Bartimaeus

Gatling guns in anime just makes me think of that gosh-awful sequence at the beginning of...Evangelion Rebuild 4, I think it was? You'll have to tell me whether it's better or worse than that, .

I was super confused for a minute here, because I was pretty sure nobody had posted in the political thread over the past few days...and then I went to go check to see what was going on in there and couldn't even find the thread. I then realized I must've re-enabled my filters sometime in the past few days, which explains why the thread is missing entirely. Working as I intended when I created the filters, I suppose: out of sight, out of mind. It's unfortunate that uBlock has a tendency to break linked videos on here these days otherwise I'd have them enabled more consistently...but I disable them to look at a video and then I forget.

Yeah, I guess I don't do well being bored. I get in a very negative state of mind very fast if I'm not mentally engaged at least a little. The good news is I'm not the type of person that ever gets bored...so long as I'm not forcefully subjected to something I want no part of. Being in an endless dark void where I only have my own thoughts and naught else still sounds significantly more engaging to me than this latest Nanoha incarnation, . It's not great news you still have a little more to go, though... As for Komi, have you considered just...muting the sound? I've done that before when a certain character has annoyed me too much... Ah, I was thinking more of the dreadful moment-to-moment stuff and the entire thing seeming like a whole pile of mostly nothing wasting your time and draining your will to think or live rather than any of the "big" negative moments like that. "Beg for death...and I'll make it quick." Some generic Shadow Thief combat line, I'm pretty sure.

I think that's precisely the issue, so I have to agree with @KP on top of ZA WARUDO. At least Discovery gives you something to think and be mad about - that's, if nothing else, something to mentally occupy the viewer, even if it's actually objectively worse in most ways. This show sounds so much like...death? Or maybe more like something that would make you wish for death? I just cannot envision ever sitting through more than like 5 minutes of it if your descriptions of what it's like are anywhere even remotely accurate, because it seems like something that put me into a state of existentialism and question why I or really anything else exists if this is what it is all culminating in - a terrible-looking, terrible-sounding, terrible character-filled, and just utterly dreadfully boring cartoon that one is being forcefully compelled to watch. A show making someone become secondhand suicidal from even the thought of watching it must truly be the mark of greatness...right? I'm just so glad it's finally over. Will you please promise to not try anything new ever again?

Yeah. I guess, in a sense, at least we can also attribute it to 2021 instead of the new year, which would've been a terrible way to start 2022. She was seven years Anne Frank's and Martin Luther King Jr.'s senior...man, that's old. To have your full mental faculties during that entire time and then die peacefully in your sleep one day near your 100th birthday...better than any of us can hope to expect, that's for sure.

What a terrible way to cap a terrible year.

Oh my gosh, screw these forums, I wrote a reply and the forum neither posted it nor kept a draft. I miss the days of Firefox' Lazarus auto-text recovery extension working so I didn't have to worry about this. 1. Is Captain Malfoy also a terrible character? Please tell me it isn't so! ...This is Discovery, everything is terrible. 2. They just...decided she's a new lifeform? Just like that? A short discussion and "yep, you're a new lifeform" - that's how it works in this? 3. The general quality of dialogue writing: The good news is...they're going to renew this for another 6 seasons because of your loyal and enduring support!

So I'm a little confused about this whole "AI becomes its own person in a show of diversity and how woke the creators of this show are". Didn't that...like, already happen in TNG? Isn't that the background of Data? Pretty sure he's a Starfleet officer...right? Heck, Doc was pretty much his own thing albeit disembodied but respected as a person in Voyager as well...right? Am I crazy? A welcome reprieve there, at least...

I literally was thinking "well, I'm going to have to post the Dr. Phil seizure" as I was reading your first paragraph, and then it just kept going...and then you more or less beat me to it. So how about this gif I "randomly" found on Google: Eh, brutally murdering kids isn't as bad as...whatever Pegasus was getting up to. Sort of.

That's what I saw him in first (as well as Claire Foy, whose performance as Anne Boleyn was despicable and yet somehow still elicited an awful amount of sympathy on my part - she was great in the first season of The Crown as well), and I saw a couple of other things he was in afterwards as well. Yeah, great show, supposedly they're making a second part to the miniseries at some point, but there's not been much news as of the last couple of years...have to wonder if Covid silently lead to its cancellation... It does sound like a very American kind of film.

