LadyCrimson

wtf - I try to go to Dramafever site and it just has this big announcement page of "being shutdown immediately." Stuff happens, things go kaput, I get that, but what I'm peeved about is no announcement to subscribers? The site loaded up fine last night, btw. No email, no "go here to deal w/your account" link on the website, nothing. Will they auto-cancel the CC sub for me? What's going on? Thanks, Warner Brother's. Not. https://www.dramafever.com/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/tamarherman/2018/10/16/warner-bros-asian-drama-hub-dramafever-to-shut-down-immediately/

One Punch Man (anime) is leaving Netflix soon so I finally got around to checking it out a bit. I'm not sure I'd call it a good anime but I did laugh like a loon during the first few episodes that I watched. It pokes fun at a lot of action anime tropes, especially power scaling, and oh man I was in stitches from many scenes.

Bout 70 degrees Fahrenheit. California, baby. It's like that all the time. Or warmer. Like today it was closer to 80F. Day time temps usually don't get much cooler until late Nov/early Dec. here.

Have a list made out of what I'd need for a new pc rig. Was going to still go with the i7-8700k but now I'm staring at the i9-9900k. I'm not one to preorder so it wouldn't surprise me if I'd have a hard time getting my hands on it first thing, but I'd rather wait for reviews on it anyway. Which means maybe .... Xmas? New Years? New PC will likely be in the realm of $3000+ (since I'll be buying a new GPU to go in it instead of tossing/using my current one in). When it's finally on my desk, I better be able to play FFXV at "4k" with 45-60fps/maxed including most nvidia-works (vs. 30-40fps at around average w/no nividaworks) or I'll toss a fit.

*reads back through thread* Oh, I didn't really expect many replies to my bad-endings post. Thanks for all the suggestions. I don't tend to find horror games/films bad-endings to be what I look for - occasionally towards the very end of such but it's rare. Not that I don't like horror bad endings, but I rarely find them emotionally involving, perhaps because I don't scare/frighten easily, or perhaps because feeling horrified by something isn't really what I seek. I suppose there's certain themes/tropes that I almost always like/fall for and I find it to be fairly rare in video games. Not sure I could explain it, outside of sacrifice and tragedy which are both pretty generic terms. But a lot of the games mentioned I either have never/barely heard of or haven't tried so I'll check those out.

I think the only things I've seen Henry Cavill in are Immortals and the Superman stuff. At least that's all I remember. Immortals was ludicrously awful yet for some reason I rather liked it in an over-the-top visual way, and it made me think Cavill would an ok Superman at least physically . But while Cavill has looks I don't get much on-screen charisma presence from him. I feel nothing when he's on-screen. There's nothing in his eyes. Just me tho.

@Gfted - we caught a lake catfish once, that was large enough to "fill" a large-size ice cooler. I don't know what that translates into inches. Not as big as yours, maybe only 20-24". But we left it alive in the cooler for the trip home (several hours by car). The guys killed it in the kitchen (that was...a big mess). I didn't think it made for the best meal. Too old, maybe. Heh. ================ Decided I'd try Crunchyroll. After some days of watching/trying a fair bit of anime series, I can't really remember most of it. They sort of all end up feeling the same and most don't fit my personal tastes. Too ... youthful. Nothing against anime, mind. When I do like a series, I really like it ... it's just rare I like one that much. Oh well. Gintama looked goofy-action entertaining/amusing but after watching the first couple, I realized there were over 350 episodes (plus it's still ongoing?) and my fear of lengthy commitment had me running away posthaste. (edit - btw, I gave up on Bleach largely for the same reason - even skipping a few seasons, it was too much).

(Kind of music, kind of funny) Since I'm currently starting the Netflix series The Good Cop: Josh is one of those famous people where I find him hilarious/interesting in interviews and such but his official music bores me to tears most of the time. But he (and Ellen) is very charming.

I need more games with non-happy endings. I don't mean "game over" screens or you hit the wrong button/wrong choice and the world explodes/game over/reload. ...50 years (well, ok, 45 years) of happy/heroic endings in most entertainment and I'm tired of them. I need more character tragedy, pathos, ambiguous and bittersweet that builds and escalates throughout the whole game. Anything come to mind?

Fraps doesn't work with Win10, I hear. Or at least, it can be really difficult to get it to work, if at all. Win10 it seems many use Shadowplay (nvidia) or OBS (also used to Twitch-stream) as freebie options. Shadowplay requires you to install/use nvidia's Experience, however, which I find to be bloatware and useless. I'm kind of in the same boat because I use Fraps with Win7 but when I build a Win10 rig I'm going to need something else. The main thing I liked about fraps is it's high quality format that works smoothly while editing vs. high on-the-fly compression into mp4 format or whatever that feels chunky and awkward in editors.

