Heck they didn't really menace at all

Gomez danced menacingly. But a creepy menace, not an intense menace.

I feel like it wasn't really menace though

@trogdor that's why it was creepy :)

It was more like the flair of an intense goth who was actually a nice guy

that's...probably right

Thats kina how the whole family was really

they were goofballs

They were scary because they were different and liked extremely creepy things

But if you went to stay with them you would actually be fine

and have a really fun time

As long as you didn't have a heart condition

XD

@NautArch yes exactly

I get the impression they also 200% loved having house guests

I don't remember if people stayed with them or only visited breifly

@trogdor bigger party and more shenanigans. of course they loved house guests :)

@NautArch yes XD

That's my reasoning

The point being, anyone who left the Adams estate was most likely not being kicked out

They were running away because the dial of hospitality was cranked up too high XD

@trogdor hahahaha!

@Rubiksmoose The MCU developed a really bad bathos problem over the years: undercutting dramatic moments with humor. The best example is probably in Guardians of the Galaxy when the group has a hard-earned "we're all in this together" moment but instead of giving it a beat to breath and be appreciated, Rocket immediately punctures the mood.

Bathos isn't inherently bad, but Marvel movies have been escalating it to the point where serious or dramatic moments seem unwanted because they're always undercut by a joke instead of being given room to just exist.

(I'm really struggling with whether "bathos" is an unusual and illuminating term of art I'm about to learn from BESW--as is a near-weekly occurrence around here--or if it's a typo.)

Bathos. It's a real term. In this context it's a term of art for writing.

It is a word

I thought it was a word for the face my five year-old makes when I tell her "yes, it's a bath night."

Contrast pathos, which is what you get when dramatic moments in the story are taken seriously, and which can also be overdone.

I say this as someone who learned it from @BESW

(I'm shooting for bathos in this educational moment by posting my assumed meaning of "bathos.")

Or at least from him linking a video about it

So, Taika Waititi is well-known for making films that are really hilarious, but which take their characters seriously.

And they do this with a particular kind of humor style that's common in Māori rhetoric, but also I've seen it in a lot of colonized indigenous cultures.

It uses bathos to undermine unearned pathos.

If you take a superficial read of Thor: Ragnarok you'll think it's full of bathos, just nutty with it, the most bathos-riddled Marvel film so far.

@Ash How about this: "an effect of anticlimax created by an unintentional lapse in mood from the sublime to the trivial or ridiculous."

I think that video on Guardians of the Galaxy explained it pretty well

It's when you're about to have a sincere emotion, and the film interrupts you with a sudden mood change, usually a joke.

@BESW Such as Banner preparing to Hulk out, possibly giving up his humanity to save a bunch of people... and then faceplanting onto the bridge?

I had no idea what the word was before that and I got a good handle on it because it had examples

@trogdor I'll try to track it down.

So, Thor: Ragnarok uses bathos to deflate ego.

Marvel movies usually undercut dramatic moments with a joke regardless of why or how the drama was developed.

Waititi uses a particularly biting deadpan form of bathos by following the simple rule that the joke is on the person with the overinflated sense of self-importance.

That means you don't undercut pathos when the pathos is earned... but if it's not earned, you savage that pathos without mercy.

@BESW s/bathos/pathos/g?

I don't know that notation.

The rhythm and tone that Waititi uses to do this is uniquely Māori in flavor. And I've seen it in a lot of cultures that value helping each other maintain face, or exposing hypocrisy to each other without the hypocritical person noticing.

Dan Talupa calls it "the comedy of deflation," and he points out that Waititi isn't just doing it diegetically: he's making explicit callbacks to MCU staples.

Like Stark's thoughtless banter (he re-named Thor with a dismissive nickname that's a joke in a culture Thor doesn't know, and Waititi shows us it actually hurt Thor's feelings) and Whedon's unearned dramatics (Thor being confused why "sun's going down" didn't work for him works on a meta-narrative level because he's actually got MORE established chemistry with Banner/Hulk than Natasha did).

