Bartimaeus

Lmao!

For a show like 1899 where there's clearly plans to develop the main story and character arcs over multiple seasons, where you won't have a clear picture of the entire work unless it's allowed to be completed, the fear of never being able to see where it's all supposed to go can be a pretty heavy one. I mean, not really for me because I'm more of a journey and not a destination kind of person (in fact, I feel conclusions are almost always the weakest part of most practically anything if you did enjoy the journey), but for other people that aren't that way, yeah, I can understand it.

Socialist safety nets, or cheaper video cards? It's your choice.

Very simply put, heavily relying on types of symbolism or themes that do not personally impact me to carry a work is a surefire way to make sure that piece is ineffective for me. So it is no surprise that though I read literally hundreds of classic literature short stories in high school English, I only did not dislike exactly one: short stories, by their very nature, are barebones and incredibly pointed while being seeped in cheap...no, let's say simple yet usually painfully abstract symbolic tricks and shortcuts to quickly convey ideas as a result of the limitations of the medium...and it's at the cost of virtually everything I normally find enjoyable about reading literature. I hate the short story medium, and themes and symbology are never what I wish to approach or analyze a work of fiction with first - only, perhaps, once I already love and can immerse myself with it. With all of that said... The Green Knight (2021). The recent discussion of it reminded me of how I was into Arthurian stuff when I was a kid, which also reminded me that I had intended to see this even though the trailer looked...well, never you mind that. Pretty sick hair, kid - you'd give some anime girls a run for their money. More pertinently... Essel (the prostitute?): I like your head better where it is. Gawain: I gave my word, I made a covenant. Essel: This is how silly men perish. Gawain: Or how brave men become great. Essel: Why greatness? Why is goodness not enough? [no answer, end scene] Thank you for being the voice of reason, Essel. Anyways, I had some mixed feelings about the film overall as I predictably had trouble identifying with Gawain's character and the journey he goes through, but I did at least eventually get a lot closer than say...The Northman where I wanted to behead the main character almost the entire film, and I did think the film ended on a high note. The first third of the film was a bit difficult to get through, but it at least did ultimately serve some purpose in concretely establishing Gawain's measure of character. Hey, at least I'm pretty up front when I just say "I can't watch this simply because I don't like the style/characters/framing" about something, .

im just glad they share the same series numbers with the desktop models now...but then again what a mess

Yeah, some people in particular circumstances are really struggling to post at all right now - check out the last few pages of the "forum issues" thread if you're so inclined:

Yeah, if I was doing anything that needed or really even encouraged me to upgrade, I'd probably find the motivation to do so. But gaming isn't really a major hobby for me anymore (and hasn't been for maybe seven years now), and even when I am inclined, it's by and large either retro-styled or straight up emulated crap that doesn't need it, so...

In my case, I can definitively see that I included a non-AP style quotation, which breaks posts one hundred percent of the time unless it's the very last part of a paragraph. I can't do AP style quotations, I just can't - it was torture back in high school and college, it's torture now, I ain't doing it. It's just a good idea to avoid quotation marks, apostrophes, and parentheses altogether since they seem to be the most inclined to break posts right now. Though apostrophes inside of words should be fine.

Another generation, another...uh, generation that I skip. Man, my crappy GTX 1060 is getting a little lean in the years... Although there could be a great mid-end card that I could eventually be persuaded by, regardless of how poor value the enthusiast products are.

Non-edit: The forums are trying to force me to use AP style quotations by not letting me post unless I convert, but I'm not falling for it - y'all will just have to deal with crappy image posts instead.

Yeah, egg prices have gotten pretty crazy. I think I've mentioned it here before: no eggs means Bart starts eating people. Protein is the only worthwhile food, and eggs are the king of easy, flexible protein that can be used in a wide variety of ways.

I wasn't allowed to read The Golden Compass as a small child, as my mom apparently thought/heard it was too anti-Christian. Of all places to draw the line, she chose the weirdest ones. Ten years later, she somehow ended up reading it and told me it was actually really good. Thanks, mom. Well, to be fair, she had pretty much given up the entire idea of organized religion and didn't want much to do with other American Christians by that point, so I guess it's understandable her stance had changed during the same time.

Man, I don't like the show, but that's ridiculous. It is folly to ever get attached to any Netflix show ever: always assume there won't be a second season.

