Spartacus Separate Paths review

Wow, I have been watching Spartacus since the very first episode aired and I must say no episode was quite as shocking as this one.

As per usual this season this episode focuses on the two camps and their war against each other, we see from the start just how much Kora leaving has driven Crassius to be quite unstable, he marches his men through day and night hoping to catch up to him, he sends small batallions forward to delay him while his main strength slowly closes the distance between them, his unrelentless marches though threaten to drive his men to the ground and Caesar yet again shows himself the voice of reason as he pleads for a night's rest. Crassius simply states that any who slow down will be killed on the spot, does this guy know how to motivate people or what?

This episode showed just how much Crassius is pulled by his top two advisors, Tiberius and Caesar both give conflicting advice through out the episode on each move, their rivalry has never been more deadly.




Caeser threatens throughout the episode to expose what happened to Kora, hoping in some way to get both father and son to see the reasonable action, when Spartacus splits his army into two, one heading for the mountains and one heading for Rome, Caesar Immediately states that protecting Rome is more important, what use is capturing Spartacus if their Capital is taken? yet Tiberius again  aims for glory and tells his father to forget everything and continue chasing Spartacus.

This leads to the most shocking moment I had ever seen, Caesar confronts Tiberius in his tent, threatening to reveal his secret yet again if he keeps on challenging Caesar's opinion, finally getting tired of all this verbal combat the two men decide to slug it out in the good old fashioned way, but just as Caesar gets the upper hand, two guards come to protect Tiberius, he orders them to hold his rivla down and in a moment I should have seen coming rapes him.

Their rivalry reaches its climax here...or at least Tiberuis does.

Now they both have secrets on each other, it should be noted that in ancient Rome if two men have a sexual relationship the one who gets penetrated is shamed, yet the man doing all the leg work is considered powerful for his ability to dominate another man, and Tiberuis sure proves that here.

REBEL CAMP.

Now that I am done gushing on team Rome, lets head back to team Spartacus, with no more secure base to fall back on old Sparty is on the run hounded by Crassius, yet unlike his roman counterpart Spartacus knows he cant push his people as hard, he leads a group that has women, children and old men in it, its not the same legion that Crassius has of trained roman soldiers, because of this the gap between the two forces is slowly shrinking.

The option of leaving people behind rises up, as it always does in such situations, let people fend for themselves and allowDarwinism to decide who lives and who doesnt but Sparatacus decides against such an action, prompting Crixus to tell him that if they cant outrun Crassius they should take the fight to Rome instead, a suggestion Spartacus looks sorely tempted to take but in the end decides against it and this marks the separation we all knew was coming.

From history we all know Crixus leaves and makes his own army that falls, and the show follows history closely here but unlike what previous episodes show us the spearation wasnt fueled by anger but by two men deciding that they no longer agreed with each other and chose to part ways amicably, many call backs were made to earlier seasons which made this episode have a very nostalgic feel to it.

I definitely preferred this resolution than the one hinted earlier that it would be anger which drove those two men apart, this felt much better.

Surprisingly Agron who has never had a good thing to say about Crixus( apart maybe from " fucking Gauls") decides to tag along, the life Spartacus promises him of living past the mountain peacefully isnt one he thinks he is meant to and he decides to follow Crixus, leaving his lover behind, Agron knows attacking Rome directly is pretty much suicide and while he may be fine with risking his own life, risking Nasir's as well is something he cant do.

Many other scenes happen of course but they were all predicable things, Gannicus sticks with Sybil this episode instead of Saxa, Spartacus and Laeta get together, etc etc.

History mentions that Spartacus may have impregnated a roman woman before he died and thats probably going to be Laeta, odd how the woman Spartacus bones once get pregnant ( Illythia, Laeta) and they are both roman too... interesting.

FINAL SCENE.

WHAT LIES BENEATH YOUR FEET?! 

A chair but in the show we get the classic answer from the second episode of this show, reminding us yet again just how far this show has come in the few short years it has been allowed to flourish.

The fight scene at the end is amazing and probably the biggest show has had yet, violence has always been this show's greatest strength and it does not disappoint here at all.

