Bartimaeus

the fact that they have 'them' argue in front of you the second time you meet her and it's literally just the same voice back to back arguing against itself and then jeanette 'disappears' in a room without any other entrances/exits besides the one you're already standing in surely does not help conceal the mystery a lot of the voiced dialogue is...I mean, quite clumsy and ungood (that introductory cutscene was a real "holy crap, just what am I playing here" moment), but in such a way that is now largely amusing and charming to me, so I think I've come to terms with it and it's fine

Double posting here, but I got absolutely clobbered by the werewolf in the diner like five times before I realized yeah, okay, I just don't think I can fight this guy right now. Not that I really wanted to, because there's (currently) no reason to fight him in the first place, but he just straight up Wolverines me. Doesn't help that my combat stats are absolute trash, since I keep putting all my points into...well, non-combat stuff. It's a 'final death' speedrun trying to kill that guy, though.

Vampire: the Masquerade. So I started over as a Ventrue...and I made it a half hour before I realized that the insane Malkavian dialogue was actually way more interesting and certainly fun to read, so it just didn't really make sense to me not to go back to my schizophrenic cheerleader oracle. This game is unbelievably jank and silly, but...it's also somehow really fun, probably the most fun I've had playing something in a long time. Maybe modern games should try to be more janked, I don't know. I now have a sweet katana that I got from some Japanese(?) vampire that initially beat the crap outta me until I figured out that I needed to use Bloodbuff, and it's pretty dope. Also, most everyone that wasn't manic goth girl Jeanette says my lady sounds like a total whackjob, but for some reason, they suddenly don't seem to have much of an issue with it when I seduce them. Funny, that.

I couldn't decide between a Ventrue and a Malkavian, the two of which seemed to have the best non-combat stats/skills, ended up flipping a coin and it landed Malkavian. My character looks like an insane cheerleader of very questionable moral fiber, but she does have nice hair, so...was that bad? I see now that it might have had some effect on the player dialogue, which might explain why it seems all my options were all written by a madman?

vampire: the masquerade (/ bloodlines?) holy crap, this is one jank game anyone got any general tips for someone who's never played this game before

which is definitely untenable for me, given the kinds of games i (don't) play although in reality, given the games that i (don't) play, i could probably just go pick up an rtx 2060 for $100 and call it a day, or wait another year until the rtx 3060 is thereabouts the same place

The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (2013). I don't know if it's just because I'm watching it for the second time, or because this time I watched it in Japanese, but it went from an "I like it" to an "I love it". Isao Takahata is the man, as always.

i'm never gonna be able to justify buying another mid-range gpu in my life, am i? once upon a time, mid-range cards did a decent enough job and only cost $200 and not $400...

cowboy bebop episode 9 idk why i have such a difficult time mustering up any motivation to watch this show, it's generally fine, yet it's still really difficult "Hey, Jet, did you know that there are three things that I hate? Rugrats, beasts, and tomboys..." Spike has a very...interesting idea of "tomboy". I'm not exactly sure what Faye all qualifies as, but I'm pretty sure it isn't quite that. Maybe it varies from culture to culture. (e): Episode 10, the one about Jet and his ex-girlfriend. So you know how Sailor Moon would often introduce "guest" characters who would be the target of the villains for that episode, before then disappearing forever from the show once that particular episode was over? They might even be someone one of our characters supposedly already knows or was friends with or whatever. It's frankly not an uncommon tool for a lot of shows, but for something fairly silly like Sailor Moon, who really cares, right? At the end of the day, it's about our characters, not the randos that come and go, and the show itself usually seems to know it and behaves accordingly. In a show like Cowboy Bebop, doing this sort of thing feels quite a bit more grave when the show tries to treat its random guest characters very seriously and attempts to make real emotional beats out of it. I mention it here because so much of the focus of this episode, instead of being on Jet and his struggles with how he was abandoned by her and had to cope and move past it, seemed to come from the point of view of the ex-girlfriend and her new guy, who were only just first introduced (heck, even just mentioned!) this episode. We don't even really get to see Jet experience any kind of real character growth for it, because not only was this entire thing just introduced this episode, from the moment he sees the girlfriend again, he already seems to have completely forgiven her and just wants some closure, so there's never really any question of how he's going to resolve the situation. It seems a very strange way of trying to develop and resolve what should be serious character arcs for your characters, and I think this is why the show feels largely ineffective whenever it tries to get serious for me. For silly popcorn entertainment, this show is fine...but I've yet to see it successfully do anything else.

stumping intensifies imo nuggets should win, but miami winning would make their run one of the very greatest of all time (especially relative to their abysmal talent level, honestly makes zero sense that they made it past the first round, never mind to the finals)

I will feel a little bit better about the Bucks losing to the Heat in 5 games if the Boston Celtics lose to the Heat in 4 games.

