Pork bun; pot belly; spare me the tears;
I'm getting on; you're getting old; you're getting off here.
I can't quite tell; it's hard to see; you're somewhere in my mind;
Or is it me? It's hard to see; you're losing—

I think I'll try. No, no, I won't.
This happens sometimes. All the time.
I think. Do I forget?
A half forgotten memory. Still vaguely tinged with some regret

What have you been watching and reading this week? You don't need to give us a whole essay if you don't want to, but please write something! Feel free to talk about something you saw that was cool, something that was bad, ask for recommendations, or anything else you can think of.

If you want to, feel free to find the thing you're talking about and link to its pages on Anilist, MAL, or any other database you use!

Have you watched any TV shows recently you want to discuss? Any shows you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

A bit of background before I get to the main body of the post.

I've been following Warcraft's story since Warcraft III came out. It was a wonderful experience of my childhood, and I was interested in the story's progression since then. Even though I haven't played WoW personally until last few years, I read the comics and books, and I read about the lore. Chatted with friends who played the game.

Near the very end of Legion I started the game (2018), and Battle for Azeroth was my first real experience of the game. I played a demon hunter night elf, and I didn't have a problem with the story at the time. I thought the burning of Teldrassil set up the conflict well, and I found the world fascinating. Of course, it was heavily colored by me finally being able to play the game after almost 2 decades. I was also a night elf fan since my childhood, so I looked at things mainly from the perspective of Alliance. Story-wise, my major problems were that N'zoth and Azshara were defeated too quickly, and Tyrande's ritual transformation should've had resulted in much more of an impact.

I now know that the experience for Horde players was much different. But roleplaying as a demon hunter night elf suited the BfA story very well. I had just come out of a long battle against demons to find my people burned to death, their land destroyed. Vengeance, once again, fueled me.

Come Shadowlands, and like most people, I found that the story to took a steep dive in quality. I don't think I need to elaborate, but I will touch upon the main points. The afterlife was extremely unimaginative and made death lose its impact, the conclusion of Sylvanas's story was extremely unsatisfactory, Jailer was all kinds of bad writing, and Tyrande's arc was a major letdown.

Coming to the main issue. With the release of Dragonflight two years ago, and seeing how much people praised it, after a month or two passed I bought the expac and joined the adventure. However, despite all the letdowns of Shadowlands, I found the Dragonflight story to be the most unengaging one I've experienced. I just didn't care about the dragons and their personal arcs. Every word that came out of the major characters was such a cheesy and cliche line. In the cinematics, every one of them, especially Alexstrasza, talked so slowly and artifically that it threw me off every time. I just couldn't take it seriously.

There is only one memorable moment I remember from Dragonflight, and it's that one dragon in dwarven form that tells you his story while you sit down and listen for a few minutes. It was a really touching and tragic story, but it was just a very minor interaction.

I have no problems with personal stories or more touching subjects being told in video games. In fact, I think they can be wonderful. So, that wasn't the part that bothered me. What bothered me was that dragon aspects felt extremely one-dimensional and same-y, and their story was like a poorly written Disney story about the importance of family. Because it was handled badly, it especially felt jarring and out of place in the world of Warcraft, where violence and war crimes are rampant.

Yet, many players seem to have enjoyed the story because it was more "down to earth". I have trouble with this, because I have trouble understanding how people found this story to be engaging at all. For example, when Amirdrassil arc concluded, I didn't feel anything. In fact, it just made the burning of Teldrassil feel hollow for me, because I felt like that dramatic turn of events didn't matter at all. Night elves had a world tree and a home again, as if nothing happened. This retroactively made the story worse for me. At that moment, I realized I had stopped caring about WoW's story and was forcing myself to care. I decided to stop playing, at least for a while, because story and lore were the main reasons I played.

This, however, led me to a question. I've been following r/wow for some years, and the general opinion there is that Dragonflight's story was well done. My experience is the opposite, as it was the most unengaging story experience for me.

I have considered several possible explanations for why people reacted so positively to the story of Dragonflight.

• The one-upping of threat levels and villains in Shadowlands left a really sour taste, especially because it was handled so badly and retroactively undermined a lot of stories. So a relatively tame threat and villains were welcomed.
• Since the "gameplay" part of the expac was received well, this put people in a positive mood and led them to interpret the story charitably. This might go the opposite way too. For example, both BfA and SL were also criticized heavily for gameplay reasons.
• The expectations for WoW's story are really low, and that's why longtime players that are still playing don't mid the stuff that bothered me. In other words, they adjust their expectations. People who didn't adjust left.
• People don't actually pay much attention to story, they are mainly interested in raids and other combat-centric parts of the game, or even cosmetics. So, when discussing the story, they mostly go with the prevailing vibes and opinions of the community.

I think all of these play some part in the explanation, but I came up with these explanations based on my own experience. I also can't assess their relative importance. For the reasons, I thought I could benefit from a wider array of opinions, especially from people that have or had been involved in the game and community for longer than me.

So, my questions are;

• Why do you think Dragonflight's story was received so positively?
• Why don't people seem to care about the aspects I mentioned?

For the end-user, that is. I'm sure Meta and the like think their algorithms are fantastic at what they want them to do.