Sadly despite the early victory of team Crixus, Rome gets backup, Caeser ( while on foot instead of on a  horse because for some reason he doesnt feel like sitting on one ) somehow managed to convince Crassis to retreat and protect Rome instead of continuing the hunt, leading to the total annihilation of Crixus and everyone who followed him.

Tiberuis, piercing yet more people with his mighty spear.

An overall amazing episode and easily the strongest of this season, I cant wait for the next couple of episodes.

Here's the trailer for the pen-ultimate episode of this show.

Dota 2: Solving Eul's Sceptor.

After using Euls while using AA and finding out that it cant be used on allies, I realized that there is really no defensive item to use to save allies apart from Force Staff.

Force staff simply has no competition, it can be used offensively and defensively and there is no other item like it, while Euls could potentially be its rival if it worked on allies.

Euls has been slowly buffed over the last 19 patches and still nobody uses it, that goes to show that its not numbers that it needs but a design change, Euls needs to work on allies as well as enemies to have the effect needed.

6.75 - Recipe cost decreased from 600 to 500
6.73 - Movement speed bonus increased from 25 to 30
6.69 - Mana regeneration increased from 125% to 150% to match its components
6.68 - Cast range increased from 600 to 700
6.68 - Added double click support for Euls
6.63 - Movement bonus increased from 20 to 25
6.63 - Now requires a sobi mask instead of a Robe of the Magi (100% Mana regen -> 125%, 16 Int->10 Int, 125 cheaper recipe).
6.60 - Can be used to target yourself
6.58 - Recipe cost reduced from 800 to 600 gold

Of course allowing it to work for 2.5 seconds on allies is a bit broken, so I suggest one of two solutions.

1- Euls only works for one second on allies, this will allow you to time it to dodge spells and stuns, if you saw an ally being charged or receiving a storm bolt you can sceptor them and allow them to dodge it, and one second isnt long if an ally is stunned, hexed or slowed then one second wont remove it.

2. Euls works for 2.5 seconds on allies, but heroes can only be cycloned once every 20 seconds, this prevents teams from stacking cyclones and using it each time the carry gets in trouble, plus 2.5 seconds without your carry helping the team is quite bad but it does allow it to be very defensive item.

Happiness is a choice.

I wonder if the title is a bit misleading, but anyways I believe we can choose to be happy yet for some reason many people either dont want to be happy or just dont know how to be.

Imagine yourself in a dark room, and you're holding a flashlight, in this room there are all kinds of sights, good and bad and you can choose where to shine your flash light on, will you choose to focus on the good things and be happy or the bad things and be miserable?

Too often we forget the good things we have in life and focus on the one bad thing yet its our choice to give it attention even when its far away and no longer affects us. For some reason its easier to feel down and miserable than to put in effort into being happy.

Think of the world for a second, right now it has wars going on, extreme poverty that people sleep starving and a natural tragedy every few months, but what exactly can we do about it?
Aside from donating to these countries, we cant do much so after doing what we can its easy to stop thinking of these situations because they dont affect us, yet if you kept thinking of them eventually you'd feel sad about the state of the world.

Our daily problems get bigger simply because we give them too much attention, you can confront a problem and resolve it, or you can ignore the problem and forget about it, the worst thing you can do though is dwell on it and have someone or some issue ruin your happiness.

We give our problems power over how we feel when we pay too much attention to them, we're only human and of course we feel down from time to time but staying down and feeling horrible is a choice we make after that, a choice we make all too often.

The world isnt here to make you happy, so make your own happiness because no one can make you happy if you're determined to be miserable.

Naruto 624 review

Ah finally, after a break for a week Naruto is back and continues its flashback of Hashirama and Madara's past.

The chapter starts exactly where the 623 left off, with heads of both clans engaging each other and from the first page it states that the current heads are equals in terms of battle prowess.

What does this mean? it means the battle wont be decided by the adults but by the children, however both Tobirama and Izuna are equal in strength as well, leaving only Madara and Hashirama as the wild cards of the battle field, whoever wins the fight between those two wins the war between Senju and Uchiha.



