Bartimaeus

Nope, just anime that doesn't have the necessary restraint or respect for its characters because the male gaze conquers all, . I don't mind twists, but eh, yeah, definitely doesn't sound like a show for me at all - way too wacked out.

Even though the Packers are currently made out of some string and duct tape, we somehow keep winning. Can't complain, I guess, though I suspect our luck will run out sometime soon.

I'm not really much into straight fantasy anymore, which is probably a big part of why I'm not at all interested in this show. That, and I am sure that even if I was still into fantasy, historically I haven't tended to do well with huge shows like these anyways. I might give it a try at some point if the reviews are great, though...see what's what, I guess. I read the majority of the books (the first...eleven or so, I want to say?) in my early teens, when I wasn't quite as critical as I am now. And then I come in here and apparently there are people who re-read the entire series every single time a new book came out. I think I'd lose my mind if I had to sit through the entire series of Nynaeve tugging her braid and smoothing her skirts again. Thinking about it does kind of give me a wave of nostalgia, but they're memories probably better left undisturbed. At least it wasn't as traumatic as reading Harry Turtledove in 5th grade - The Wheel of Time was an easy and silly adventure series in comparison to that.

lmao, I'm so glad I've played Baldur's Gate way too many times so I can picture the exploding gibberling perfectly What episode are you on now anyways?

You know, this doesn't really quite seem like my type of show, all things considered. Not that it sounds terrible or anything, but eh. What's up with the ridiculous amount of anime shows with next episode previews, anyways? Is it like an industry standard or something? I'm trying to think of any western animation shows that do it and I can't think of any...

I always thought they called themselves "friends of the dark", while if you're not with them, you'd call them "darkfiends". You know, an easy way of verbally differentiating between them depending on what side you're on. I got to one of the last books and randomly noticed it wasn't spelled like that in one instance and was like "ha, they spelled it wrong here...and here...and here...wot?". Went back to one of the first books and found an instance of it again and just about 'd myself.

Was it only me that took until literally like book 12 or 13 to realize that the word was "darkfriend" and not "darkfiend"? ...Oh, I was the only one that was that consistently blind and stupid? Okay, yeah, that's kind of what I thought.

The Red Strings Club. Feels like a game that's kind of trying to be like VA-11 HALL-A, but instead of having a fun group of characters carrying the game through silly dialogue, went for some investigation of a grand conspiracy plot instead. It's...alright, but isn't quite what I wanted, I guess.

I had a bad dream last night. Yes, it is relevant to anime...and especially this anime thread. Sakura, episode 58. A cold open? How very unlike Sakura!

Speaking of Toy Story 4, I actually watched it recently, and here's a more differenter opinion: I think Toy Story 4 is my favorite of the Toy Story series, even though it has some serious problems that bring it down so completely unnecessarily (like the entire plot revolving around the literal, LITERAL trash that is Forky...or Buzz Lightyear being a completely useless and utterly flanderized moron the entire movie when it seems like they should've just found a way to remove him entirely). There's some quite stupid stuff in that movie...but I fell in love with the villain instantly, I didn't mind where they took Bo Peep's character, I even liked her little toy friend, and I identified more with the themes in it more than in any of the others. I do recognize, however, that it is probably the worst quality out of all of them in terms of consistency and storytelling, but now that I've confessed this sin, I can...uh, live peacefully, I guess.

For whatever reason, I felt more emotional connection to those two stupid robots than all of the rest of Pixar's characters combined, I think. Don't ask me, it's overwhelmingly the reason the film works for me where so many don't. Anyways, it's thanks to Frozen that I started getting more interested in animation again, which eventually lead to me trying out a few Cartoon Network shows like Gravity Falls (STINKS), Adventure Time (SORT OF STINKS BUT HAS SOME GOOD PARTS), and Steven Universe (DOESN'T STINK OUTSIDE OF A RELATIVELY SMALL PERCENTAGE OF EPISODES), which then eventually lead to me checking out various other animated movies and shows, which eventually lead to me incidentally coming across that one Nausicaa poster that inspired me to me actually give it and the other Ghibli movies a chance, which eventually lead to me trying out more random stuff like Perfect Blue and Sailor Moon, which finally leads us to having resurrected the anime thread and where we are today. All's well that ends well, aye?

And I disliked Finding Nemo back even when I saw it right after it came out so I am not particularly tempted to try Finding Dory (especially since I didn't have positive memories of her as a character from having seen Finding Nemo), and I have been told by others repeatedly to watch Inside Out...but I never got around to it, . I like the first ~5 minutes of Up, but I couldn't tell you about the rest of it because I think I fell asleep watching it. Something about...a bird...and a talking dog.

