Hoiditthroughthegrapevine

After you loudly declaim, "HAHAHAH!!! I regret nothing!", you begin telling the judge and the spectators in the courtroom about your nefarious scheme. You regale them all with your plan to create the greatest heist squad that the world has ever seen, you tell them about Joey the Beak, an Ivory Billed Woodpecker that you had trained to crack through the toughest locks, Tiny the Sooty Albatross that was trained to be the ultimate get away bird once the loot had been recovered. And as your enraptured audience listens attentively to you spill the details for your ultimate crew, they are completely oblivious to the gathering multitude of pigeons pecking and scratching at the courtroom skylight. Just as you finish telling your rapt audience about your team of hummingbird lookouts, you jump up on the defense table, you raise your arms from your sides and in a very birdlike pose and while looking the Judge squarely in the face you shout, "I am the one that can never be caged, I am Birdman, hear my mighty KAW and tremble!" "KAWWW!!" you shout, just as 300 hundred pigeons crash through the courtroom skylight, and circle you and lift you up through the hole in the roof and into the sky. You look down at the pitiful fools, trembling amidst the shattered glass as your pigeon minions fly you up, away and to freedom. Now you: Cackle and rub your hands together, floating and gloating. Begin Phase 2 of your plan.... Tell your birds to carry you to a shower so you can clean off all of the pigeon dookie. Tip your head back and let out another mighty KAWWW!

You pull the ship into port, disembarking at the quay followed by the angry swarm of blood thirsty birds and after a short stroll you find a nice Barstucks. Pulling out your laptop you begin to write a self help book for people like yourself that seem to have found themselves at the epicenter of a biblical scale plague of birds. Unfortunately no one at Barstucks particularly likes your feathered entourage so you and your flock are summarily kicked out. And really, you can only write while drinking coffee in a cafe with a comfortable atmosphere, so that ship has sailed so to speak. What do you do now? Try to find a mountain cave where you and your birds can live out your days in peace. Try training your birds to commit petty crimes, with the eventual goal of running a global racketeering ring with your avian minions picking pockets, snatching purses, pulling off major heists, etc. Try hiding in an anachronistic phone booth. I think that worked in the move The Birds, right? Pretend that you are a bird and see if they loose interest in following you.

You get the skulls with candles, the dark velvet runners, the table made of femurs, and the black basalt basin from the shipboard pantry and set them up on the poop deck. You begin chanting and inscribing mystical thaumaturgical designs upon the planks of the deck with some black ash from the bonfire, and as you are just about done with the intricate preparations for the Ritual to Appease the Wild Beasts, you remember that this particular Eldritch ritual involves bird sacrifice. Whelp time to choose again. Do you:

Hahaha,that got fun fast. PAGE 6: Being naturally indecisive you decide to do 3 of the 4 actions simultaneously. While dancing frenetically to the beat of the tribal drums, you begin organizing the other dancing passengers and the flock of enraptured birds into a human/avian bucket brigade, and in dancing chorus you all quickly dispatch the bonfire. The danger of an angry mob confronts you, mostly incited by the passenger who was attempting to make a smore when the bonfire was doused and has been tearing his hair and beating his breast in grief over the poor soggy graham cracker, the wet greasy chocolate, and the slimy icky marshmallow remnants of his beloved smore. You decide decisively that decisive action is required and realize that a captain is what is decidedly needed. Whilst still dancing to the pounding of the tribal drum, you propose that there be a Dance Off to determine who will captain this madcap ship, and put it to a vote. Signalling the victory of your proposal, all the crew's arms and all the birds' wings are raised in assent (except that smore guy, man he really wanted that smore). The stage is set, the stakes are high, in the competition is a hulking Behemoth, chest a tangled mat of oily black hair, eyes small and beady, and wearing some, uhmm, pince nez too cuz why not. Another competitor is long a limbed beauty of Persian extraction, with flashing eyes, glowing teeth, and uhmmm, a pet moneky. The final competitor other than yourself is a rotund roly poly little man, who is wearing a tank top, a backwards hat, and has two glass eyes. Now to win the opprobrium of the crew and the captaincy, which of the following dances do you do? A complex tap dance routine Grab a mop and do a routine from the Musical Stomp Do a break dancing routine Some other type of dance.