I've realized that some male voices speaking in Japanese or Korean (calm vocalizations, that is) make great "white noise" recordings for bedtime. The vocal tones are soothing/hypnotic when you don't understand the meaning being the verbalized noises so aren't distracted by that. I've tried ocean waves, rain, thunderstorms, etc and most of the time the tones in things like that vary too much into pitch ranges my ears don't like. Rain comes the closest, as long as it's only rain and not thunder and wind. Having a fan on high works too, except I don't usually want air motion to go with white noise (especially since I have a spouse). ...and yes I've had trouble sleeping again. The past four days I think I've slept about 8 hours.

I'm late to be aware of the news, but apparently F/X is going to do a limited series (10 episode) of Shogun? I'm not sure how I feel about that, if it ends up completed. On the one hand, I'd love a new mini-series based on that novel, with modern tech and actors and costumes. And 10 episodes could allow it to be something fairly epic. F/X has been doing all right with some of their series lately, too. On the other hand, my pessimism always runs rampant and I can think of a zillion ways for them to totally mess it up. I'll be interested to see a cast list, when it forms. The original 80's 5 episode mini-series of Shogun (not the truncated movie versions of it...) is still one of my fave things, along with the novel. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/fx-orders-shogun-limited-series-1132074

Watched the anime series Hakuōki Shinsengumi Kitan (22 episodes) which is based on a visual novel which is a (Japan) historical-fantasy based on the Shinsengumi group during the final years of Edo period. First half was average to pretty good, then I basically cried through the 2nd half. And that's with me already knowing the story/route from the visual novel (which also had me sniffling in 4 chr. routes). The combat-bros, the end-of-an-era woes, THE FEELS. The VA's are mostly excellent. The female protagonist/narrator-eye is kind of annoying in that not-uncommon indecisive/in distress trope but not as annoying as many so I can overlook it. ...also, I recognized one of the game/anime chr VA's from Bleach. ...realized Attack of Titans has a 3rd season going, need to fire that up next.

Sorry to hear that. Not the same details in my life of course, but I do know that mixed/unsure feeling with family loss. For me it's always such a strange sensation. I usually eat more chocolate in response.

Bought a simple/casual game (on sale) because it looked like an easy way to pass some time today. Took over an hour to download the game (since I idiotically didn't take note of size of d/l before buying). Am now no longer in the frame of mind to fire it up and actually play it. ....such is my gaming life (and attention span) in the digital era.

Bleach was in a slow decline after the Soul Society arc and went to free fall after Aizen was From what I can tell, in terms of the anime, that doesn't occur until season 22, and there are only 26 seasons? I think it goes into decline well before that. The main issue I have is there are way too many characters being constantly introduced for long stretches and then largely disappearing only to appear again later when convenient for a fight or exposition, then disappear again. It's chr. whiplash and I don't care about any of them. By season 7 or 8 I'm only in it for the Quincy kid, Aizen/his plot, and the guy who owns the shop (in the striped clothes). Some of the others are fun as combat side chrs tho. Stop yapping, start fighting.

Binged the 1st 3 seasons of "Bleach" (subbed) via Netflix. Mostly because I saw the live-actor movie (also on Netflix), which was very corny in some spots but did make me interested in the anime again. I'd heard of the series and even watched one episode years ago but I forgot about it. Those 3 seasons were all right. After 1st season, I kept FFWDing through a lot of the slapstick, unnecessarily prolonged action sequences and side chr. diversions, mostly interested in the main story/villain arcs. Didn't like the pattern of starting a major battle then leaving it, sometimes taking 2-3 episodes to go back to/finish it after sidetracking. There's plenty to diss about the series but initially it's still worth at least skimming through. Sadly, all the other seasons are on Hulu, which I don't like to watch/use much. All I want is to hop-skip through rest of the Aizen arc but I'm not sure I'll have the patience to FFWD through 20+ seasons for it. Season 4 and 5 were apparently not even manga based, so I completely skipped those. Anyway ... first 3 seasons were 65% fun and 35% boring. I liked Slayers much better overall (including its slapstick) but Bleach does have some good action and a few character/arc standouts. A lot of it is rather "meh" tho.

Tried to watch "Kidding" on Showtime. I should say first that I'm not a huge fan of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (it was ok, but I wasn't in love with it). The premise of the show - Mr Rogers-like has a bleak mid-life crisis or some such - could be interesting/funny, but Kidding is so bleak and the chrs. rather unlikable/non-sympathetic (acting is fine) that it's kind of hard to get into the show. I like dark and tragi-comic/satire but it's another show where I hardly even chuckled. It's not just that it's not funny - it's not even interesting. Two episodes in, I turned it off. I guess I don't have the patience anymore for shows that don't at least give me a feeling of "I want to know more" within an hour or two.