I find myself routinely asking why I get so many suggestions I have no interest in when using all types of websites. I haven't used social media since the early years of Facebook, but I imagine most recommendation algorithms are tuned much like the ones on those sites, i.e. to offer more of the same, whereas I'd prefer something to introduce different stuff I'd probably like. Maybe that differentiates me from the average user, but there should be enough people like me that it'd be factored in, no? Just because I watch a cat video doesn't mean I'm all in on cats.

I mostly like Pandora's service but it feels like their music library isn't huge for my fav genres. Steam regularly tries to interest me in the most insipid games based on superficial commonalities to what's already in my library. Youtube can be good, but it can easily be echo-chambery. Shopping websites of all sorts are usually a crapshoot. What gives?

I am wanting to setup a personal podcast server but I am not really sure how to go about that.

I have my own server at home with docker and I am not sure if there are any well-known FOSS (preferable dockerized) podcast server applications that I can spin up and load some podcast episodes into so that I can create my own custom podcast feed that only I would subscribe to?

and I want to be able to support video podcasts.

This is a recurring topic for the Three Cheers for Tildes mobile app, which is currently in alpha testing.

I'll summarize the previous month's updates at the start of each topic, so people can read the updates and then hit Ignore if they don't care about more frequent updates and user feedback.

Recently:

Three Cheers version 1.0 is out for Android! (Mar 25, 2024)

• Submit topics!
• Added donation option in Settings
• Share links from other apps to create a Tildes submission
• Edit topic text
• Delete topics
• Require minimum Android 7.1.1
• Fixed refreshing feed after login/logout

iOS v0.11.3 (Mar 28, 2024): Fixed UI bugs and crashes on large iPhones (Pro Max series), particularly when using the in-app WebView browser.

iOS v0.11.2 (Mar 8, 2024): Fixed crashes in Inbox under the Comments tab.

Android and iOS v0.11.0 (Mar 3, 2024)

• Added sort options for topics
• Tap username on comment, and topic OP, to view profile
• View markdown of topic OP
• Fixed minor UI bugs
• (Android) Fixed wrong profile showing via bottom tab, after logging into a different account

Android and iOS v0.10.0 (Feb 15, 2024)

• View and send private messages
• Added button to send private message from a user's profile
• Added "Tap to refresh" when a feed is empty
• Show posted time in topic OP
• Renamed bottom tab to Inbox (instead of Notifications)
• (Android) Removed animation when using bottom tabs
• (Android) Fixed crash when replying from a user's profile
• (iOS) Fixed crash toggling Details in topic OP
• (iOS) Fixed layout bugs with markdown tables
• (iOS) Fixed UI bugs when replying in a user's profile
• (iOS) Fixed minor UI bugs and crashes

Last month's topic: February 2024

Where to get it

Android version on Google Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.talklittle.android.tildes

iOS version on TestFlight: https://testflight.apple.com/join/mpVk1qIy

Tis fire season again here in North America and Europe. From my house in coastal California I grieve every year as more of my favorite forests burn, from British Columbia to California.

There is no end in sight for this transition. So what can we do to at least mitigate the worst of its effects? I think the time to play defense over pure "wilderness" is long gone. The forests that haven't burned are still beautiful, but they're riddled with disease and so overgrown the ecosystems are permanently distorted.

Every year there is less pristine forest and more burned land. I'm a fourth generation Californian and the Portuguese side of the family still owns a ranch in the foothills from 1893. But I own nothing and the prospect of being able to afford land in California has forever been beyond my reach. Burned land needs to be rehabilitated in a thoughtful manner. I'm hoping once my daughter finishes college and our life starts a new chapter, that I can find a few acres where I can make the best environmental impact, such as a headwaters, then invite experts onto the land to teach me how to best heal it.

Every year I have this idea, and every year more areas become available (in the worst sense). I don't need to live on this land. I don't expect it to be much more than grasses and saplings for 20 years. I'd get out to it one or two weekends a month, rent some equipment and hire some folks as I could. I also understand that my original thought that this would be immune from future fire seasons is wrong. But at least the land can be designed to be as fire resistant as possible, with a clear understory and single large trees. And that is another part of the allure. This acreage would come with its own challenges for sure, but in some sense it is a blank slate. The permaculture people could show us how to remediate and reconstruct the land from the bones up.

I know this project would be an aggravating money sink, and even perhaps an unrealistic and irresponsible fantasy by someone untrained in forestry management. But there is so much burned land now. Every year another giant 4% stripe of California goes up in smoke. Yet this idea just doesn't catch on. It entails a lot of patience and work. I know it's not what most people want to hear. They want their idyllic cabin in Tahoe or nothing. But that time is quickly coming to an end and learning how to revive the forests that have been devastated is our only real choice.

Whenever I've tried to get serious about this, though, I learn that there is no market in burned land because there is hardly any profit to be made. No real estate agent that I can find is specializing in this because their clients are having to sell ruined land and burned buildings for pennies on the dollar. I've been advised that the best way is to find a specific spot, do my research, and approach the owner directly. But, again, there is so much burned land now I hardly know where to start. The Santa Cruz Mountains? The Sierra adjacent to Yosemite? Crater Lake in Oregon?

Any thoughts or ideas or resources would be appreciated.