself.


Even from behind she could tell that the woman was young, with a messy mop of brown hair. She was clad only in a short jerkin and tight britches, the only concession to modesty a length of cloth draped loose around her hips. And she'd walked towards the armed men in the village with a blind confidence that astonished Arya. The idiot seemed to think she was in one of Sansa's stupid stories.


“Another wrecked village. You guys hunting whatever did it?”


The men didn't bother to answer, beyond obscene descriptions of their plans for the woman. Two of them approached, towering over the short woman who'd casually wandered into a village of armed killers. They reached to grab her, but others kept a watch out. Arya could only hope they didn't spot her.


“Oi. Hands off, jerks.” Somehow the woman had grabbed the wrists of the two men and shoved them back.


Arya could see the angry snarl on the face of one one of the men under the shade of his helmet, until his vicious backhand had been pre-empted by a shove that had left him on his back several feet away.


The men's laughter and obscene suggestions faded away as they armed themselves. Soon the lone woman was facing some twenty armed men.


“Sounds like you're a bunch of scuzzy bandits. I guess it's you who've been attacking the villages around here.” Arya could see metal gauntlets on her hands that hadn't been there before, which rang as she clashed them together in front of her. “In that case, I'm bored and angry, so bring. it. on.”








Arya had seen things that had shaken her to her core before. She had felt like she was looking through a transparent wall as if the world had turned on its side and “this can't be real” before. So when the woman jumped nine feet in the air and a kick had unleashed a burst of yellow light that tore into the ground and scattered grown men like a thrown ball had scattered Bran's wooden knights, for a moment she could feel the square outside Baelor's sept under her feet.


Landing among the shocked men she lashed out with wide sweeping blows that hurled men to lie broken on the ground. For a moment Arya remembered Syrio's precise movements and disdain for wide flashy blows, but this demon woman had strength and speed enough that she could fight like this. A bearded man was thrown into a hut wall here, a crossbow bolt was batted out of the air there. In a matter of moments there was nothing moving, the armed men cowering or fallen.


It was then that the door of the largest village house burst open and a gigantic armoured figure stepped out.


“So trash enough mooks and the boss appears. So Mr. Bandit Chief, are you going to fight or make a speech?” The woman looked over at the gibbet. “I'm not in the mood for talky rationalisations right now.”




The huge armoured figure charged. A massive sword swung down. And the woman deflected it with one armoured fist. She stepped forward and, with a noise like a blacksmith's hammer, drove a series of punches into the breastplate and jumped back to avoid the backswing.



“You are already dead.” and she laughed and stepped forward again. However the next swing of the massive sword was a feint and the giant figure grabbed one thin arm and threw the woman in the air. With both hands on the sword he chopped into her bare midriff and sent her body flying into the wall of a hut. And Arya recognised the crest on his surcoat. The night of the tourney at King's Landing, all the knights had hung their shields outside their pavilions. “That one belongs to the Hound's brother,” Sansa had confided when they passed the black dogs on the yellow field. “He's even bigger than Hodor, you'll see. They call him the Mountain That Rides.”




And the woman stood up. The edge of a sword, driven by the brute strength of he Mountain That Rides had . . . left a welt on her bare skin. A few drops of blood could be seen, but that was all. She nodded toward her opponent.


The Mountain had obviously recovered from the shocking impossibility faster than Arya and charged the outlandish demon woman. And she disappeared into thin air. A load bang from behind the huge knight revealed her location as an inhuman punch knocked him forward. Then she was at his left, his right . . . and the mountain crumbled.

Spoiler

The woman is Kawara from West Wind Brigade in Log Horizon. The Round Table Council has been experimenting with dimensional gates to try and get home and created a permanent rift to Westros, to be precise the Riverlands during the war of five kings. They decided that the West Wind brigade (consisting almost entirely of women) would be friendly and harmless looking and non-provocative for making contact with the locals. Gregor is, strictly speaking, a more skill swordsman than any adventurer, but a level 90+ adventurer is so ridiculously strong fast and tough as well as having f***ing magic powers it doesn't help much.


Incidently, the Adventurer gold piece is considerably larger than the Westros gold dragon.