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really dumb, but I laughed:

Currently watching a show called Dorohedoro on Netflix. The premise is that the main character has a reptile head and amnesia, and is trying to figure out how that happened. His world ("The Hole") is bleak and downtrodden, and sorcerers are teleporting in daily to abduct, and experiment on its inhabitants. It's got a weird lighthearted tone, despite being very dark and creepy. I'm halfway through it, and so far I can recommend it. Before that I watched Kimetsu no Yaiba: Demon Slayer. For a shounen (is that the term?) show it was really good. Very likeable main character, unlike other series in the same genre.

Hi guys, first of all, I wish to thank all of you, who regurarly post helpful comments. Now I need just an opinion. What multiclass would you roll with Devoted fighter with quarterstaff? I'm thinking of Devoted/Monk or Devoted/Paladin. Or maybe even Monk/Paladin if I would drop the +2 PEN. Is it worth it? And what stats should be prioritized considering this to be RTwP build? Thank you for tips.

Yep, the plan was for her to have that role but she was supposedly not all that interested. I read somewhere that they kept reducing the role to try to make it work for her but in the end they just gave up and went with someone else (Visitor) playing a new character (Kira). Another interesting casting story was that they originally wanted Famke Janssen for Dax and even though she ultimately turned the role down they ended up using her spots from The Perfect Mate in the Trill redesign.

The whole "talk about it with others" is the main reason I used to do it, but I'm also saying screw it to that, it's not worth it to me at this point, . Speaking of Usagi and Rei, I was watching the intro for Sailor Stars, and there's that part where they all hold hands together and go to spinnyworld - but the first two hands actually properly grab each other, while the last three more just stick their hands on top of the other two...which made me curious as to whom the first two were, since it was a little difficult to follow. Well, I slowed it down, and what do you know, it's Usagi and Rei! Don't that figure? I watched the baseball and plane episodes, which were pretty good, but I didn't have much to say about them - well, except for Minako and Rei tying up the announcer and hijacking the game, because of course they did, . That, and I felt a little bad for Lead Crow, who is like the very definition of anime tsundere, but very obviously had a soft spot for her "rival" (or should I say "cousin"?). I was very right that they would be no match for Nezzy. Episode 23:

Looks like the PS5 has the same issue as PS3 and PS4. As soon as your CMOS battery dies, and you can’t connect your console for some reason online, or your side of PSN servers will go down, you lose access to all of your digital games and some of your physical games as well...

YT suggesting me stuff like Pretty lady at least

A slow, meditative joke video about a joke game. That said, around 5:00 when he upped the weather and wind for the "true professional player" I sorta lost it. ...there's a 2022 version now, complete with ... multiplayer!

"The Next Phase" TNG. Good straightforward ST episode. We've seen this type of story before, but Michelle Forbes' Ro and LeVar Burton's La Forge make the episode a lot of fun.

Not that I'm watching anything that's in the process of coming out right now anyways, but I've completely and utterly sworn off anything that is doing weekly releases at this point - waiting until the season is done before starting it. I've learned that lesson too many times, as it literally markedly decreases my enjoyment of anything I try to watch that way. Need to be able to watch stuff at my own pace without getting annoyed by cliffhangers and more filler-ish episodes that wouldn't be annoying while watching in a group of episodes, but very much are when it's just a single episode a week. Speaking of Sailor Moon .PDFs, I also want to try Codename Sailor V at some point, particularly since I already have the .CBRs for them. Hoping Sailor V doesn't fail me where Sailor Moon did.

It competes with PL8 spells of course (why PL9?). But imo if I really want to terrify without using too many resources it's great. Deals good dmg, too. Freezing Rake and Piercing Burst etc. are nice of course (Wall of Many Colors is cool as well - but who wants to give up their Wall of Draining for it? ), but the real bombs come at PL9 so I don't give up too much firepower imo. Maybe your primary role is CC and not dmg - then this is a nice option I think.

Dunno if this is useful to anyone but I figured I might as well post it here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2220432833 Any feedback is appreciated.

Not a topic to lose your head over.

