#Out of Jurisdiction

[bigfatbreak]

Does Chloe tone down her direct bullying/harassment of Marinette after that day to just the dead mom jokes out of guilt, or is it more that Marinette now being homeschooled means Chloe just lost access? Also, does Lila try the whole lying/sabotaging thing on Marinette and just fail or does Marinette just not care?

Lila has no reason to sabotage Marinette because Marinette isn't threatening her little empire she wants to build. In fact, she really wants Marinette on her side BECAUSE she's not apart of the school, so she doesn't need to keep up an elaborate web of lies! She can just try to befriend a talented girl who makes AMAZING food and try to get freebies~

meanwhile, with Chloe, things got really complicated after the pool incident...

Tom was not in the mood to put up with this crap.

[sadclowncentral]

How do people decide what counts as space and what counts as reaaally high in the sky? Vibes?

i absolutely love this ask because you accidentally asked one of the most controversial questions space law has to offer.

you see, allmost all countries agree that while the border between atmosphere and outer space is gradual, for regulation purposes, the border should be at 100km/62 miles. this border is called the Kármán line, named after the physicists who made the calculations that this is roughly the cut-off point for sustainable satellite orbits. while some countries have put it into writings in their national space legislation and some haven't, the Kármán line is in the United Nations and national practice almost universally accepted. almost.

because the US of fucking A refuses to accept it. there is a working group of the united nations that has met biannually for nearly sixty years to finally put this matter to rest, and every time the US rolls up and says that there is no need for a definition. you see, the US puts their national limit at 80km/50 miles and staunchly refuses to cooperate on a consensus. is it because the US airforce wants to retain plausible deniablity on what constitutes an infringement of airspace? is it because accession to the Kármán line would change minor outcomes of the space race of the sixties in favour of soviet Russia? is it because they want a round imperial system number instead of dirty kilometers? your guess is as good as mine.

but given the fact that we see increasing development of suborbital flight technology and outer space and (national) airspace are governed by vastly different international regimes when it comes to liability, traffic management, and military vs civilian use, it would be great to come to some fucking agreement.

to answer your question: what constitutes really high in the sky and what as outer space (100 km) will, despite extensive space law development in the last decades (1 0 0 kilometers), remain a mystery (one hundred fucking kilometers). unfortunately. (100 KM!!!!)

[ruporas]

soft (and some bittersweet)

[mic-check-stims]

ddid you know he turns 44 today

[anxiously-sidequesting]

how about you shut the fuck up Mr. Irresponsible

[theonewithval]

But friends don't look at friends that way

[khattikeri]

law school will make me think insane shit like "could shen qingqiu sue luo binghe for battery for forcing him to drink his blood" and then realize the equally insane answer is "even if forced blood drinking is an intentional tort that he Could sue over, shen qingqiu constantly dies and maims himself because he loves and wants to help luo binghe that badly, so he Wouldn't"

[imoenhatesthis]

Lily Orchard and Imoen: Is the Mod Popular?

So unfortunately, Lily Orchard talks about the Imoen Romance mod in her 'Addressing Allegations' video (starting at 39:31, ending at 41:13) in regards to Courtney, whose made allegations against Lily you can hear for yourself here. Please heed the trigger warnings in both videos, though I won't be going in-depth here.

In this video, Lily describes that Gorion's Ward and Imoen are "the best of friends whose closeness borders on romantic at times...", (40:13) who discover being siblings in BGII. That isn't true but whatever, I'm not here to talk about the game itself. After going through her other sister OCs, she ends by going, "[I] talked about one of the most infamous and positively received mods for one of the most popular RPGs ever made," (41:05) end quote, so clearly this doesn't have anything to do with the real life allegations.

Two issues: One is that this is a deflection that does not address Courtney's allegations at all, or why she would find the fascination with those characters suspect. But the second is that this idea that the mod is popular and well-loved is just not true, and I'm going to spend time arguing against. If anything, how decidedly unpopular it is says that Lily is the one actively seeking out this content.

So why didn't Lily show proof about the mod's popularity in her debunking video? Maybe include a positive review? Well...

There was once a forum dedicated to the mod, populated only by people who'd want to play this kind of thing. So, if Lily is remembering this forum, that information is going to be skewed one way with any negative reviews chased out. It's long gone now, so I can't pull numbers. Instead, I'll be using general forum spaces that are probably the most popular with general BG fans, Beamdog and Reddit.

On the official EE mod release thread on the Beamdog forum... the total combination of posts from the author/coder and players only total 30 pages, with posts as recent as this month. 25 posts a page equals 750 posts altogether from across 10 years, though the most recent page is just 1 post, so 726. If we're SUPER charitable and say that's about 700 people playing and posting there throughout 10 years, not including mod authors, that's a minuscule audience. Especially when the original BGII game sold about 2 million copies, as well as Steam estimated selling about a million copies of the Steam release of the Enhanced Edition. Let's say the old deleted forum had about 1 thousand, maybe 2 thousand members, let's say there may be 10,000 downloads of the mod--that's still such a small percentage as to not matter. Definitely not enough to call it popular in the community.

