Bartimaeus

I tried that crafting system probably like twice before I said that I was literally never, ever going to craft anything. I kept to my word...of course, I also quit the game when I got to like level 30 and stopped trying to play MMOs thereafter, .

If it was a joke, it made me burst out laughing; if it wasn't a joke, well...it still made me laugh. RIP their dev group, still need to play through that game.

To be honest, within the first half of the film, I found the gore to be more interesting than anything else that happened. I was quite certain that I was going to despise the film overall by that point and was heavily debating just turning it off, and while I can't say that I'm glad that I persevered, doing so did at least improve my disposition towards the film. The Seventh Seal very much looks and sounds like a film that I would hate on multiple levels...but then again, I very much enjoyed The Tragedy of Man (2011) and that doesn't sound very dissimilar in premise. But then again again, animation is a different medium that can play by very different rules at times... I don't know, it has six different sub-sections and contains quotes from critics calling out other critics for their apparently terrible readings of the film, presumably with follow-ups by other critics doing the same to them. There doesn't seem to be any kind of consensus on what exactly the film was about or was trying to convey, just a whole bunch of different ideas that are possible or seemed like they were intended. There are suggestions that Persona is actually an "impressionist vampire film". Which...I mean, I guess I can't disagree with because of how open-ended the film is, but that's certainly not where my lame brain was going with it. Meanwhile, the director says that while he had specific ideas in mind when he made it, he's not going to tell anybody what they were and instead welcomes any and all interpretations because that's more meaningful than him forcing any particular view. Which is probably the correct way to handle it, but still not the most helpful.

Persona (1966). A lot of the time, I pick out movies that that seem interesting to me that I don't actually try until months or years later, by which time I have no idea what originally made me interested in them or what their premise was, and I just start it blindly. This can be great because I don't have much of an idea of what to expect and therefore not much in the way of pre-conceived notions, which I think is often very valuable in movie-going experiences when you're not simply watching more of what you normally watch...other times, this is not so great because I don't have any context for what I'm seeing when it seems like having it would be very helpful. Within the first few minutes of this film starting, I saw at least a few different things that I can remember now that told me I was probably going to be in for a bad time: 1. A hand very graphically having a nail hammered through it. 2. A mutilated and decapitated lamb's head being drained of its blood. 3. What looked to be major organs being ripped out of some kind of creature. Suffice to say, it was not the most comfortable first five minutes of a film that I've seen. I have not seen a picture directed by Ingmar Bergman before, but that's certainly a way to be introduced to a filmmaker. Anyways, the movie is about a young nurse who has been charged with caring for an actress who's been thrown into the loonie bin - on account of having suddenly lost it and gone full antipathy and mute. As for me...well, I don't do plays, and this largely feels like a play. The kind of play where everyone kind of sounds and acts like aliens from another planet in that sort of unnaturally stilted way. That said...it started taking a turn about halfway through that made it a little more interesting and engaging for me, so at least it had that; better to end on a (relative) high note and with something to think about. Still, not really my cup of tea. (e): I see that the "themes and interpretations" section on Wikipedia is a bit of a hoot.

She'll make a fantastic Supreme Court justice once our president is back in office come 2024, .

Why Twilight Q? You a Twilight Zone fan or something?

I have Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes bookmarked, but like you, my watchlist is...crushingly expansive. I will take, uh, the other one, under consideration...I read the premise, and it actually sounds more interesting than the title would suggest, so who knows.

I did actually have you precisely in mind when I wrote that, yes.

The Timekeepers of Eternity (2021). I've never seen a movie quite like this one...and it's quite possible that I won't again.

https://kmph.com/news/local/amber-alert-issued-for-missing-15-year-old-girl-out-of-southern-california Husband kills mom, then he kidnaps their fifteen year old daughter. Amber Alert gets sent out, cops and father get in a shootout while he and the daughter are in his truck with him driving. 15 year old girl is apparently outfitted with "tactical gear" (what this means exactly is not yet known - armor/helmet, maybe?), she jumps out of passenger side door after the vehicle was disabled by police and runs towards police and immediately gets gunned down and killed by them. Amber Alert cancelled. I think this story could only get more American if it had also happened in Florida. (note: linked story itself is a little light on details, but responding police have already defended shooting her by saying they thought she was possibly armed - and of course, "possibly armed" means she was not, otherwise they would have said that she actually was; one rifle was recovered at the scene)

Primal, episode 6. I have a pretty intense dislike for emotional manipulation via fake-out deaths, but in this case, the show did it about as well as it reasonably could have by doing an entire episode set around tender love + care, rest, and recovery...well, while also under constant threat of being eaten because this is a prehistoric show, but yeah. That's about as good as you could hope for if you're gonna have a character be near bludgeoned to death.

Both Browns and Cowboys have looked surprisingly competent without their QBs. McCarthy saving his job, .

Isn't the 5000 series already like that? I thought the only way to gain more performance out of the 5000 series is by undervolting it and improving the power/thermal efficiency. This seems a bit more extreme because it goes to the absolute limit by default - not my favorite approach personally, but if it's still an improvement when working at roughly the same power draw as the previous generation, then that's still good, particularly because you can implement that yourself if you prefer. Though these benchmarks seem to be proving that performance only matters for productivity purposes, since games just...can't saturate CPUs anymore. I still remember the days of 4 core / 8 thread CPUs being the practical limit not all that long ago...yeah, no more. But if you love power-performance efficiency like I do, it seems the 5950x is still king(?). I wish I'd waited to build my system a little longer so I'd got one of those instead of the 5800x, but it's hard to convince myself to buy one now considering the 5800x is already far beyond my needs.