Yeah, just looked it up on Netflix, doesn't seem to be available in the US. Sucks, but I might try and check out the manga, have you read it? Will have to check out Fate and UBW for sure. I'm sure you've seen My Hero Academia, but have you seen Mob Psycho 100? Both are animated by one of the best studios in Japan, Bones, though the animation is by different substudios (Bones A and B respectively). One of my favorite animes of all times, Rahxephon, was done by the same Bones substudio that did Mob Psycho (Bones B ). It's kind of slow, like Mushishi, and it's a giant Robot animation, but it's atmospheric and super good. And the theme song is by Maaya Sakamoto and is one of the best anime theme songs of all times. Also, I am big Giant Mechanized robot fan, and this series was directed and created by Yutaka Izubuchi, who is possibly the most talented designer of Giant Robots that the world has ever known, and the series itself is super good. Yeah, the English dub is amazing! There's a dearth of Laputa videos on Youtube, the best example I could get of the English dub was the official trailer, but it does showcase the voice acting (Dola only has one line, though they do include the animation of her eating the large slab of ham in Potzu's house). Another funny thing about this "official trailer" is that with all of the beautiful songs that Hiyashi wrote for Laputa, they use a crappy Inya-esque elevator musicy tune for the BG music.

Sorry to double post, but I forgot to mention it's an option to just post a choice, and then have someone else continue the story based on your choice. Here's to seeing where this goes!

That is so good, on so many levels. The album art is some of the very best, in riposte, I give you one of my favorite songs of all times, with some equally amazing cover art, yet from a totally different plane of awesome: And I do mean different. My favorite bit starts at 1:29 in, holy crap, so good!

Mushishi is a slow burn for sure, but there are some truly beautiful moments. Not to sound like a schlock jockey, but that show has some serious heart. Natsume Juujinchou sounds good, how did you watch the anime? It doesn't look like it's on Funimation. If you already know Ufotable, then you probably already know that Demon Slayer has some of the very best animation of any anime series. My wife's high praise is that she actually likes watching the fights in this series (holy crap, really the animation is just bonkers amazing). But really, it's so nice to see an anime with a compelling story, with amazing characters, and having so very little filler. There's a training montage sequence that spans two episodes, but even that has no filler. So good. I'm excited to see Mugen Train in the theaters too, but my anticipation is tempered a bit by not really liking any of the trailers that I've seen so far. But I will definitely see it, and if it's good, I'll drive out of town to see it at the IMAX. I have daughters, so every once in awhile we watch anime that has been dubbed. Just recently we watched my favorite Anime of all times, Laputa (or Castle in the Sky as they call it stateside), and I have to say, I like the dubbed voice acting better than the original Japanese. Cloris Leachman as Dola the space pirate is beyond perfect, and Mark Hamil as Muska is amazing ("The power of Laputa is the dream of all human kind!", so good).

Granted! The Nightwatcher gives you a set of pajamas (the pj pants have vines artfully twining through a teselatted repetition of the double eye of the Almighty, and the jade green PJ top has a cute cartoon version of the Nightwatcher coiled and smiling over bubble letter text saying, "Life's boon good") and she also gives you a slip of paper. After you receive these items you are instantaneously transported back to earth. Looking down at the slip of paper you read, "You have been selected to participate in a paid sleep study, where we will be testing the effects of eating gourmet cuisine and high quality chocolate on the quality of subsequent sleep". Your bane is that whenever you have to select between multiple checkout lines you will invariably pick the slowest one. I wish for a pancho...a pancho of invisibility, cuz why not?

Great, glad you liked it! If your PDF has a collection of Heinlein stories, I would suggest also reading "And He Built a House on a Crooked Hill", which is another of the very best science fiction short stories. Richard Dreyfuss' performance is perfect in By His Bootstraps, and there are some other really good SF stories in that collection. Honestly it's worth listening to all of them just to hear the Harlan Ellison intros.

