In the Lord of the Rings fandom there’s a persistent debate whether balrogs, or Durin’s Bane specifically, have wings. The text in Fellowship is ambiguous whether what it is describing are literal wings or something else wing-like.
In the Deltarune fandom, there’s a fairly heated debate on whether the character Ralsei (depicted as a feminine male in game) will end up coming out as transgender or not
Both sides feel it’s the most natural route for the story, both sides have evidence in their favour and both sides feel the other would ruin the story
A recent merch ad depicted a female Ralsei and it caused a bit of revival in the discussion (despite ads not being canon)
In the world of Game Collecting, the guy with potentially the largest single collection on the planet is getting rid of his collection.
The ideal plan was for it to all go to a singular museum, which was in the works and then unfortunately fell through. Problem is the next two backups also fell through. So plan D involves the collection being split up and some of it going to the Embrace Group, and some into private collections, which was seemingly both never the plan. People who donated items, thinking that they would eventually be publicly displayed, are rightfully upset. And then the rest of his fans, such as myself, are somewhat bewildered that this is how it will end after decades of amassing a collection, and then years of saying it’ll all be going to a museum.
systemd is fine for some
I understand the pushback against it being “not unix” philosophically, since it’s a large system instead of many small systems working together.
At the same time systemd is still kind of just a collection of config/script files. And as annoying as it is, the perennial “well just contribute to / code for the thing you like instead” mantra applies. init.d is falling out of favor with maintainers because they find it comparatively harder to maintain and update.
I have the vague feeling that a lot of the people that would care the most have moved to NixOS or esoteric stuff like it.
BMX: free coaster vs cassette.
Doctor Who has a bunch of them!
One of the big recent ones was the Timeless Child plotline. For people unfamiliar with the show, the basic premise is that the main character, the Doctor, is an alien who’s species can regenerate themselves when they’re about to die which saves them but they become a physically different person. This was invented back in the 60s so they could change out the lead actor, William Hartnell, when he got too old to continue in the role and it’s become a core part of the show. We’re now on about the 15-16th Doctor, although that number is a bit contentious too for reasons I won’t go into here because that’s a whole other thing.
A few years back there was a plotline where it was revealed that the Doctor isn’t just a regular alien, they’re something called the Timeless Child that just appeared in our universe from somewhere unknown, and was the one that gave their whole species the ability to regenerate themselves. This was widely hated, as it not only changed the Doctor from a sort of wandering hobo into a Super Special Chosen One, but it also directly showed that William Hartnell wasn’t the first Doctor, there had been probably dozens of other ones before him that had just never been mentioned until now.
The internal debates that I’ve seen usually aren’t people debating whether this was a good idea or not, they’re mostly about the best way to retcon it away and never speak of it again lol.
Uggggh… I only watched the 13th doctor episodes a couple of years ago to catch up to David Tennant’s return and I totally forgot about all that… I don’t mind weird ‘missing’ incarnations like the war doctor and even the one at the lighthouse had she either fit in or was ambiguous as to what ‘number’ they are but yeah, the timeless child stuff was awful and weird and just made the doctor feel so hollow… Instead of being this flawed character trying to do good they suddenly are important in the universe because of their nature and not their deeds… It cheapens the doctor so much… Can we not just pretend that 13 never happened? I’m still yet to watch the 15th doctor series because of how awful the Chibnell era was…
I very much enjoyed the 5 hour video by Jay Exci on it because it really showed how poor it really was. I was never that keen on some of the Moffat era when he got too Moffat-y for his own good but I would have had that in a heartbeat.
It’s such a shame because I really like Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor, but yeah her whole era was so badly written. She’s doing Big Finish now though so hopefully she’ll get some good stuff to work with there.
The 15th Doctor era is… odd. No spoilers but RTD is back as lead writer but he makes some… decisions lol. Including putting one of the worst episodes the show has ever had right at the start of 15’s run. You’ll probably know it when it happens! But then inbetween the oddness there are some genuinely really good single episodes too IMO.
Miniature painting: True metallic Vs non metallic metal.
Should you paint the metal parts of your minis in metallic paint (containing small amounts of pica and/or aluminium to give it a reflective shimmer), or is it better to use non metallic paints and paint the shimmer and reflections to give the illusion of being metallic?
