;O How Deep Does The Rabbit Hole Go.

i remember someone mentioning that a Sonia-like character would work to set up Dostoy for a redemption arc, but it couldn't be Sigma b/c they're wrapped around his finger. BUT NOW, their self-esteem should be improved via Dazai + they're being given all intel in a way that would prevent lying + apparently they're held in high esteem by Dostoy + being 3yo gives relatively biasless outlook.

bonus rephrasing: now Sigma has taken the offer to have their knowledge be equal to someone they percieve as having absolute control over everything.

or, you know, just flip them over and step on their trachea.

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The stereotype of the ugly, unfuckable feminist exists for a reason – because it’s still the last, best line of defence against any woman who is a little too loud, a little too political. Just tell her that if she goes on as she is, nobody will love her. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’ve always believed that part of the point of feminist politics – part of the point of any sort of radical politics – is that some principles are more important than being universally adored, particularly by the sort of men who would prefer women to smile quietly and grow our hair out

If you’re a feminist you’ll be called a man-hater. You don’t need rebranding (via nothingman)

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Did someone say RANT ABOUT THE BEST MECHANIC IN YU-GI-OH!?

If one really wants to practice weaponising game mechanics - chain beat is the way to go, even if Black Garden might not be the optimal variant for it. But if you want to start small (with a chain burn), you should make a point to count Chain Links in chat/out loud anytime you do anything. This will force your opponent to keep explictly passing over their priority (right to activate stuff). Either they'll do that every single time (against chain burn it should intimidate too, as there are only two things they count up to ;D), or they'll just state for everyone to see that they'll giving you a free reign to do whatever the hell you want. Outside of chain-dependent decks, try not to use it on people who aren't trying to be cute. Once we're done with you, you should be able to out-ruleshark them. So pay attention. There will be a test later. One could argue that it's actually continuous effects that are the fastest, since they can apply in the middle of a chain (Counter Fairies are made of this and so is placing Spell Counters) For example:

P1 activates Reinforcement of the Army, thus creating Chain Link 1.

P2 (in response to Rota's activation) chains Call of the Haunted, targeting Thunder King Rai-Oh.

P1 does not chain anything.

P2 does not chain anything.

Because both players passed, chain closes and proceeds to resolve backwards (codeheads may recognise it as a LIFO stack).

First, Rai Oh is summoned.

Then, RotA 'resolves', but due to Rai Oh being on the field, the effect fizzles without doing anything. This can stop more than a single part of an effect, if the rest of it involved the word "then")

If an effect fizzles without doing anything, it's still considered to have been activated. If one attempts to make a Grand Unifying Rulebook, a trigger effect can be chained if the last thing that happened was the activation condition. And there are plenty of them so get ready to see that phrase a billion times.

Simplified example, ie. what happens in practice:

P1 tributes Treeborn Frog, summons Caius the Shadow Monarch and activates his effect, targeting Blaze Accelerator Magazine.

P2 chains BAM's effect. If P1 doesn't do anything, P2 will proceed to discard Volcanic Scattershot and draw a card

both players do the following roughly in this order:

banish BAM

mill two Scattershots

destroy Caius

subtract 1500 points from P1's LP

If they know what they are doing, this is not a problem. If they don't, it becomes a complete Clusterfuck.

Same example, once more with clarity:

Open game state: P1's MP1

it doesn't matter for the following details, but keeping track of it is makes rulesharkers knock themselves out on your SUPERIOR RULE-FU

this means that Turn player has priority

P1 tributes Treeborn Frog to tribute summon Caius the Shadow Monarch. The last thing that happened was an attempt to summon a monster (because this window of opportunity is limited pretty much exclusively to negating summons that do not start a chain, like Horn of Heaven or Koa'ki Meiru Overdose, they are usually lumped together with summon responses)

Since P2 doesn't respond, P1's Caius arrives to the field. The last thing that happened was Caius' tribute (=normal) summon. Tributing Treeborn Frog is a cost and thus promptly ignored.

Due to the fact that his effect is a trigger (responding to his own summon) and the one declaring it's activation is the turn player, it is a Chain Link 1 (CL1 for short - this notation is incredibly useful) targeting Blaze Accelerator Magazine. The last thing that happened was:

Caius was tribute=normal summoned

Caius' effect was activated, targeting Blaze Accelerator Magazine.

yes, both are consiedered "things you can respond to".

P2 activates the effect of Blaze Accelerator Magazine, thus creating CL2: BAM. The last thing that happened was:

Caius was tribute=normal summoned

BAM's effect is activated.

P1 in retalliation chains... nothing at all.

