majestic

Some dude named Touya, as if you haven't been reading our CCS praising posts and know full well who that is and just want to bother me? Man, today my colleague who I badgered into watching Sailor Moon a while back resumed watching Sailor Stars during lunchbreak. It was the first episode after the filler arc, and while he used headphones I kind of watched along and laughed like an idiot all the time. The season is such a riot at times. Usagi not knowing what the ring is supposed to mean, Ami being hyper-embarrassed about fangirling harder than the others, Minako doing whacky things because she's Minako... ... Sigh. Someone invent brain bleach already, I want to re-first-watch this.

Ah, well, that wasn't about carbon. Regardless of one's perception, hydrogen is made up of one electron and one proton no matter where we are in the universe (and regardless of which isotope of hydrogen we're talking about). This is about as basic and immutable as we can get. If it had but one proton more, it would be helium. All you need to do is agree on a common concept of representation. Now, that might be really difficult, but scientists already expended a lot of effort on defining all measuremeants we have based on natural constants and ratios thereof, and for good reason. Everything else is fun speculative fiction. There are several proposed solutions for non-carbon based life, and they all have the same problems. None of the proposed elements that could change (i.e. different solvents, or different base elements) work well enough. It's not impossible, but a good deal less likely than carbon based life - and that's just by any basic definition of life, i.e. microbes, not complex life forms. In terms of purely hard science fiction the most likely thing to be found are non-green plants, that's not exactly what we imagine, is it? If you apply the duck test to above statement, it comes out as time travel. The how, when, what and why is relatively besides the point, but makes this particular twist all the worse. Sure, there's the idea of block time, the concept which I think is what the film/short story is based on, and the idea that time isn't real but is an emergent property, making it "not real" in a physical definition sort of way, which means absolutely jack sh*t in terms of reality. Block time is a neat mathematical concept, but that's about it. Like tachyons. Tachyons are mathematical solutions that show up that would work - but have no basis in reality any more than if you use the Pythagorean theorem to calculate the hypotenuse of a triangle, then look at the math and go "hey, in theory there could be triangles with sides that have negative length!" because x² is always a positive value (unless it's i, but have you seen a triangle with a complex number as hypotenuse somewhere in reality? ). Wow, that went on a tangent. Alls I'm saying is that I can understand why people enjoyed Arrived for what it is. For me, the ending ruined the entire experience. If there was any way to have perceived that in some other manner, I would have never watched it. Major spoiler:

Quoting myself here, again, I guess... There was also some special effects failure with the water in episode three. I rewatched it several times to make sure that it wasn't an just a streaming issue, but unless it meant something else it looks like the water on the shore is a digital effect that didn't entirely cover the greenscreen for a frame or two there. No islands in Vancouver, after all.

I don't think you're supposed to think about this too hard.

It's the twist I had an issue with. I loved everything up to it. Just didn't work for me. Many things don't, but this one was actually one of the larger disappointments. Stargate had a pretty fun version of this at some point, with the elements of the periodic table serving as a universally understood basis. Basic element makeup is the same everywhere, after all - at least as far as we know, and it would be pretty weird if it weren't.

Midnight Mass, episode three. Couple of quick points, before I get too far into it. edit: Crockett Island also looks an awful loot like Canada with added water. Was that shot in Vancouver? edit 2: Also, absolutely fantastic sound track, loving the music in this.

Is like every name in JoJo's a music reference?

I didn't read the short story, so I don't know what you're talking about, but I found the film to be pretty interesting until it decided to do what happens at the end, which really crashed me hard out of immersion. That was incredibly jarring and not in the good way. I'm not against strange endings, to be honest, not that long ago I watched a film where the protagonist literally turned into a car that the other main character just drove away with and enjoyed it, but it was the sort of setting where this is not the strangest thing that happens. They do end up being chased hard by a medieval fairy tale castle for a while, after all. *shrug*

The things I wasted the most time on: Subtracting that from the 45 to 50 hours I needed for the first time to complete the game I'm at the mid 30 range - and that's with looking almost everywhere. 70 for a completionist run seems really high, unless that means grinding out every achievement, which I really needed the 90 hours for. It would probably have gone quicker with just playing a third NG+ game to reap the increased XP rewards from enemies, but I really did not want to... restart the game again. However that was just my experience, and everyone else I know who played the game except you did not complete it. But yeah, if the average main story + extras completion time is really 43 hours, then that's definitely too long for what the game offers. I get that the game would be super frustrating if attack variety matters for the player. Most bosses come down to parry, parry, parry, sidestep, slash, sprinkled with a combat art or two in between, or some firecrackers. There's not even any variety in how to defend against enemy attacks. There's the right way, and that's it. It never bothered me, but there are points in the game where style was clearly chosen over substance.

I just checked my playtime, I'm at 90 hours, that includes grinding an awful lot to reach 100% achievement completion, three complete runthroughs of the game and me repeating certain areas in the game ad nauseam to see if I can stealth kill every enemy. I don't think From Software designed the game with single 50 hour playthroughs in mind, but I'm pretty sure I also spent around that time for the first one. Thought the final chapter was a bit rushed and not at all properly set up, the combat arts were all mostly useless, the best one got knocked down because it trivialized (read: one-shot) the final boss - and that arguably fell under high risk, high reward, because a misstep and it doesn't look good for the player - and making the secret boss twice the size of your screen and the same color as the warning kanji that tell you what sort of dodge you need to perform was one hell of a terrible design decision. Being stuck in one way to play the game didn't bother me, or at least not that much compared to all the customization options that are by far and large useless (although those two issues are interconnected, I suppose) but... I am also not an avid fan of Dark Souls. I liked, but not loved, the first one, and never played any of the others. The raving reviews it got were certainly helped by an unhealthy From Software hero worship, but as far as games go, I liked it well enough and I played worse, for much longer.

