karaddin

I think the big one that needed more time was Egwene. If she's already a broken damane by the time Rand gets there he's going to need to kill her in self defense which is going to have a huge impact on him. There would have been a slow chipping away at all of them though. It's all building on the cold open in the finale - LTT shares the pain and regret that Ishy feels about the cycle of souls and endlessly fighting each other. Ishy knows this from what LTT says to him about not wanting to do this again, and he's trying to grab onto that. The part he's missing is the the difference between them - that while they both regret it, the Dragon doesn't get broken by it. I thought it was an illusion at first, it's sandwiched between his own illusion of himself and the dragon banner, and he specifically comments about the simplicity of the first illusion. I've changed my mind now though, his "I'll try again in the next life" is about his own next life and his death being an illusion doesn't jive with that. His peace as he died also seemed sincere. So I think a basic illusion with the power in general is what he's calling a "simple" illusion, legitimately dying in full knowledge he'll be brought back in short order but with Rand having the full impact of thinking he'd killed him is the best fit for everything we saw imo. That's a much more sophisticated illusion. I'm assuming the show will hand wave it in some way to continue using Fares Fares in the role because I think continuity makes sense in the visual medium, but mostly just because he was fantastic in the role.

The Muppet scene was hilarious, I would have been happy with the episode just from that. That said the revelation about what exactly happened at the end of 4 and them reckoning with that isn't filler.

I haven't gone back to it yet, that was months ago and it took me ages to get the PS5 fixed so I would have lost some of the other muscle memory with the controller I started to gain lol. BG3 and Cyberpunk have hogged my time since I got it back anyway. I was through the first area into the church with 3 bosses down, but felt I had to learn parrying to keep going - my 500 hours in Elden Ring I avoided ever using a shield haha, the pistol parry was needed for the feral hunter though.

Same. As a make shift weapon in the season finale its fine, but his weapon for the rest of the series? I'll mock that as well.

The two scenes do make sense to compare as they're very similar on a high level - purchasing a high tech gadget during which the seller gets the player character/companion to sit down and tries to renege on the already agreed upon price. I get the idea of using the comparison to get people that wrote off Cyberpunk to give it another chance, but sentiment has largely turned the corner already now so it's not really that needed.

There's one contrasting the main part of the pick up with a similar meeting in Starfield that I have to assume isn't the strongest scene in the game, but the comparison isn't flattering lol.

Yup that's absolutely part of the problem. "If you don't know, vote no" is absurdly simple and as a consequence.... It's effective.

I didn't want to answer first and bias the responses but I guess once someone has answered that goes out the window anyway, so for me... Very similar for essentially the same reason (which doesn't surprise me, I think we're pretty close on our interpretations of the books) but not the same one. It's Rand on the mountain at the end of the TGS for me, it's game over at that moment if he doesn't turn back to being human and feeling love. It's the climax of all the internal mistakes Rand had been making about how he needed to be to win, all the well meaning bad advice that almost cost the world, but not all the mistakes he's making like the list as you point out. It's also another of the parts that were written by Jordan right?

I just never had an issue with the shield holding because 1) it felt like a very short time to me, I'm not sure what's making it feel long to others (Daniel Greene interpreted it as 5-10 minutes) but either I'm missing something that says it was longer or they are missing something that says it's short, much more importantly 2) Ishy isn't actually trying to break it. He's trying to scare Egwene into abandoning Rand, not destroy the shield and kill them. He's already accepted that Lanfear completely fucked him, is making a half hearted play to still make it work but has resigned himself to waiting for the next life - his own, not Rand's. The other 5 arriving on the roof top isn't an overwhelming force he can't beat, but it's what rallies Rand to say that he has never and will never turn. Ta'veren interactions are a nice way to make the power of friendship a literal power though I get the impression I see some of the book details quite different to some, so a question to you all that may help illuminate where we diverge: What do you interpret as the decisive moment that wins the last battle in the books? Which is not to say the other moments don't matter, they're all important, but if you have to point to 1 specific tipping point what is it?

Yeah I'm pretty confident they're doing the work to set it up, and it feels even more likely than it did before s1 even started that they'll do exactly what we speculated back then - Rand with all 3 of them and Elayne+Avi also involved. The main risk of that approach is that it feels like it's just catering to male fantasy, but 1) that argument against it always felt.... Very questionable to this queer woman, like our very existence is judged by whether men like it when I really don't give a fuck and 2) given a lot of men's reactions to the series so far it doesn't feel like there's much risk of the show doing it in a way that feeds into that lol On the "avengers assemble" tower thing - there was a comment I just saw on Reddit by the book expert consultant it gives the strong impression it's going to be a very long time before we see them all together again, and that was part of why they really wanted to emphasize the importance of them all working together in a matter that's obvious in the visuals.

I'm certainly going to agree that Albo/the yes campaign did a poor job of selling it to voters, but I think it's a bit rich to act like campaigning badly is equivalent to running the campaign against it. He should have canned it as soon as Dutton started campaigning against it and the polling tanked, but Dutton is still worse. And unlike many of the no voters I don't even give him the out that he was made to be concerned about the details. At least the political opportunism on his part doesn't seem to have worked out for winning him votes even if it succeeded at tanking the referendum. The sooner we can get him out of the coalition leadership the better for the country.

Yeah. Not much more to say than yeah, and fuck.