Hey, look, cosplays - another thing I cannot and will not ever understand, try as I might. The only way I can even kind of accept them is when I keep in mind that most - most - of the people doing them are just doing it for some kind of goofy fun. It's all I've got. them clowning on each other was like the only interesting or fun part of their entire relationship throughout the entire series outside of a very rare episode here and there Yeah, a lot of Naoko's own drawings seem pretty sexualized (and never mind the WRITING, as you've pointed out)...but been there, done that, forgiven her given the situation. But yeah, completely unaware fanidiots have a tendency to ruin everything whenever you interact with them on their favorite things - throw 'em all in the trash. I'm borderline hypercritical of my own favorite things - you could take literally any of my favorite movies, games, or TV series and I could point out a number of objective flaws or at least subjective things that I feel could've been done a little more effectively in different ways. That's the beauty of art, particularly highly collaborative art that has tons of people involved, not to mention all of the moving parts and compromise making games or film requires given resource constraints and deadlines...and that's the way it's always going to be. If you ever find something that is truly literally perfect for you all the way through (themes and ideas, characters, plot, setting, dialogue, technical execution...the whole shebang), hold it closely forevermore, because that is a rare occurrence indeed.

To be honest actually reading the manga, or at least parts of it so far was a major wakeup call. More than watching Crystal was. I don't think I've ever run into a deeper gulf between what seems to have been the creator intention, her statements (some which were probably made in anger while utterly stressed out) and the fanbase misunderstanding and misrepresenting everything while being incredibly militant about it. Plus an immense amount of people taking these fan statements at face value and perpetuating them even into professional reviews. In almost every review of the first Crystal season the reviewers state how much better, loving and "healthier" Mamoru's relationship with Usagi is, compared to the 90ies anime, because Mamoru spent a longer time being mean to Usagi in that one - and dated Rei for a while (which in itself is a subplot that I find a bit bewildering - what's Rei doing there, annoying Usagi or does she really like Mamoru? Going by Sailor Stars it really seems to be the latter. Poor Rei, nothing really goes well for her either, does it?). Did they even watch the show they were reviewing? Kissing a passed out Usagi? Yes, that's certainly healthy. Jumping through her open window? Oh boy, yes, please do more of that. Telling her to transform in front of him? Wohooooo. And the final kicker, abducting her when she falls unconscious after reviving Toyko and then creepily holding her back at the shoulder and sniffing her hair while giving back her bag. How romantic. Nothing screams healthy relationship more than being a creepy obsessive stalker, after all. And let's not at all get into the murder-suicide or what happens during Black Moon. Mamoru's and Usagi's relationship becomes actually nice and good and... yes, healthy, in the third arc. They love and talk to each other like real people would. By that time Mamoru and Usagi have a normal relationship in the anime as well. Just a lot less of it, because it's probably the least interesting part of Sailor Moon. We could examine what happens in the season that shall not be named, but the manga equivalent there has some of the worst things ever in it, so that's not entirely fair either. The manga fanboys are just cherry picking here and conveniently forgetting that the anime and the manga ran concurrently. Mamoru being mean to Usagi for a while was because he was distant and initially a bit mean to her in the manga (what with her test scores) and it was not at all clear if he was an ally or an enemy up until the second half. Yeah. For fun I just googled Sailor Tin Nyanko and came across a cosplay costume. So that's actually one thing I would like to ask Naoko Takeuchi should I ever get the chance. When she complained about the anime being made by men (even though some of the most prominent animators working on it were women) and her characters too sexualized, that was before she made the Dream and Stars arc, obviously. I wonder if she still feels that way when you look at all the characters - including the Amazoness Quartet, or if that statement was purely meant for the heroines, or if she stopped bothering after the third arc and just went with it.

And I still have to watch the second season of One Punch Man. But the next one is probably Castlevania. I haven't watched any of it yet but it seems the last season is coming next month. After that Goblin Slayer and any other "short" one that I want (that is, with maybe 20-30 episodes top). Eventually Legend of Galactic Hero and Jojo's Bizarre adventures. Jojo comes later because it is longer and I'm craving for some SciFi.

