Wind farms are wildly lucrative and Donald Trump is living in a country that puts profit above everything else.

Hey now. Where do you think I spent that other 20?

Headcrabs walked so the Unggoy could scuttle

I think @gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de has it a bit off, because he sees the individuals as positive or negative agents. I’d say it’s positive or negative social situations.

If you’re playing dodgeball, the point of the game is to hit other people with a ball. That’s the situation you’re in and your social reward is in playing the game.

By contrast, if you start flinging food at a wedding, you do not get the same social rewards. The point of a wedding is not to physically dominate your peers.

In OP’s Greentext, you’ve got a kid who is in aggressive, jockular friend circles where verbal sparing is expected and rewarded. Greentext would not be rewarded if he behaved the same way with his mom.

But it’s certainly possible that if the mom was younger and in a social circle with more jockular members, or she was sparing with other old biddies on Facebook, that she’d drop the nice demeanor and come out swinging.

Sure. Half of Shakespeare’s work is adoption or embellishments on Greek myth and British folklore.

But we get a blockbuster every year or three that’s just King Lear with the serial numbers filed off

No they aren’t. They’re the baseline for a superabundance of modern cinema and theater.

Romeo x Juliet is the cornerstone of a thousand romance novels and heist thrillers. Hamlet is the backbone of modern horror. Julius Caeser is every political drama. The Tempest, every disaster movie. Comic books draw on them. Musically draw on them.

Every graduate of Julliard has performed in a dozen Shakespeare plays. Every British comedian can recite a few works by heart. The periodic remake still consistently fills theaters.

Shakespeare is the most playgerized man in history.

Me: in a pile of sixteen different LEGO sets, mixing and matching to create an unholy abomination

My Dad: “It’s all he does all day, doesn’t want to try anything new.”

That’s not fair. SquareEnix still puts out a few bangers. BG3 was fantastic.

Every game seems to demand you commit more and more time.

Yeah, I have really gotten turned off by any game with “Daily Quests” in it. My compulsive need to collect ever zig makes me feel like an addict trying squeeze 30 minutes a day in for a full week.

It’s like I’m waterboarding myself. When I come up for air, I hate the game and myself for playing it

I’ve been playing Halo 1 on the original XBox for half my life and I’m in my 40s

😏

Jrpgs are OK too, but I only like them on handheld.

People like you should be drawn and quartered

Are you having a good time, though?

Trying to explain to my wife that millennials are the most technologically savvy generation in history, but she just keeps yelling back “give me the Netflix password, the TV won’t turn on”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulford_Act

Named after Republican assemblyman Don Mulford and signed into law by governor of California Ronald Reagan, the law was initially crafted with the goal of disarming members of the Black Panther Party, which was conducting armed patrols of Oakland neighborhoods in what would later be termed copwatching.

…

Both Republicans and Democrats in California supported increased gun control, as did the National Rifle Association of America. Governor Ronald Reagan, who was coincidentally present on the Capitol lawn when the protesters arrived, later commented that he saw “no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons”

Kanye No: Getting paid to report on civil rights abuses

Kanye Yes: Getting paid to inflict civil rights abuses

“I want to be a conscientious objector.”

“AR-NOLD!”

I guess I just really, really hate Harry as a protagonist

If Rowling had just stuck to sports YA novels about wizard high school, instead of sticking her withered claw into politics, I doubt anyone would have more to say about Harry Potter than they’ve said about Luke Skywalker.

after the fifth one, I can barely remember anything that happens in them, outside some biggest plot points.

It’s just crazy to introduce “The Three Big Magic Items That Change The World” in book 7. Like, you haven’t finished playing with the Seven Evil Relics That Keep Voldemort Alive and you’re already injecting this other shit? Save it for a different series.

Compared to how I can still fairly well recall what happens in books 1-4, and mostly 5 as well despite there being more time passed after reading them, the contrast is huge.

The first three movies are, in my opinion, really nice happy little Christmas movies. Been watching them on and off since I was in high school. So the plot is burned into my brain. I honestly think books 2 and 3 are the peak of her writing. Genuinely really good kids stories. Fun antagonists. Clever riddles. A few twists at the end.

And then she blew up in popularity, and the whole franchise went off the rails. Ah well…

Moral of the story, never let a good author write a fourth book.

Literally “the pre-destined future leader who just needs to walk forward and automatically wins”.

What’s his biggest hurdle through the entire three-book adventure? Picking which hot princess he’s going to marry? Politely asking some ghosts to defeat half the Dark Lord’s army in an unwritten side adventure? Literally walking up to the Black Gates of Mordor and telling the Eye of Sauron “Made you look”?

Come on. The most difficult fight Aragorn has in the entire epic adventure happens in the first half of the first book.

I’d argue Harry is way worse than both Aragorn and Rand Al’Thor.

That’s fine. You’re entitled to your own opinion.

What qualities does Harry have?

Naivete, isolation, and confusion that gives way to optimism and comradrie in Book 1. If you ever read any Roald Dahl novels, he’s got much of the same youthful curiosity and compassionate cheerfulness of James from the Giant Peach and Charlie from the Chocolate Factory.

Much of Harry’s early personality is informed by his struggle to understand his parents and his parents’ friends, picking up and discarding their habits and traits in pursuit of self-actualization (Book 3/4/5, in particular, have him latching onto Remus Lupin and then Sirius Black as idols, only to lose them and himself in turn). Over the course of the series Harry’s initial optimism is poisoned by cynicism and hatred, frustration at the failure of his elder peers, and ultimately a depressive death spiral. He matures, discarding the childish qualities of the early books and adopts more mature (often toxic and reactionary) views and motivations by the end of the series. As a case in point, Book 1 Harry would have happily joined SPEW, while Book 5 Harry considers it an annoyance. I’d say Harry’s arc really peaks in Book 6, when he uses black magic on Draco Malfoy and Snape has to rush in to save him. He’s gone from a cheerful, generous, naive little kid to a battle-hardened child soldier.

Like, if I was to really describe Harry’s story progression, that’s it. Its a look inside a child that’s forced to fight a war for survival. You get a similar (abet much better written) character trajectory for the Animorphs. But to say nothing is going on with the central character? That’s blatantly rage-bait.

Also my suspicion that book 6 is the last book that Rowling had more than a few token notes on. By book 7, you can really feel the ghostwriters crowding in and WB taking a heavy hand in editing/finalizing (although it’s clear they’ve been around since book 4). Forcing a Disney-style happy ending on a wizard civil war betrayed so much of what Rowling had set up in the early novels.