I think a lot of this is why Thor Ragnarok is one of my top two marvel movies

I didn't necessarily make these connections but it was done so well that it was extremely enjoyable

Though it's easy to find reviews which completely missed this and accuse Ragnarok of being the most inconsequential film of the MCU because they're just looking at the setup/punch structure and missing who's being punched and why.

(FYI Black Panther is the other one, I find myself switching which one is on top but they are both in the running for it)

Even though Waititi laid it out quite explicitly in a few scenes, like when Hela explains to Thor that the previous Thor movies were glorifying a nation which pretended to be peaceful and benevolent while still benefiting from centuries of un-atoned-for colonial bloodshed.

Yep

I especially liked that she could say that

It's a little weird in a way though

@BESW ah, it's the old ed/sed substitution notation -- s(ubstitute)/<oldthing>/<newthing>/g(lobal)

She has to serve the purpose of bringing that up while also being the villain that wants to bring that conquerer lifestyle back

But it's made to work surprisingly well

@trogdor It made a lot of sense to me: she doesn't see anything wrong with the old ways, but she (rightfully, which is why it burns) sees hypocrisy in a nation that ignores its cruelty while pretending to be kind.

See also Killmonger: villain has a legitimate concern about the hero's situation, reaches the absolute wrong conclusion about what to do about it.

It's a lot better, I think, than the previous MCU villain formula of "what if hero but without morals?"

Which is, ah. We're tired of the Joker being an elemental inverse of Batman, thanks. Don't need four films where you do the same thing with Tony Stark.

Mmm

Even Captain America's origin is "What if villain but with morals" and somehow that works better?

@BESW the only thing that hits me about that is that she showcases a large amount of awarness about the situation right? But she doesn't have enough to know that what she is doing is wrong too?

@trogdor ...there are some really upsetting online conversations about te reo that I think would provide some real-life insight into that attitude, but I won't inflict them on you.

Yes, pretending to not have been a bloodthirsty colonial power is wrong

There are a lot of people who are so immersed in a cruel, exploitative power structure that they think it's not just normal but default and beneficial.

But how is it ok to then go,... Back to the mass conquering murder stuff ?

Her problem isn't the murder, it's the lying.

She's proud of her accomplishments and upset that her dad erased her from history.

Afternoon all

[wave]

I'm definitely missing context here...

Oh right

Thor?

That makes a lot more sense.

@BESW I guess it's just hard for me to get into the mindset that lying is bad but mass murder is perfectly fine

I didn't even disconnect during the movie

But after rehashing what Happened it has struck just as a bit odd

Movie villain though

So I guess wtv

To be fair, "Goddess of Death" whose superpower is "knives."

Lol

She is the goddess of knives

And she was raised in a very bloodthirsty context.

Death is just what she happens to do with them

What you're saying is, without Odin's influence maybe she could've realized her true dream and become Goddess of Sushi?

Lol

I mean maybe

I almost understand Odin more really

He does a terrible thing, eventually realizes it's really bad, sweeps it under the rug and only shows what might be genuine remorse when it's ready to bite him

Hela never got to the second stage: Odin beat her to it and then swept her under the rug.

So she's still stuck in stage one, but now she's mad about being erased.

Fair enough

Which makes her even less likely to re-evaluate her stance, because she's been put into a defensive posture: last time someone admitted that what she did was bad, she got stuck in an alternate dimension for a thousand years.

(While the person who put her there benefited from her work.)

There's a surprising amount of sympathy you can wring out of Hela, if you dig. It's almost like someone in charge of the story was intimately familiar with people who benefit from a violent system and are afraid that admitting the system is wrong will get them punished.

I suppose I can see that yeah

Being the only one who got punished for behavior that others were definitely complicit in

I can see doubling down from that

@BESW yeah -- or worse yet, people who see the system slap folks around for trying to speak up about the system doing wrong things

Yup.

some of the Invisible Institute research into the epidemiology, if you will, of police misconduct is fascinating and illuminating

A lot of anger, and the idea that remorse was directly responsible for her punishment,... I can see that as a big factor in deciding not to change

And it's family. That doesn't help.