P2 passes right to chain as well, thus both players move into resolving the chain that formed.

2nd Chain Link is resolved (R2 for short): Volcanic Scattershot is discarded (at resolution, since it's not a cost), P2 draws a card.

R1: Caius banishes Blaze Accelerator Magazine.

You'd think that the turn moves back to an open state, but NOT SO FAST! In the middle of resolving that chain, Scattershot's effect trigger happened. Since you can't shove another Chain Link in the middle of an ongoing chain, trigger effects patiently wait for the current chain to finish to either politely ask if it can activate (In case it "If~, you can~" and "When~, you can~") or rudely do the thing at the first opportunity (in this example, this happens with the -500lp effect). As a result, after Caius-BAM chain resolves, a second chain is immediately created, bypassing turn players priority. Thus the example continues with a rather tame case of SEGOC, just so you'll have a taste of what's to come.

CL1: Scattershot -500LP effect activates.

CL2: Scattershot mill themselves as a cost with the intention to nuke the field.

Now that trigger effects stated their business, players can meddle some more. The last thing that happened was:

Blaze Accelerator Magazine was banished.

Volcanic Scattershot's mill'n'nuke effect was activated.

P1 doesn't chain anything.

P2 doesn't chain anything.

R2: field is nuked.

R1: 500lp worth of effect damage is dealt.

Since two other Scattershots were sent to the graveyard, yet another chain is formed.

CL1: Scattershot-A -500LP effect activates.

CL2: Scattershot-B -500LP effect activates.

P1 doesn't chain anything.

P2 doesn't chain anything.

R2: 500 points of damage are dealt.

R1: 500 points of damage are dealt.

and finally - FINALLY - the game moves to an open state (It's still P1′s MP1. If you forgot - this is why explictly asking for responses to specific things is important ;D)

...i can already tell you're internally whining "but why should caaareee?", glad you asked, buster ;> This is where a lot of hidden power/weaknesses of a lot of cards come into play.

People usually gloss over the fact that 1500 comes in three hits, so to speak. This means that Dark Room of Nightmare will deal 900 points of damage and Gorz will retalliate with whooping... -500LP.

Since Caius always activates before BAM, in a void BAM's effect will always go through.

Because BAM can destroy Caius post-mortem, it becomes sort of a mind game - especially if you throw a stray MST into the mix.

If you aim Caius at BAM, they WILL activate it (if they don't it means they do not have Volcanic Shell and that they most likely don't have Volcanic Scattershot - enjoy the free knowledge)

Say you suspect to the point of acting on it that they DO have a Scattershot. You could do the above to pave the way for something nastier. If you have a MST and they have another card, you could aim the Monarch Spite Cannon at that, instead.

If they chain BAM, you can chain MST to destroy it. That way, Scattershot stays in their hand, Caius prevails AND they do not get to draw a card. Oh, and BAM both was activated and destroyed (which means that although this turn they are completely locked out of BAM-shenanigans, they will be able to both retrieve it with volcanic Rocket and use it's 3rd effect next turn).

If they don't, you went +1 in card advantage and still can do the abovementioned later.

No trying to use Solemn Warning after your Bottomless Trap Hole spectatularly failed (or is slated to fail). This also means that summon negation stops the continuous effects of monsters-that-would-have-been (and if you gloss things over, one could even joke that they do so retroactively.)

Costs cannot be chained to. EVER. This is also the reason why Lonefire Blossom works under Skill Drain (by the time it's effect resolves, Skill Drain has already stopped applying to it.)

Volcanic player is perfectly capable of drawing into a Scattershot, which they'll have to discard.

If you want to save Caius with Forbidden Lance/etc, chain it to the second chain. If you do it do it too early, your opponent might troll you by yarding a Shell. If you do it too late you won't even have a target anymore. This also means that if you are using The Monarchs Awaken, you can both have your cake and eat it.

No matter what, doing shenanigans with Escalation of the Monarchs will end with you losing that monster to Scattershots. Whether or not you really needed that Raiza to go off is another matter.

Both players can chain Call of the Haunted to the 3rd chain - and it will ensure that the summoned monster will not fall into a BTH (since the only window of opportunity after that chain opens up only for "dealt/took damage" and "monster effect resolved")

If you are willing into "what are you doing STAHP" territory: if you can read that their only valid discard is a Scattershot - you could chain Torrential Tribute to BAM. Because they activated it, they would have to discard the little guy (as you can't activate cards if you don't have valid targets). However, they wouldn't be able to mill two others, which would be rendered mostly useless, ticking time bombs as you have to discard/mill all of them to get the nuke effect.

