majestic

Well, the bill for the new heater and its installation arrived in the mail today. There goes the money I would usually just waste on booze, hookers and coke. Still, having warm water in winter beats some fun on the side, right? *shrug*

Komi Can’t Communicate… episode something. This is gradually getting worse. If I stop posting it is because I decided to become an ascetic hermit free from the shackles of modern technology or I killed myself to escape my OCD.

This is a '91 Japanese comic, so chances are it originally read as something like new-half or worse, but yeah, modern translations should be a bit, uhm, different. Yes you did, and I find myself agreeing...

Lann is a Crusader archetype cleric, he just doesn't know it yet when he starts the game. Sure beats Sosiel and his 10 DEX with Medium Armor feat, and giving him a mount adds a nice early game tank and some extra party carry weight. Sure you can do all that with Sosiel too, but Lann actually can hit things from the backline, and eat the ocassional attack that comes his way. Daeran isn't a cleric, because cleric get domain powers. Especially Nobility and Community... worth taking mythic feats for. Well, in my opinion. Daeron makes a decent divine blaster if you give him Bones as extra Mystery, but I'd still rather bring Ember for hexes and some burning hellfire. There's only so many classes you can take before the bonuses start cutting into your character progression, and I haven't checked yet what happens when you take Paladin and become a Lich, with the new patch that apparently locks your alignment to neutral evil. Not an issue for an existing monk level, but I think an issue for... well, Paladins, although with the homecooked mechanics of this game, I don't really know. There's also only so much you really need. With Archmage Armor, the Scaled Fist CHA to AC, the bonuses from being undead, the extra Lich spells, the bonus stats from Dragon Disciple and an almost endless supply of Mirror Image, Blur and Greater Invisibility casts, yeah well, sorry, what do I need a mutagen for? Not that playing Vivisectionist in general is a bad thing, the game doesn't really track how many sneak dice you can actually have, so you can load that... end up with something like 15d6 sneak attack. Add a monk level for some fun scaling (and easy crane style access) and some Arcane Slayer for mage armor and you should be good. Motherless Tiefling for that natural attack, feral mutagen... pairs somewhat well with Trickster since you can skill mule a bit anyway. *shrug* Then there's the extra added cheese if you make mercenaries. Ever tried a Brown-Fur Transmuter casting an empowered Frightful Aspect on someone else? Or even early on, +6 DEX Cat's Grace is not to be sneered at. *shrug* So, anime! I, uhm... haven't talked about last week's Komi Can't Communicate episode, which I should do before watching this week's. Like @KP Cross Split Attack (lol name change) alread said, it was nothing remarkable. However, I thik Komi's "Help I can't speak" face is up there with the best emoting of anime characters ever. Certainly one of my favorites, together with Sakura's faceplanting and Usagi's hilarious faces in Sailor Moon. And that's taken pretty much from the manga, so it's hard to credit the anime with the look...

Yeah, you win.

They're nigh-useless in most AD&D 2nd edition cRPGs unless multi or dual classed too, but they're usually in heavy armor and at least in theory field a weapon that can hurt enemies in melee combat. White Mages in JRPG on the other hand can heal undead to... erm, their second death, but other than that, nope. They really are just mages with buffs and healing spells. WotR you either make a Crusader or an Oracle with the Angel mythic path and go "lol, did I just step on a demon lord?" and make enemies go KERPOW with Arbitrament and your funky Angel spells that are all not subject to saves or spell resistance. Making your main character a cleric even takes care of hauling one along. Which means being able to leave Lann at home. Overall probably the best main character to play, unless you want to do something silly like a Sorcerer/Monk/Dragon Disciple/Eldritch Knight/Lore Master 80+ AC 2-handed Fauchard crit machine with a merged Lich spellbook. In IWD2 clerics arguably make the better frontliners than pure fighters, but that's 3E for you. Fighter(4)/Cleric of Helm(X), have fun. Anyway, my point being that the cleric class conjures up an image that's not really a mage with healing spells. What was the topic of this thread again? Oh, right, anime... anyone seen the new Komi episode yet?

Yeah, to consistently hit the harder enemies later in the game you'll have to aim for a 65+ attack bonus after buffs (more for unfair difficulty, but at least that is self-admittedly meant to be unfair). The entire game is set up so you need to load the dice in your favor to even stand a chance, unless you happen to have a main character Angel with spellbook merging, because in that case you're blessed with spells neither subject to saves nor spell resistance and a whole lot of casts per day.

