Lurker > CaptainOfCrush

kateee posted...

#17: Hysteric Party
First TCG release: Structure Deck: Lord of the Storm (2006-07-12)

Another one of my favorites. This topic actually triggered a pang of nostalgia, so I've done a few things over the past several days to satisfy it. One of them was looking up the status of Harpies today, and I found this vid:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATsh3vpDVlk

This guy's deck looks incredibly strong (Harpies now have a formidable Synchro monster that can use ANY Harpie as a Tuner - COME ON), so imagine my disappointment when I subsequently looked into tier lists and saw that Harpies aren't even close to being viable competitively. If cards this powerful are considered crap, today's meta just can't be fun. =/

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Yoblazer
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Speaking as a casual viewer, it would be pretty embarrassing for the continent if Qatar wins the whole thing.

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Yoblazer
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DoomTheGyarados posted...

And supervisors never being ok to date a coworker like that.

Eh, I wouldn't support this being a "hard" cultural rule. Work is still among the most common places that couples meet, and unless they begin their careers at the same time/place, there will likely be some difference in office authority. Most large companies are aware of this reality and have established procedures to keep office relationships from affecting the actual work (the couple usually needs to bring the relationship to management's attention so that each person is placed on different projects/clients).

I've known more than one coworker who has dated higher-ranking people at the office, and the relationships have been long-lasting and seemingly healthy. While abuse of power is certainly possible, I don't assume it to be the norm in these cases.

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Yoblazer
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kateee posted...

Wait really. Is it just the term or the grouping of the cards general? I know the term itself may not be super widespread but they were the first limited to 1 spell cards! It listed them in the how to play for my starter decks; they were the cards!

The term "Power 5" is new to me, but I understood what you were talking about. Those were the first "mandatory" Spell cards that every deck needed in order to be competitive. I find Dark Hole to be the most interesting because it's the only one with any downside at all, but even back then, everyone recognized its power and considered it a staple.

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Yoblazer
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I'd rather pose the question in here before Googling it: are Pot of Greed coffee mugs a thing?

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Yoblazer
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Not everyone does, but I *vaguely* recall the figure that about a third of American high school students play on at least one organized, competitive sports team (many students play on multiple teams, depending on the season). Considering that the US has the third largest population in the world... that's a ton of people taking athletics and competition seriously from a young age.

Rest assured, we have tons of fat people too. It's a "country of extremes" in many ways.

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Yoblazer
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I get the feelings that Americans take athletics much more seriously from a young age than do most other countries. I know Japan is crazy about high school baseball, and I presume that European and South American kids take up soccer from an early age, but Americans are like that with tons of sports.

Kids (usually ones with means) are encouraged to take up sports like soccer, tennis, swimming, and gymnastics from an extremely young age. Once they progress beyond primary school, they'll enter high schools where the students skilled in football, basketball, soccer, baseball/softball, swimming, track, or wrestling occupy the top spots of the social pecking order. All of these sports have organized teams, leagues, competitive schedules, and funding. Youth athletics are just an ingrained part of American life, and I'd wager that things we just assume to be normal here (like "pep rallies" and "rival schools") might be weird as hell in other countries.

Anyway, you take all that time, effort, and money spent on several different sports, grow it up a few years, and you're left with tons of athletes who'd naturally qualify for the Olympics (without the need for large-scale national organization like you might see with China or Russia).

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eston posted...

Context matters

This, if friendships/groups form naturally despite age gaps, I don't see anything wrong with it. I went to a commuter school for my grad degree, one that featured many non-traditional (read: older) students. My group had people in their early 20s through their mid-40s, but since we could all relate about the same classes, exams, job prospects, and eventually careers, it hardly ever felt strange. We'd often grab dinner and drinks together. Full-on partying was less common, but it's mostly because the older friends had families and responsibilities that kept them from attending, not because we found them creepy.

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Yoblazer
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Simple and Clean
is the way that we're washing our hands toooonight
now join the covid fight

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Yoblazer
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You can't find a pizza topic without the word "cardboard" used an insult somewhere in there... but I've never understood it. Are you trying to say that the bread is chewy/tough, that the sauce is bland, the cheese is too greasy, the toppings suck, all of the above? It's such a strange insult to me.