What I found interesting was how both parents went for the other's son instead of each other, after a brief clash they both thought it would be easier to simply kill the other's offspring and hope the shock of seeing their child die infront of their eyes would be enough to weaken his rival.

A very cold thing for a father to do to another father and it further shows the hatred between Uchiha and Senju from just one panel of how they would throw kunais at children in the hope of getting a small advantage.

However both of the older siblings finally interferes in protecting their younger brother, its interesting how they both do that, they protect their brothers with each other's stones, and not their own.

Another thing I found interesting was how a rock can stop a sword and a kunai but the I thought this is a callback to something Zetsu said much earlier.

I get the feeling from the panels shown that already Hashirama and Madara had surpassed their fathers in strength. Sadly protecting his brother convinces madara that peace is not possible anymore and he therefore gives up on his dream and seems to almost join his father, with regret though, but even though he might be willing to fight Hashirama he knows he would lose and tells his father as much.

In almost every instance of comparing strength, Madara has admitted he is weaker than the first Hokage and this trait apparently started very early in their rivalry.

Madara awakens his sharingan, and promises to meet Hashirama on the battlefield, the first time of many to come, and after many battles finally the Senju decide enough is enough and opt for a treaty between the two clans.

Despite all their battles Hashirama still wants peace, this is consistent with what Tobi said earlier about how the Senju approached the Uchiha for a peace treaty and here we see the start of that, sadly though it only happens after the death of Izuna.

Its mentioned that the Senju are stronger than the Uchiha, which conflicts what Tobi said though who said the clans were equal, it would seem that in their time in the cave Madara may have lied to Tobi about some key aspects of their history.

It seems Tobirama's slash earlier killed Izuna and in his last moments he gave his eyes to Madara, for once you can see why Madara thinks peace is impossible, he just lost his brother to a man who keeps talking about peace yet Hashirama's own family kills more Uchiha.

Finally Madara lies defeated and asks to have a swift death, Tobirama's all too willing for that yet before he can deliver the coup de grace, Hashirama interferes to protect his old friend.

While this may show the first hokage's mercy it also shows weakness I think, the cycle of hatred could have been ended right then and there with the death of Madara, especially considering what had happened afterwards, had he just killed him the whole shinobi world war wouldnt exist right now.

I dig the death glare quite a lot, a nice reminder of whose boss between the brothers.

Our chapter ends with Madara proposing that to gain his trust, either Hashirama or his brother must die, yet knowing that they both become future hokages that obviously wont happen, my guess is that Hashi says he will kill himself but is stopped before he does by Madara, who becomes convinced peace might exist just by watching what Hashirama is willing to sacrifice to achieve it.

And thats all from me for this chapter, thanks for reading.

Do Nice Guys Finish Last?

Very rarely yes, but if they do finish last its generally because they arent nice to begin with.

The media has given a lot of sterotypes based on race and gender yet probably the one guys can identify with the most is the "nice guy" stereotype, which basically states that no matter how nice you are to a woman she wont like you because you are nice, she'd prefer instead a jerk who "treats her badly".

Or so the media would have us believe.


The thing is that those so called "nice guys" arent really nice to begin with, they dont act this way because of who they are, they act nice to girls because they somehow thing that if they are nice to the girl they love, for some reason she will love them back because they are so nice.

Thats the issue those Nice Guys face, instead of genuinely being nice to a woman out of respect for who she is, they instead are nice to her because they expect something in return, its how they think life should be apparently, if they are nice to a woman, for some unknown reason she has to be their wife. You wont see Nice Guys being nice to people who dont benefit them, because they dont need anything out of them so why waste time being nice?

Thats the problem with being fake nice, its not real and people will see through it eventually, acting nice isnt the same as actually being nice and deep down those Nice Guys are hardly nice at all, they try to manipulate women into loving them by pretending to be nice when in fact they themselves have no single good quality to begin with.

well perhaps no good quality is a bit much, they have some good qualities but not one people are interested in, even if a person is genuinely nice they need more than that, would a guy date a girl if all she had was a "nice attitude"?