As a collorary, every effect that negates an activation, has to be chained directly to what it wants to stop. Negated chain links still exist for the purpose of reading the potential triggers left by the resolution of a chain. There is also a SECRET RULE-FU TECHNIQUE that never ceases to blow my mind. I've mentioned effect fizzling, i've mentioned activating fun things at fun times for fun results. Effect Veiler-Fiendish Chain interaction is what combines those two aspects. Say you have a monster with an ignition effect that tributes it as a cost. For this example, let's take Cardcar D for a joyride. But before that, a few things to keep in mind before we jump in:

Monster effects that tribute themselves for cost activate on the field.

Effect Veiler can and will negate abovementioned effect.

Fiendish Chain only negates things that activate and resolve on the field, just like Skill Drain.

The only window of opportunity to activate Effect Veiler to negate CCD is when it's summoned. Once that moment passes, it'll vroom away.

Do you see where this is going? You have CCD and a Fiendish Chain, your ornery opponent has Effect Veiler. What can happen? Go on, try to figure it out yourself.

The answer is: In response to CCD's summon a chain is formed: CL1: Effect Veiler, targeting CCD. If the turn player adds CL2: Fiendish Chain (targeting CCD), durning resolution Fiendish will negate CCD. As a result Veiler's effect will not affect CCD. After that, you can activate CCD'e effect and it will go through, because Fiendish affects only face-up monsters!

If something is done by the players 'at the same time', like with Dark World Dealings

Rule- trigger-wise, it's resolution opens up trigger conditions:

"a (normal) spell card was resolved"

"you added a card from your deck by drawing it"

"your opponent added a card from your deck by drawing it"

Physically, opponent of the person who activated it is the one to do it 1st (tho i do not have a sauce. It should be either a single-card ruling or in one of the posts of tcgplayer's resident judge).

See also: "events that do not start a chain" (=that do not form a chain link) in the rulebook. The thing that screws over sharks and what i strongly insist on doing: if you activate something in a window of opportunity for triggers as a CL1 (like activating Bottomless Trap Hole because a monster was normal summoned), you are RESPONDING TO *AN ACTION* (here, to the normal summon of a monster). If you are activating something as a CL2 or higher - you are CHAINING TO THE ACTIVATION OF *A CARD (EFFECT)*. And continuous effects APPLY. If you have aaaaaaaall this knowledge nicely sorted out in your head, the only way they could bend the rules would be to confuse you first by muddling what is really happening. Insistent, rigid terminology also point to what they don't know. Even corrected by a judge, they might operate under their old assumptions. Enjoy free knowledge=power ;>

Hey guys, I’m back with a new post!

Today’s article is pretty hard to understand; it’s usually one of those things that new and average players don’t understand or apply in the wrong way. And it’s probably one of the most important things to know to play the game. So, today I’m gonna write about...

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the reason people get tired of educating, explaining, reasoning, sounding out

is that it just never ends

and its the same shit over and over again

people just continually fuck your shit up

and you have to smile and grit your teeth and go, ‘yo thats actually fucked, please don’t do it’

and when people you like and admire do it

do and say the same stuff you are forced to devote your energy to fighting

its like being kicked in the teeth

this is why people have flash temper reactions to bullshit, even if it was done without malicious intent

a thousand micro aggressions building up over your life

‘why are you so angry’ 'why can’t you just explain it calmly' 

maybe its because it never ever ends

and you explain it to one person and they get it and you feel good, because thank fuck, someone listened! someone grew! someone changed! someone genuinely meant it when they said sorry

turn around

and there are more people doing the same thing

what are you supposed to do

what are you supposed to do, other then scream

write. your. own. if not now, when? if not you, who? i certainly started crying at code out of sheer lack of gameplay as good as ruina; and implore you to do the same. The other option is to just be miserable, with no end in sight.

...that said, seems like this fandom needs to learn of the existence of Wisecrack:

It hurts

After talking with people in discord for the week that this has been going on, I think my feelings on the Project Moon situation are just. Like, this was a company I felt was "safe". Obviously corporations are not your friends, but this was a studio that consistently pushed out games with progressive - and at times even radical - messaging. This was a studio that has consistently written solid characters with gender as an absolute afterthought. Emma is a boy! Harold is a girl! That's how little gender matters, which, ironically, is something that matters.