Ah, see, that's what I mean when I say I'm lacking the proper context for it to register as being worse. This is simply not my forte, so I'm more looking at their outfits just for what they are rather than any additional connotations, . She definitely looks incredibly weird and off-putting...but the way I was looking at it, at least she has some actual clothes on instead of going full anime skimpiness. Soul Hunter Sailor Heavy Metal Papillon? What a legendary name. The lady...not so much from the looks of it. (although not for Fish's Eye, but the actual good ones, lol) Nothing like realizing literally everyone is wrong and thus were always irrelevant to begin with, huh? Don't even know what that is, probably don't want to know what that is. I certainly don't mind trying to figure out where more subtle characters are standing in relation to each other (NEWS FLASH: Sailor Moon characters are NOT in any way subtle), but there's a big difference between "trying to figure out" and "actively re-writing as if my feelings have any merits to the outside world whatsoever", .

I have rewatched that episode and more or less made my peace with the scene. It is funny, until it suddenly isn't any more - specifically when Makoto changes her expression after a while, because then it turns from everyone is embarrassed to be stuck in this situation to Makoto looking like something embarrassing is underneath Ami's skirt. Which feels weird to me, within the context of the girls transforming next to each other like they usually do. Makoto's embarrassment here is for the benefit of the audience, not because it's something that makes sense for her in this scene, if that makes sense? That part of the scene will always bother me, but that's just me. Everything else, especially the stupid fandom, no longer seems as relevant as it did before I read Naoko Takeuchi's statements about her own work. Shipping, well... oh boy. You're saying you don't like Pearlmethyst or Amedot? Seriously? Hahaha. Yeah. I started out being online at the time when the Ur-Ship sailed (surfed?) the depths of the nascent world wide web. Shippers are the worst. It's doubly bad because I still think Chris Carter caved to the fandom when they actually wrote Mulder and Scully into an actual relationship, instead of a professional relationship that turned into a deep friendship. Character reading and subtext depends a bit on the context. There's the scene in the couple cruise episode where Rei invites Ami and says they don't need boys to have fun. Oh lord, has the fandom read things into this one, while in context, the only thing Rei did there was to annoy Usagi who wanted to go more than Ami did, and the girls had just met each other too. Homosexual subtext doesn't need to be read into Sailor Moon because it's openly lived anyway. And there certainly isn't any unresolved sexual tension between Ami and Makoto, for crying out loud. Or anything. Do the two even talk to each other alone at some point, outside of Ami offering to dance with Makoto because nobody else danced with them? There's not much one on one time for the girls without Usagi in general, I think. It's almost always Usagi and one of them, or they're in a group. Well they can't all be fun like Fish-Eye. Absolutely, yes. Which is why I really liked the scene, regardless of the contrivance necessary to make it work. I don't know, Tin Nyanko screams bondage fetish in a way that Aluminum Siren didn't, but yes, the Starlights are... worse. Still sad that we missed out on Sailor Heavy Metal Papillon. Just imagine what the animators could have done with her:

With 90k DMG per hit you can probably one shot Eothas before he wreaks havoc on Caed Nua . Then you can just relax and go to Brackenbury have a beer with the Doemenels.

It's Spring, the giant jumping spiders are out in force again, ridding the yard of all the boring usual house spiders. I love how aware they are that I'm there, holding a phone 2" from their face and they only move their head a little to stare you down, while still eating, being all like "yeah, so, you want a piece of me? I'm busy at the moment, come back later."

I guess there's no limit to the crazy damage you can inflict with this exploit. Enough to one shot even the megabosses, I'm sure.

And that's one big turn off for me.

Gothic emo lyrics and glam rockish sound. Consider me sold.

I can imagine Sailor V being a better read than the Sailor Moon manga, if only simply because it features wacky Minako hijinks. When it comes to weekly releases that's one part nostalgia for me, because that's the only thing we had for a while. It conjures up memories of a time when we'd gather the family to watch a TV show in the evening, then talk about it in school, and one part having external pacing. I specifically mentioned not doing anything new until I'm done with everything I started (which as for right now is NGE, Steven Universe, more Sailor Moon, JoJo's bizarre adventure, Cardcaptor Sakura, Revolutionary Girl Utena and a handful of live action TV that I used to follow but had no time for during crunch time last year) unless it's weekly releases because that way the additional time investment on my end limits ifself. Because it there's something I'm really bad at it's setting limits or goals for myself. If those don't come in from the outside, well... I either go on uncontrollable binges (hello watching three seasons of Steven Universe over the Easter weekend) or simply don't continue at all, even if I like or even love something. That and the fact that our government keeps on extending the school lockdowns and my nephew has started living here, because there's no way his parents can go through what he needs to learn with him - and with nothing else to do, the only time I can get to the TV is... when he's asleep. I have my own Usagi/Rei relationship with my brother, and he's the Usagi in it when it comes to school.