Googling for lists of the best mods for BGII will bring up mods for the UI, general tweaks, difficulty, visuals, and portraits/voices. Especially portraits, people really like portrait mods. Sometimes the BG1 NPC Project is mentioned (which has it's own controversies, it's just probably the most talked about of any of these), but all of these will come long before a mention of NPC mods. So, NPC mods, especially romantic ones, are a niche of a niche.

On a few forums where I do see someone recommend the Imoen Romance as a "required mod"... most of the time they get a negative response.

(Source)

(Source)

Just straight Googling Imoen Romance mod or mod reviews will bring up forums with pages in the single digits, with general discussion devoted to "Is this incest?" questions. It's impossible to go onto any forum post about the romance without at least one person weirded out by it's existence. So, there's at least a variety of opinions on the mod, it's not overwhelmingly positive.

But fine, that's general forums. What about BG mod reviewers? ONCE AGAIN, never ever reach out to these people.

Lily uses the Smoldering Mod Bar's review of Saerilith Romance to condemn that specific mod for its bad writing and taboo themes. It sure would be something if the mod reviewer also had a negative view on Imoen Romance...Oh wait:

(Source)

Okay, well, let's look at positive reviews instead. Lily has also quoted a Beamdog forum review to defend her views on the mod:

(Source)

Why didn't Lily link to the review in question? It would prove to everyone people love her favorite mod just as much as she does, right? Well, I can link it below:

(Source; scored on a 5/5 scale)

Oh, that's not quite as positive as she'd have you believe. Still liked it, but not quite to the level Lily does.

Here's another Beamdog mod reviewer making similar negative points, despite overall loving the mod:

(Source) Even reviewers who champion the mod as great can point out "Wow, this talks about incest quite a lot in a way it didn't even have to." And about it's other flaws too, things Lily never does.

I'm not saying NO ONE thinks the mod is good or that no one has ever mentioned it. I included positive reviews for a reason.

The issue is lying about how popular and well-liked the mod is in order to paint her sister as a crazy obsessed stalker whose just overreading into things. Especially saying this in a video about those allegations, and especially after saying the Gorion's Ward and Imoen are "romantic at times" all in the same breath. Putting ANY lie in this specific video is a serious stain on the credibility of Lily, thus it's important to call it out.

[weneedatdcharacterwho]

We need a TD character who fights with the chef for the right to cook great food

Or just a TD character who's an extreme gourmet chef who thinks all the food on the show is a crime against humanity

.

[l1ve-l4ugh-lov3craft]

I’m a demi4demi gerrymichael truther I said what I said

[greycatbird]

Adirondack Park in Autumn🍂

[sarellathesphinx]

Constantly torn between genuinely loving the remake timeline’s depiction of Reeve and Cait and being immensely sad that pretty much all of my favorite lines of theirs from the original were totally excised or bc of plot developments will never be said

[randomwordzard]

LMAO they really said Not my planet, not my problem

[teteminne]

And chapter twenty-three of flatlands is out!!!!!

[rachel-morrigan]

Also if it's Loona beating the hell out of Blitzo then it's funny ahah gag but when Moxxie dad slaps him then we're supposed to take it seriously sjdjejdbdk

No like,i get it and i get that the circumstances are different and one is clearly written to be a serious scene but cut me the slack here for a second, cause how is Loona beating and kicking blitz funny to begin with and how is it supposed to be funny when you try to make a character on the other side of the story, someone we are supposed to take as an abuser by doing the exact same beating and kicking (it was a slap but you get my point regardless).

I apologise for being a nitpicky asshole but tell me how is that coherent in the slightest writing wise cause

This character is abusive for this but that other character isn't despite doing the same stuff?

[sundayswiththeilluminati]

Rasputin sitting there like Plankton going "I don't know...I never thought I'd (encounter a problem where overwhelming force is the worst choice)" and he just goes "I'm just gonna go think about this for uh...for a while, talk to you later."

Poor Rasputin sitting on a bench staring out into space with Sleeper Simulant next to him, a device whose entire instruction manual is “this end towards problem.”

It’s better he thinks about this now than when we square up properly against the Witness though. If there’s anything Rasputin is an expert on it is, not to be mean, losing to the Pyramid Fleet. I don’t think many entities survive that and even fewer survive it twice. Rasputin knows firsthand that direct violence doesn’t work. You can’t fight the Fleet; it just proves their point. So hopefully Red works some stuff out here that will benefit us in the next several seasons as well, because I mean you think Rasputin tends to solve problems with violence? Guardians are the champions of shoot first and then shoot second third and fourth. We can’t coast on Massive Damage much longer and the Witness probably doesn’t have a crippling allergy to dunked orbs. We need a plan, not just him.