domain:parrhesia.substack.com
sodiummuffin
17m ago
The full copypasta:
Meng Hao walked into the McDonald's. The cultivator taking his order gave a derisive snort, but Meng Hao did not really care, because he had repressed his aura down to the Single Patty Realm, and a fool would not be able to tell his true level of burger eating.
"Give me... a Happy Meal!"
The cultivator's face flickered before he finally regained his composure and laughed. "You couldn't afford a Happy Meal. Get lost! Don't you see that there are Double Quarter Pounder Realm eaters waiting behind you?"
Meng Hao slapped his bag of holding and threw 80 billion spirit McDonald's coupons onto the counter, causing an earthquake which demolished half of the restaurant. Everyone dropped their jaws. None could see how this was possible!
"I'll take that Happy Meal with a side order of fries, " Meng Hao said. He was as calm as the ocean in a painting of an insanely calm ocean. "And let me see your manager!"
The cashier cultivator coughed up a mouthful of ketchup. He simply could not handle Meng Hao's killing intent, because he was only at the Quarter Pounder with Cheese realm himself. Even though Meng Hao had suppressed his aura, because he had cultivated the Heavenly Burgin' Qi, this was enough to kill people a few levels higher if he truly wanted.
It was then that another man which a much more fierce aura stepped forward. "You dare make trouble here?"
"P... Patriarch Hamburglar!"
Patriarch Hamburglar was 99 cents of the way into the Big Mac Realm, plus tax! Meng Hao was pushed back two feet, knocking over a soda machine. Powerade Mountain Berry Blast geysered outward, killing several onlookers.
Of course, Mayor McCheese saw all this happen through the window.
Meng Hao coughed up a mouthful of blood, snorted, constricted his pupils, and then his expression went calm. He unleashed the aura of 64 patties, condensed down to a 2 patty stack that could fit into his mouth!
Mayor McCheese coughed up a mouthful of cheese. His pupils constricted.
"Is this... Seeking the McRib stage??"
Meng Hao had the gentle air of a scholar, but it wouldn't stop him from killing several people in a McDonald's.
"Burger Devouring Scripture! I'm Lovin' It!"
With the first keyword of the Burger Devouring Scripture, everyone below the early Quarter Pounder With Cheese stage exploded into purple mist. The light of the immense heavenly burger shone down with the contours of a golden arch as 9 illusory burgers floated around Meng Hao's body, which is probably an important xianxia number that matches the number of lakes in some sacred Chinese province I've never heard of. But that was only a fraction of Meng Hao's power. He waved his arm, bringing forth thirty more cultivation techniques that hadn't appeared in over 400 chapters!
"Heavenly Tribulation Fries! Eastern Everburning Egg McMuffin! Fruit Smoothie Guillotine! Soul McCafe Mocha Incarnation!"
Meng Hao's expression was the same as ever as he slapped his bag of holding, and brought out his karmic ketchup packet, Fry Cook Lord medallion, seventeen different wooden time spatulas, a five-coloured resurrection coupon, the silk burger wrapper, various souls of lightning McNuggets that he may or may not still have, and his mask of the legacy of Ronald McDonald. Oh, and the image of a flying Chicken Snack Wrap dragon appeared. Remember that? It was basically his Main Thing at the start of the novel, but quietly faded into irrelevance. Until now!
All of this takes some time to describe, but actually happened in the space of only a few breaths.
"What! Impossible!"
Meng Hao wanted to summon the parrot as well, but it was too overcome with eroticism by the purple fur depicted on a nearby poster of Grimace, and was busy drilling out a glory hole straight through the poster, and the wall it was pinned to, with its strong parrot erection.
But it was more than enough. The Hamburglar's soul flew out and was absorbed into his mask! He screamed as his body was destroyed completely.
Meng Hao brushed off his robe and swept up his spirit coupons and everyone's bags of holding which probably didn't have any cool sh*t inside unless I write him into a corner later, and anyways, don't worry about it for now. He surveyed the rubble that was all that remained of the McDonald's.