There are - flame bats, great stelgaer, moon spiders, most nature spirits, wisps, engwithan hierarchs, all vithrack casters, Scyorielaphas - mostly high level enemies. So yes, the paralyze from Grave Calling can be resisted...

am thinking folks is getting suckered in by skarpy_one and a meme he found somewhere on the arse end o' the internet. atp wave 64 were a covid specific survey conducted by pew between march 19 and march 24, 2020. asked respondents views on school closures and international travel and the like. a quick looksee didn't reveal anything similar to the s'posed chart data from pew or from groups such as the nih which commented 'pon pew wave 64. the chart skapry offers clear ain't from pew, so one wonders what were actual data and the relevant questions regarding mental health, which again would be almost necessarily covid specific. am thinking until something a bit more concrete is offered, ordinary and prudent skepticism, particular o' anything provided by skarp_one, should make the question as to the chart data validity a non-starter. HA! Good Fun!

Wow, that sucks hard.

To be honest I'm looking forward to being done with everything I've started watching. Then I'll just... finish my Lord of the Rings re-read (it's a different translation, so "re"-read is a bit of a stretch). I'll also probably try not to get entangled in watching 6 shows at once, or only if they have weekly releases and are currently running. Still haven't caught up on a lot of things I wanted to watch last year, like Westworld, Agents of SHIELD, and some other stuff. Sigh. I've thought about mailing my Sailor Moon manga PDFs to my Kindle so I can read somewhere else than on my PC. If that looks halfway acceptable that would be something. Since they're mostly uncolored nothing much would be lost in the process. Hm. Could make a case that R+ Minako is her default mode, and the first season and talking about her past helped her move on and get back to how she was supposed to be. In that case helping Minako move on was one of the nicest things Usagi ever did for her. Hmmm. That's probably not how that was intended, but it works for me.

Madoka Magica is probably what I'll watch after finishing Sailor Moon since all y'all watched it and it's pretty short, but I'll be on at least a little bit of a break in between. I have totally exhausted my TV watching abilities over the past 5-6 months, in between rewatching the first three seasons of SU, piles of Sailor Moon, Speed Racer, Evangelion, Hilda, OK K.O., Infinity Train, and some odds and ends of other shows. There was once upon a time that I had only ever watched exactly two shows all the way through - I'm still adjusting, .

The first two movies are the anime series, if you've already seen it you can skip them.

Heavy ending spoilers for Puella Magi Madoka Magica ahead: How did you like the soundtrack by the way?

I guess it depends on your definition of backwards...there have been a number of advanced for their time civilizations in Africa. Egypt/Kemet in North Africa which had grown from the Tasian, Badari, Amaranti, Gerza lands, plus trade partner/occasional subject/occasional ruler Nubia/Kush are examples of advanced civilizations in Africa. North Africa was also home of Carthage that managed to hold off the Roman empire for awhile and was a pretty remarkable country. While the land of Punt is still speculative, I believe the general current consensus puts it in east Africa (Ethiopia/Eritrea area). That same area held Aksum, a major country in trade. The Mali and Songhai empires were centered in west Africa. When the Mali empire was at its height, only the Mongol empire held more territory, from what I understand (although the Mongol Empire was still 9 times larger, so there was a big gap between #1 and #2). The Ghana empire predated and was eventually absorbed into the Mali empire. Great Zimbabwe - in the area of Botswana, modern Zimbabwe and Mozambique - was another wealthy trade empire, with an impressive (now ruined) stone capitol city. You also get the Kongo Kingdom which was born of two earlier kingdoms, the Mbata kingdom and Mpemba Kasi. So in general, while there were strong and advanced civilizations, they were laid waste by the things that lay waste to all countries: time, changes in circumstance (invasion, internal strife, loss of trade goods, environmental changes). Egypt, Nubia/Kush and Carthage were conquered by Rome (I believe, Nubia briefly conquered Egypt, and then Egypt and the Assyrians regained it, but the end seems to lie in Rome). The fate of Punt, like its location, is speculative, but by the later Kingdoms of Egypt was treated as an almost mythological land of plenty, so its decline so early in what we have records of probably leads to its mysterious fate. Aksum & Zimbabwe seem to have suffered drops in trade that ultimately led to their collapse. Aksum splintered into other countries/kingdoms and part was taken control of by other countries. As mentioned the Ghana empire collapsed, speculatively due to collapsing from Islamic invaders. Mali was greatly decreased by the rise of the Songhai empire. The Songhai empire had a succession crisis involving the king and his sons that weakened the nation. Morocco (founded from areas conquered from the Byzantine Empire by the Umayyad Caliphate) was able to conquered both empires. The Kongo Kingdom was slowly converted after a Portuguese explorer found the kingdom and started spreading Christianity; it was subsequently destroyed in a series of wars with Portugal and the Dutch. Modern Africa primarily doesn't really take shape until the colonial lands begin to gain independence (the last one in 1977!), and some areas have faired better post-colonialism than others, and their success or lack of happens for a variety of reasons. So there's not a single answer really as there is not a single reason or source for the development of the continent, but a tapestry of reasons woven through time and through various lands and peoples with differing desires and goals.

