“I’ve delayed the deadline to let the very promising peace talks that are definitely real and not at all made up proceed”

You know it’s bad when the last message is essentially “we are just going to stop talking publicly about it”

Sure, but this comic is in English…

Dating fine, but if going for a long term commitment, it may be rough to be in your 60s with a partner in their 80s. They have to understand if they are theoretically on that path and that their relationship will transform into elder care at some point. Also before that the older one will stop keeping up sexually.

If both see it as a short term fling, probably ok. The 46 year can probably keep up with a 25 year old in the ways that matter, and may have enough money for some interesting experiences to share.

I say it’s generally a problem of long narratives, but some genres like comedy can get a pass since they don’t have to rely on growth and progression.

To the extent a story needs to develop, running a long time is likely to doom something.

Running a few books or a handful of seasons can work, but if a story has to evolve over decades…

Haven’t gotten around to One Piece (that episode count is… daunting), but I think I really know it’s done as soon as they have a ‘tournament arc’. Give up all pretense and just have them fight for the sake of fighting.

And then there’s bleach, where, oh look, he has a somewhat cool sword, oh it has a cooler form, oh there’s an even cooler form, oh now he has mask powers, but limited, oh wait, we were lying that wasn’t his real cool sword form… Ugh…

Think another example of ludicrous power escalation was when in Loki they just had a drawer of assorted infinity stones. Yes, played for laughs but the problem of escalation suggested is real.

I think the real problem is trying to keep a story going too long, and the need to escalate everything constantly serves to ultimately undermine how that progress feels.

The stories tend to be repetitive, end up where a villain gets a new MacGuffin and the hero has to get some new capability to overcome only for the next villan to have an even bigger MacGuffin, rinse and repeat with each time being portrayed as some impossibly large leap over the last. To keep characters going they time jump, they get cloned, they come back from the dead, they cross over from some alternate universe.

Basically, most genres of fiction have a risk of overstaying their welcome if you try to make it go on a long time.

It’s not so much a problem plaguing fiction in general, but fiction that runs a long time.

If it’s a contained story with defined end that comes relatively soon enough, the stakes can be relatively fixed, arcs can run through to a logical conclusion, etc.

If you have unending, soap-opera like story, then you hit problems. Characters can never actually be fully realized, they have to have their development paused. Any romantic ‘will they/won’t they’ gets ludicrously drawn out. You usually get tougher plot armor because fans are really attached, or a revolving door of characters that you don’t get attached too, or people inevitably managing to be alive after having died. You have power creep where insurmountable challenges get overcome through progress and then something has to reset the new capabilities to table stakes.

Giving us the ow for now, later it’s going to give us the d.

Reminds me of a time when my nephew was playing vintage Super Mario Kart and started trash talking me about how long they had been playing and that I didn’t stand a chance.

“I was playing this since before you were born kid”

Absolute gigafrood energy.

Well that reinforces the point of the critique.

It invents an intent that may be inconsistent with the original vision.

E.g. it just assumes girls should all be wearing makeup, which may be very much at odds with the character or the scenario.

Strong “don’t you have phones” vibes.

With an SPF of 45, you won’t get burned

And this is how I find out that systemd lets a process running as a user get the crypted password of the user:

"privileged" : {
                "hashedPassword" : [
                        "$6$AY98/.dwdtU20LBM$L9fFhaH.E2xA6waYBVmHl/wS4HFSPn5v/JaIlrSW6wLOfKkV6H1Boqggj/109WO/uHXF1J/NkyXsK1BaCRKwx/"
                ]
        },

I mean, why the hell…

Primary school, middle school, sure, good times.

High school and college… I’ll take one job any day over a “job” per subject. Except the long breaks, my adult life really needs those. I get so jealous when work with a European colleague has to go on pause as they take a gigantic time off.

Suits can override their art directors, or replace them with someone willing to play ball.

Mostly hope rests with indie devs, but that’s not too terribly new given the big business of micro transactions and forced online play only.

Well, somewhat good news: The best stuff of the times is generally still available, often legally for cheap, or even cheaper otherwise. As long as you aren’t purist about original copies on original hardware.

Business folks calling the shots over the artists cut back their hours and insist they let the slop generator make up the difference.

Every corner that can be cut to make running the business cheaper does get cut, and this is a pretty big possibility of corners to cut. It’s worthwhile to adamantly express the market for quality work.