Yes

I was about to say too

I just figured it was simpler - she's yet another foil of the hero

Little brother shows up and is sounding suspiciously like dad

Right before into the pit Hella goes

Oh, sidenote for @MikeQ and @kviiri following our discussion about Dark Heresy yesterday - this is a "recap" of one of the sessions we played

Too much text

Not enough dakka

0/10

lol

That was a full 8 hour session though

What if all the text is daka daka daka?

There were also no orks in the party

Wait...

Does that mean hodor is an ork?

@Ben No. Also not enough dakka.

But yeah I'm guessing that most, if not all, of this narrative is driven by the game's existing mechanics, rather than the players and DM coming up with embellishment for a back-and-forth grindfest

@MikeQ what if, instead of Dakka you get Waagh?

Is that acceptable substitute?

XD

@trogdor Then you would need more dakka. There is no substitute for dakka, other than more dakka.

Well that's what he's saying I think... too much Waargh not enough dakka :P

Aaaand I have now exhausted my WH40k orc jokes

Waaargh did the ork cross the road?

To get more dakka

Construct Additional Pylons just doesn't translate well into Warhammer 40k

I deserve those crickets

Lol

@trogdor, @Ash Hah! Found the bathos video:

@BESW oh dang it,... I found that but thought it was the wrong one

XD

Yeah, I watched three others before going "Okay, I'll try this one."

Found several that talk about bathos in passing, but this is the one that focuses on it.

Yeah I can't watch 3 videos to find the right one

Because work

Question... I need a few game suggestions for 2 people (me and my dad) to play in our free time. We're out of town together, and outside of watching dvds, there is nothing to do here

What kind of games?

Just little one-off games like King of Monsters

little to no requirements (pen and paper, maybe some tokens of some kind) for two players

Roll For Shoes, obviously.

Well, we don't have dice... but I can download an app

Otherwise, what is roll for shoes?

Here's the RPG.SE tag wiki.

Ok, so it's a very simple dungeon exploring rpg?

Roll For Shoes is like, the definition of a little one off game

You can do anything with it.

It doesn't really even have to be dungeon

I might need an example just to get my head around it... If people are up to it maybe we can do one later?

Once in chat we had a game about catching a criminal in an unnamed city or something and I played a wolf with shoes

@Ben chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/25435/2015/7/2

chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/10554/2013/9/11

Once our GM was late, so we played a quick game of RFS about some gamers whose GM was late.

@BESW you are too good at this

XD

Oh yeah the I rolled for spring attachments

I forgot about that

XD

@BESW Ok, so I'm reading through this... how is XP used, and how is it determined that a skill is 2 or 1 or 3?

A skill's rank is one higher than the rank of the skill that it's derived from.

If you roll a rank 2 skill and get two sixes, you get a rank 3 skill out of that.

If you roll a rank 2 skill and get one six, you can spend one XP to treat the other die as if it were a six for the purpose of "do I get a new skill?" and get a rank 3 skill out of that.

Ok...

So, I roll to jump. I get a 6. I used my Do anything skill to do that, so I now have Jump 2

Well, no. Now you have a rank 2 skill that's somehow derived from what happened when you tried to jump.

Yes.

If you failed the roll despite getting a six, you might have Lead Butt 2.

What's the highest possible rank in a skill?

One higher than your current highest rank.

@BESW What determines whether I get XP in a skill and a new skill from a failed roll?

Cool, so what if I put 1 rank in "Having 100 ranks in all other possible skills"

> For every roll you fail, you get 1 XP.

> If you roll all sixes on your roll, you can get new skill one level higher than the one you used for the action. [...] XP can be used to change a die into a 6 for advancement purposes but not for success purposes.

As well as the new skill?

Getting XP and getting a new skill are determined independently.

Ok, so I roll to Jump. I get a 5, the opposed roll is a 4. That means I don't get Jump, and I don't get XP, but I still successfully Jump?

Right: "the sum of your roll is higher than the opposing roll, so "the thing you wanted to happen, happens." You did not fail, so you do not get one XP. You did not roll all sixes, so you do not learn a new skill.

Ok

The next time you want to jump, you will still roll Do Anything 1 for it.

Unless you have exp you can spend to learn a skill

Or unless, say, you're trying to pole-vault over a carnivorous marine creature and you have "1970s pop culture references 4."

