Bartimaeus

Interestingly... Tough to win awards when you bomb, but I guess you can still earn a lot of nominations. This was pretty much the opposite of the type of story I would've liked to have seen during this time period, so it was a pretty tough scene for me.

Babylon (2022). It's made by the same director as the J.K. Simmons-starring Whiplash. It is nominally a film about Hollywood in the 20s-30s and a fictionalized account of three characters at different stages of their life during the shift from the silents to the talkies. It's an incredibly self-indulgent celebration of the glory of Hollywood in pretty much all the ways I was hoping it wouldn't be while paying some only marginally effective criticism to how the industry chews up and spits people out at the same time. It's not the worst thing I've ever seen by any means, but it was a little difficult for me to believe that the director of Whiplash made this. I don't think I really care for Margot Robbie, though I'm still probably going to watch her I, Tonya at some point, and if I don't like her in that, that'll probably be it.

I sometimes think about Amentep saying that Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull is fine and more or less in line with the rest of that franchise, and I don't know, maybe he's right and I've just lost sight of the forest for the trees because of a few issues that I can't get over that at least some other people can. I was never the biggest Indiana Jones fan in the first place, but I can watch the first three movies - the fourth one hurts my brain to sit through (not being hyperbolic here, I have to cover my eyes at many junctures throughout the film in order to keep "watching" it), and that's not something I can really get over even if I wanted to, and it probably unfairly paints my view of the film and others like it. No, it makes sense, and I think it's something that every medium suffers to some degree. One only has to go through your Steam queue to see that it feels like the vast majority of games, particularly AAA games, suffer from the same issue: endlessly deriving and iterating on the same gameplay concepts that have been done so many times already. Companies usually go for what they believe is a safe return of investment, whether it's television, movies, or video games. That's probably not ever going to change because the people that run these companies view their medium as being a vehicle for making money first, being entertainment second, and being art...probably 9th or 10th or worse, .

Cowboy Bebop, episode 6: Faye eats dog food, Fatty eats cake, and Giraffe eats bullets. There was a very particular musical cue in this episode that was also used for Satoshi Kon's Magnetic Rose, which threw my brain for a loop when I heard it. Turns out, the same composer, Yoko Kanno, did both movies, so I guess it's alright even if it's pretty weird to re-use music like that. Magnetic Rose used it first, . P.S. I kind of forgot I was watching this show. P.P.S. This might have been my least favorite episode so far. I seem to not particularly care for when the show tries to get more serious about anything. So far, it feels at its best when it's being purely silly. You can dislike something while still finding it enjoyable. Go with that!

Eye of the beholder and all that: I love Undertale's visuals, . Also, Morrowind looks more visually appealing to me than either Oblivion or Skyrim, so I just don't think we're going to agree on visuals very much at all.

Let me be clear about what I mean when I say "imbecilic emoji spam". I think emojis are in a disgusting art style and it's difficult not to have distaste for them wherever and whenever they are used, along with any other similar react-type graphics that don't distinguish themselves with a very different style. Even on here, how can someone use stuff like "", "", "" and not immediately think "hey, wait a second, these awful graphics are representing me, I don't want that, let me figure out an alternative"? Maybe people who aren't brain-damaged (i.e. not me, unfortunately) aren't quite so sensitive and don't even think about something nearly so minute as the art style of a reaction graphic and what it conveys? I'm not sure. However, the word "spam" was a key component of what I was talking about: it is not simply the act of using an emoji in a relatively normal manner to convey some kind of feeling, it is the act of spamming them (using a pile of them all at once) that changes my attitude about the person from "I don't know why they use them like this" to "if I never interacted with this person ever again, it would be too soon". So fortunately, that statement did not apply to anyone here on the Obsidian forums with but maybe one or two exceptions whom I have already blocked one way or another. Speaking of which, how's the ignore list for "the power to control"? When was the last time you turned on daytime/cable television? If it's been recently and you feel you still can make that statement...well, let me do some self-censoring here myself, . Hold on, I did not do that. There have absolutely been many instances of me being a toxic jerk about something like this (see sentence immediately preceding above the quote block!), but this is not one of them. I have not watched a single second of The Rings of Power outside of a couple of short random/contextless clips that were shown to me so I really have no clear feelings about it*, so my first paragraph was genuinely not at all directed towards you and The Rings of Power but rather towards the general feeling of watching something and thinking "man, this is absolutely terrible" while then immediately coming to face with people who love it and being like "what the hell, they practically love it for all the reasons that I hate it" and the increasingly negative feelings that unconsciously arise as a result. I would not have been nearly so extreme in how I said that if it was specifically about you. I mean, probably. I've always known that I can go way too hard on stuff that I simply do not understand, but I've always been willing to apologize for it as well, . *In fact, when the main thread/discussion of The Rings of Power was ongoing, I distinctly remember someone on here saying that (paraphrased) "the writing/dialogue in The Rings of Power is actually much closer to J.R.R. Tolkien in style than Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings", and I took that as an anti-recommendation for the show because I've read all three Lord of the Rings books and kind of low-key hate them specifically because of J.R.R. Tolkien's writing style, especially as someone who's an aphantasiac (no mind's eye, i.e. no ability to visually imagine anything, so writing style/prose being to my tastes is critical for me when reading). So I did not investigate any further, and I would imagine that was probably wise.