A few big problems for me with Pixar: 1. I seem to never feel any kind of emotional connection with their characters. This may be because they overwhelmingly prefer young male protagonists, which I have previously noted a number of times as being anathema for me. Between the time Pixar was founded and the time Frozen came out, they had exactly...one? female protagonist, and that was in Brave, and Brave... 2. Their worlds/settings are utterly fantastic without even the slightest bit of being grounded that severs any ability for me to treat them the least bit seriously. Disney may have really annoying animal companions that are way too human for their own good, but that's something I can at least kind of head canon away if I'm invested in the other characters and the world. 3. The structure and emotional cores of their stories are very formulaic, and while this isn't necessarily a bad thing, it's pretty serious when nothing else in their films really interest or grab me. 4. Their character art style is generally hideous, and while that shouldn't really matter, and I am a noted art style snob. ...There are probably other things, but these are the biggest things that constantly annoy me about their films. The only Pixar film I really like is WALL-E, and it has all sorts of problems that I'm going to completely overlook because it's the only one I really like, . (e): Perfect timing with Amentep saying he hates WALL-E, . I'm so sorry.

Yeah. I mean, no. ...No, I haven't seen Dark Star yet, that was going to be the next one, but I was persuaded by someone not on these forums to change my pick to Little Trouble in Big China, which unfortunately turned out to be a ludicrously terrible idea. Not sure when/if that'll happen. Also, yes, Whisper of the Heart, .

I don't think I saw literally anything else that you mentioned that wasn't Star Wars or The Thing, but you did mention a lot of things, so don't quote me on that, . My feelings on Nolan's Batmans were that I liked Begins, Dark Knight is close enough to it if a little difficult to follow, and the last one felt like a significant step down in literally every way possible to the point where I didn't like it at all. Speaking of Frozen, I've seen Frozen a handful of times of my own free will as well - it helped re-kindle some interest in animation after a looong vacation from it, after being starved out by Disney's very lacklustre 2000s and my long-held general dislike for Pixar and the kind of material they put up.

I have a friend with the a similar reason for why they love Mononoke so much - it was the moment they realized that cartoons didn't have to be just silly kids stuff. Of course, I then replied to them "yeah, that movie was a pile of dogcrap". ...We're no longer friends for some reason I can't discern. ...Okay, only the first sentence was true, but you get the idea, . Yeah, I wasn't going to get into animated stuff, since most people in here wouldn't have any idea what most of it was, plus animated stuff is a pretty different medium from live-action. But yes, Whisper of the Heart is the best Ghibli...followed by Only Yesterday, and then Grave of the Fireflies, . But everything else you said that wasn't Sakura were all terrible choices. How embarrassing! ...I'm trying to think of what the movie I've watched the most is, not accounting for stuff I watched a lot as a young kid just because it was on. Most of the movies I listed I've seen between 1 and 2 times...I guess I've seen 12 Monkeys and Heathers around 4-5 times, so probably those. I don't make a habit of re-watching stuff very often - movies are not really my natural outlet for "comfort entertainment", as @Raithe put it. Though I do sometimes watch very specific stretches of a movie or show a number of times, usually parts that make me emotional for when I need an emotional kickstart. I'm not a hundred percent sure why I do that.

Least reliance on CGI out of the three, cares the most about actually developing its core characters, has a great balance between lightheartedness and tension without dipping too far into forced attempts at humor like TTT and TRotK do, characters are the closest to how they should be without diverging too much for the sake of FORCED CONFLICT (Frodo and Sam are especially unfortunate victims of this as the trilogy goes on)...and best of all, it's really long BUT not outrageously so like TTT and TRotK. Yeah, it's easily the best of the trilogy, . I can't really rate movies in terms of like...a top ten list, but it's easy enough for "tiers", and when I separated my live-action movies from animated movies, there were literally exactly ten live-action movies that fell into the very top tiers, so it was easy to create a "no order" top ten list, . Alien, Children of Men, The Witch, and The Lighthouse are the ones I've seen from your guys' lists, and I like all of them, . ...Technically, I've also seen Pan's Labyrinth as well, but it's been so long that I can't say how I feel about it. (e): And also The Warriors, which while I didn't dislike, I didn't quite like either - I appreciated it is how I would put it.

@Keyrock I've seen Total Recall, Pulp Fiction...and The Last Crusade, of course. I'm struggling to remember whether Total Recall is the Schwarzenegger movie about clones or the one about Mars...and the fact that I can't remember tells you enough about how I felt about it, . Pulp Fiction is alright, but Quentin Tarantino frustrates me with his unending commitment to reprehensible characters and having his films only ever serve as the movie equivalent of a rollercoaster with hardly anything else going for them. Good rollercoasters...but still just rollercoasters - my brain begs for just a little bit more, and he never gives me anything. And I've seen a few minutes of both Goodfellas and A Clockwork Orange and I might revisit the latter someday, but probably not the former. And that's the "odd one out" for me, so to speak, but I have a bias for it because I watched it so many times as a kid since it was one of my mom's and my favorite movies. Yeah, I get you there. Fellowship is the only one that's really even vaguely worth watching the extended edition for too, because most of the scenes added by the extended editions in TTT and TRotK are somewhere between mediocre and bad and they're way too danged long as it is. The two things I think I usually value most in "serious" movies are love of the characters (in whatever form that takes) or tension (again, in whatever form that takes). Only extremely rarely do I get both (e.g. 12 Monkeys, Perfect Blue, The Florida Project, etc.). So yeah, I suppose that makes sense, . "comedy-horror epic" wat Yeah, see above what I wrote in the first block with regards to Tarantino, . Good inclusion of Casablanca, I rather like that one as well.