Right. Then that time I get a 4, and the opposed roll is a 5. So I don't jump, and I get 1 XP. I can then spend that to learn Jumping 1?

I am fudging on turn base stuff... I'm just trying to get my head around the mechanics

I'd say yes, what you're describing is totally cool.

You fail the jump, and you spend the resulting XP to gain a skill based on what happens to you.

It will probably NOT be "jumping 2."

One of the cool things about RFS is that it forces describing outcomes carefully.

You're trying to jump and you fail. What happens?

The new skill you learn must be derived from that outcome, NOT from the thing you were trying to do--the thing that actually happened as a result of you trying.

This means failure isn't just "oops, didn't work."

If nothing happens from a failure, no skill can be derived from it.

Ok, so I would get a new skill by spending the 1 xp, but that doesn't mean I successfully jump?

I just get a new skill (e.g. lead butt 1)?

Yeah

The trick is that getting the new skill and failing are separate

ok

You can also succeed and get a new skill

Still separate things

The thing that gets you the skill are the 6's

Not the fact that you succeeded or failed

It'd be Lead Butt 2, because you rolled one die on the skill that produced the new skill, so the new skill is +1.

Oh yeah that too

It's always 1 higher than the skill you used to get it

Ok cool, I think I understand now :)

Despite it's relative simplicity it has been known to be confusing on certain points

We played it the wrong way a couple times

I find it's easier for people who haven't played a lot of "traditional" games, because it subverts those conventions.

Yeah I do think it was confusing in large part because we expected the "search for loophole's"

Also the idea that mechanical advancement and narrative success go hand in hand.

Yes

Several things that we have as baggage from say, D&D basically

Other systems are applicable but that's my best example

Nice Janelle Monae on the radio

Woo!

This day gets bonus points

howdy howdy

afternoon!

hello!

A lovely day of 90F temps and 90% humidity. wheeeeeeee

is that 30ºC?

(I kinda remember C = F - 60)

@Helwar 32

@Helwar Nope :P

oh

@Helwar C = (F-32) * (5/9)

Then I don't get it. If 32F = 0C... why is 90F = 32C?

Celsius and Fahrenheit are based off of two different reference values, so they don't scale linearly.

@Helwar because....math? (90-32)*(5/9)=32.22222

Oh I didn't read your last line

but the real question what is the temp in faerun?

yeah I think when I was in highschool I never got that right

@NautArch it depends. World's spine temperature or Chult's temp?

@Helwar african or european?

They are linearly related, they just have different zero points

@NautArch Spanish

@kviiri that's what I thought, but apparently not?

@Helwar No, they do. c = (f-32) / 1.8

@Helwar Nope they definitely are.

it is just shifted as well as multiplied/divided.

Celsius: 0 is the temperature at which water freezes, 100 is the temperature at which water boils, everything else is in relation to that.

So every Fahrenheit you add adds 5/9 Celsius degrees, but doubling the Fahrenheit temperature doesn't double the Celsius temperature (because of the different zero points)

@BESW That I know :)

@BESW I do love scales with real physical meaningful and memorable reference points.

Fahrenheit: I put some marks on this beaker and that's cool.

(There's one account that 0F was supposed to be the temperature of a specifically measured brine, and 100F was supposed to be human body temperature, but... maybe?)

heh?

humm, I think I was confusing everything with Kelvins. Kelvin 0 is absolute 0, not Fahrenheit... Now everything does make more sense in my head

I think at least the 0F is true

what would have been the purpose of starting with human body temp?

AFAIK

Several accounts of how he originally defined his scale exist. The lower defining point, 0 °F, was established as the temperature of a solution of brine made from equal parts of ice, water and salt (ammonium chloride).[2] Further limits were established as the melting point of ice (32 °F) and his best estimate of the average human body temperature (96 °F, about 2.6 °F less than the modern value due to a later redefinition of the scale).[3]

The scale is now usually defined by two fixed points: the temperature at which water freezes into ice is defined as 32 °F, and the boiling point of water is defined to be 212 °F, a 180 °F separation, as defined at sea level and standard atmospheric pressure.

