Bartimaeus

Opus (1995). Well, it's the last of four mangas that I've tried by Satoshi Kon, and while I couldn't stick with the other three, I guess I saved best for last. It's a...meta manga, which it makes itself clear pretty much right off the bat by opening the story up about a manga artist struggling to make deadlines. I don't usually care for meta-narratives, but the degree to which this is meta is...uh, kind of to an existentialist level. Big spoilers (even though I'm not going to write more than a paragraph about it):

Yeah, I posted it here probably like five or six months ago, . As for whats his face from SOAD, I do think I admitted I was somewhat biased given that my mom (and thus I) listened to them a lot when I was a small child, which can certainly be an influence. (e): Apparently, the thread hasn't moved much since I posted it, since this is just a few pages ago:

"Context" if you're like me and didn't get it at all (...it would've at least helped to know whom the lady was): I mean, I still don't really get it, besides that Antonio Brown is randomly being a bit of a piece of **** to Tom Brady after Tom Brady stuck his neck out for the guy multiple times and even let him live in his own home for a while, but I mean, I guess whatever. I don't really get the angle on the part of Brown here, so it's hard for it to strike me as being particularly funny.

Her initial statement after the 15k for the entire game and then 4k per day numbers came out was basically...no, actually, I'll just quote her: "I would like to put this whole bloody franchise behind me quite frankly". I said it when Platinum's response initially came out, but such a weak "I'm gonna peace out now" statement is really just not ever what you want to go with when what you previously said was incredibly vociferous - not if you weren't lying, anyways.

Primal, last 4 episodes of season 1. They went full horror for the three before the finale for some reason: plagues, the undead, witches, an unseen one-punch monster... Well, the witch one was kind of averted because one of the witches wondered why Primal Jack and his dinosaur were so loyal to each other, so she looked into their memories to see that they had lost their families together just like she had and decided to free them from the coven's clutches, but still. Anyways, we got a third character that actually knows how to talk (though not in English)...aaand she's gone (note: no, this is not the aforementioned witch). Man, they got me with that season cliffhanger, and it worked too, because now I want to watch season 2.

Everyone who is a fan of cinema should love Mr. Breen's work: they are all professionally made feature length films. Now, if you're someone who is not familiar with what films are, it's helpful to say that they're kind of like books, but thankfully not really at all like books.

It's probably an 8 right now, from what I can generally discern of the Packersphere. For myself personally, it's about a 3, because this is really just more of what I saw in the first few weeks, so nothing much has really changed and it's not terribly surprising to me. Packers must get significantly better in multiple areas if they want to stand a chance of getting into the (admittedly pretty weak) NFC playoffs. The offensive line has been playing poorly on the whole, the WRs and TEs are somewhere between bad and terrible (also most of them hurt), Aaron Rodgers has looked quite bad (no doubt compounded or possibly even caused by the former two issues), and the defense...generally plays well in the first half but has a tendency of falling apart in the second, probably because they're tired as hell from the offense completely and utterly failing to effectively play ball control. They can still turn things around if the offense can find itself, and that last wildcard spot is wiiide open with it being currently occupied by the 3-3 Rams, so I don't think the season's over yet, but...I think we'll have a better idea of whether the Packers are truly down and out within the next three to four weeks or so. On a side-note, I stopped playing fantasy football probably 3-4 years ago now, but I still do one pick'em group on ESPN with the friends that I used to play with, and I am currently beating the snot out of them all by a pretty significant margin, so much so that they aren't even talking to me about it anymore, which is a pretty surefire sign that you're being too successful at something versus your friends: ESPN says that I am currently in the 99.9th percentile out of the millions of ESPN pick'em players. So at least I have that going for me, which is nice. Sadly, I still have not taken up sports gambling, so I wasn't able to parlay my apparent wild pick'em success this season into free money, but...you take your wins where you get them, right?

Franky is a pretty trash character unless he's magically gotten better in the second season, and it doesn't sound like he has.

Gunsmith Cats, episode 2 of 3. If action shows spent less time on unmotivated action and a little more on writing and building up the characters to the effect of making the action more meaningful (and also preferably clever and fun), me and action shows would get along much better. Sadly, that's not the case...except for Gunsmith Cats. It blows my mind that a show like Noir, which steadfastly refused to do...anything at all with its characters in favor of repeating what were effectively the same mindless action sequences over and over, got 26 episodes while this is just a 3 part OVA. Well, this one looks like it was even more expensive to produce than Noir (which is no easy feat with how good that show looked), but still. Ah well, sometimes short and sweet is ultimately the better way to go: I think it's always better to have an 8/10 (great) movie's worth of content than simply a 7/10 (good) show's worth instead, but opinions may differ depending on how easy it is for you to commit time to a show...and possibly how much of a generally disagreeable person you are (spoiler: I am the most disagreeable).

She did serve more heads of state than anyone since Churchill, though.

I'm not familiar with that character, but it sure looks like someone that she would voice. She'll probably always be Fall-from-Grace to me.

Instead of the old "appeal to authority" fallacy, I'm thinking we should come up with a new one called "appeal to social media", where we are all immediately skeptical of anything that starts with someone throwing a hissy fit on social media. It's hard to believe, but some people just lie on the internet - imagine that, lying on the internet: how uncouth! I'm sure she has the offer in writing somewhere...kind of up to her to prove she wasn't lying. But honestly, I sometimes underestimate how dumb some people can be in assuming that someone's not going to flat-out lie about these sorts of things when it can easily be proven one way or the other. If you go on social media to drag someone or a company through the mud and you're straight up not telling the truth, surely it can't be a surprise when whomever you maligned punches back. Story quotes her as saying Platinum is lying but "I would like to put this whole bloody franchise behind me quite frankly get on with my life in the theatre"; sure sounds like an "ight imma head out" kind of statement to me. This also now makes a lot more sense why Jennifer Hale was hired...hire an actual professional when the old talent goes crazy, huh? Hey, speak for yourself: her voice is always a joy every time I hear and recognize it, .