Packers are in a similar situation with David Bakhtiari, though I'd put a better outlook on someone with a torn ACL than someone with a serious neck injury. Still, Bakhtiari is absolutely needed for the playoffs (and indeed, we probably lost that NFCCG last year because of him not being in it, given the insane pressure that Rodgers faced in that game), and it was expected he'd be back long before now, and he's barely even practiced... Rodgers had an insane MVP campaign last year after having had a healthy and consistent line the entire year - it's kind of flown under the radar that he's having another MVP-like year (albeit not as great of one) while having had to replace that entire line for most of the entire season (right now, we have literally nobody left from last year's line - starting 4 backups and a rookie!). May both our All-Pros come back healthy and good, .

I haven't seen it...and I probably won't because I just saw that it stars two of my least favorite current big-time actors (Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence - although it does have Mark Rylance whom I rather like)...but I was under the impression that the film was more for how little we're accomplishing in the realm of climate change and the imminent crises that are likely to occur as a result over the next handful of decades. And Wikipedia says it was written and filmed in 2019, before Covid-19 existed, before being delayed because of it...

Certifiably trash already, and it was only the first episode. You really need to work on your show-picking skills, . At least A Silent Voice is a single movie that's 2 hours long... Being aware of your own limitations in knowledge and intelligence automatically makes you less dumb than those who aren't, in my opinion. So by my estimation, Polnareff is still dumber, . This right here is the key problem with Venus Wars, because it describes the cast of protagonists to a T, and it's why even though Venus Wars had a number of other good things about it, it makes it pretty difficult to particularly like. Given how much of a mess it all was, I think I'm probably being slightly too generous to Akira in giving it a 7/10, especially because I only gave Venus Wars a 6/10 - as I usually do, I'll probably reflect back on it in like a month and consider adjusting it, most likely down to a 6.5. The initial impression is important, but so is the impact it made on you in a longer view. Some stuff really benefits from that retrospection because it turns out it stayed with me much longer and I have more positive feelings towards it than I thought or could have expected (see: NGE...or Whisper of the Heart, or Perfect Blue, or Miyu, or...), but if in a couple of months I look back and I have more negative feelings (see: Nadia) or feel it was actually perfectly forgettable (see: Soda Pop Bubbles Up Like Words), then my initial rating was too generous. Yeah, the two girls were both likeable enough, but both...not much in the film. Pretty much all testosterone besides that. And Kaori was more of a punching bag than a character, really. Hey, maybe the show is just as good reading only faces and emotions instead of words, . Yeah, I saw a few people out there who were also upset they couldn't find subs for it...some things just don't catch the attention of translators, I guess, particularly some older stuff that never got a lot of notoriety. Maybe the movie is unrepresentative of and significantly better than show, and that's why only it was translated, .

In five minutes or two hours - as long as it gets the job done, right? Akira (1988). The intro set a nice tone. Soundtrack is jamming. Animation has a strange style and level of detail that makes it unusual and fascinating to look at. I like the setting and visuals. I found the direction of the Japanese dub to be...a little lacking at times, but not too bad - I tried the (Animaze) English dub for a few minutes, and while it was competent enough, it didn't feel quite right, so I went back to the Japanese. Characters...sure are a lot of men and boys being shonen up in here. The post-apocalyptic setting...justifies that to a degree, but not to the extent of where it goes, I think - that, or I just didn't like where it went. Speaking of where it went, the plot and whatever the hell the themes were supposed to be...um... Well, it was classic 80s insanity plus a little extra, I suppose. Actually, this reminded me a lot of a cross between Venus Wars (1989) and Metropolis (2001), but better than either...and, as you can notice from the dates, released before either. It gets a "good" (7/10) for looking and sounding good and keeping me pretty entertained for most of its runtime, even if I thought it was utter nonsense by the end. Most every time I watch one of these old anime films, I can't help but keep thinking it's a bit of a shame that so much of the 80s' and 90s' fantastic animation/music/general style was used on so much silliness lacking in the departments that I value the most. ...This reminds me that Satoshi Kon died way too young - now there's a guy that knew how to do things just how I like them...and whose praises I probably won't ever stop singing. Except for Paprika, which is, ironically, his most famous and beloved, because of course it is, . I should re-watch that to see if it still doesn't appeal to me just as much as it did the first time I watched it. Poor Kaori sure got a raw deal throughout this film. Every time a character said the main character's name ("Kaneda"), it just sounded like someone exclaiming Canada. ...O.K., now I have to go re-read majestic's post with the context of having actually seen it. Hey, I liked Blade Runner. The original one, mind you - the new one bored and annoyed me to the point of openly laughing at it trying to be deep and serious. Oh, don't ever watch Venus Wars then, because it coincidentally is pretty much exactly that. Actually, I can't help but wonder if Venus Wars, which was released about a year and a half after Akira, was inspired a bunch by it, but a quick search didn't reveal when the film started development...though it is based off a 1986 manga, but Akira is a 1982 manga, so... Yeah, I can't really disagree with what you wrote, except that I guess I liked it a little more than you did. Although...I'd say I liked the first half a lot more than the second half, but that's probably because the first half was more straightforward and more grounded as opposed to the...well, borderline meaningless ridiculousness of the final act that I kinda started zoning out at parts for, but it is what it is, I guess! P.S. A note for @majestic - while glancing at the voice-cast for Azuki-chan, I couldn't help but notice that Meiling literally voices the titular character, which is hilarious because while watching it, I had actually thought that it was like watching a non-magical version of Cardcaptor with a toned down version of Meiling as the main character. Not sure if I was subconsciously influenced by the VA for Meiling literally being the main character, or...