(wikipedia)

Huh.

@Helwar Right, Kelvin uses the same size of unit as Celcius, it just shifts the 0 down to absolute zero and counts up from there.

@trogdor It would've been useful for a doctor!

oh yeah I guess

There's also Rankine, which is the Fahrenheit version of Kelvin.

fair enough

@BESW that's why. I was mixing up Kelvins and Fahrenheits, I was substracting like if they were kelvins, but some random amount that I guess I missremembered from fahrenheits...

That's one of the cool things about units that evolve naturally rather than being designed deliberately: they're often actually more useful for a specific set of applications.

@trogdor Good question. As a physicist it seems like a pretty bonkers choice given that body temp is not only variable with time, but also in space within the body at any given time. So average body temp doesn't really seem to have a lot of true physical meaning. It isn't even like people would understand inherently what 96 feels like either. Could have been useful for medicine though. Scales weren't really meant to be understandable by everyone I think at that time anyways.

@Rubiksmoose yeah it seems like the medical application is about it

(For example, units of 12 get used in contexts where it was useful to be able to separate things into lots of different kinds of subdivisions easily.)

SI units are obsessed with decimals because they were designed by people who interact between different units and different scales of unit a lot.

12 is a really convenient number

Although as a computer scientist I'm biased to like 16 more

If you're a merchant who needs to be able to divide things between different numbers of clients depending on how many you've got, 12 is a lot more convenient than 10.

@BESW Everything having the same scale and nomenclature helps A LOT, I'd say is way easier to understand and work with

@BESW Why 12?

@Helwar 2/3/4/6

because of all the ways it can be divided

evenly even

@BESW One of my favorite biscuits comes in packets of 19. That's evil.

Compare 2/5.

@kviiri biscuits = cookies?

@NautArch Kind of. They're British cookies... so probably less sugar.

Hummm... I kinda get it... but isn't it such a "small scale" factor to really bank on it? I mean, In europe we use the International System for everything, and my baker can still sell me a dozen baguels, while our scientists can easily convert between units

@ColinGross I always thought biscuit was the british word for cookie and not a different thing?

¯_(ツ)_/¯

@NautArch Everything is different, but only slightly. Except football. The American version of that is way different. And smalls. And shorts. And fanny.

@NautArch It is the same, depending on wich variant of english you are speaking. Some like to give a different connotation between cookies and biscuits, and even some biscuits are not even cookies at all (Biscuit can refer to "cake sponge" too. In fact the word here in spanish is "Bizcocho")

@ColinGross PLease explain smalls, shorts and fanny, please

"Cookie" is used as a fairly recent foreign loanword here to refer mainly to the slightly puffier variety, usually with chocolate chips or something along those lines.

(in spain "Cookies" are mostly chips a'hoy style of biscuits)

@BESW I really wish I could send this conversation to my brother who studies film but had issues with Ragnarok's comedic undercutting (so I guess Bathos).

@Helwar They're all references to underwear and what one might find in them.

@BESW Shorts are underwear in some dialects? Smalls I kinda remember reading it somewhere, but fanny I've never heard of :P

@Rubiksmoose How about just this article?

@BESW Done :)

It's bathos, yes, but bathos is a tool like any other and Taika wields it with precision and purpose in service of the film's theme and its repositioning of Thor in the Marvel canon, while bathos in most other Marvel films reminds me of Ebert's witticism about Roger Christian's use of oblique angles.

(And if your brother isn't familiar with Ebert's review of Battlefield Earth then he's in for a treat, as is everyone else because you should all enjoy that prescient masterpiece.)

I've read the article once, skimmed through it twice after reading your next message. I've read your message 2 more times. What is bathos?

@BESW gotcha

It's what the article refers to as the comedy of deflation, and which this film describes as an ongoing problem with the Marvel cinematic franchise because they misuse it.

The overuse of bathos is a common accusation of Ragnarok in particular though which I think is unwarranted, because Waititi is wielding it with precision and vision.

@BESW Do you have any specific examples of how it reinforced the themes of Ragnarok. I find that thesis fascinating. I'm unable to read the article at the moment so forgive me if that point is made in there.