Magical Angel Creamy Mami. Yes, that is the real name of the show; no, I did not pick it; yes, it is supposed to be for little girls. There were four different but very similar magical girl shows made by Studio Pierott all in the mid-80s, and Creamy Mami was the first of them. I've already watched Magical Emi, but there's also Magical Fairy Persia and Pastel Yumi, and though I tried both of those out, neither of them really clicked. Creamy Mami's first episode introduced the "magical girl" element of the show...somewhat differently than the others. An invisible spaceship, which curiously looks like Noah's Ark, descends from the heavens. Mami is the only one that can apparently see said spaceship and decides to approach it. The aliens, who earlier came across a cat and who evidently decided to shapeshift into these strange "cutesy" versions of one, are quite impressed with this and suck her up into the ship. Maybe you thought I was exaggerating, but no, that's literally exactly what happened. Inside the spaceship, she rides a goat into a mass of roaring blue flame and becomes some kind of holy warrior. Sorry about all the little girl underwear in these gifs, but this wacky crap must be seen by at least one other human. After slaying a dragon and getting swallowed by a sea monster, she meets this...thing, the apparent master of the ship. That's an alien. That's a literal space alien. Mami "hugs" the alien a little too tightly with her hands... ...and she is summarily ejected (by way of instant apparition) from the spaceship, and I guess now she's a magical girl thanks to some alien tech she got. She gets home and her mom spanks the hell out of her for being out so late at night. What a great first episode. You know, something about all of this seems ever so slightly less wholesome compared to Sailor Moon...just a little bit. Forget the power of love and friendship, it's literally just aliens! This reminds me that there was a very weird episode in Magical Emi where Emi got lost with another girl that was new to the show, and the other girl kept talking about getting off Earth with no prior hint or explanation at what she could possibly be talking about...and it turns out, she was also a magical girl with her own little alien familiar! The episode ended with Emi getting back home and that other girl never coming back to the show: I can only assume that Studio Pierott was planning some kind of Magical Space Witch Girl cinematic universe that sadly never panned out.

I've watched the first two episodes so far. It felt extremely off-kilter and not really in a good way, but I'll give it a few more to see if it can find its bearing. Between The Powerpuff Girls, Samurai Jack, and Primal (and if I ever get around to watching Symbionic Titan, probably that too), Genndy has earned my patience.

i've watched an embarrassing amount of this show as well, mostly because my nieces like it and are still holding me hostage PLEASE SEND HELP

the Mario movie no, this one stinks, I was talking about the other Mario movie no, this is insane nightmare fuel, I meant the OTHER other Mario movie That's the one! Super Mario Brothers: The Great Mission to Rescue Princess Peach (1986). Peach suddenly crawls out of Mario's TV screen while he's up late playing video games and she asks Mario if he can protect her from Bowser, so of course Bowser and his minions immediately follow her through the TV and kidnap her, taking her back through the TV so that he can marry her. Yes, they are going to keep re-using that idea for literally our entire lives. Mario and Luigi have the figure out what the hell happened and how to try to rescue her. Random screenshots: also i watched the chris pratt mario movie my neices are holding me hostage pls send help

I may not have totally understood the usage of "stumping" myself: my understanding of the word was it meant to go around being vocally in support of something. Usually politically related, so like a presidential candidate calling it quits so that they can go throw their weight behind another candidate that they feel is the best choice (especially if they make speeches and/or go to rallies to do so), or perhaps something more like Bernie Sanders going around yelling at clouds all of us to raise the minimum wage. I figured both of those would qualify as "stumping".

It shared the same name and I didn't think to check the author before starting it. I'm pretty astonished myself that it would apparently qualify as some kind of outrageous ignorance of literature worth commenting upon - exactly what percentage of posters here do you think knew there was a series of Peter Pan prequel books in the first place? Before I mentioned it in that thread, that is. I am guessing it was, and is still, not very high.

General rule of thumb is that if a service will let you watch, read, or listen to something, that service has necessarily opened up a golden opportunity for you to permanently own it outside their means of control as well. Whether or not a particular end user finds this of interest or will make use of it is another matter entirely...