Yes, it's better to not post anything more than a few sentences long at this point...which is kind of limiting for discussion.

EU4 was by far the most I've liked a game of that type, but the more mechanics they added to it, the less I liked it, . Did they ever add a way to just...disable stuff in a modular way? Any (predominantly singleplayer) game that has had so much feature creep over such a long period of time should have that, at least for some of the more hot-button issues. There's a few things that I would absolutely have to cut out of the game before I would ever consider picking it back up again because they annoy me too much.

Simply typing...uh, quotations-period-space (the actual characters) just about literally anywhere in a post appears to make a post unpostable. I can insert those characters into any post of mine anywhere (with the exception of immediately before a line break, because said line break culls the space) and it stops working. Truly, the most dastardly of characters. This was probably the cause of some of my other failed posts, since I do like them quotations-period-space combos. AP style quotations are trash. Edit: It also happens with apostrophe-period-space combos.

Image reply because the forums will not let me post it as text for some reason without breaking: Have fun figuring this one out, @majestic. The apostrophes in the first sentence were originally quotation marks, and the brackets in the second sentence were originally parentheses, but it still doesn't post even after changing them.

Nah, glass cannon always and forever in every game. If everything you attack immediately dies, there's less opportunity for you to get hit in the first place and also you mow through the game much faster to boot, . Many years ago, I intended to play through the Dooms, but at this point, I'd be lucky if I ever make it through just the original. Signalis (2022). Genre-wise, it's basically the same as one of my favorite games Yuppie Psycho (2D isometric atmospheric horror exploration), but you play as a Soviet Russian lady android technician that crash landed on a colonized frozen planet where some kind of virus has apparently driven most of the other androids to a zombie-like state, and you need to find your counterpart that you arrived with, your human pilot. I've played a few hours of it and have quite enjoyed it and its many little details, but I don't have a good grasp for where the story is going yet.

@majestic identified one set of circumstances regarding parentheses that causes it to happen, but I had it happen with another post recently that didn't have any and couldn't figure out what was causing it, and it was too late at night to want to bother to diagnose it so I just deleted a big chunk of the post instead and it finally went through.

Escaflowne...the movie, again. Last time I watched this, it was fresh off of having watched the show. I thought I'd try again, now having put a significant amount of time in between. Nope: with the exception of maybe two sequences, it's difficult not to feel like practically everything in this film is either lame, rushed, or botched in some manner. The two sequences that are alright are when Hitomi meets Merle in the stable and we have two characters talk like actual human beings for the first time in the film, and then when Hitomi and Van go to the tavern and talk about the cat sisters and the ancient song...and the latter one really only works if you remember the poor cat sisters from the show. Besides that, this movie's a big fat lotta nothing. O.K., I will also give a pass to Van very offhandedly carving a rock mouse for Merle as well as Merle singing with the other cat children, but that's it.

I largely didn't give about the mystery in Dark, I ain't gonna give about the mystery in a show that's a complete stylistic clone of Dark. All the characters who are belligerent and crappy to each other, the long pauses and vacant looks they give each other before they deliberately withhold information or lie to each other ad nauseum, the same annoying musical cues, THE BIG MYSTERY (which is probably simple in the overall idea but ultra-convoluted in execution)...come on, I already watched this show and more importantly, I didn't care for it, so I'm not watching it again. If someone here watches 1899 and likes it but you haven't seen Dark, go watch it, it's the same thing. Now, as has been well-documented, I don't really usually care for THE BIG MYSTERY in shows/movies/games/books, but I click on a crappy looking teen drama show... ...and the very first scene is of the same character having apparently recently bathed head to toe in someone else's blood while running on the streets. Now that's a mystery I'm curious to learn more about.

1899, episode 1: it's Dark but on a boat, or rather two boats into the trash it goes

Cowboy Bebop, episodes 3 and 4. Faye is introduced...and the show immediately gets better. As you might expect, I'm not super keep on her design, but her personality/mannerisms kind of remind me of an older version of Fuu from Samurai Champloo (albeit more intelligent/wacky/skilled...so maybe not like Fuu at all, but somehow the thought still entered my brain), and she's fun to listen to. We'll see how long that impression lasts.

That's what keeps breaking my posts lately...need to cut those nasty parentheses out of my life, I guess.