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Yoblazer
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XIII_rocks posted...

A lot of names we've grown used to over the years would be considered "blah" if they were introduced right now imo

I think it's pretty good

Yep, most team names are accepted without a moment's thought because they have generations of history.

I thought Golden Knights sounded dumb as shit. Still do, actually, but it's grown on me in only half a decade.

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Yoblazer
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*looks up Griggle*

Ah... childhood trades lol. Luckily, I was 16-17 when I started, so I at least had a decent idea of card value. I do remember getting a Raigeki from a buddy who wanted my Dark Magician that had different artwork than the standard ol' hat-tipper. For all I know, I could have gotten the worse end of the deal from a dollar value perspective, but it was a freakin RAIGEKI.

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Yoblazer
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kateee posted...

#21: Imperial Order
First TCG release: Pharaohs Servant (2002-10-20)

This is it.

This is it indeed! This is my favorite YGO card ever. I can't remember how I got it back in the day (it wasn't a pull, meaning I must have traded for it). Still, before the era where counter-traps and MST ran rampant, this card locked. shit. down. I normally used it as a free Spell negation and let it die the next turn, but I specifically remember one duel where I let THE EMPEROR (for he is more than a king) troll for like five straight turns as my friend held an ever-growing hand of useless Spell cards. After all, the LP penalty was so miniscule relative to the effect - hell, the Emperor's own animation shows the Emperor scoffing at the LP cost lol.

Once I decided that this was my one and only favorite card forever, I started to ham up its usage to maximum cringe. For a couple duels, when I played it, I'd yell "Order! Order! IMPERIAL ORDER." My buddies hated it so much that I quickly stopped.

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Yoblazer
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Probably not lol, but I desperately want it to be real

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Yoblazer
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IIRC, the original way to "resign" a duel was to place your hand over your deck, which admitted defeat to your opponent. Did anyone actually do that in tourneys?

I only played for fun with my buddies, but one friend randomly did that in a match (I had him pretty much dead to rights), and we all laughed our asses off.

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Yoblazer
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I was hoping Chidori would be top 10! It's also my most played XYZ (if I had to guess, I may have used it as much as all other XYZ monsters combined). Both of its effects did such a brilliant job disrupting my opponent's game, that I didn't see much need for other XYZ summons in the early to mid-game. Hell, I remember bringing him out THREE TIMES in a duel or two.

I remember occasionally lamenting to myself "if only it was a Winged Beast..." lol

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Cemith posted...

all my homies hate Micolash.

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kateee posted...

Its just some old man with a magnificent beard telling you NO. Legend.

This is also a good way to describe my favorite YGO card of all time; I'm hoping it makes the list!

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Yoblazer
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Part-time university lecturer here (earning poverty wages of my own!)

College is not an outright scam, but it is severely overpriced, and the value of the degree itself has been diluted over time as larger percentages of the workforce attain them (about 40% of millennials have a bachelors).

Students are relentlessly nickel-and-dimed on expensive textbooks and administrative fees, as the costs of the newly built dining hall or campus gym (that most students didn't ask for) are incorporated into their tuition. Tenure-track professors spend their first ~5 years focused almost entirely on their research; once they are published and have gained tenure, they are impervious (it's almost impossible to get rid of a tenured professor, no matter how lazy or incompetent) and glut themselves on a lifetime of massive salaries while teaching as little as two classes per semester.

The US university system leans too hard on a broad spectrum of learning. Generally speaking, it takes about 40 college classes to earn a Bachelors, and at least 30% of those will be comprised of electives unrelated to a student's major. That's just too much, IMO. Some of those elective requirements should be trimmed. Of course, that will never be approved, as it would reduce the school's tuition revenue.