This is my primary objection yeah, but I'm also arguing that its counter productive. Its not just that its morally wrong, its also a strategic mistake.

I did make a pretty long post yesterday with suggestions of things you could be doing alongside this though while repeatedly conceding that it is extremely hard to do that right, and conceding that Israel does need to be able to fight Hamas itself. Turning off electricity and water etc does (imo) far more damage to relations with the Palestinian people in Gaza than its gaining you in military value. Find ways to try and give medical assistance to the hurt civilians. Show that you do care about the civilian deaths and injuries and that Hamas sure as fuck doesn't.

Surely that's an argument for attacking the support base of Hamas, not reckless action that will kill thousands of civilians and help their recruitment. Again I'm entirely on board with trying to end Hamas, but mass deaths with apparent disregard for civilian casualties isn't the way to do that.

The no campaign effectively weaponized ignorance - "if you don't know, vote no" was literally their campaign slogan. Historically referendums in Australia never pass without bipartisan support, our opposition party decided to campaign against it to make it a political issue so scare campaign did the rest.

You know its not looking good when "might get above 40% in NSW and Vic" is the optimistic projection

Thanks all for the explanations - wasnt sure if it was going to be what it sounded like or double speak that actually meant the opposite essentially.

Care to explain what that phrase means? I'm not familiar with it.

I'd probably have taken that bet if I was your sister in law too lol. Let's hope our country surprises us and the pollsters. ETA: Might have misunderstood actually, were you saying it will be in the bottom or it won't?

Pretty much where I'm at. It's so surreal - aside from a few dicks on Reddit I haven't even seen the no campaign. It's not "campaigning" anywhere I actually see. There wasn't even a single no campaigner at my local polling booth, but a ton for yes. Yet I know that's not going to be remotely reflective of the outcome. My pessimism says WA won't specifically embarrass you simply because every state will vote no.

If we're assuming we're at the end of TSR at the end of season 3 and they're told "you're getting 5 seasons at 8 episodes each, no more, there will be no further negotiation" then I think you'd have Rand open season 4 with Rand taking Cairhien (or Tear), Dumai's Wells in ep5 or 6 and finish on cleansing saidin. I don't think you can fit in the full rebel tower plot this streamlined but you do have Egwene back in the tower and being punished at the end of the season too. Season 5 you probably open with the Seanchan attacking the tower with Eg getting her moment of triumph, then have the Verin reveal after that for the sake of season pacing - the tower raid is a strong opener. Meanwhile Rand has some form of his Semirhage and Graendal moments. Mid season climax on the mountain and I guess you've got to have the tower replace Elaida with Egwene but it's going to feel especially rushed, then I think you probably have 3 episodes for the last battle itself and the denouement. It's ugly but I don't think there's a non ugly way to compress it the hard. You definitely don't give true death to Hopper. We can get that much at least.

I don't have a detailed 500 page action plan and I'm not going to pretend I'm a genius with all the answers, but I'd start with not giving Hamas the response they were trying to provoke. You're not going to end Hamas by bombing Gaza flat, you're going to push more people into their arms for the next few decades doing that. You kill Hamas for good by choking off their recruitment, and the best way to do that is make people not want to join them in the first place. Killing them where possible can certainly form one component of that, I suspect that being able to actually prosecute some of them would be even better but I accept that's a tall order in the immediate aftermath - but using the justice system reframes it in a helpful way. It's not a war between two equal powers, it's a democratic nation doing it's best to protect it's people against a group of terrorists commiting crimes. Diminish them in the public (both Israel and Gaza) view so they aren't seen as an actual "alternative". Demonstrate wherever possible that you value the lives of Palestinian civilians more than Hamas ever will. The blockade does the opposite of this and the whatever current military goals it serves do not outweigh the harm it does in this aspect. This isn't even getting into the moral component, it's my opinion this harms strategic objectives although the moral component is much larger for me personally. Do everything possible to provide medical care for civilians hurt as collateral damage in the strikes against Hamas targets you feel you have to make. Under the circumstances it's admittedly challenging to have the Palestinian civilians trust it, but perhaps set up dedicated facilities within Israel to provide this treatment - and don't make it a ghetto camp. To avoid the latter you probably need to do extensive screening but if you're working with the hospitals within Gaza you can do triage on which patients would be suitable to transfer to these. Really put some effort into outreach to alternatives to Hamas and work to elevate their profile and also advocate against escalation of the conflict. Again I'm making this sound easier than it would be, as you risk making them be seen as a puppet if you do this in the wrong way - it's extremely hard and I'm not intending to paper over that. I'll accept that you need to be making some strikes still, but be very discerning in when you choose to do it. There's minimal military value to bombing a building that Hamas were in if they're already gone by the time you hit it, some specific ones might have some value in denying their future use but that's going to be the exception not the rule. Essentially - attack the support base of Hamas primarily alongside engaging them wherever you can directly engage them. Now obviously this isn't going to happen with the current administration, but I think that would be a better response to this attack than what we're seeing.

Glad to hear they made it more doable then, it wasn't the good kind of challenging.

It might also just be buggy, it was beforehand. Using it on already knocked out enemies didn't work at the time I tried it either, it took a bunch of tries against a scanner hustles in Northside where I could jump off a building for good height and used the poison grenade to get them low first. Scaling would make that even harder.