Is this that old joke? "Why is the US similar to a loaf of bread? After 300 years both will develop some form of culture..."

China isn't going to invade Taiwan. They don't have a track record of doing things like that. They will find another way to take it if they want it.

Yes, it is. But if streamers can't be bothered to read out text rather than looking into the camera while it gets read for them then screw them I'd say. There's a very popular German Let's Player named "Gronkh". I don't follow him but in the few vids I saw he was reading all dialogues with different voices and intonation. It was engaging enough (and sometimes also funny) and he doesn't seem to have any reservations or problems with non-full VO. To the contrary I'd say. Of course you should be a streamer who can read fluently. Some might struggle with that. But then I'd argue they shouldn't play dialogue-heavy CRPGs in the first place.

Excuse my french, but streamers my ass. I feared that video might sound like it does. A bit like Commander Data reading the lines. Ok, it's from 2012 - but I also checked some text-to-speech for some learning software today (coincidentally) and at least that one still wasn't anywhere near a proper trained voice actor. But 10 years is a long time for those things - so maybe...

Agreed. Good point. Its success also indicates that there's still a market for a story-heavy game with a lot of subtlety in dialogue and choices. This makes me happy. There market may not be D:OS2-sized, but it's there, and it's not small, either.

For historical reminder, this is what PoE1 did. Mostly text, with some key voiced dialogue. As I probably mentioned elsewhere, when Deadfire announced full VO I was pretty ambivalent about it, since I generally read faster than voice actors talk, and having voice actors talk interferes with my ability to read. As a general rule of thumb, I assume that any game with full VO had to sacrifice a lot in terms of dialogue reactivity depth. Generally I've been correct, and Deadfire is probably the first real time I've ever seen full VO *and* extensive dialogue reactivity. Not only was the VO expensive, it was probably disproportionately expensive compared to their budget as a result. Fortunately, the success of Disco Elysium tells me that Josh Sawyer's big concern has not materialized: that OBS had contributed to escalating the indie RPG cost by making it minimum stakes to have full VO for RPGs. I don't think many people complained that Disco Elysium was missing full VO.

I agree to the general statement - but Full VO for RPGs is extremely overrated given its immense costs* which makes it a bad choice for games with small and mediocre budgets. The increased immersion (and that's debatable, too) almost never outweighs the drawbacks (a lot less money for other things that would do the game good). Also, while CRPGs certainly aren't books - they come pretty close in comparison with other video game genres. Adventures, too. Same as TTRPGs which are a bit like interactive books. While I like the DM to put on some fitting music and try to speak with different voices it's not really needed for immersion. Makes it easier of course - but often the ton of work required from the DM to pull that off doesn't warrant the outcome (even if it's nicer than without no doubt). )* If done professionally. And you def. don't want to do amateurish VO.

It's a shame that Obsidian don't license their engine... everyone keeps re-making the wheel. I'd be happy if PoE3 was just new rendered BGs and items for the current deadfire game - I don't need a completely new engine every version.