Here’s my answer from the last time this came up (which might as well have been yesterday from how often people unfairly lionize Sam and shit on Frodo):

“As he stood there, even though the Ring was not on him but hanging by its chain about his neck, he felt himself enlarged, as if he were robed in a huge distorted shadow of himself, and vast and ominous threat halted upon the walls of Mordor…”

"Wild fantasies arose in his mind; and he saw Samwise the Strong, Hero of the Age, striding with a flaming sword across the darkened land, and armies flocking to his call as he marched to the overthrow of Barad-dur… He had only to put on the Ring and claim it for his own, and all this could be. "

“In that hour of trial it was the love of his master that helped most to hold him firm; but also deep down in him lived still unconquered his plain hobbit-sense: he knew in the core of his heart that he was not large enough to bear such a burden, even if such visions were not a mere cheat to betray him. The one small garden of a free gardener was all his need and due, not a garden swollen to a realm; his own hands to use, not the hands of others to command.”

Sam was tempted, and if he possessed the ring long enough he would have been overcome like any other, but his Hobbit-sense saved him in that one small moment, when he had held the ring but a short while.

Enabling NSFW is probably most of it, but I also blocked the user Madness (or something like that) who posts most of the celeb spam, and my feed has been 100% better.

Three. lemmy.ml, sh.itjust.works, and lemmynsfw

lemmy.ml because I was a relatively early adopter in the reddit migration. sh.itjust.works because they’re the largest instance I’m aware of that defederates the fewest other instances. If there were a large instance that didn’t defederate anyone, I’d definitely join.

sh.itjust.works is what I consider my “main” account currently, but unfortunately beehaw has the largest gaming community, so I have to keep a lemmy.ml tab open for it too. I use lemmy.ml on the living room computer so there isn’t porn on the tv all day.

Either way, it’s handy to have accounts on at least two different instances for when your main instance is down.

As long as the game is balanced and there are enough counterplays to camping, I’m fine with it.

I have - I’ve played all 3 Grandia games. The second is really good, and it refines the battle system in some nice ways, but it’s a (slightly) smaller, more character driven story that loses a bit of the grand, somewhat naive, adventurous spirit that makes the first game so unique and satisfying.

There’s a large number of people who prefer Grandia 2, and for good reason, but I prefer the characters and story of Grandia 1. If you haven’t played either, I recommend playing both in order. Grandia 3 is a bit of a letdown in comparison, but I still really enjoyed it and think it gets a bit more hate than it deserves.

Lemmy moment

I wonder what’s the largest that defederates with the most.

Almost definitely beehaw

I also wonder what’s the largest that gets defederated the most.

Probably exploding-heads. If not, then lemmygrad.

Definitely sh.itjust.works. The largest instance that defederates with the fewest other instances (though they could still do better here - there’s no reason to defederate either exploding-heads or lemmygrad), no email required on sign up, and a super chill vibe.

Definitely sh.itjust.works. The largest instance that defederates with the fewest other instances (though they could still do better here - there’s no reason to defederate either exploding-heads or lemmygrad), no email required on sign up, and a super chill vibe.

For me it’s anything I have to download an app to operate.

Literally every game on console with online multiplayer forces you to pay for essential features.

Bloodborne

500 hours is also my sweet spot I think - I don’t think I have any games with significantly more than that. Here are the games I have ~500 hours in (that I can remember off the top of my head):

Breath of the Wild
Civ IV
Dark Souls
Monster Hunter World
Skyrim
Warframe

If entire series count though, it’s gotta be Civ, by a landslide.

Phone by itself in left front pocket, facing leg. Keys and sundry in right front, wallet in back right, receipts in back left.

Ooh, not locking multiplayer behind a paywall so I can play multiplayer games somewhere other than just on PC!

Ooh ooh, controllers that actually work!

Ooh ooh ooh, no more artificial scarcity, like making more than 12 total physical copies of games and not arbitrarily removing games from sale digitally!

“Framerules” in Super Mario Bros. speedrunning on NES is probably the most memed analogy for a (very slightly) more complicated concept I know of.

The game can only send you to a new level every 21 frames (about .3 seconds), so there are tons of levels where timesaves don’t lead to any benefit, because you have to save a full .3 seconds in order to see any benefit.

In the community, this has been explained with the same analogy so many times that “Imagine there’s a bus” has become a well-known meme.

So, imagine there’s a bus that only leaves the station every .3 seconds (21 frames). Because the bus only leaves at the times on its schedule, arriving early for the bus doesn’t get you to your destination any faster, because you still have to wait for the time the bus will leave. For this reason, any new time saves in SMB1 must reach a new “framerule” (get there early enough to catch the previous bus) for there to be any real timesave.

I just finished blazing through Life of Pi in a single day today. I thought it would be obnoxious and tryhard, but it turned out to be a surprisingly interesting read and a hell of a page-turner. Gets a bit… weird… toward the end, but definitely a book I’d recommend, and one which I’ll probably be thinking about for the next few weeks.

Onward to rereading Children of Dune!

Oh man, I’m so jealous at you getting to read the Dune books for the first time. I’m about to start Children on my third reread, and every time I read the series I’m just as enthralled as the first time. Dune + Children is probably my second favorite novel ever written, though God Emperor is close behind them.

Nice, thick, heavy hardcover, thick, textured pages, no jacket.

Grandia is one of my favorite games of all time. It captures the pure joy and excitement of adventure better than any game ever made.

Also one of my favorite battle systems. A great expansion of the early Game Arts system seen in the (also amazing) Lunar games.