It's not weird at all. If I took all your favorite things and turned them all into steaming piles of dog poop, and then it turns out you don't like dog poop, well, what the hell is wrong with you? Why don't you like your steaming piles of dog poop? These steaming piles of dog poop were committee-formulated and market-tested specifically to appeal to your dog poop tastes - there must be something very wrong with you to not like your steaming piles of dog poop! Maybe you're even an -ist or two for not liking your dog poop... Everyone else in the world loves these steaming piles of dog poop, why don't you?! It doesn't help that we're all more connected than we've ever been. Before the internet, if you didn't like something, maybe you told some of your closest friends and you all talked about it and then you usually moved on - no hard feelings, or at least there shouldn't be. Now if you frequent a forum like this or view comments on social media, you could post about how you tried but didn't enjoy something, and immediately the next person that replies talks about how GREAT it was while making sure to hit you with their imbecilic emoji spam. One doesn't really have to do with the other, but it is difficult not to unconsciously associate them nevertheless. Negative feelings about something have infinite opportunity to grow while allowing practically nothing for it to reverse course thanks to the internet.

I think the palette is a bit too vibrant, it could use just a little softening up a la the MOTHER/EarthBound games (starting with those blue menus!), but otherwise I think it's perfectly fine. But then again, I think 3D game graphics are largely flaming dog crap and vastly prefer 2D graphics of all kinds, so you know, different strokes for different folks.

There's a difference insofar that techniques, trends, tropes et al. are all fairly insular for each from the other. If Disney started requiring that all of their flagship titles be rendered in a cubist art style and it turned out to be wildly successful, you wouldn't expect the anime industry to start copy-catting them. That's an extreme example, but you get what I mean - they may not be different mediums (...although maybe 3D animation vs. 2D animation should be considered so given how different their limitations are), but they're distinct enough that it's very difficult to put them under the same umbrella and make anything but extremely broad statements that apply to both. I was going to say "the thing that really bothers me with 3D animation is..." with one specific idea in mind, but then like four other things that are also really huge problems for me popped into my brain as I was writing that, so never mind. I am not entirely against digital animation (after all, I certainly like a number of examples of it), but I'm almost definitely not ever going to get used to 3D stuff at this point - it would've happened already if it was ever going to. I wonder if these industries need to like...straight-up crash so they can get a reset. Downsize the number of shows being made, get less niche, figure out what works and what doesn't. Well, at least with anime, I can take comfort in the fact that Japan is killing itself by being literally the fastest aging country in the world. No more Japanese people, no more trash anime, . Unfortunately, Hollywood is going to take a little more time... Yeah, I'm appreciative in that I like a lot of simple character-driven stuff, and that never really requires much of a budget, so I'm probably always going to be able to find some movies that I like every year. If you're someone that instead likes the big movies but conversely find the medium has practically left you behind for a variety of reasons, you're going to be in a much worse spot.

why are the textboxes/menus blue i know this is a small detail in the grand scheme of things, but it's kinda triggering me right now hate to say it, but blue is simply the incorrect color for this purpose

Now, to be fair, I said "spiel" and not "rant". There's a difference. The difference is...that I tried to imply that I didn't sound completely unhinged, but, well, you know me: of course I sounded utterly deranged. Okay, but for real: I actually didn't limit my talk about it to anime at all. My nieces have grown up with both Disney and Studio Ghibli films and the like, so they don't really understand that there's a difference between Western animation and anime, at least not such as we would understand it. The issue of hand-drawn animation vs. computer animation is even worse for Western 3D animation, so it wouldn't make much sense to criticize just anime for that. There was a particular scene in the movie that was particularly impressive in terms of art and motion, and I mentioned to my older niece something along the lines of "can you imagine drawing each frame of this scene over and over, with all the little moving details, so that it looks like everything is in motion like this?". She responded by saying, wow, it must've taken months to draw this entire film. Yup. Definitely months. Hey, a hundred artists and animators taking a few dozen months to finish a film is still technically months, . Speaking of anime features, did you ever get around to the other two parts of Memories?