Some observations: The closest we come to agreeing there is, funnily enough, Die Hard, . Not that it would place anywhere near my "favorite films", of course, but as far as action movies go, I rather enjoyed it and can appreciate how good it is and why it would obviously be considered important and great. I think I also rated it the most highly out of anything you listed at a 7/10. Haven't seen The Hangover, Office Space, Elf, or Army of Darkness - I THINK the only one I would strongly consider watching is Army of Darkness. The Goonies (6/10), Back to the Future (6.5/10), A New Hope (6.5/10), and The Last Crusade (6.5/10) are all valid enough choices - lot of action-adventure movies there (with the exception, to a degree, of BttF), but at least I understand them. If you had chosen Temple of Doom (7/10) or The Empire Strikes Back (7/10) instead, they would've competed with Die Hard for being the closest, . I've seen The Black Cauldron (3.5/10) and basically all I remember is being shocked by how bad it was...but that was some years back, . All in all, it could be a lot worse! My top ten favorite live-action movies would be the following in no particular order: 12 Angry Men [1957] Downfall [2004] Parasite [2019] Heathers [1989] Monty Python and the Holy Grail [1975] Rosemary's Baby [1968] The Florida Project [2017] The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring [2001] The Thing [1982] 12 Monkeys [1995] Please let me know if you consider any of these particularly great, so that I can take some time to reflect and re-think whether they were actually that good or not, .

Is that the lady I just mentioned that I wanted out of the movie more than literally anyone/anything else? ...Hmm, . I didn't have any problem with Kurt Russell's character - indeed, it was rather amusing to see him play a kind of dumb and incapable version of the type of character that he usually plays. ...I get the feeling I should've asked all of you guys "should I watch Big Trouble in Little China yes/no", to which all of you would've immediately said "absolutely, 100%"...at which point, I would've then included the following addendum to my question: "...given that I hate kung-fu, swordplay, cheesiness, usually action and comedy movies in general, and so on and so forth", to which all of you would've said "if you crap all over this movie, we will throw you down a well" or some such. Yeah, I'm not sure we've ever agreed on a film, and we probably never will, . Heck, if I had known you loved it, I would've probably taken it as a warning...

Yeah, I did mostly get that, but it's still a very cheesy 80s action(-comedy) movie. The utterly clueless protagonist (who asks "what the hell is going on" approximately 40 or 50 times throughout the film, ) may not be the suave action hero he thinks he is, but it doesn't really fundamentally change how the movie plays out for me, especially when the movie has some peculiar character direction and dialogue (the "romantic interest" lady, Grace, was an absolute albatross in almost every scene she appeared in - if there was one character being cut out of the film that would've helped make it at least a bit more enjoyable for me, it was her, as I could not wrap my head around why she acted the way or said the things she did outside of "we need to complete this picture of a borderline parody American action movie, and that means having a girl"). But I'm not an action guy, and I'm especially not a cheese guy, so really, I'm just the wrong audience for something like this.

It's less to do with however good Grim Dawn might be, more to do with that I am not, and have not been, interested in any ARPGs for many years now, so I'm not going to put any time into playing a new one. Path of Exile was the last one I put more than a couple of hours into (probably about a handful of years ago now) and I stopped playing it when I had a lagspike that killed my character on the (then) final boss of the game. Felt no urge to keep playing, and have never felt any urge to play any new ARPGs since. With D2, there's nothing new to learn, it's not complicated or particularly challenging, it's just a matter of playing an old game for a few days until I've had my fill.

Big Trouble in Little China (1986). This was the dumbest 80s action movie in the history of dumb 80s action movies, maybe ever. Everything everyone said and did in this movie seemed like it was written to be as dumb as humanly possible. It was somewhat amusing in a "what the hell is wrong with you" kind of way, I guess, but didn't do much for me beyond that.

Two things: 1. The forum software inexplicably loves to color-shift my avatars, and I have no idea why. It's not as noticeable with this one, but it was super noticeable with the previous one (to me, since I was very familiar with the previous image I had). 2. For some reason, the forum software would not accept this one in .png no matter what I did, so I actually had to save it in a .gif instead to avert some kind of inexplicable and unexplained error (and no, it wasn't due to the size, the limit of which is like 100 KB and mine was ~82 KB). So in conclusion...circle avatars and the whole avatar upload process is crap on here and the forum eating posts and really the whole post-submitting form is crap on here. I am trying to think of what got better on here since the forum upgrade...the easiness of embedding images and videos, I suppose? Of course, there have been many times where I *didn't* want to embed something and found it very difficult NOT to...so, really, all in all, it's been a bad deal. Curse the Obsidian forums!

Google says that's Justy Euki Tylor from The Irresponsible Captain Tylor. Right, then. Meanwhile, I can't figure out what KP's is from at a glance because approximately a billion different people have used it for their avatars across many different platforms and it's too much work to sort through that crap. I would also like to point out that I'm the only one that changed my avatar in good faith - the rest of these cretins did it just to troll you and/or simply follow the leader, @majestic, .