All that said, there are steps I think an incoming student can take to mitigate costs and get more value for their degree:

• Start at your local community college. This will save tons of money, will allow you to more easily transfer to a good university (it's always tougher to get into a competitive uni directly out of high school), and no one cares where you got your pre-reqs done anyway.
• Transfer to an in-state university. If your family is rich, you can travel across the country to your dream school. If you're on a budget, stay in-state, as this usual cuts tuition costs.
• STEM. If you opt for an easier major like business, stick with number-based fields like accounting or finance (that was the route I took). If you opt for liberal arts, I don't really have advice for you as I don't know anything about that realm.
• Join every job-fair and job-related student organization you can find. These exist EVERYWHERE, and many fields, such as accounting, recruit extensively with the university. I returned to get my Masters in accounting after a few years just working and looking for jobs on my own, and I was amazed how much easier it was to find a job directly through the university system than on my own.

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Yoblazer
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My brother worked at Walgreens for a year after getting his PharmD and really hated retail. He was lucky enough to get a county government job as a jail pharmacist, and for the past 4-5 years has been so much happier about his career.

I wish you better days ahead, TC, and hope you can land something much better for yourself and your family.

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Yoblazer
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Snake5555555555 posted...

Was the episode "The New Arrival" by any chance? That had a pretty killer reveal similar to what you described.

Actually, I may have just found it! I think it was "Til Death" from Season 2. The voodoo influence and dark colors at the end are definitely triggering some hazy memories. Assuming that is the one (I'm pretty confident)... yeah, that ending would have given me nightmares. Thanks Mom and Dad!

Though I just looked up The New Arrival, and that would have probably scared the crap out of me too.

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Yoblazer
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During one of those free HBO preview weekends, I was watching Tales from the Crypt with my parents (probably because they assumed it was a kid's show like Are you Afraid of the Dark). The episode focused on a monster/demon/ugly faced thing, and the final scene was the big payoff where the monster's face was revealed. Well, right before I got to see it, my parents told me to cover my eyes, and I was already so scared by that point that I did so immediately.

I never saw the monster's face. It's been at least 25 years since, and I still think about that episode sometimes. I'll occasionally look up the list of episodes to see if I can find it, but no luck yet (and no, I'm not gonna watch multiple episodes of that crap for 10 seconds of childhood closure).

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Yoblazer
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Little off-topic, but when I played Silent Hill 2 at launch, I nope'd and powered the console down when the radio static got really loud. I also waited during the day to play through the prison section because it was just too much late at night.

And I wasn't even a "kid" kid - I was 15!

Considering 2001 standards, that game didn't mess around.

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Yoblazer
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I will say that the confidence in which he spoke it (almost bellowed it out like a killer line to win an argument) and the nonchalant reaction in the room is a perfect encapsulation of the longstanding, normalized racism in the South. This is just normal shit in like 30% of the country.

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Yoblazer
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A newcomer is taking the GOP 2024 field by storm

https://twitter.com/TheeKHiveQueenB/status/1417595498496593922?s=20

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Yoblazer
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Oh man, I just remembered one early-era card that wrecked my shit: Ekibyo Drakmord. When my brother's friend first busted it out in a game, I did like twelve double takes and demanded to read every word of the card text. I couldn't believe a freakin common (this was still around the time most of us were fumbling with the first starters) could be so broken.

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Yoblazer
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IIRC, Summoned was a common. I think Soul Exchange was one of the rares lol.

Back then, I remember being the first among my friends to "figure out" that a 40-card deck was superior, and that arbitrarily bloating the card count would just dilute the overall deck strength. I trimmed down to 40 and started beating friends who had better cards (like 2-3 Trap Holes versus my one) and they couldn't wrap their heads around why until I told them.

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Yoblazer
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Dark Magician and Summoned Skull were in my og deck, which must have meant I got Yugi.

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Yoblazer
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kateee posted...

And I wasnt there for it but apparently the Reaper had quite a period of terror back in the day.

Oh yeah. If it wasn't a hard staple, it was nearly one.

Thanks for including so many cards from the old days - this is turning into a fun trip down memory lane. =)

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Yoblazer
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Sooooo asking about Chrono Trigger is still a dumb question right

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Yoblazer
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Back when I started grad school (2013, around the same time I'd gotten back into YGO), one of my classes was coincidentally located next to a card game club. I walked in, figured by the looks of it that they were all playing Magic, and asked one of the guys if they ever played YGO.