Nope, guys want a girl who has it all, but for some reason they expect girls to like them just for being nice, while they are boring, weak unfunny people, why do Nice Guys think a girl will love them when they dont love themselves?

No girl wants a guy who is rude and disrespectful to her, guys should be nice, but that shouldnt be All they are.

You cant change the world, but you can change yourself.

One thing I find that I completely disagree with my brother is how we would both change the world for a better place, my brother thinks that to change the world you need to change other people to be better, while I think that change begins from the ourselves first, that you shouldn't ask others to change since we are flawed, how can we tell other people to get rid of their problems while ignoring our own?

 Laws and Rules exist to make sure people dont do wrong things, because we assume without them that society would collapse, the thing that keeps people in line is the threat of punishment, not personal goodness. Countries that get overthrown or suffer a revolt show the worst in people, with no law to govern them they act little better than animals, rape, murder, theft spread like fire.

Knowing all this, we have punishments for crimes in normal society, you get fined, jailed or even first degree murder depending on the severity of your crime, all this helps us reinforce the notion that bad actions will be punished.

That is how the world is right now, we tell people what to do and what we expect out of them and should they follow through they get... well nothing really, but if they disobey the laws then punishment soon follows.

My brother thinks along those lines, as do many others and it works of course. That is why we would criticize other people for their faults and tell them what to do instead. But I think thats the problem, we tell others what to do without showing them instead.

On a driving trip recently the car in-front of me suddenly stopped and I had to change lanes, no big issue yet this bothered my friend sitting next to me, he cursed and got angry at the stalled car yet I didnt see the issue myself, I just changed lanes, it was far simpler to just change my course than to sit and fume and wait for the other driver to move.

Thats how life is, at least to my eyes, people try hard to change other people when its so much easier to change yourselves and avoid problems. We get angry at our friends, family, lovers for their problems and nag them to change when in reality we could just change a littler ourselves and adapt to them much easier and avoid many problems, in time they will change because they want to, not because we nagged them over it endlessly.

You cant change the whole world

So thats what I think at least, we are a small thing in a huge world, expecting to change it is just impossible, but changing yourself can happen, its not easy, we all molded into the people we are over years and experiences, but you can change and be a better person, more patient, kinder, nicer.
Lead by example, don't expect others to follow what you say, show them how to be better people by improving yourself and they will follow.

Advice on taking advice

From the title I guess you could say this is advice-ception.

The human mind is an amazing thing, it can do a million operations at a time, we can think, dream plan ahead with this amazing tool, yet our minds also hate change and do whatever they can to find fault with the world and not with ourselves.

As a species we dont do well with taking advice, because we are too used to blaming other people for any bad situation we are in, its easy to find faults in them, finding faults in ourselves? uhh, we dont have faults to find anyway remember?

Still we do like to ask for advice when in a tight spot, we want to hear what other people say and how they can help us, the problem with asking for advice is after we hear it, we almost always dismiss it, believing we know best and ignoring what other people have to say.

We're not perfect, everyone says that easily, its something we all heard " nobody is perfect" yet for some reason we still think we know better than anyone else.

Listen to the message, not the messenger.

One reason I personally dont listen to people is I tend to ignore what they are saying, and focus on the person saying it instead. They can be telling me real solutions to what I'm going through, but instead of listening to their advice I instead focus on the faults of the person talking and reach the conclusion that if they have problems themselves, why should I listen to them?

The best personal example I can think of is when it comes to driving, I'm the only one in my family who drives which means I will be driving in any sort of family gathering or event, and whenever one of those happens someone will point out some flaw I have while I drive.

" Signal earlier"
" Put more space between you and other cars"
" Slow down, we're not in a rush"

Is any of the above bad advice? no it all makes sense, but instead of thinking about what they say my mind automatically goes " they cant drive, why should I listen to them? they dont know what they are talking about".

Yet I might avoid an accident if I just listen to such basic advice without getting full of myself.

Judging the messenger and not the message is the easiest way of ignoring advice, if a serial killer said " Killing is bad" most of us would go " who is he to tell us that?" instead of just agreeing with the simple fact that killing is indeed a bad thing.

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Oh you've read this far? have a cookie:D