I can't think of another franchise I've engaged with that just... writes women as people. I've heard George R.R. Martin is like that, but I never engaged with the TV series that introduced the US to the concept of filler or the book series it was based on. I'm gonna gloss over Lobotomy Corporation a bit here because the story only has 13 characters, but 12 of them return for Library of Ruina. In Ruina you have Binah, Angela, Nikolai, and Elena as assertive women that take control of the situations they're in. You have passive uwu smol beans like Hod and Eileen! You have characters who are war criminals and that's not a mark of a villain, that's just a part of their backstory! Some of the women here have just Done Crimes! One of the women IS a crime! And men are treated the same! There are characters with traumas and behavioral disorders who act like real people would! Lesti saw the aftermath of Love Town and started talking about food! Beef intestine no less! Philip saw his colleagues get murdered and physically manifested a mental breakdown! Xiao saw her husband get murdered and physically manifested literal burning rage!

All of the writing has been good! All of it! And it has consistently written women in a way that is flat out rare, even in 2023. And Limbus has been doing the same! Outis is assertive! Ryoshu is assertive! Hermann is assertive! Don is an idiot and Faust refuses to talk half the time! Heathcliff is assertive! Meursault is assertive! Gubo is assertive! Hong Lu is an idiot and Sinclair is/was a pathetic sop! Across the board, the character writing is just GOOD. As Lobotomy Corporation progresses, Ayin's shitty behavior becomes more and more apparent! And that all culminates with Angela being tossed aside like garbage once she's no longer useful to him, as you hear her desperate wishes to just be seen!

All of that, or at least most of that, was Kim Ji-hoon. But Kim Ji-hoon is also the person who hastily fired VellMori at 11 PM, over the phone, while he was out of office in Japan, because some incels accused his company of being sympathetic to feminists in 2023.

And it fuckin hurts that the source of those stories, the stories that I just spent three paragraphs praising, the stories that are so important to me, could turn heel in half a second like that. As if he was writing completely different stories than the ones I've been reading. And I hate that? I hate that. Because there isn't a replacement! I don't get Grandma War Crimes and Dumbass Justice Enactor in other stories! Like, maybe some will come close, maybe some will have the same exact character somewhere, but never all of it together. Never written as amazingly as the City is.

So it hurts. And the silence is loud.

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some additional arguments/points:

each time someone whines at me @elo hell, i send them to those vids and say "if you are really that good as you say, this is roughly how your games should go"

you are the only constant in each and every one of those games.

don't defuse flamers/raise morale because it's "nice thing to do" do it because it makes things easier and more convinient

if you don't come with the mindset of carrying these four noobs to the bitter end be it hell or high water, despiteyour teams sabotaging - what are you doing here son

actually there isn't much difference between skill in various divisions; by that i mean that lower elo makes more mistakes and punishes them less, so they sort of even out. higher elo makes less mistakes and/because it punishes them harsher, thus it also evens out. ergo: each mistake you make is a reminder why you aren't a diamond/plat/what-have-you

some puny little pawn starts trying to rile you up?

are you seriously so weak to be bothered by it? man up.

stop giving them excuses, people rarely have the gall to moan (in the unfun sense) when you are too busy slaughtering the opposing team just because you can (and when they do, the whole scenario becomes hysterical)

lookatit, sad little thing trying - and failing miserably - to build up it's ego with whining because it sucks too much at LoL to utilise other aspects of the game.

why do you assume they even HAVE brains. they are for all intents and purposes bots to be pinged around the map as if you were playing an RTS. they don't listen?

once you're 12/0/6 doing pentas left right and center/cockblocking each frag attempt of your opponents they'll start paying attention.

see below

why do you expect them to be useful in any way shape or form. unless you spoon-feed them gold they are mobile wards at best. after that they become distractions and meat shields - if you're lucky, that is, so don't count on it.

INB4 "you botched formatting": whine to tumblr for devouring/changing html tags each time i try to fix the last dissapearance/not showing proper formatting on dash

And this also (I need to follow that guy I like his videos)

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the future is now

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@lu-is-not-ok

A VERY DISORGANIZED AND WEIRD MESS OF THOUGHTS THAT ARE ALL RELATED TO THE SODA EGO SOMEHOW

So wellcheer’s story is like, this employee getting drugged and taken aboard a ship, and eventually coming to enjoy his work there, finding it better than working in the city. In general this reads to me as the escapist fantasy of the employees, wanting something that’s more fulfilling, more satisfying, hoping for a change. While I think Hong Lu having it is somewhat self explanatory, I think we need to consider Ryoushuu as well, since both can provide context for one another. I will also bring up the fact that someone pointed out they could correlate to the types of work that give grape wellcheers, those being attachment(being kind and friendly) and repression(denying the abnormality in some way)- which I didn’t quite agree with at first, but I think I understand better now that yes, it’s likely. With that out of the way~! Let’s talk about Hong Lu, since he’s the one we understand the most about! These are not clean sections by the way. They’re ramblings of a mad man.

