I feel this in my soul. My university house had mould on the bathroom ceiling, and one of my roommates was allergic - they went into violent sneezing fits every time the showered.
Our landlords tried everything to avoid addressing it, up to claiming that, “people couldn’t be allergic to mould like that.”
They only “fixed” it after one of my other roommates threatened to talk to his father who was a lawyer. Their “fix” was to paste over the ceiling with vinyl plates.
Don’t forget every magical staff , necklace, and ring that casts a spell.
Will I ever use Create Water from the Rain Dancer? Probably not, especially with Shadowheart lugging around more than a dozen bottles of water. But what if I really need it?
I seem to remember them being surprised by the success of Bravely Default, not expecting a deliberately old-school RPG to appeal to modern audiences.
The cynical part of me believes this is performative on their part - they know a game like that will be popular, but it won’t be the most popular thing ever and they won’t make all the money. So, they try to push bigger games that are more easily monetized in hopes that people will just forget their own preferences.
I’m probably on my own in being a big fan of the books and also liking the first season for the most part. Despite the changes, the world felt recognizably like Randland. I only really hated the last episode.
But that last episode was an absolute trash fire. It wasn’t just different, it was wrong. A bunch of characters and story elements are either killed off, not present to begin with, or in the wrong place at the start of the second season.
I’m willing to forgive a lot of that due to the troubles the production had with COVID and the loss of one of the main actors. All that was on top of regular old studio meddling that happens with these things.
My hope then is that the second season will go about trying to correct everything put all the characters where they are supposed to be at the start of season three, which I’m assuming will align with the third book.
I grew up with the NIV, so it was just natural. It was also the default option when I went to biblegateway.com to copy the text, so I just rolled with it. I know there are some people who would be scandalized that I didn’t use the KJV, but that’s their problem, not mine.
I wouldn’t argue that the modern BIble “disowns” the OT, but some NT authors were doing their best to sweep it under the rug to make their fledgling religion more palatable to the Greeks and Romans. Early Christianity was just a sect (some might say a heresy) of Judaism, so it wasn’t inititally designed to appeal to Gentiles. With that lens, you can even argue that the apostle Paul is a more important figure in Christianity than Jesus - indeed, I’ve seen this argued a few times.
And you know what? These sorts of topics are a lot more interesting to me now that I don’t feel compelled to believe the traditional interpretation of them. I became far more interested in the development of early Christian theology after I became an atheist, probably because while I was still a Christian I was afraid of what I would find out if I challenged my beliefs at all. Not an unfounded fear as it turned out, given the arc of my life.
I have to put my 25 years of religious education and devotion to use somehow now that I no longer go to church. I figure helping non-belivers better understand Christianity is a pretty worthwhile endeavour.
“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness”
2 Timothy 3:16 (NIV)
Here’s the verse that was always given to me to support “the Bible is the word of God and 100% infallible.” Not that it’s not circular, but it does exist.
Remember, the Bible has a lot more in it than folk tales and cultural laws. There are a lot passages that are prophecy, poetry, or theology - sometimes all three at once. It’s just that the stories are a lot easier to remember and internalize.
There is a miniscule (0.014%) chance for the very first enemies in the game to drop an extremely powerful item that normally isn’t available until much later. Getting it early is absolutely wild because one of its effects is doubling stat gains when leveling up, which can quickly snowball your characters into godhood.
My personal pet peeve is when they play an ad before giving you the menu options.
First, wait thirty seconds for them to tell me how great their mobile app is. Then listen to the options, pick one, find out I picked the wrong one, and have to go back up one level. Now I have to listen to the ad again before I can hear the options.
I don’t care how proud you are of your app, I wouldn’t be calling you if I could solve my problem with it.
When I played AL I put in the minimum effort. Playing with a random group every week means no one is really going to appreciate it.
On the other hand, my current group is my close friends. Not only did we have to up write a fairly comprehensive backstories, but we also create a bunch of NPCs specifically bonded to our characters that the DM weaves into the plot. It’s really fun and engaging.
I proposed to my wife in the middle of our dingy basement apartment with no one else around. We were going out to dinner with our friends that evening to celebrate her PhD thesis defence. I asked her if she was okay with a public proposal. She said no.
So, I grabbed the ring (which she had helped me in part to pick out) from where I had stashed it and handed it to her with no ceremony or fanfare.
It was honestly more fun waiting for our friends to notice that evening.