Messages

Ahhh okay. Got it (finally).

This thread is stupid.

the Nazis. It's all anyone will fucking talk about these days.

I hate Illinois Nazi's!

Yeah, well, their head coach is a bit of a knob.

Is this really necessary? It feels like we've been here before (many times over), and the way it's going, the moderators will be forced to take action at some point.

So please, think twice about what you post (and perhaps even about keeping this thread going at all).

/mod hat

This is exactly why I said no religion or politics in my “Skeptic...” thread. And look what happened there. Quite an interesting topic I thought. But it died in a day because no one was able to somehow bring up the Nazis. It's all anyone will fucking talk about these days.

Fitz, you have to remember. Feige and co. are not making these films just for the comic book fans. They're making them for the masses. They want absolutely everyone to be able to watch these things. And they work hard to make sure that the highest percentage of those people also enjoy it. As a result the one sub-group most likely to get upset by anything in the MCU are the comic book fans, because they have their own ideas about how things should be. Whereas someone like me who didn't grow up on superhero comics can go into Marvel film and just enjoy it.

I suspect that even if everyone who ever read more than 10 comics were to evaporate into a cloud of dust, these films would still be the biggest-films on the planet. The fact that they do use existing storylines from the comics shows that they do genuinely love and respect the source material, but at the end of the day it's about making it accessible to everyone.

Case in point. I thought the final battle of Endgame was amazing, if a little bit too long. Because as someone who never read the comics I have no preconceptions about what should or shouldn't have happened.

I'm still none the wiser.

[Hopping Homeward]

Close one this month. Well done everybody.
But the winner of MAGS July is Hopping Homeward by NuggetSeb.

Congratulations Nugget. You'll be contacted soon about choosing a topic for September.

Thanks for the responses so far. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely still get along with my family and we've never clashed over these differences. As Fernewelten suggests I don't really argue against their wacky claims. They already know I don't believe any of that stuff and it's probably a source of some frustration for them as it is without me doubling down with detailed description of how cold-reading works.

It's also, I suspect, partly because I live abroad. They have all this time together to egg each other on and share coincidences and talk about them as if they are signs from heaven without really questioning what they're saying. So I think Snarky had a point that they're probably just simply trying to include me in sharing some of the things they see about the world. (And it's surely no coincidence that they all smoke a certain type of plant, which I don't.)

Mandle, your story is fascinating but also heartbreaking. And quite scary too because that kind of thing can happen to any of us for any reason. The human mind is so fragile. I hope your friend gets the book finished, and better yet, published, without any drama. If so I will buy a copy.

Oh, shit.

https://deadline.com/2019/08/kevin-feige-spider-man-franchise-exit-disney-sony-dispute-avengers-endgame-captain-america-winter-soldier-tom-rothman-bob-iger-1202672545/

What do you think? Is this for real or some kind of stunt?

[Bit of background:]

Bit of background:

In one sense, I was quite lucky growing up. Mum never forced us to go to Church, and despite calling herself a Christian whenever the subject came up, my sisters and I always had complete free reign over our own beliefs.

I dabbled in things religious and spiritual as a kid but ultimately logic prevailed and [with a little help from Dana Scully] I became a firm skeptic. These days, anything remotely spiritual, while I might find the subject fascinating, basically ends up on the ‘nope' heap.

I'm a twin (not identical, luckily for my sister), so of course the inevitable question we always get is “oooh, do you have a psychic connection?” The answer is no. That's not to say there haven't been a number of very convincing coincidences over the years (like the time my sister got an unexplained pain in her ankle and we worked out it was the exact time I had fallen off a fence and twisted my own ankle).

Some more background:

My twin sister is convinced she is psychic. Not just about the twin stuff but about loads of things. She recently had a dream about an Angus breed of dog and then a few days later our cousin (whose surname was Angus) died. That is an admittedly weirdly specific detail for a dream, but to her it's proof.

My younger sister doesn't go as far as claiming to be psychic. But she does love crystals and reiki and weird energies coming out of nowhere.

