You are definitely being creative in a roundabout way, but once you have all that work done, you can theoretically tell almost any kind of story within that setting.

I have been doing this in a very minor way (compared to you) in creating a D&D world so that I can step in at any point in history with an adventure and have the players version of the world change through their cumulative adventures.

I don’t have 5000 years of detailed world history or even a completed world map yet, but I am having fun and so are my players.

So to tie all this up, you are doing this for you and having fun with it. Why stop now? Write your stories. Maybe find an audience.

More or less though that writing process is similar to Tolkein’s. Make the setting well enough and the characters will suddenly start to make their own decisions for you. (And then you rethink earlier decisions when you get better at it and need to retcon things.)

Food is, indeed, a thing.

Absolutely, I was just giving historical background about Activision.

As I remember, back in the 90s, the CEO of Activision hated video games.

So of course that zombie of a company is still fucking up gaming.

A few days ago I picked up my 80 year old dad and got him to the grocery store, and he forgot to close his front door.

When we got back he was panicked that cats had gotten outside. (He has four.)

We searched for about ten minutes and saw one inside, but couldn’t find the others.

Thankfully they had all stayed inside.

Gotta be careful with your outdoor kitties, folks. There are risks and costs in allowing them to live fuller lives.

So so glad that Larry made it home!

Thank you! I don’t intend on stopping or giving up anytime soon. My pets would never forgive me. Nor my wife.

I keep getting interviews, so at least there is that, and my next one is Monday.

My mother was a drug counselor who refused to ever even attempt to quit cigarettes.

She died at 62. I spent three years of my life caring for her at her end as she begged for cigarettes.

Her death broke my Dad, and I still care for him as he lives life as a hermit, fifteen years later.

I don’t have children of my own, or maybe one unofficially adopted one.

I am willing to make a number of sacrifices for the ones I love. This resolve has been tested but not yet broken.

But I am a stoner and a drinker, so have not escaped the same traps exactly.

I am more mindful of the choices I make, or at least that is what I tell myself. I keep a close community of those that I love and trust.

Stay away from tobacco. And probably alcohol as well. (And the hard drugs, coke/meth/opiates, of course.)

I have been obese my entire adult life. This year I have lost 30 lbs so far. But my despair has grown as I am also unemployed, so that weight loss has stalled. I can get back to it and will. This post was a good wakeup call.

Prehistoric bananas were also vicious predators.

Easy. They are orange cats.

They don’t think, so they don’t believe they are. That is up to their worshippers.

I am embarrassed on behalf of the performers to much to watch them shame themselves in a series hashed to death with an underlying source material that is tainted with controversy and not all that deep to begin with.

Jon Lithgow played one of the first openly trans characters in cinema in The World According to Garp but now feels he can do this because actors aren’t their parts.

And he is right, but I can still be disappointed by actors making choices.

I’ll put it this way.

There is so much bot content that there is little worth engaging with.

You are clearly not that, but I am an older and married man, so what would I say without being a creep?

I suppose thanks for not being a bot.

Bright had me questioning everything about the setting to the point that I didn’t care about the answers and really disliked the movie in the end.

BUT… I had those questions, and not everyone disliked it, so you have a decent point.

(So, we have elves and orcs, the elves run Hollywood and the orcs have gangs… but we still had WWII and slavery, so even other species actually existing we were still wildly racist on skin color? That deserved a lot more attention, but felt so lazy to me that I decided the justifications weren’t likely to be interesting.)

The City of Lost Children.

It drops you into a world with no explanation and trusts you to keep up.

The story is fascinating enough, but at the end you never really get many answers about the setting and why things are the way they are.

The whole story is just a thing that happens in that world.

It’s kind of like a sci-fi fairytale.

You’re a real mean drunk, Superman.

This is oil taxes, the target is overall budget. The surge in oil taxes is bringing them to their target earlier.

But yes, the headline is shit. No argument there.

No, he plays the masks.

Obviously the, ahem, climax is an orgy of Weird Als.

And so do I!

I did say stealth sequel, so be wary.

Same author, great story, very different book. I’m sure you will still enjoy the read though.

It is a wonderful stealth sequel to Snow Crash as well. Good callout!

I had only heard of it being released early.

I have been to five movies in the theater in the last six years. Superman, two Marvel movies, two Dune movies.

It takes a lot to get me to both leave my house and pay extra money.