Yes, I assume that. Because we live in a democracy and if the king or queen tried to actually exert power we would just ignore him or her and carry on as though they hadn’t done so, until we were able to formally strip them of their last vestiges of authority.

By most accounts he’s not really all that interesting (as subjects of movies go). He’s a pretty normal guy, in a nerdy way, and his life hasn’t really had a lot of drama in it. This is by far the best treatment for a Weird Al biopic.

They don’t have actual power. They are figureheads. The ostensible power that they have would be stripped from them immediately if they ever attempted to use it.

No, that’s the point. She was literally not allowed to take political stances. Could she have done more? Possibly. But she had no clout or influence. She was just a really rich person whose consent was technically required to pass laws, but who was not allowed to withhold that consent or to influence in any way the…

That’s fair, and I agree that ME3 did weapons best. The improvement I would have made there is having all weapons findable in the missions instead of only purchasable in stores (DLC weapons I mean).

Morally, incest is repellant, let me state that clearly. But genetically? It’s not as dangerous as people commonly believe. There’s no magic force that detects if two parents are closely related and then makes their baby into a mutant. It just increases the likelihood of doubling up recessive alleles, which can cause…

Different cultures also attach different levels of relatedness to aunts, uncles, and cousins depending on which side of your family they’re on, so in some places it’s okay to marry one first cousin (the way we generally reckon it in the English-speaking world), but not okay to marry another.

That’s only in the Legendary Edition. The original game’s guns didn’t do that. They all played the same, with only stat-driven differences in damage, overheat rate, and accuracy.

I actually love killing Mordin in ME3, because he’s not the Mordin from ME2. His voice actor in ME3 was so distractingly different that I couldn’t wait to off him. The Mordin I loved was already gone.

You’re right and wrong.

That’s one of the key differences between the current incarnations of the Republican and Democratic parties and their respective bases. Republicans have become explicitly authoritarian, and their leader really is Dear Leader to them - he’s infallible because he has to be for any part of their worldview to make sense,…

Accusations of hypocrisy only work on people who are capable of feeling shame, and that’s 0% of current Republicans. There is nothing you can accuse them of that will make any difference unless you can successfully prosecute them (which only works because it takes them out - if Trump ever goes to prison not one single…

I’m not at all pleased to be on the side that values knowing stuff over winning. I definitely think knowing stuff is good, but this side needs to fucking win more. The Democrats have more supporters and their policies are wildly more popular than Republican policies, yet the balance is roughly 50:50. I understand that…

No one is shutting down legitimate criticism of Rings of Power by calling it racist or sexist. Only the racist and sexist criticisms.

The best part is they didn’t wait for the show to air before ripping on the writing, proving without a doubt how entirely not-racist they obviously are.

If you point that out, the people who are mad about black people being on the show just switch to being conveniently mad about having hobbits on the show, since they’re not part of the known stories of the second age. There is no way they won’t contort themselves into being angry about black people on their TVs.

How is that an attack on Tolkien’s theology?

You’re right; unfortunately you have to be at least semi-literate to understand that point, which leaves off 100% of the toxic Tolkien nerds who think that this show is somehow “destroying” Tolkien’s legacy.

Yeah, try it again with a little more peace inside first. I enjoyed the first two episodes immensely. The number one thing this show had to accomplish was to draw you into its world and make you believe in it, and it does that spectacularly.

Not if the antlers is what they were out to get.