Well, I think your classical assumption that only F, G, and K class Main Sequence stars are candidates for intelligent life isn't necessarily warranted in a stellar system with a known all powerful creator. You no longer necessarily need a star with a stellar lifespan in the billions of years, because the planet doesn't need to be given enough time to independently evolve life when life can be directly created or seeded upon it. Also the very strange Taldain binary star system underscores this point, Taldain is tidally locked between a white dwarf (facing Darkside) and a class AIa, or AIab or AIb blue-white supergiant (facing Dayside). So the Dayside facing star could be very similar to the star Deneb in the constellation Cygnus (which is an A2Ia supergiant). A lot of the conditions we restrict our search to for extraterrestrial life from here on Earth don't apply in a Star System where stellar objects can be directly manipulated by near omniscient entities to fine tune the habitable qualities of the planets in a given solar system (like Rashek and Sazed did in the Scadrial system). Red hypergiants are most likely off the table because the habitable zone is wholly encompassed within their volume. But with the inbaked instability of the orbits of the Rosharan moons and the fact that the continent of Roshar needs to be magically sustained or else it will erode into the sea heavily implies that extreme permanence was not a high priority design goal for Adonalsium. Even stars of spectral class O are possible candidates though they have a stellar lifespan of around 10 million years and the habitable zone is roughly some 500 au distant. It would be pretty sweet if the shard of [redacted RoW spoiler, but if you've read it you know which one I mean, wink, wink] invested in and populated with life a small asteroid or planetoid caught in the gravitational pull of one of the rarest types of Stars. And with the amount of mass being shed by that giant star there would be an inordinate amount of stellar wind to possibly fly interstellar kites with. One other kind of interesting point is that if the Cosmere is an Open Star Cluster, it's much less likely to be a closed system, other stellar bodies could drift through its non rigidly encompassed border, or it could itself cross into or through another such cluster. What are the ramifications for that? How does Investiture not leak from the system. Interesting to speculate on for sure.

The best time travel story, with an homage to the inherent contradictions of time travel in the name of the short story itself, is "By His Bootstraps" by Robert Heinlein. There's a great radio drama version of it starring Richard Dreyfuss that was part of the 2000x: Tales of the New Millenium collection of radio dramas produced by NPR. https://archive.org/details/2000x It's episode 20 in the list. The production of the Machine stops by E. M. Forrester is fantastic too, really the whole collection is a ton of fun. The intros by Harlan Ellison are great too.

I think if you reversed the descriptors I would answer yes. The Desolations were foreseen (otherwise why make the Heralds functionally immortal) and the Radiants were planned (pretty suspicious that sentient pieces of composite investiture containing admixtures of Honor and Cultivation copied the surge granting properties of the Honorblades). Embuing a group of agents with demi-godlike powers to fight on his behalf in a struggle that Honor knows is going to take an indeterminate amount of time is not planning the cycle of Desolations, it's rather forethought and delegation. The Honorblades represent a rather large and direct commitment of Honor's powers to the struggle to keep Odium bound to the Rosharan system, most likely with a concomitant weakening of himself that eventually led to Tanavast's death. With the larger picture in mind, that is honorable. I think Honor foresaw that the Heralds were likely to die, and to die quite a bit in his service, but didn't necessarily forsee the Oathpact, or alternately was so consumed by his Intent that he didn't see any problems with the Oathpact. The thing that I think is bonkers is that Ishar designed or at least helped design the Oathpact, that's like seeing a levee giving out and saying, hey guys let's plug up the holes by cramming our heads into the breaches. It does make you wonder why the Heralds didn't continue the fight on Braize, instead of playing hide and come torture me. If they were surrounded and it looked like they were about to be captured by the Braize bound Fuzed, why not make their honorblade appear with the point in their own brain instead of submit to unremitting torture? And granted, not every Herald could use their powers to nullify the deathless fused, but you do have two heralds capable of soulcasting, with a direct conduit to Honor's power (basically limitless investiture) seems likely that they could have soulcast the air around the fused into aluminum. Good luck zipping through that Lezian. Not to mention the crazy things Ishar could have done with his Bondsmith powerset. The cycle of Desolation is a great story, but so far the explanation for why it has played out this way doesn't add up super well. Like did Honor, when choosing his Heralds, have a contract with explanations of the granted powers in giant letters and the explanation that there's a small chance that they'll be tortured for thousands of years in teeny tiny letters at the bottom after all the boring standard form of contract stuff that no one ever reads? I guess how much of the questionable nature of the workings of the Cycle Desolations Honor is responsible for comes down to how good his shardic Futuresight was and how far he had been consumed by his Intent at the time he founded the Heralds. With poor foresight, he's not really culpable and if consumed by his Intent he probably would just have thought that of course they'll suffer eternal torture because that's the honorable thing to do. Now Cultivation, she probably saw all of this coming, and her non-intervention to alter the course of the events on Roshar is to my mind tacit acceptance of the terms of this terrible cycle. What is her long term game?