Neither of them liked the original Top Gun, but both of them really liked Maverick. What does it mean? ...I mean, I get it, since I'd agree, I enjoyed Maverick a bit more than the original, but still.

Twilight Q (1987), a two-part OVA that seems like it was intended to be a kind of rip-off of The Twilight Zone. Only two episodes were made, but apparently there were supposed to be more - all from different directors with their own original ideas. It's kind of a shame that only two were made, as it was a quality production, and it would have been a fun show to watch an episode here and there of a la an anthology series like Tales from the Crypt or The Outer Limits. Ah well.

Posts being eaten has been a thing with this software since the upgrade some years ago (those of us who have written lengthy posts only to see them mysteriously vanish with no draft saved have learned to always CTRL+A and CTRL+C before posting!), but there seems to be times where it's especially bad and it repeatedly happens.

The only work of his that I've seen is Spy Kids, back when I was like seven or eight years old. It looks very unlikely I would enjoy anything he was director or writer for. Apparently, James Cameron wanted to one-up it when he was slated to be director before he was canned because he was too busy with Avatar trash: "With James Cameron as potential director, the film was to be produced with the same mix of live-action and computer-generated imagery that Cameron used in Avatar. Specifically, Cameron intended to render the main character, Alita, completely in CGI. Cameron had stated that he would make use of technologies developed for Avatar to produce the film, such as the Fusion Camera System, facial performance capture, and the Simulcam. In May 2006, Variety reported that Cameron had spent the past ten months developing technology to produce the film." Like...couldn't we just give her a normal head/face but metal android body, like the show did? Wouldn't that look and work a lot better? I don't know, that would just kind of make sense to me. I'm not a famous Hollywood hack director, so my opinion on such things is eminently worthless. I watched Jojo Rabbit recently, does that count for anything?

Battle Angel Alita, a two-part OVA about an amnesiac android girl named Gally. Her head's picked up by some semi-mad scientist in a scrapyard and he resurrects her and treats her like his daughter. Turns out, she musta been a gladiator in her past life or something, because she just destroys. To be honest, it's a little dumb but was a bit more enjoyable than most similar 80s/90s action trash. Overall, not too shabby for a minor cult favorite. I have no idea why they gave her such gargantuan eyes in the live action adaptation (which no, I have not seen): I wonder how much money of their 200 million dollar budget it took to make her eyes like that. (e): Apparently, James Cameron co-wrote the screenplay for Alita: Battle Angel, so that's gonna be an immediate nope from me, dog. Never heard of her.

@Chilloutman Imoen gets access to 9th level arcane spells and HLAs at 3,000,000 XP plus the 40,000 XP that went into her 7 levels of Thief; Aerie will instead take double that at 6,000,000 due to her XP being split between mage and cleric. That's a pretty significant issue if you need the arcane firepower; cleric spells can be nice and all, but being able to get Improved Alacrity and Time Stop at the end of SoA (and certainly for much of ToB) is probably nicer. Though mage-cleric is probably the best multi-class available, dual classes tend to...er, outclass multi-classes pretty heavily simply due to the economy of XP and the fact that a mere 40,000 spent on Imoen's thief levels ultimately amounts to practically nothing. Edwin, on the other hand...yeah, okay. Single-class Conjurer (by far the best kit for the additional spell slot per spellcasting level) combined with his absurd necklace (which gives him an additional two more spell slots per spellcasting level!) makes that a bit of a no contest. @majestic There are some other edge cases for different kits - for example, Invokers pair great with a sorcerer that takes the best and oft-repeated AoE enchantment spells (i.e. Sleep, Confusion, Chaos, Greater Malison, Emotion: Hopelessness). But yes, Conjurers are definitely the "power gamer" pick due to Detect Invisibility/True Seeing really being the only halfway important Divination spells.

That was pretty existentially soul-crushing, but nice - thanks.

I was thinking the visuals looked a little strange, as the backgrounds and character animations didn't look like they quite matched each other. The character animations being actual scanned physical embroidery, I will forgive it, because that's rad and I love it (and also, I would say that character animation is the most important bit to do quality animation for in a game like this, so that was a wise choice). No idea if the game will be any good, but I'll wishlist it and wait for its release, hopefully it'll be enjoyable. And hopefully there won't be too much platforming/combat, as these kinds of games tend to miss the mark pretty badly when they go too heavily in that direction.

I've played a few games of Golf with Your Friends with some friends before. I was pretty bad at it compared to them, but it was fun enough. ...My style of playing anything even slightly competitive with my nieces is that I'll generally play much more risky/daring than I otherwise would. If I were to play this with them, I'd probably be trying to go for wacky shots and bombing it most of the time, . I see that you're the..."I will win every time" type instead.

I've changed my mind.

That was part of the intent, but really, it's more just a general warning on these kinds of threads, whose subjects obviously hit very close to home for some, simply not being a great arena for civil meetings of the minds when feelings and allegiances differ in such an inherently irresolvable manner. Saying this would seem to make me the forum's biggest hypocrite, seeing as I am pretty infamous for being the god-emperor of putting people on ignore...but I'm O.K. with that, particularly given that my criteria for putting people on ignore is a little different in that it's usually just "do I consistently dislike reading posts by this person across the forum?".

I feel like you got the opposite intended reading of my admittedly deliberately ambiguously worded post. C'est la vie, .