u/Communist21

Harry being some kind of mini Gordon Ramsay.

A lot of fanfics portray Harry as some kind of amazing cook under the assumption that the Dursleys forced Harry to cook every meal. In the books the only times we see Harry doing any cooking for the Dursleys are when he fries some eggs and when Vernon tells him to watch the bacon. I think the opposite is probably true, Vernon and Petunia would probably not trust Harry to cook anything complex. Harry probably does know the basics of cooking but the idea that he is some expert chef is a bit comical.

Fanon nicknames.

Gred and Forge pop up a lot in fics as if it's their common nicknames, they refer to themselves as that once in the book, and the entire context of that is that they are making a joke about the initials on their sweaters. Similarly things like Ron calling Hermione "Mione" happens once and it's in the context of him having his mouth full. I also don't think anyone ever refers to Harry, Ron and Hermione as the "Golden Trio" the closest parallel I can think of is Snape very sarcastically calling them the "dream team."

Dumbledore calls everyone by their first name.

In the books the only people Dumbledore ever regularly calls by their first names are Harry and Voldemort. Harry is the student he interacts with the most and he almost certainly calls Voldemort "Tom" to rile him up, besides I doubt Voldemort would be any happier if Dumbledore ran around calling him "Mr Riddle."

Hogwarts letters always come on your birthday

Hagrid showing up during Harry's birthday was pure coincidence, and it's also specifically mentioned that Harry had been receiving letters in the weeks running up to his birthday.

When Gandalf is speaking to Pippin he seems very surprised that Frodo and Sam have decided go into Mordor via Cirith Ungol. He says the following:

"And when I heard of Cirith Ungol –‘ He broke off and strode to the window as if his eyes could pierce the night in the East. ‘Cirith Ungol!’ he muttered. ‘Why that way, I wonder?’ He turned. ‘Just now, Pippin, my heart almost failed me, hearing that name. And yet in truth I believe that the news that Faramir brings has some hope in it."

Gandalf seems to trust in Frodo, that the path he is taking has hope. But it's also clear from his reaction that it's clearly not the path he would have advised they take.

There are of course other ways into Mordor, going east around the mountains, sneaking through the black gate or going through Minas Morgul but all of those paths are even more dangerous.

So is it possible that there are simply safer and perhaps more obvious ways into Mordor that we simply never hear about. Perhaps if Gandalf had not died and the fellowship hadn't broken up then Gandalf would have given some exposition dump on the various ways into Mordor.

I think everyone knows that the third Doctor got into his fair share of physical fights and he would use his Venusian Aikido on opponents.

But re watching some of the fourth doctors stories I forgot just how often he also got into scraps with people. I think it's really apparent in The Masque of Mandragora where it seems like he's getting into fisticuffs every 5 minutes. And I forget what episode it's in but I seem to remember him trying to break someone's neck at one point.

This sort of stuff vanished with the fifth Doctor for the most part, though he did use a gun a few times. It was back during the sixth doctors run (to the point where Colin Baker sometimes resembled more of an action star) before vanishing again during the seventh Doctors run (apart from him briefly trying to kill the master)

Why hasn't this aspect been brought back? I guess it might be a bit strange for modern Who watchers to see the Doctor scrapping with people. The closest I can think of is the Tenth Doctor having that sword fight.

The 4b movement calls for Women to not date, have sex with, have children with or marry men.

The 4b movement started in Korea from an organization called Womad. For some context Womad is a feminist community in Korea and it split from another feminist organization called Megalia after they began to crack down on anti LGBTQ movements.

You may be asking yourself "oh what's the problem?" well like I said Womad split off from Megalia due it taking a nicer stance on LGBTQ, Womad is very much against the LGBTQ community. It's what's known as "TERF" which is basically "trans-exclusionary radical feminist."

The 4b movement was very much founded on excluding trans and gay people. I'm not sure how true it is but I've read that in Korea feminism has always had e very transphobic and anti gay slant and one trans women in Korea said the 4b movement was radicalizing against trans people.

There have also been some very vile accusations towards people in the movement. I don't want to get into them but they are very vile and illegal including things like possible murder.