The Coma Star Cluster in the constellation Coma Berenices is the second closest open cluster to earth (288 light years distant), and it has approximately 50 member stars. Depending on what angular size measurement you use (I've seen anywhere from 2° to 7.5°), the Coma Star cluster would have a radius anywhere from 10.1 lys to 37.8 lys. If the sun was at the center of an open cluster of the same radius as the Coma Star cluster, just listing stars of apparent magnitude 4.5 or greater (which would definitely appear on a star chart), then Alpha Centauri (1 confirmed and directly imaged planet), and Sirius would be encompassed by the smaller estimated radius. If the larger estimated radius were used that would add Epsilon Eridani (Ran), Procyon, tau Ceti (4 confirmed planets, 4 suspected planets), Omicron2 Eridani (1 known planet), Altair, eta Cassiopeiae (Achird), e Eridani (4 confirmed planets), delta Pavonis (The planet Caladan in Dune is the third planet orbiting delta Pavonis), beta Hydri (Southern Hemisphere constellation Hydrus), Vega, Fomalhaut (1 known planet), and pi3 Orionis (Tabit). Looking some of this stuff up I found this amazing gif on Wikipedia that shows a 3D rotation of the nearest stars to the sun (spoilered below). Get your 3d glasses if you have 'em because it looks super cool in 3D.

I grew up as an evangelical Christian, and possibly paralleling the experience of some agnostics and atheists, was bored and somewhat depressed by church services that seemed to be devoid of joy and that seemed, at least to me as a kid, like a pageant of extreme artifice, with the wooden multitudes going through prescribed motions without feeling, seemingly as an attempt to hedge their afterlife bets and avoid the "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" end. In college I went from a smug self-satisfied atheism to a more uncertain and qualified agnosticism. But when I found the love of my life, and tried to really come to terms with some of the deeper issues that I had always struggled with, I found then the loving hand of God extended. The world is suffused in beauty, love is the motive force that drives the human soul to its most exalted heights, and the example of the Love, Compassion and Redemption of Christ are a continual inspiration to me. I'm a Christian, I believe in the triune God, God the father (reason), Jesus the son (love) and the Holy Spirit (justice and beauty). I realize now that my earlier views of the people at my old church were ungracious in the extreme, everyone approaches their faith in a different manner, and anyone who seeks truly is deserving of respect. Many are the ways attention is diverted, few are the moments when the mundane concerns of life can truly be put aside. I try in my life to find at least one moment a day where I can thank God for the beauty of his creation, for his gift and example of unconditional love and for the capacity to do the same in my life.

So the rules are pretty simple, the post before you will have a story or a continuation of a story, and will have 3 to 4 choices for what action to take. When you reply, you choose whichever action appeals to you, and then continue the story up to a point where a similar decision crux is reached and list 3 to 4 choices for the next poster to choose from as the starting point to continue the story. Grisly deaths are most definitely allowed, and if after a grisly death you want to start a brand new story, go for it. Or if you want to roll the story back to a previous point, just quote the post of the story where you want to choose a different decision and then keep it going. Also, visual aids (like little drawings to illustrate your portion of the story, or really whatever) are allowed and encouraged. Also, to keep references to different posts straight, it might be helpful to start out your post with a page number (just the last page number +1) Ok, to start things off we will be telling the tale of: The Minoan Murder Mystery PAGE 1: You're on a yacht off an island in Greece, reclining on a chaise lounge and gazing at the flat turquoise plain of the tranquil Mediterranean. Your associate, a rather rotund gentleman with round rimmed spectacles sits next to you, smoking a clove cigarette and reciting "She Walks in Beauty" in a nasaly but not unpleasant tenor. You only arranged this expedition because it was a chance to examine the newly discovered subterranean structure connected to the Palace at Knossos, but the rather affected Professor Duchamp is beginning to get on your nerves. As the foremost expert on Linear B writing, the necessity for his presence precludes you from throwing him overboard as you badly want to do, but still, the sun and sea can only soothe so much weariness. Looking at the crystal clear water, you think of how you combed through petabytes of Infra-red satellite imagery of the environs surrounding the Knossos palace complex, sure that you would find the tell tale signature of the fabled buried labyrinth. And sure enough, your hard work paid off, and with a grant from your University you organized this archaeological expedition to explore the newly unearthed site. Crossing the forecastle with a tray of apricot bellinis, the captain of the 82' schooner that you hired smiles affably at you and rolls her eyes at the professor's recitation. As you lean forward to take a proffered flute of champagne with a single turkish apricot sinking and riding up the internal column of bubbles, you notice a strange symbol on the captain's wrist. Her eyes follow your gaze and for a moment she seems somewhat shaken, but quickly regains her composure, and with a drawling accent she says "Gia sou", and grabs a flute of champagne herself and tips it back heartily. There you sit, with the champagne flute in your hand and a vague apprehension hanging over you, something about that symbol tickles a vague memory, a half remembered bit of obscure lore that you read about in your undergraduate days. Do you: Drink the champagne, and ask Captain Chloros what part of Greece she hails from. Ask Captain Chloros about the strange symbol tattooed on her inner wrist. Return the toast saying "Gia sou", and then hold onto your drink with the intention of dumping it after the captain has left. Dump the champagne overboard, and retire to your below deck cabin with the excuse of a headache, to look through your research materials for a clue about that symbol.