"Guess I'll be taking that Happy Meal... to go!"
Originally from this review of I Shall Seal the Heavens.
No_one
17m ago
I saw some people complaining on the reddit that there are none, so probably not.
Honestly though.. what we really need is companies recycling the assets in other genre. E.g. look at Cyberpunk 2077. I believe it's pretty doable to slap in a paused real-time combat system into in and real RPG stats. Could be an entirely different game, and most assets are already made.
sun_the_second
could survive a COD lobby and a gay furry discord server
18m ago
Any idea on what's the source of mind wipe obsession?
SkoomaDentist
18m ago
Sometimes jokes can’t be explained without ruining the joke
Is a quote that's very rarely actually true but likes to be paraded by people who simply made a bad joke and they aren't willing to own up to it.
No_one
19m ago
Not really, no. It's an invasion by entirely different aliens, this time someone was messing around with dimensional portals and fucked up. There's actually one common element - you can find a certain alien race as prisoners in the other place, and it canonically takes place in the same setting.
Find a copy and play it, if you have time. Once you get used to the graphics, it is a very fine game. The real-time mode was quite good, some people hated it but I liked it. I actually wish you could have that in OpenXcom.
I'm asking for stories that are identifiably girl stories but also follow basic storytelling rules rather than expressing the basest cringe urges of women
Kemono no Sou-ja Erin. It's about a sensitive but plucky young girl who, over the course of her life, tries to make connections with people, create social peace, and uphold her values in a cynical world of intense political and social conflict. Positive femininity is shown as a kind of extremophile lichen, which grows in the cracks of an amoral dog-eat-dog world. With each new challenge, Erin has to find a way to turn people away from their dark impulses, resolve interpersonal conflicts, and be subversively moral under evil rules.
I'd certainly introduce this show to a 8yo-16yo daughter if I had one.
No_one
25m ago
Genshin Impact
I loathed the aesthetics on sight. But then, maybe mission accomplished - I was told I have an abnormal personality profile.
self_made_human
Sajjano durjano bhūyāt, durjano badhyatāṃ sadā, baddho'nyān nibandhāyet
34m ago
That's why it's an actor, they're only pretending to be retarded. They're also method actors.
2D3D
34m ago
I swear you gotta find chinese cultivation literature written by women for women. The guys there are the angstiest most memory addled (literally necessary every female cultivation novels male protag gets hit by pans/trucks/magic/curses every 5 minutes) wangstfests ever. The men will have an all consuming inciting incident that traumatized them and they will have no plan of action (or a ridiculous 2 million step rube goldberg plan nothing in between) that cannot be resolved unless the female acts as the motivating force for them to move forward. After that its just endless emotional traumas and memory wipes to torture the protag and the male love interests repeatedly so the denouement of love declarations can be made over and over and over again.
2D3D
42m ago
Heroes who suck at their jobs don't get traction from boys. Heroes who have emotional angst get traction from girls even if they suck at their jobs.
Famously, several properties were sustained by women deep into fanfic before it was even a thing. Gundam, Sherlock Holmes and Star Trek are examples where rabid female fanbases saw deep meaning where authors probably didn"t intend it and interest was sustained as a result. It wasn't a girlboss doing girlboss things that made girls interested, it was angsty shit. If girls wanted to see girlboss badasses they'd watch Star Wars and demand to play as Luke while the little brother is Leia being rescued.
Girl protaganists aren't associated with badassery because for the most part girls aren't badasses in real life. Mom may crush it at her rock climbing gym but she still needs dad to lift the heavy rock in the garden. By practical reality observable feats are skewed male, and thats just biology in action. Slam dunks by six foot plus dudes look awesome, positioning for shots at the backline looks lame. Female combat sports are awesome, much more so than male, but thats within the constrained environment. The world we actually live in simply requires physical reality to dominate and thats just what historically we end up sering most of.