That sounds worse than Magic User's Club. Pretty good voice cast though. Too bad.

Oh, I will. Eventually, I will...

Wait, does that mean you stopped thinking it's great sometime after the first 10 hours? There's one part of the game that I really HATRED'ed, but otherwise it was pretty good. Can't say I cared much for the High Monk nerf, but it was a bit overpowered...

Yeah, so after episode two, it sure seems Bev is everything I expected her to be, and...

Loan words in Japanese are a riot. Anyone up for guessing what a クイズ (kuizu) is? Helpful hint: It's an English word.

Not going to lie, not really looking forward to learning kanji. That might prove to be something that kills the fun, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

That just made me laugh really hard because I JUST posted about The Exorcist in the TV thread. And yeah, I get that (also regarding your family history, of course). Especially DUIs, what's wrong with people, they can't drive properly even when sober, and with even further impaired judgement? Ugh. Okarin sexually assaulting Ruka (whom you didn't even get to meet, I think), Mayuri doing someting similar, Daru the walking hentai moron who wants Kurisu and Mayuri to randomly start having hot lesbian sex to watch, Feris who is the worst maid café nyan character in the history of ever, all the times everyone makes fun of Kurisu for being a tsundere, the way Okarin treats Kurisu and Mayuri (and both take it for no real reason, Kurisu at least complains about it in tsundere fashion but still sticks around). Oh, right, and Moeka, the woman who only talks through writing text messages even when people are standing right in front of her. It's a baffling cornucopia of terrible until it randomly decides to be good. You know, it's exactly how Love Live! is, and what a coincidence, both were written by the same writer... Hiragan has 46 characters too. Functionally the two syllabaries are the same. The problem is that now you have two different characters for exactly the same sounds to memorize. I'm already halfway through the 46 characters, so that's not really an issue of being able to memorize them. It's a little tiresome, is all.

I could see myself faling asleep if Pastor Hill and Bev ever have an extensive talk, but I don't think that's what the "where my aaaakshuun at?" camp means by that. We'll see soon enough.

Maybe. I was reminded a bit of this thread and this particular talk when I watched the first episode of Midnight Mass, because Prisoner Riley also doesn't exactly start at a good place, does he? The really sad part is that when it's good, Steins;Gate is really good. It's just not, most of the time, and some of the time it's unbearably terrible, and you didn't even get to the really bad parts. The anime has a weird tonal problem where every character is a walking anime stereotype, but it never does anything wortwhile with it. It's not over the top enough to be actual satire, it's not funny enough to be a parody and when it's serious - which it often is - then the characters' quirks and adherance to the worst sort of anime tropes is in the way of truly enjoying it. It only breaks through the problems with the setup every now and then, and that as a whole isn't really enough. Speaking of letters, now that Hiragana is done and over with, it's time to learn the other syllabary (mostly used for loan words): カタカナ (katakana). I wonder what sort of drug they were on when they decided on which symbol represents which sound. Perhaps it makes sense to Japanese natives, but from this がいじん's perspective, uhm... nope.

Based on the glowing recommendations I've watched the first episode of Midnight Mass. I don't really have an opinion on it yet, what with the pacing and all, but a few stray observations: First of all, it's very recognizably Mike Flanagan in the same way a Nolan film looks and feels like Nolan. Or French movies are really, like, French. I also went and checked if this is based on a Stephen King story, and it apparently isn't, but just from the setup, it might as well be. It features all of the classic Stephen King pieces and character types (and dead cats, ugh, horrible flashback to Sleepwalkers), although what does that really say after like half a thousand books. I enjoyed the episode, but I'm already tentatively disliking the religious nutjob setup, and I hate Bev and all the tropes she stands for. But hey, apparently this goes places (I avoided all the spoilers, which is a first for me), maybe the character will take a different turn. If she does though, then why set her up like that in the first place? The best part of the episode was Riley and Erin talking. I'd watch an entire series with just that. I'm also up for watching Annabeth Gish on screen at any time. It feels like she's always just Annabeth Gish in a role, but that's fine. Monica Reyes was the only decent part of the latter X-Files seasons (of the original run, not the two new ones). That just might be nostalgia though.

I liked Blade Runner 2049 better than Arrival. Technically I enjoyed Arrival more until it became so stupid it turned from a really good film into something not even Alex Kurtzman and Jar Jar Abrams could dream up while collaborating to create the stupidest movie premises of all time (and oh boy did they try, huh?). By the by...

One confirmed and some suspected cases in Israel, that genie has left the bottle. Time to book another golfing vacation in South Africa. Last year retarded hotel owners from Tyrol brought the original SA strain back home, but Delta drowned it out before it could become an issue. This one could be more fun, so git going!

Looks like it's a bit too late for that. Huh.

I actually really liked them going shopping. Komi and Tadano having one of their "talks" is almost always a nice moment. It's just everything else that's... doubleplusungood.

Star Dreck, Venal Disease, Season 4, Episode 2. Current Burnham crying counter is at 1 from last episode's almost cry face at the very end. Should that devolve into actual crying at the start of the second episode, I shan't increase the counter. Opening flashback features Ni'Var (formerly Vulcan) and Gray being seen by Dr. Culber, so we're probably going to advance these two stupid plotlines in this episode. Well, here goes nothing. Burnham cry counter is now one to three. That's one for real, and three time she had an inward sad. One minor positive thing, this one was less offensive than the last one, but it cranked up the stupid writing and terrible science to eleven, evening it out. Terrible performances by all the actors, except for Abe Sapien, who continues to give it his best even through all the makeup and prosthetics.