"Sometimes, but Yu-Gi-Oh is basically the [some offensive language about developmentally disabled people] version of card games."

freakin NERD I was so mad.

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Yoblazer
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kateee posted...

i actually ended up quitting again though after pendulums el oh el

Same! Hated those things, never bothered to even learn that mechanic properly.

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Yoblazer
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kateee posted...

I forget exactly what caused it but the first time I got back into the game since I was a kid was 2013. After finding out everything I had loved as a child was garbage I basically had to start looking for a new deck. Random cards just splashed together werent going to work anymore so I went looking for an archetype. They basically werent a thing outside of a few handful of cards the last time I had played so it was a new experience for me and I was pretty determined to look for an old-school archetype which left like Blue-Eyes, Dark Magician, Toons and Harpies or something like that and there was a clear winner there for me.

What the... this is my story, like word for word, and I also happily settled on Harpies.

Am I you?

Ok, maybe I wasn't a kid when I stopped playing the first time, but there was a good 5-6 year period where I stopped playing, and when I decided to try again in 2013, everything had changed.

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Feel proud everyone, we've PREPARED OUR KIDS

https://twitter.com/TheTNHoller/status/1416925524065148928

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Yoblazer
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I'm about 25 minutes from the end credits. This movie is too long.

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Yoblazer
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Ah, I remember Guts's trusty sidekick, PAK. Considering I devoured the manga back in like 2007-08, maybe I should reread the whole thing from the official translation.

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Yoblazer
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Another crusher for me. Now to ponder what the extent of the Delta Dip will be...

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Yoblazer
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One minute in and I'm already missing this crew.

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Yoblazer
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Yes, love him.

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Yoblazer
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I think they realized that Looney Tunes are far less relevant today, which at least partially explains the litany of other franchises stuffed into this movie. I paused it at the halfway mark, but IMO so far all the non-Tune stuff (DC Universe, Harry Potter, The Matrix, freakin Mad Max) is way funner than Bugs bugs-ing it up.

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Yoblazer
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I'm 40 minutes in and it's a silly fanciful movie for kids and families, much like the first. LeBron is being more expressive and allowing himself to be a part of way more gags than MJ, and that might be the highlight so far. There are also franchise references out the wazoo - it definitely feels like Ready Player One in that regard. Unfortunately, the music is forgettable (like Leon said, the original had a legit incredible soundtrack).

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Yoblazer
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Reeeeekt all week

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Yoblazer
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Plate full of bullshit

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Yoblazer
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The muscle behind keeping it illegal (I assume it's primarily alcohol, tobacco, police unions, and prisons in general) must be even more influential than we realize. Every recent marijuana bill put to a vote in every state (including red states) has passed with margins so ridiculous, that I have a hard time believing it's Joe Biden's antiquated beliefs that are halting the push for legalization. It has to be backdoor influence.

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Yoblazer
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0, need buttons bruh

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Yoblazer
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If this game introduced Powder fuckin Toast Man before SpongeBob, I'm holding out hope we get playable LOG

https://youtu.be/-fQGPZTECYs

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Yoblazer
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I still feel guilty for twice allowing a buddy to drive buzzed after group hangouts. I "politely" try to talk him out of it and volunteer to drive him home, but I haven't had the stones to truly call him out in public and take his keys. Luckily, nothing has happened (yet), but I'm really surprised - and obviously disappointed - that he'd risk himself and others because he doesn't want the inconvenience of coming back for his car the next day.

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Yoblazer
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EndOfDiscOne posted...

My immediate thought was in Xenoblade 1 when you first make it to Guar Plains.

SAME. Also, Xenoblade manages to one-up itself a few hours after this when you get to see Satorl Marsh at night.

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XIII_rocks posted...

People who booed taking the knee secretly delighted that they've got three young black lads to blame for this

I noticed this regrettably and figured racists in England are gonna be all over it.

EDIT: Ignorant of me to single out England, especially when social media exists. Racists all over the world (we are trash).

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Yoblazer
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Great points, the rhythm showcases have been amazing.

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