Personally I prefer TMM, because it’s basically the same techniques but if you fuck it up a bit it doesn’t end up looking terrible like NMM, and while NMM looks great in photos I find TMM looks better in real life, which is where I enjoy my minis. NMM definitely requires more skill, but I don’t think the results are worth it unless you’re entering competitions.
I’ve done both. NMM is normally thought of as a skill flex, and it can be that. I’ve used NMM more realistic figures meant to look grounded, like WW2 infantry. Metallic paints can look too shiny for bare, but dull metals, and techniques like rubbing graphite are too subtle for me. I’ll paint bare metal items with a simplified NMM so they are easily visible on the table, but it’s not flashy so people rarely consciously notice.
TMM can look better than many people end up doing it by actually layering different shades of metallic and treating it like painting any other part of the mini instead of a single color + black wash.
Who “What do you two think?” in W.D. Caster’s “Dark, Darker, yet Darker” easter egg monologue is addressing.
Personally, I’m in the Sans and Alphys camp, but we’ll have to see where the rest of Deltarune leads on that.
Stalker 2 sucks.
In the RTS game beyond all reason there is a long ongoing debate thread where people would argue for removing the ability to co-op(one of bars unique mechanics)
In BAR you generally play team games up to 8v8 and can instantly send resources to other players. You can also transfer units. This is pretty cool it allows you to work together to get higher tech things faster. 2 people sharing 1 lab is more efficient than 2 people making a lab each. So obviously the higher ranked games devolved into the most fucking degenerate co-op tactics. Cheese or be cheesed. Lanes decided by which good player gets more boosts. You’d end up in games where your role is to be a battery and make energy for the first few mins. You would end up losing your lane at 3mins because the other team boosted your lane then once you die they go boost the other side. You’d have the top players in the team forcing the bottom players to be a boost for them because them getting ahead is far more valuable. It was fun in the beginning but got very bad.
So top players were arguing that there needed to be a fix and tried to discuss what it should be and more casual players would constantly argue that it wasnt a problem, it was a skill issue, it was fun etc, someone just needs to counter it.
The solution people wanted was a resource tax but it required engine work. But its been done now, we got the engine work and its a toggle on setting so those who want it can and those who dont can leave it off. The “coop is a problem” thread is still going but i dont know what the new arguments are about.
I only play BAR in skirmishes, never online. Love the game, but so rarely play as to not know how to co-op well.
That being said, this is how colonial era wars worked. You’re the battery that was India in WWII? Or are you the UK making units?
In Blade Runner, whether or not Deckard is a Replicant.
That one’s pretty fair, each version of the text has pretty blatant differences
I still play a little old school Doom and earlier this year the creator of one of the main engines people use (GZDoom) got some flak for using some AI in his coding, causing a lot of people to switch over to a fork (UZDoom).
I don’t miss many things about the old site but the niche communities are one of them. If anyone wants to dive into years of minutiae covering everything from big drama to slap fights you should check out
https://old.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/“Should lizard people women have breasts?”
Easy, depends on the tone. If it’s supposed to be grounded and realistic with speculative evolution elements- probably not.
If it’s rule of cool, yeah sure.
l’ll just say that if I, as a worldbuilder, were creating a race of lizardfolk they would not have mammary glands. They would also not be too anthropomorphic. It would ruin the reason I like coming up with alien races, to solve ergonomics problems that their unique anatomy and lifestyle present.
Warhammer cheated and only created Lizardmen that magically come from spawning pools. Anything else is a distraction from the great plan.
I suppose it depends on whether lizard people are humanoid reptiles or repiloid mammals, or maybe something completely different.
Thats not a debate in LoTR Fandom. Debate would imply one side has a leg to stand on. No wings.
Does carbone fiber infused plastic make a difference for 3d prints. Many say its useless, but i do know it make them stiffer. Mot really stronger just behave stiffer. Enough to ne useful in some applications.
but does your hotend cooling fan suck or blow
It blow, i wasnt aware that i should care.
Lots of debates about the internal arrangement of the original series Enterprise…
- Bridge: forward facing or offset?
- Engineering: primary or secondary hull?
- Shuttlebay: short or extending under the nacelle pylons?
- How big is this ship, anyway??
I watched a video on this recently which was able to demonstrate that Engineering was shown in different locations in TOS. So the answer is, “Don’t worry about it.”
How big is this ship, anyway??
This was a particularly goofy handwave in the Lost in Space show as well. :D
“Exactly as big as it needs to be” --Dr. Who fans on the TARDIS, probably
