Steampunk

"Point blank range" Don't know why, but it annoys me when people say that. Ninety percent of the time, they should say "contact range." Kinda niche, I know.

Cordelia is a fire crotch. That alone makes her superior to Sumia.

Getting in to debates with people before "establishing" myself as a member. Probably should've let people warm to me before throwing my opinion around. Now I shall spam the forums until everyone loves me.

Added you

I thought it was really weird Micaiah and Sanaki were sisters. Micaiah's supposed to be really old, and Sanaki's like 12. lolwut. Sothe annoyed me with all the Ike dick sucking he did. HIs being required in the endgame despite not being anywhere near useful. Micaiah bothered me because she just didn't have any killing power unless her speed was good (which it probably wouldn't be unless you saved before every level up and reloaded until it increased every time) and she was a required unit throughout the game. A glass cannon is fine so long as that cannon can deal a KO punch. Micaiah could if she ever doubled, but she never did for me. I hate being forced to use units that can't pull their own weight. Dead weight characters are a way of artificially making the game harder without actually making the game harder, and RD had plenty.

Huh, apparently my trainer is a pothead. Good to know. If y'all ever need to score some serious grass, you know where to come.

When I was a kid, I thought this was the greatest cartoon ever made. I was also a Sonic the Hedgehog kid. Lastly, I loved Swat Kats: The Radical Squadron. It's a shame the series never took off. It was pretty bad ass for two seasons.

It's like someone tried to make chastity belts chic and failed hard. Points for effort but not much else.

Super Quick Time Event Land Why play a game when you can watch cutscenes while command prompts pop up unexpectedly? Can't tap 'A' 1000 times per second? Such a noob!

tl;dr - because the human brain is hella drug. The mind is a powerful thing. It really is. That's ultimately where I think the challenge lies: the human brain can make anything, no matter how ludicrous feel incredibly real. Dreams are a perfect example: no matter how incoherent or irrational events in your dreams may be, they can still feel as real as anything you experience while awake. When the mind can make anything feel real, some people can't help but wonder if the mind is playing tricks on you when you don't believe it is. Considering that the brain can make misspelled words appear correct, and that there are blind spots in your peripheral vision that the brain automatically "fills in" so you don't notice them, it's not too unreasonable to wonder how many other things the brain changes to make sense of everything we experience. That's not even getting in to disorders like Dissociative Identity Disorder (multiple personalities) or Capgras delusion (believing everyone you know has been replaced with an imposter). Most people don't care: real or fake, this is the life they have so they're going to make the most of it. Others take these things more seriously because of how their brain is wired. So really, it comes down to each person why they accept reality or not. One person may believe everything isn't real as a coping mechanism due to severe trauma while others may reject reality because of delusion. People who don't have those issues may have no probem accepting reality at all, and some people with dissociative disorders may have times where they reject reality, but they are aware they are doing it.

Think of it this way. Your ancestors were probably uglier than you but somehow managed to convince someone to have sex with them without the benefit of Axe body spray or Barry White. If that doesn't give you confidence, nothing will. Honestly, it helps if you identify what specifically is causing your low self esteem. Do you think you're just not good at anything? Do you have trouble dating? Figure out what the problem is, then try to fix it. And also remember, fake it until you make it. Yeah, probably not what anyone with poor self esteem was hoping to hear, but acting confident can help some things go your way (which can build legitimate confidence). Also, bear in mind that high school is the worst place in the known universe to try and build confidence because everyone there is a) underpaid, overstressed staff, b) chemically imbalanced and hormonal, or c) put on a pedestal because they are the star quarterback, won some band competition, etc. Once you get out of high school and spend some time with people who aren't under the stress of school and also aren't going through puberty at the same time, you find the world is a very different place.

J. R. Ewing from the original Dallas tv show. I know it's a soap opera, but he really was an exceptionally well done villain. He had no redeeming qualities whatsoever, yet people still wanted him to come out on top.

Added both of you. My FC is 2922 - 0373 - 6749

Sent PMs to everyone I could. To everyone I couldn't, I added everyone listed in the first post. My FC is 2922 - 0373 - 6749

Anyone want to trade a Chespin for a lvl 1 Charmander w/ Pokerus?

Technically, WWIII has already been fought (only we called it the Cold War). I doubt WWIII will break out over this. Bear in mind that, even with our military budget cuts, no other country comes close to US military spending. The only countries that pose legitimate military threats to the US are NATO member states which are not likely to fight against the US were WWIII to break out. So Russia, Iran, etc, can enter into a full-blown war they are not likely going to win or they can shoot themselves in the foot by honoring a defense agreement with a country that most politically savvy countries might want to start distancing themselves from considering the civilian gassing. On the plus side, if WWIII does break out, maybe we'll get lucky and it will pull the US out of this economic pothole like WWII did with the Great Depression.