My mum believes some really odd things. She's convinced herself that little robins who come to say hello in winter are actually her mother and father coming to visit her. She thinks they come to her in other ways too.

My aunt also claims to be frequently visited by my nan and grandad. But she full-on sees their full-body apparitions. And my mum just unquestioningly believes her.

Now:
I went back to the UK the other week. It was great to catch up with my family (who I absolutely love and miss every day, by the way). The first thing they did was tell me about my sister's Angus dream. Like, it seemed important to them that I heard this story.

Another thing you should know us that my wife and I are expecting a baby boy in November. My mum and I were talking in the kitchen and suddenly she started talking about my [late] grandad. She told me that he's going to want to meet my boy and that I should look for signs and be open to the possibility that he might visit me. It was clearly something she had been wanting to say to me. She knows I don't believe that stuff and I think she's a little upset that I don't.

I said the truth, I'll be open to everything, I always am (Thank's Mulder), but I instinctively analyze everything through a logical, grounded lens.

I went to the toilet and while I was in there I heard my mum and sister talking. Mum explained that she had tried to talk to me and get me to ‘be more open' and it seemed like something they had been talking about before I came. Almost like they were trying to stage an intervention on me for my addiction to being reasonable.

It was the first time in my memory that mum had ever made a conscious effort to change my belief system (or lack thereof). It felt weird. I'm not the sort of guy to get into an argument and fall out with his family over this kind of stuff. What's the point in arguing about it?

But one thing happened on my last day with my sisters. We were in Worthing. We walked across this bit of green. My sister points out a white feather. “See, it's a sign. I think it's Iain (Angus, the cousin who died)” I had to point out to her that there were quite a lot of white feathers. You see, Worthing is what you might call a seaside town. There are a lot of seagulls. I had to say to my sister. Not every white feather is a sign from heaven. Sometimes, you're just in a town with a lot of seagulls.

Is this what my mum means by being ‘open'? Rejecting the most obvious explanation in favour of the exact least obvious, just because it would be nice to think that grandad is watching? It doesn't make any sense.

Part of me wants to sit them down and teach them a few basic fundamental facts like “That isn't even the same fucking Robin as yesterday. Nan can't be in both of them” and “seagulls molt” and “by the way, that psychic you visit predicted I was going to have a girl in 2016 and instead I'm having a boy in 2019. They are charlatans!”

But the other part of me knows that they have been through a lot of shit over the years (our whole family has) and this kind of thing is clearly what brings them comfort, so I'd be a jackass to try and change their thinking. But that's why I was so put out by my mum trying to change my thinking.

The point
Not sure really. Just felt like getting that off my chest.
Do you have any similar stories or situations with your own families? Have you fallen out over it?

Let's keep it purely about spiritual/psychic things. I don't really want to get into religion or politics.

Still two days left to vote if you haven't yet.
I'll give you a clue. It's tight.

Hooray! 😃

Cat, how particular are you about sound quality? If you like I can have a go at the lines using either my phone or my Mac's inbuilt microphone. I don't have anything proper though.

Candy and Clarence.

Damn Creamy, nice catch. Even if it is a red herring.

He made the coffee at like 3am way before sunrise. Now that he can see the colour of his bike he knows the sun is up, and his coffee has been sitting there since 3.

Voting is now open. Sorry for the delay. Please vote using the poll above.

	Hopping Homeward by NuggetSeb
	Research Reservations by VampireWombat
	Birdy Birdy by Cassiebsg, Kastchey, Ibispi

Well done for the entries guys. I need a spare minute to rig up the voting but the entries period is now officially closed.

[Notice]

Looking nice, Nugget. Congrats for finishing.


Notice!
The thread for MAGS August is up. However, I accidentally put it in the Complete Game Announcements thread. I'm sure a mod will rectify that soon but until then, head on over there to find out the new topic.
Rectified

Yes it is. Damn.
Hopefully a kind moderator can move it to its correct location.