Telltale - I tried Walking Dead Season 1 and didn't get very far. I could sorta see why it would appeal to some but at the time it wasn't for me. I think they likely tried to expand too fast, too far once they got some fame and then didn't expand their style enough to keep interest up. Happens.

Devil May Cry HD Collection (1, 2, 3) Devil May Cry 4 Special Edition ...they were on Steam-sale ($30 total) and I'm bored. Per usual not sure if I'll get through any of them but I thought I'd at least try. Too much combat combo/scoring concept may annoy me. Can I win if all I get are "D's"? I guess I was also thinking about DMC5, so this would give me 5-6 months to get around to at least minimally trying the older ones to see if I'd be interested in the new one at all. I mean, the combat visuals of 4 and 5 look great but not sure if I'd like the series much outside of that so this is my way of figuring that out I suppose. Maybe I should've just stuck with DMC4-SE as the tryout...

Oh? That has me half tempted to get it, per usual. Although ... TR games probably aren't something I'd get really into taking screenshots of over and over like Borderlands, XV, FO:NV etc. Not enough pretty boys repeatability. I was actually thinking about this game this morning. Just because of the scenery. Hm.

I am completely and hopelessly addicted to these: Only 60ish calories each, too. But they're like crack, I can't stop eating them (well, a few a day anyway). I've been buying them constantly from AmazonFresh. They are soooo good.

I was soooo bored over last weekend that I tried some of the free "visual novels" on Steam. From the description/reviews most of these sound like glorified dating sims where you pick one out of 3-5 chrs. to romance throughout the story. There may or may not be an actual plot worth reading inside that sexy-romance arc. Most of such seem to be utter trash where I could barely get through one of the available chr. routes before turning it off as I snorted with laughter, but a couple were above grade/pretty good: Lake of Voices - largely a moody horror tale, almost zero romance, although you do have influence/route paths for different endings with some of those being almost romantic (really really subtle). Not a very long game per route but some of the influence paths were difficult to discover and most of the endings were dark and not very "happy" at all. If you can figure out the Guide's "bad" ending path, that one was great. Although, I like dark and twisted endings, so... Cinderella Phenomenon Falls into the "otome" visual novel category, but in the fairy-tale romance style vs. anything "sexy." A very fracture fairy tale. I liked this one because each chr. route was almost entirely different (once past Chapt 2 or 3 anyway) from the other. The basic story-problem was the same but the viewpoint and events change quite a bit each time. The "fairy-tale curse" the female protagonist and other characters are under were great twists on commonly known fairy tales (largely Grimm fairy tales I think?). The one based on Beauty and the Beast actually almost made me sniffle. Comes with good and bad endings and the bad endings are either bittersweet/somber or outright dark/sad. For the price of "free" those two are worth an experimental gander. Of the other freebies I tried, even if they weren't "sexy romance" stories, they were either terribly written/translated and/or just plain boring, although I did appreciate the artstyle in some. An actual 400+ page paper novel is 10000x better ... and some of the more highly rated visual novels on Steam were $30-$40. No thanks. Maybe during a 75% off sale. Edit: btw, I read too fast apparently. I had to always put the "text speed" at highest, which means all text in the box shows up at once, and I was hitting spacebar every second or two, except the occasional long paragraph. That makes most of these visual novels very short, for me. Like, an entire route in 30 minutes or less.

I still "desperately" need a new game to obsess over (vs. maybe only checking it for 4-10 hours then never touching it again) but I feel like I only like a new game once every 2-3 years now, and it's only been 18 months. Drat. Back to reading more manga's. That Noblesse one I was reading, it was pretty awesome for about 350-400 chapters but after that it became almost nothing but battle panels and hardly any plot outside of good guys vs. ever increasing difficulty bad guys. Literally pages and pages in a row of "Boom!" "How can they be so strong?" "Pow!" "How did they survive that blow?" which I became really bored of paging through. I'll check out new chapters once in a while see if it improves again but likely the authors just ran out of steam and are just dragging it out. Still, it was entertaining/fun for a long while so no regrets.

LMAO right back. Who the heck is "crying"? You seem to be under the impression my lighthearted post was trying to dispute your "facts". I don't give a poop about anything like that and I certainly don't care about convincing you of anything in that regard. Why would I bother. There's hot Asian actors in the world. That's all I said - not sure where I said anything about who finds what sexiest. And regarding my not wanting Hollywood touching Gong Yoo - since there's often the issue of language and heavy accent barrier re: many actual overseas Asian stars trying to "make it" in Hollywood, I probably don't have to worry too much there. But keep it up, dude. You're as entertaining as ever.