Keep reading

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BSD 112: War and Peace

Now that the manga has finally caught up to the anime, I shall say that I am still pretty convinced Fyodor will pull a Jesus and be fine.

That said, I hella loved this chapter. The themes, man. Essentially Fukuchi is inviting Fukuzawa to become God, though I would NOT be surprised to see a certain new character show up considering this entire chapter is basically Fukuchi and Fukuzawa trading paraphrased quotes from A Certain Novel.

It's a battle of free will vs peace, and how we walk that line as individuals and societies... war is futile and hell, and pointless because what even is a state anyways besides some arbitrary idea we've all agreed to for... reasons, and yet if you remove the ability for war and conflict as a whole, you don't really have humanity but instead mind-controlled slaves.

War is not a polite recreation, but the vilest thing in life, and we ought to realize this and not make a game of it... as it stands now it's the favorite pastime of the idle and frivolous.”

Every action of theirs, that seems to them an act of their own freewill is in the historical sense not free at all but is bound up with the whole course of history and preordained from all eternity... Man lives consciously for himself, but serves as an unconscious instrument for the achievement of historical, universally human goals.

It's true that people are born where they are born, and caught up in the stories that are grander than they are. Everyone likes to imagine what they know and what they experience and what they want and believe is True, but is it? Or is it merely a product of how they've grown? Is it a product of the centuries and millennia of people before us who create wars and conflicts and use us in them?

Yes, humans are used as unconscious instruments. But is that all they are? All they should be? Fukuchi seems to think yes. If they're currently used as instruments of war, then why not use them. as instruments of peace?

Fukuzawa, however, thinks otherwise.

It's an existential question humanity has been wrestling over since human beings have existed, and it won't be answered anytime soon because there is no neat answer. It's the paradox of human nature and human existence.

He had learned that, as there is no situation in the world in which a man can be happy and perfectly free, so there is no situation in which he can be perfectly unhappy and unfree.

Dictatorships are known, obviously, for suppressing free will and free expression.

Now, in War and Peace, Tolstoy's answer is love. And God, who is Love. But love first and foremost since Tolstoy himself wasn't super religious when writing it (later on he was though).

Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the one thing we are interested in here.

Yet, if you remove the ability to choose love or violence, then:

A man having no freedom cannot be conceived of except as deprived of life. 

And it's pretty clear what lesson Fukuchi has to learn:

Life is everything. Life is God. Everything shifts and moves, and this movement is God. And while there is life, there is delight in the self-awareness of the divinity. To love life is to love God. The hardest and most blissful thing is to love this life in one's suffering, in the guiltlessness of suffering.

Life sucks. War is hell. It makes life feel like it's not worth living. But without free will, you are not alive at all.

For if we allow that human life is always guided by reason, we destroy the premise that life is possible at all.

Anyways, even if Leo Tolstoy does not appear as an actual character with the supreme ability of "War and Peace," well, he sure is influencing this arc a lot.

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re: anime: well, Asagiri has been on board so everything that was added does provide extra data points.

re: Nikolai: ha, out respective brainrots got in the way. the focus on Nikolai w/ hand imo kind of signals the author gets a free setup to rewrite him into basically anything.

upside: dialogue (and the way the main panel is... "shot", hiding the mask) implies that now he has no reason for murderclown routine. alternatively: he's completely written out of the plot, either in Alcott-esque fashion (as pure satellite character), or permamently, as an used up plot device. Either way we forget.

downside: orrrr because it's not as upfront as Odasaku pulling Dazais bandages off, he can just double down on the mask. alternatively: the monkey paw curls and the genuine side is not to your taste.(or what happens is a synthesis of his face and mask, so to speak.)

So at this point i'm kind of afraid to ask: what result would you consider return to (better) form? keeping in mind that whatever research Asagiri did it pales in comparison to yours

re: re: scheduled Dostoy pivot: nonsense trust speech -> adapts strats and THIS being the rough CnP pivot (as opposed to Sigma :|)

can we form a coup against asagiri and make you the writer instead? genuinely... I am not taking the Fyodor immortal information well.. please help............................ ( ´，_ゝ` )

Oh, I would absolutely not do BSD well either. I just wish Asagiri had stuck to his roots more. He was a great comedy writer, and the beginning of the story was great for it. It's the action and Death Note stuff he can't seem to get mastery of. But for the immortal part: I'm not entirely sold that Fyodor's immortal, yet. It seems like yet another twists that will twist to reveal oh, shocker, he faked his memories to confuse Sigma/the ADA... or something. Could very well be immortal, but not 100% guaranteed.

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