Lmao, I was thinking that there had to be someone, but I couldn't think of whom...guess I should've just taken the time to look at the list of MVPs. RIP John Madden.

It does seem like a bad idea to ever bet against Rodgers when playing the Cowboys. It's been too many times I've thought for sure we would lose and somehow we don't. Of course, maybe the anti-Cowboys magic was actually McCarthy and not Rodgers...

I think it's not super clear-cut if we don't get the #1 seed. A poll of 25 league executives that I saw last week put the race in between Rodgers and Jonathan Taylor on the Colts, and they were just about split down the middle with a slight lean towards Rodgers, and with Brady as a distant third. If the Colts are able to secure a place in the playoffs and Taylor looks great these last two weeks while the Packers lose to either the Vikings or Bears, I could see them giving it to Taylor a la how Adrian Peterson got it in 2012 after defeating the Packers in the final game of the season to secure a spot.

Volourn was frustrating, because...he didn't used to be quite as off the walls unhinged and unpleasant as he was towards the end, and he seemed like an actual person with relatively consistent opinions but with no clue how (or at least no desire) to state them in a way that didn't have endless flaming and false equivalencies. He was a guy that was frequently getting added to and removed from my ignore list up until his last year or so of being here. That's more than I can say for a few others, whose propensity for utterly lacking any intellectual honesty or consistency from one post to the next makes a permanent ignore a relatively simple decision - there is no value to be gained for anyone in discussing matters with those who have no interest in honest discussion.

It seems likely Rodgers will win his second straight MVP at this point...and that the Packers will lose again in the NFCCG because they are precariously perched on the edge of a knife and will predictably suffer a great tumble against a more rounded and consistent team. It would be a multi-layered revenge if it were to the Cowboys, but I can't say that I expect the Cowboys to make it to the NFCCG (which is the only place the Packers and Cowboys could play assuming Packers #1 and Cowboys #2) in the first place. Famous last words, though.

You never know how far some crazies will go, and it's infinitely more difficult to be hyper-viligant about preventing someone from doing something unpleasant to you than it is for them to do it. Doesn't take that much to find and get to any arbitrary address (if the address if freely given or found), get a rental car and some gasoline and matches, and quietly wait for you to leave at some point before setting everything ablaze...if they truly are crazy and don't care about the consequences. Especially in this day and age, how confident can you really be that any given random person isn't insane? I certainly wouldn't be too keen to test it.

That means it's working. I once had a page in this politics thread (although not this particular politics thread) where the entire page was missing because it had evidently just been spammed to death by those that I have on ignore. Felt pretty amazing to just go to the next page without reading a single one. Most of the people that were destroying these threads in the past are not here as of now...most of them.

Yeah, that's one of those that I tried to watch but wanted to kill myself five minutes into and just turned off instead of going through with it. Hopefully that doesn't happen to you. I only figured out who "Cherry" was when you mentioned him moving away. Suffice to say, this film did not leave too much of an impression. Maybe I'll just unrate it entirely and call it a day...

I actually hated Words Pop Up Like Soda Bubbles, this was all an elaborate ruse to punish you for making me watch Madoka, .

Since you watched it, I guess I'll make an effort to also watch it sometime within the next couple of days. Words Pop Up Like Soda Pop: Have you considered 2x speed? I said it was "fine" and gave it a 6.5/10, you should really only try watching the things that I actually make an effort to recommend instead, .