I think a bigger problem is that social justice made certain categories verboten to criticize and thus they survive the writers room far longer than they should have. The Acolyte should have been smothered in infancy when the witch chant was proposed, but because the lead was a black woman championed by a queer person no one stood up to say shit this is lame we gotta rework it. By historical analysis most creative works, even ones with straight white dudes, suck. Its just that a mild tilting on the scales can make the sea of suck force bad ideas survive much longer.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1hr ago
Yeah, the art is busy. And shiny. When I first read it I mostly just looked at the dialogue bubbles, which was worth it on its own. Then once I caught up to the present, I took the time to look through the new comic pages as they were released, one at a time, and started picking up on the visual gags.
I wouldn't say it's my favorite art style, but I started to parse it better after exposure, then went back and reread it. It almost conflicts with the story. If you try to soak in the art, the story slows to a crawl (which is fine on a re-read, less fine for a suspenseful visual novel like this is.)
GoofyGoose
1hr ago
Treasuries are a liability of the government, not an asset.
What am I missing?
self_made_human
Sajjano durjano bhūyāt, durjano badhyatāṃ sadā, baddho'nyān nibandhāyet
1hr ago
That's a pretty accurate guess! Of course, the fact that they had free and very decent housing, that made the wages go much further. I almost get the impression that several commodities and amenities have shifted greatly in relative pricing. Property was cheap, food expensive. A doctor they knew was said to spend an incredible amount of money on food, and we're talking groceries, not dining out. I couldn't spend a thousand pounds on normal food at a Tesco today if I tried.
Throwaway05
1hr ago
I mean it seems to be clearly multifactorial and a perfect storm situation - lock everyone up with a lot of fear and guilt, have this roiling social justice/woke thing that's been fermenting increasingly unquietly for years, and have a lot of money and power and propaganda trying to aim itself at Trump and anything that seems Trump related. Boom.
A number of non-conspiracy conspiracy theories over the years have commented on this like foreign funding trying to divide America and Democrat aligned sources trying to create division to make Trump bad.
CertainlyWorse
No one is coming. It's just you.
2hr ago
I'm waiting for them to add some sort of endgame. Its like 0.9 and been in EA for years.
TeknOShEeP
2hr ago
Conversely, NY, CA, WA, etc... could be significantly more gerrymandered.
Uh, without some blatantly illegal actions, none of those three could be really any more gerrymandered than they already are. NY was a 57-43 D-R split last election, and yet splits seats 19-7 (76-24%), CA was a 60-40 split and yet seats are split 43-9 (82-18%), and WA was 57-43 splitting seats 8-2.
Conversely Texas was 58-40 with independents, and split seats 25-13 (66-34%).
The problem (and dirty secret) of the DNC in this whole dust up is they have no juice left to squeeze. Their biggest safe states are already gerrymandered as hell, and even friendly courts only bend so far. Gavin Newsome won't do shit because if he pushes harder he might get his already incredibly advantageous map thrown out for one that might more proportionately represent the voters.
To his credit though- he's not as cringe as the Connecticut democratic party and governor who are taking the high road on social media about how they are "avoiding partisan warfare". This conveniently glossed over the fact thst they have already achieved what is proportionally the most gerrymandered state in Amwrican history- the 42% of GOP voters gets exactly zero congress critters, a flawless victory.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2hr ago
I also read the entire Wrinkle in Time series as a kid. Great books (and while not explicitly Christian, very Christian-influenced).
zeke5123a
2hr ago
Sometimes jokes can’t be explained without ruining the joke and therefore are “low effort” but jokes should be the exception
zeke5123a
2hr ago
The first one was a pure reshoot of ANH. The second misconstrued “subverting expectations” with writing a movie. The final one was writing by a precursor of AI.
JTarrou
3hr ago
Did I say skilled manufacturing labor? Or was that what you had an argument ready for, and you figured my post was as good a place as any?
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
3hr ago
Oh. I never heard about that (whereas I vaguely recall watching the first anime, probably while I was preschool-aged).
No, but perhaps I should. I tend to be awerse to watching series that have (or at least should have) long term plot but were cancelled before resolving it or, worse, started strong but were derailed / ruined before the end (cough Game of thrones cough).
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