Gay sorcery. Isn't that obvious?

Malware Bytes is good, but it doesn't hurt to run multiple anti-malware programs to be thorough. Just don't have multiple AV programs running on top of each other. I run both SuperAntiSpyware and MBAM regularly and they're pretty good at catching what the other missed. Doesn't hurt to scan in Safe Mode to catch anything into the system registry that won't come up if you do a normal boot.

Can't remember if it was Secret of Mana or Final Fantasy III (SNES). One of those two. Pokemon Blue comes in close second.

To every thing there is a season, as they say. There's a time and place for semantic debate. Most internet discussions aren't it though, which is funny because that is where most semantic nit-picking takes place. When I studied rhetoric and "disciplined writing" (that's what my school called it and I can't think of another name) in university, we covered something called "working definitions." That's where you set a word's definition for the purposes of what you're discussing. I emphasize the last part because most internet fanatic semantics (or Fanantics, if you will) on the internet completely fail to grasp that. People set working definitions specifically so they don't spend hours debating what a word means. Fanantics send nails down the blackboard of my soul because they usually don't have any real counter-arguments at the point where they start nitpicking definitions, but they are determined to disagree with you in any way possible. If an argument devolves in to semantics, it's usually a sign that the actual debate is over and the weaker position doesn't know how to concede with grace.

Oh Internet.... Going back to the original topic, I believe this is impossible to determine. In order to understand what makes a country free, we must understand what makes a person free (because countries are comprised of people). All I can say here is good luck with that. That's hundreds of years of philosophical debate that still hasn't been resolved. TL;DR: The problem is "freedom" isn't a universal thing despite everyone understanding what it is. If we lived in the United States during the 1800's, white male citizens over 18 years of age would probably consider it a very free country. Other ethnic groups and women may not have agreed with them. Still, the powers that were maintained the US was a free country where all men were created equal and endowed by their creator certain unalienable rights etc, etc, etc. Today, the US likes to think it is free, but there are still certain groups in the US that are denied rights (such as gay marriage). So, people who do have all the rights and freedoms they want may think the US is a free country. Gay people may or may not beg to differ. Freedom is a state of mind, and each person's mind works differently. If a person can do what they want unmolested by government authority, they would probably think their country was free. If a person wanted to do certain things they were not legally allowed to, they would think differently. Multiply that by the several billion people living on Earth in difference countries, and we have several billion different definitions of "freedom." There may be common themes/trends, but the definitions will differ enough that, no matter how liberal a country is, there is going to be a group of people feeling oppressed in some way. Even a completely anarchistic political system does not guarantee "freedom" for all.

As a straight male who has never experimented, I am clearly the most qualified to answer this question. Attraction is like pornography. You know it when you see it.

I'm not saying Nintendo needs to stop making consoles and release their franchises into the public domain and start making Zelda games for Xbox. By "3rd party," I was thinking more in terms of a Nintendo Store in Steam or a Virtual Console in Google Play/iTunes They're closing more than one? I thought they were only closing the Australian branch of an English dev studio that is currently developing a new Warhammer and a new Total War (neither of which are Sonic titles). The Yakuza series, Phantasy Star Online 2, and the Valkyria Chronicles games are a few other non-Sonic games that seem to have done well.

Nintendo has always had a strong handheld product going back to the original Game Boy. It seems to me that they are dedicating more time to their handhelds than their home consoles. I'm wondering if they are considering a shift from home consoles to handhelds seeing as there are many popular franchises that only appear on DS/3DS and I'm sure handhelds are cheaper to produce & ship, and easy to market. On the other hand, if smartphones and tablets keep advancing, Ninty may have some unwanted competition in a market they've traditionally dominated. The last thing Nintendo needs is to compete with Xbox and PS on home consoles, and Android/Apple for portable gaming. If major developers start releasing content for phones/tablets, that's definitely going to hurt Nintendo's strongest moneymaker. It might be a good idea for them to consider using the smartphone market to their advantage. All they'd have to do is port their Virtual Console to Google Play & Apple App Store, stick a $20 price tag on it, and offer their classic games for the same price in the Wii/DS Store (or they could stick with the point system if they wanted and have people buy those through the VC app). If the gaming industry shifts towards tablet/smartphone gaming, Nintendo would already have established themselves on that platform. Right now, my phone can run Final Fantasy III just as effectively as my DS could and it can do a lot more practical things to boot. The technology is there for portable gaming devs to start releasing their games for phones/tablets. The shift to digital media means disks and carts are being phased out and fewer games require you have a handheld that can recognize a specific cartridge or disk format. Should be interesting to see if/when major devs start introducing their franchises to phone/tablets and what that does to Nintendo's portable sales. Whoops, didn't mean to ramble as much as I did.