Women choosing not to interact with men is certainly not problematic, I wouldn't agree with it per say (and i am probably biased due to my own communist views) but neither would I think that women believing in such views are wrong, I would simply accept such views as their individual choices and not care very much. But the fact of the matter is that followers of the 4b movement are choosing to associate with a anti gay, anti trans view.

I guess you could argue that they aren't aware of the views expressed by the 4b movement. But I don't really buy that as it assumes that people are dumb. A 20 second google search or a browse through the Wikipedia article, or a read through of the UCLA report would give you info on the 4b beliefs, I think most people are smart enough to do research.

Choosing to associate with it is similar to people on the Alt right who follow David Duke but "disavow" his involvement with the ku klux klan. You can disavow all you want, your still choosing to associate with a racist.

When would you consider the Dark age of the city building genre?

Personally I would consider it the late 2000s to the early 2010's as the dark age. A few years Before Simcity 2013 we pretty much had nothing and then after it it was 2 years before we had cities skylines.

The only other high profile city building game was Cities Xl, but to be honest I never cared much for the game. And then there was Cities XXl which I regard as a joke of a game. The only decent city building games we had were Tropico 4 and 5 and they are very much outside the usual city building gameplay.

I would also argue now that were are in another dark age. Cities Skylines 2 has massively improved since launch but it still has a way's to go and Anno 117 has a rather mixed response. There are games on the horizon, citystate 3, CIty Masterplan (of which I am somewhat dubious) but no real major games, it seems unfortunately that Simcity is a dead franchise.

I have always been somewhat disappointed that stealth kills aren't a feature in Kenshi. Like we can knock people out but not drive a dagger in their backs. Heck the Ninja blade even references stealth kills.

So do you think this could be a feature of Kenshi 2. Stealth is a bit simplistic is Kenshi but I assume in Kenshi 2 it will be more fleshed out, possibly with things like armor types playing more of a role with a reputation system

What are some games that were made completely obsolete by sequels, remakes/remasters and spiritual sequels? And I don't mean graphically obsolete but rather gameplay obsolete.

The sims 2/3 and even 4 all have their defenders, but the sims 2 basically made the first game obsolete.

In the same vein I would argue that SimCity 3000 made SimCity 2000 obsolete. They are very similar gameplay wise but 2000 is far more clunky than 3000.

Tropico 4 made Tropico 3 obsolete, they are basically the same game but Tropico 4 has a ton of improvements. I've heard some people say that Tropico 6 made 5 obsolete but I don't really agree with that. I think Tropico 5 wanted to take the series in a very different direction.

Mount and Blade warband pretty much made the first game obsolete. Warband just has so many more mechanics, you can create your own kingdom, better ai, a new faction and more weapons. If anyone ever mentions mount and blade 1 they are almost always talking about Warband (or fire and sword if their that type of person) and not the actual first mount and blade.

Also lets mention a game that should have been made obsolete, Cities XXL was supposed to bring performance improvements and make Cities XL obsolete. What we actually got was a joke of a game with memory leaks and a worse UI.

Assuming when outside the Black Gate Sam said something along the lines of “There is little trust to be placed in such a wretched creature, I deem. Better it would be, if we might, to seek some other road into Mordor than to follow where he would lead.”

What other ways could Frodo and Sam have taken to cross into Mordor apart from the Black gate or through Cirith Ungol

Going East through either Harad or Rhun and completely bypassing the Ash mountains.

Pros:
Probably the least defended way
Easiest on paper, no pesky Mountains navigate through and avoids the heavily garrisoned fortresses.

Cons:
Would add a significant amount of time to their journey.
Would involve travelling through enemy territory of either Rhun or Harad
Comes with the mundane dangers of travelling through a desert

The Morgul Pass/nameless pass

Pros:
A very direct route

Cons:
Heavily guarded and would require getting very close to Minas Morgul itself.
It's also mentioned that the waters there are poisonous

There is also the Nargil Pass. I'm not sure about this one, this pass shows up on a few of the early draft maps but on later maps is absent, Regardless it would have the same drawbacks of going east, travelling through enemy territory and adding significant time to their journey.