Oy vey, what a schlimiel I've been! I think I was just reading about all of the food, not necessarily the Pesach specific food, like that Koreich lamb, romaine, horseradish and matza sandwich sounded delicious! Shavuos sounds amazing, cheese and extravaganza are two of my favorite words, and they should definitely be used together more often! I hope you have a great Pesach. Nope, my brother has the opposite problem though. His hands can melt a chocolate bar in like 2 seconds. No cool Hand Luke there. I myself love the fact that I live in a world with freely available electricity, and can enjoy for a very modest remuneration the modern comfort of an Electric blanket. Not a heat medallion to be sure, but it is a little bit of certifiable earth magic. TPBM can curl their tongue

I don't know what streaming services you have, but if you have funimatiom then I would recommend Mushishi. It's atmospheric, slow moving, but incredibly good. Also, Demon Slayer ( which I think is on Netflix now) is an anime blessedly without filler. You should watch the subtitled version because the voice acting for the Japanese is beyond perfect.

Ahhh, @Orlionra, you are a refreshing rough cut diamond among the mundane plagioclase feldspars and expected basalts and granites. On a side note, it's strange not to refer to you as a crazy platypus, but rather with the terminal "ra". It does give you an endearing "I was a teenage mummy cheerleader" feel. I too will endeavor to tell a story in recommended song form. Let's start from a light existential moment of reflection, nothing more, nothing less but beautiful nonetheless. And from this moment of near non-existent stasis, the natural thing to do is... After we've learned our lesson well, the logical conclusion to draw is... And then, realizing that Holden Caulfield was right, the only thing to do is admire the...

Passover, also called Pesach is coming up at the end of March. I'm not Jewish, but looking up and reading about all the Passover food that's been mentioned on this thread makes me wish I was. TPBM has a great air fryer recipe they want to share.

Sorry, gotta double post... Okay, coming out swinging, the short mustachioed Scadrian worldhopper Felt takes the stage. (spoilered below, mild Dawnshard spoilers, kinda?) Ok, Felt's thrown down the gauntlet, what have you got @Matrim's Dice?

Sounds great, thanks @Ghanderflaffle!

Some dinner parties in heaven, you know the type, the best and the brightest from all times plus one more. (bold styling added) 1) Three Thinkers and a Caveman 2) Three Doctors of the Church and a... Skeptic And some dialogue from @AonEne's fabulous expose about God choosing Brandon to save earth from the Giant octopuses. 3) God of all, God of Fiction, Giant Octopus Overlord, Giant Octopus Underling So, Sanderson hates waiting, got it!

I might have confused things with my punishing puns... @BreezeCauthon (who is roasting as Wit) can't do the original match up of Wit VS Felt right now because of time constraints. Seems like there are 3 viable options for the current round: 1) Felt (that's me) VS Adolin ( @yeshevishman) or Felt VS Nikli (@Matrim's Dice), or 2) if it works with @BreezeCauthon's schedule, have, as you said, Wit ( @BreezeCauthon) VS Thaidakar (@Kingsdaughter613). Or 3) Pick a new random matchup, excluding Wit (BreezeCauthon) if he's too busy to do a roast right now. I don't have a preference for any of the above, but let me know what you decide, mighty and majestic arbiter of the Ghanders that are wont to flaffle.