Probably only of interest to majestic, but on the NTSC DVD for the 4 episode Vampire Miyu OVA, I found a sliver of a video (literally 0 seconds long) that played about 15 distinct frames back-to-back. I'm unsure what the point of this video sliver was, but it is useful as a point of comparison. Here is one such frame: I remembered seeing this in the show, in the final episode. Interestingly, this tiny video sliver is encoded progressively so the frames are not butchered by interlacing and telecining like everything NTSC always is...but here is the same shot from the actual full episode on the same NTSC DVD: How something is supposed to look versus how it actually looks, huh? Reality sure can be harsh.

Packers aren't good, which I think I mentioned before. Now there starts to be a question of whether they're actually bad or not.

I had to look: hoo boy, I do believe this helps explain a few things, .

It seems like most would agree that budget wasn't really the problem there: don't think throwing more at it would really help.

Believe it or not, Spider's Bane is only +2 and applies the spell "Free Action" to the wielder...but the general idea of "kill all the spiders before you can obtain the spider-killing sword that you can't really use for its specific purpose of killing spiders because you already killed all the spiders" remains, .

No disagreement there, she did a lousy job representing herself. Why attack Jennifer Hale when she's got nothing to do with it? It obviously came from a place of emotion and distress from multiple angles (not being able to reprise what is presumably her most treasured role in a major game series that she was well-liked for is one thing already before you throw in needing money to survive), so I get it, but certainly not the most effective plea. I read earlier that before they "awarded" Hellena the role, they opened it up for others to audition, which is interesting. I don't know enough about the voice acting business to know whether that's typical, but it seems odd to already be auditioning replacements before you give the lowball offer. I can't imagine somebody like Charles Martinet (Mario, Luigi, Wario et al.) having to do that for each game that uses his voice, and she's already played the role in five different games as it is...but I don't know, maybe that's just part of Platinum Games' process: not every company will do things the same way, particularly across continents. Again, not likely something we'll get an answer about. Ah, the beautiful future of 'AI': just another one of those boots forever stomping on the face of humanity in search of a quick buck.

Most non-star VAs do have a second job: it is and has always been an underpaid and undervalued industry that preys on people's desire to be a part of something and be known for a role, possibly make it big. Regardless, it still doesn't take away the value of their work and impact whether they're being offered competitive rates for the roles they perform; replacing her with Jennifer Hale makes it pretty clear that it wasn't really about the money. Why Platinum Games seemingly wanted to replace her is a much more interesting question that we probably won't get an answer for. Personally, the little I've seen of those games makes me wish I could forcibly silence all voice-acting because of how gosh-awful the general voice direction is, so hey, if they really want to save some money, they could hire me so that I could fire everybody and just use text boxes that one hundred percent would be totally fitting and completely not clash with the style of the game at all, .

Considering they got Jennifer Hale to replace her, who almost certainly commanded a much higher asking price given her experience and fame in the industry, it would suggest that they simply wanted someone different and the lowball offer was their way of trying to shift blame ("we tried to get her back, but she refused the offer"). I haven't played the game or heard her work, so I can't comment on the wisdom of this. Yes: one should perhaps instead look up how much travel nurses are paid in the U.S. - it is substantially higher than regular nurses for short-term positions to cover staffing deficiencies, either because of simply not having the normal manpower for whatever reason or because of temporary situations that require more (e.g. surges in covid). Even that's still not exactly analogous to true contract work like you'd find in the tech industry, where e.g. external computer architects and engineers can get paid literal hundreds of dollars per hour for a job that may only be as short as 4 hours...or possibly much longer, depending on what it is. Point is, you don't know when the next job will come in for contract work, since by its nature it's irregular and unpredictable employment, so if your skills are valued enough for people to hire you for contract work, it necessarily has to be a lot more so the person can afford to stay afloat; if they can't, then it wouldn't be sustainable and it wouldn't be a thing.

As I wasn't ever going to touch this show with a ten foot pole anyways, it is quite petty and besides the point (also, possibly a little racist...against elves?). If the characters and writing were good, it would be more or less irrelevant immediately.

I have been informed that the following picture is apparently Elrond from The Rings of Power (yes, this is actually real): I am now starting to understand what @majestic means when he says the elves don't look quite elven, because these guys look hilarious. However, as I sadly have not watched the actual show, I have the fortunate distinction of being able to pass on discussion of the series in any meaningful capacity.

"I'm a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms." Gunsmith Cats (1995), featuring Rally (left) and May (right) are two gunsmiths who maintain and sell guns in the city. But actually, they're bounty hunters who have a propensity for bending the law a little too much themselves and end up, against their best interests, getting roped into helping the feds. For some reason, these two also live together and like to bicker about everything. The first episode (of a 3-part OVA) was genuinely quite fun. I've had this on my to-watch for a couple of years now, but my history in trying out old action-oriented shows/movies has been largely disappointing on the whole, so I'd grown skeptical of it over time. Hopefully the next two will be good as well.

All teams play on TNF each year, it makes sense to put these two in it together.

@Gromnir Do their words become worth less if they initially lied to the FBI? Genuinely asking, I don't know about this sort of thing.