been stumping for denver vs miami in the finals, might actually get it

I have a noted and remarkably poor tolerance for continuing to sitting through at length things that I do not enjoy, be it music, television, or books. When it comes to specifically English literature, I always had a tendency to start thoroughly skipping the books I just wasn't feeling, which was a lot of them because "classic" middle school-level, high school-level, and college-level English literature was full of books that I would've either returned to the library or donated immediately if given the choice. It's really not any different from the conversation I had with Gromnir regarding Citizen Kane: I've enjoyed a lot of very old films, but I didn't really enjoy Citizen Kane basically at all even after having specifically taken the time to read about how it pioneered and revolutionized film-making beforehand, so what am I supposed to take away from the experience? Bleh. Suffice to say, not only will 'ignorance' of such subjects abound from the point of view of someone more traditionally 'learned', it's also pretty clear that I will have very different takeaways compared to most others...and any appreciation I have for something will often derive from things that others evidently do not understand, and I am fine with that. On a side-note, my comment about the Peter Pan book was actually in the movie thread, not the book thread. I am somewhat curious as to what you would take issue with, given that I didn't really write much about it in the first place...mainly, it focused on Peter himself, so I suppose you had a very different reading of his character? On the subject of music, I just don't enjoy the vast majority of music, which is why I don't typically comment in here on other people's music: I try stuff out, and I almost always go "oh, yeah, this isn't for me" very quickly. When watching all of those "top hits from each month for [given decade]" videos, I came across just two artists from all of those videos combined whom I took an interest in (Gogi Grant and Melanie), whom I subsequently wrote down and said "I'm going to check out an album from both of them", which I did and subsequently kind of wrote off because even though I liked the specific songs I heard in those videos, I still didn't really enjoy their music as a whole. That's usually the way it goes for me.

I think the film you're talking about is just called "Mother!" (2017), but I could be wrong. Though I haven't seen it, there is an obligatory "won't somebody axe-murder Darren Aronofsky so that he can't hurt me anymore, please and thank you?" and all that that I have to mention. Sorry, the man's made two of my very most unpleasant film experiences...well, maybe more than that if I ever watch any of his other films. If I am wise, that shouldn't happen, but...well, you know, it is me. (e): Nope, turns out, there's also a film called "The Mother" (2023) starring Jennifer Lopez, whereas I got confused because Mother! stars Jennifer Lawrence, and apparently I thought the "J-Lo" moniker applied to Jennifer Lawrence as well. Phew, okay, that's my bad. I believe The Jungle Book remake is supposed to actually be pretty good by all accounts, but I haven't seen it myself. The animated Jungle Book certainly has its charms, particularly given the largely great musical scenes, but I've watched it in its entirety in recent memory and can say that I certainly remember it being a lot better overall when I watched it as a kid. So you never know, sometimes good things come from even totally wrongheaded ideas.

now and forever but actually i just wanted to see if it was as bad as it looked, which...it wasn't, but I still didn't much like it I was recommended Hereditary at one point, but I never got around to seeing it.

I don't know how other people view this thread, but most of the music people post in here I can only (valiantly) persevere 5-10 seconds through before closing out. I could start marking everybody's posted with "Confused" reactions if you like, as that's about all that would seem appropriate.

The Witches (1966). Would've probably been a lot more interesting if it was made ten years later, by which time film sensibilities had changed a bit...ends up feeling fairly safe and a little stale for a "there's a witch!" movie. Joan Fontaine as protagonist lady was nice enough, though. Kind of reminded me a bit of Disney's Sleeping Beauty in some ways, which was a bit strange. Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland (1989). Solid children's animated film with great animation made mostly by a Japanese studio (a very troubled collaborative development between East and West, as I understand it), not particularly innovative writing or plot but fun enough even for adults...I think better watched in Japanese than in English, though - the English cast and direction is a bit...inconsistent. Peter Pan & Wendy (2023). It was a great big old mess. I'm not particularly fond of the Disney animated film, but I do like the original novel, and this film feels like...a fairly direct adaptation of the animated film while also making a lot of changes to the story and characters that also did not come from the book...some of them fine, some of them not so fine. I couldn't but help feeling very terrible for the poor lady that played Tinker Bell - not only was her CGI just atrocious and it was a noticeable eyesore any time she was on screen as a result, they also didn't let her speak for just about the entire film and she had to resort to goofy and over-the-top expressions that could work in a cartoon, but do not at all in a live-action film. She was also probably the most noticeable character re-write throughout the film, as they chose to not have her fight with or backstab Wendy, which will only bring even more scrutiny upon her character from adult fans of the original film/book wondering why the heck she's so different from previous versions. Overall, the film feels largely like a bit of a retread of other similarly misguided Disney live-action remakes like Beauty and the Beast and Cinderella and the like, so if you didn't like those and the others, probably leave it alone. But this one at least doesn't have Emma Watson's sandpaper-esque singing in it, so at least there's that. That made my skin crawl in Beauty and the Beast and that was the last one of these live-action remakes that I saw as a result (I'm pretty sure?), so it's a small but notable improvement.

That tracks - even during the Bucks' title win in 2020, I kept thinking they'd get eliminated each round. Miami in the first round? They just beat the snot outta of us the previous season. The Nets superteam? No way in hell. Atlanta in the conference finals is when I started believing...then we lost the first game at home, and then Giannis hyper-extended his leg and was out for the rest of the series. Putting faith into anything or anybody is the exact precise moment that the world stabs you in the back for it.