Yeah, unlike Fireflies and other outwardly deliberate tug-at-the-heart-strings affairs, it doesn't really seem to be intended to destroy the viewer, but because it does so for at least me while also going through a very full spectrum of different feelings (both positive and negative) for many different angles regarding life, it feels so much more encompassing, personal, and powerful than practically anything else I can think of. Throw in almost every other element being chef's kiss, and it's as close to both objective and subjective perfection as I've ever experienced. Some things just feel like they must be some kind of miracle for them to exist exactly as they were made - for all the different parts to have come together so perfectly at precisely the only time they could have been made with no issues of anything about it ever being problematic, unnecessary, or otherwise negative to even slightly weigh the overall experience down. Whisper of the Heart is it, and I simply do not see any kind of opportunity for anything else to even have the remote possibility of being able to out-do it with regards to my ever so particular tastes. But that's okay, because it deserves its place at the top for me.

Whisper of the Heart (1995). The nieces are home for spring break, and they wanted to see the "prequel" to The Cat Returns. I actually tried to have them watch it once in the past probably like a year ago, but I didn't really expect them to care for it because it's not the silly fantastical adventure that The Cat Returns is, and they kind of lost interest like 20 minutes in. But for some reason, they were in the mood today and unlike last time, it kept their attention the entire duration and they loved it even with some of the sillier awkward teenage stuff that they find embarrassing, so watching it with them was positively magical. Still my favorite movie of all time, I had to hide tears from my nieces at several junctures. (e): Also, oh my gosh this movie is so gorgeous, even my older niece commented a few times on how insane some of the artwork was, which, of course, made me launch into a short spiel about everything being hand-drawn compared to the computer animation of today, which only seemed to break her brain even more. Hurts my soul we'll never see its kind again, but I can be thankful at least it exists.

https://www.nexusmods.com/hogwartslegacy/mods/137 Doing it purely by offset will be different for every game, possibly even for different patches of the same game - if anything is added somewhere in the the file before you get to the ansel offset, the offset you're looking for would change. How much that actually happens in practice will depend on the game in question. The alternative method I don't know as much about, but it's almost definitely still specific to the FF15 .exe (especially if one makes assumptions based on the poster saying "until significant changes are made to the .exe"). This one I would actually need the game in order to test (and I don't have it). Also not sure if Denuvo would make it more difficult or not. Eh, looks like you're probably gonna have to wait for someone who's a little more hands-on to figure this one out, .

Mind posting a link to the instructions? Curious to see how complicated they are, and googling "hogwarts legacy ansel camera hex edit" didn't turn anything up besides a random 4chan page I'm not going to look through. I've done some hex editing in my time, so if there are instructions already laid out, it shouldn't be too difficult...in theory.

I know somebody who was using an ancient Core 2 Duo with a GTX 970 up until just a couple of years ago... The system, I understand, had some performance inconsistencies.

I actually watched all of this year's half-time show - it's the first time I've sat through an entire one. Normally, I bow out after maybe 30 seconds, but this year's was such a hilariously awful clown show right off the bat that I started cackling immediately before the soul-crushing cringe could even set in. I don't think anything or anyone that might appear in the Super Bowl half-time show could ever interest me musically, so I guess the best chance to make me stay is to try to induce scornful laughter. A real bang-up job this year, I'd say.

This Psych episode is as close as I'll ever get to watching Twin Peaks. Well...actually, I've seen a couple of episodes of Twin Peaks, so I guess I should say it's as close as I'll ever get to enjoying it.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with Milly. Gerty...it is admittedly not great, but else are you gonna do?

I've never known an Amy that I've liked even going back to childhood, so I can't help but instinctively prefer Meal, . Home girl just didn't want to be an Amy, can't blame her!

Milly and Gerty aren't bad nicknames...

Very apropos, considering I just talked to someone else about Top Gun: Maverick today and how I think the only thing I can ever see Tom Cruise is as a murdering psychopath thanks to his role in Collateral. Whenever he plays the "hero", I always can't help but think how much better the movie would be if someone just randomly blew his (character's) brains out during the first act before we're introduced to the real main character. I'm pretty sure I have actually seen that Robin Hood, because like you just mentioned, I remember Alan Rickman being...well, you know, Alan Rickman for it, but I literally...Kevin Costner was in it? Are you sure? ... Oh my gosh, he's literally Robin Hood. See, this is what I'm talking about...

Ooh, rough way to end the Super Bowl, ticky-tacky holding call deciding the game, but not terribly surprising for the NFL.

We share the same favorite Indiana Jones film. #destroyedbyfactsandlogic

Helluva recommendation, hard to disagree. Except that while there are 5 films in my top 50 that start with "The", there are actually exactly double that in my bottom 50 films. So I guess it's actually pretty risky...