White Mage is a character class/job originally from Final Fantasy, I think. A healer and support type spellcaster that's pretty much in every JRPG ever. Classical turn based JRPGs, that is. In something like Secret of Mana you just have the girl character with her support and healing magic, and nothing of the sort in Terranigma or Illusion of Gaia. This is a White Mage from Bravely Default 2, a swordmaster and an, uhm, what was that guy again, some divine caster (Spiritmaster). More like a priest from World of Warcraft, just without a damage skill tree. Western styled RPG clerics are usually not complete wet noodles in combat and don't just wear decorative night gowns in battle.

By the way, I'll just shamelessly post the promotional poster hosted on TV Tropes for the third season to make a point about how much this anime looks like a JRPG: Hayate (top center, white hat, largest character on the poster) in particular is a poster boy girl white mage. Robes, white hat, giant staff with a cross on it... ticks off tropes like there's no tomorrow in general. Giant hammer, giant sword, spears, a summoned mini-dragon.

inb4 @Keyrock : Steamworld Dig 2 is absolutely fantastic.

I suppose it's liable to not do that, what with the setting. I also imagine real samurai weren't always smelling like sunflowers. It's really heartwarming to see StrikerS continuing A's excessive use of weird German. One of the characters working for the villain of this season just summoned an "Insektzug" which the subtitles helpfully translated as insect platoon. Technically it is not exactly wrong to just combine insect and plattoon, but since a platoon is more than one insect it should be Insektenzug and even that is... odd, to say the least. Zug is a common military term that's barely ever used outside of the military to talk about a group of soldiers and the word Zug has a whole lot of meanings depending on the context, just as long as something moves or pulls (to pull / ziehen, Zug is essentially the substantive of ziehen, literally also the pull) something it can probably be a Zug - e.g. trains, a chess move would be a Schachzug (Schach = Chess), a draft is a Luftzug, the rifling in a, uhm, rifle, is also a Zug, and so on. Migratory birds are Zugvögel. Moving from one place to the other is an Umzug. Weird use of words is weird, I mean, and that's not even touching the other potential uses for Zug - a mountain range is a Gebirgszug for instance, and a character trait is a Charakterzug. Picking Kompanie (company) isn't the same because a Kompanie is at least two Züge, however... really, like, easier to understand the intention behind it. Insektzug sounds like a bad way to say Ameisenstraße (ant trail), really. Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS episode 7 So far it looks like there'll be actual character development. I thought the extra runtime would be dedicated to stupid action and fanservice, but that's only part of it. I thought the first two seasons were okay to likeable, by far and large (except when the first one wasn't). This is currenlty on its way to being actually good. I just hope they don't mess it up.

I don't think wimmin were allowed to be samurai.

Naoko loves telling scary stories because Sakura flips out immediately.

Hoe? Not a whole lot of epsiodes left there, plus the film.

It really looked like transformation sequence censorship until Erio's buffed up attack started to hang the same way. There's definitely something wrong with the files, VLC plays them, but other media players (including MPC-HC) don't bother doing even that much. So far they've been using the extra time of the episodes for a whole lot of conversations. Sure there's some action, and sometimes it's the focus of an episode, but at least for now everything seems well balanced. Even had a shower scene that didn't just exist for fanservice (and arguably those five seconds of Subaru in the shower barely count for anything). A's and StrikerS have a different director from the first season. First season was directed by the same guy who went on to direct Madoka. Uhm... ahem. *cough* Sometimes it pays off to stick with something, I guess (if that sounds like trying to convince myself that it's okay to not be able to drop something, then that's because it is ). Can't say I didn't regret watching the series after the first five episodes (and afterwards I sort of felt filthy for liking it), but so far StrikerS makes up for a whole lot, and with the focus being the newbies and less the established characters, it probably could even serve as a standalone season. A little too early to really tell after 6 of 26 episodes of course. I mean, they could still visit a hot spring back in Japan, but so far they're not even on Earth any more.

Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS Episode 5: Finally has the new and full transformation sequences, and my copy appears to be damaged, because every time one comes up, without fail, the video feed craps out and hangs, curiously enough until the transformation is finished. That's too consistent to be a coincidence. Sigh. Seriously, what's wrong there, now that they're all old enough for this to not be weird I'd like to properly watch my anime tiddies PLEASE! Looks like a botched censorship attempt (while the frame freezes the background remains in motion). No, not a botched censorship attempt, that really is a censored version. It just pseudo-freeze-frames over the nudity parts, except in the opening credits where it's apprently okay because they're color coded like in Sailor Moon. Or who knows, really. It's too selective to be frame damages and it can't be a problem with the calculations either because much faster frames with a lot more changes play smoothely. It's the first real mission for the team. The action reminds me a bit of 80ies sci-fi anime, which isn't too bad. It's not CGI madness, doesn't do super stupidy shaky cam imitations and I continue to be surprised by the amount of detail that went into the dialogue at times. Nanoha and Fate fly off to intercept incoming enemy drones and call back to HQ to have them close the airspace before launching. That's totally not necessary, but it sure adds to the immersion. Subaru is impressed with the performance of her new and improved techno-magic roller blades (that idea is so silly it deserves recognition just for that), and they respond that they were built to make her stronger and faster. Subaru is all nice and says they're a team and work together. So far the first couple of episodes are better than the previous two seasons. Still cautiously optimistic. edit: Nah, that really was a conincidence. The file seems to be corrupt somehow. The episode ends with Caro and Erio defeating a big enemy drone with a defense field with a maneuver they've trained before with Nanoha, and a first glance at the villain. A scientist with half his face in the dark, I wonder where they got that idea from. No mad laugh though. edit 2: The newbie team has a very distinct RPG setup. Subaru is the tank, Tia ranged DPS, Erio melee DPS and Caro is a summoner with some buffs. I wonder when they get a level up.

Oh, I also watched another episode of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS. The Space Cops have apparently taken a page out of the Terran Confederation's playbook and install ability limiters in their mages (and their techno-magical devices) that can be removed in cases of emergency. Nanoha explains that to the newbies as necessary to prevent rivalries between mages and to establish a clear hierarchy, but let's be real, that's just management speak for being able to stay in control in case a powerful unit goes rogue or attempts a coup. Yeah, that's totally not going to become a major plot point later. edit: I'm sort of appreciating the thought that went into expanding the show's universe there, and it makes sense from the command's point of view, they agreed to give the three strongest (presumably) mages in the entire Space Cop force their own spec ops team to do as they see fit, so some manner of a fallback option isn't a bad idea, even if Nanoha is like the nicest girl ever, both Hayate and Fate are former antagonists. Alas, when they told the newbies that once they've gotten some combat experience they'll unlock the next power setting on their devices, one of the characters couldn't help themselves and told them they should think of this a levelling up togetherm killing immersion a bit.

I really don't like it. The first and the third opening I actually always listened to. Those were nice. I'd still say that's a bit of a bigger if than you seem to think. But we'll see eventually. I don't think it'll be going anywhere in my case. I mean picking up bits and pieces through listening is one thing, actually learning the language would be quite another, never mind reading or writing. I've toyed with the idea of picking up a third language, but that's a whole lot of effort for comparatively little gain, and pretty much none for Japanese. I'd be better off learning a Slavic language, that would at least have some practical use. Not counting getting weeb street cred as worthwhile reason. There isn't even a Japanese restaurant anywhere near me. Forgot to reply to that part. I don't think there's an English subbed version of Indien, otherwise I'd be curious what you'd think about it. 😐 Nope. Not going to do that, sorry Sakura opening #3.

The opening itself is nice indeed. The song though, nope. Although, yeah, it's not nearly as bad as the second opening of K-On!. That's like the worst ever. I linked that before, but why not post a reminder... I also have PGSM to watch once I get back to things Sailor Moon. You should be good even if you stop reading for a longer while. I find your lack of enthusiasm for Japanese grammar disturbing! *starts force choking random people* That's what I get for not stopping myself typing up a storm. Took me a while to write that, even double checked for spelling mistakes.

That's region locked, but since the title says Kurisu laughs I can imagine what it is. The movie has a sequence where...

That's the power of love! Or well, energy in this case, anyway, but I understand. Sometimes when I'm working from home I'll just set YouTube to randomly play music videos I accessed with my account, and sometimes it gives me a bunch of Sailor Moon songs, like the Sailor Star song, and I'm feeling all nostalgic, then it flicks to the Star Locket version of the original theme song or worse, so the sad violin version of Sailor Stars and I'm... pretty much hit by a deep longing to rewatch the series. It's not that often that I rewatch something and find it even better than the first time around. Particularily Sailor Stars as a whole, I remember liking the season, sure, but not it being this good. Certainly not being better than R, which it actually is, in spite of how the art looks... Reading the Sailor V manga seems like a good idea, but I'll just finish the Sailor Moon manga first to get that out of my mind. It's been open for quite a while now and it's starting to bug me a bit. Gotta stop now before I turn this into a yuuuuuge rambling post. So how much do you like that terrible third Cardcaptor Sakura opening by now? Yeah, because back when I started watching Cardcaptor Sakura all I got from listening to the Japanese original was a bit like Pinky's POV: Yeah, truth be told, I think that would have been hard to miss. I did miss Sharoan not calling her by her name until the elevator episode and I went to check the Wiki because it was really strange hearing him yell Sakura, so I helpfully passed that observation and bit of information along. Just in case. It sounds like oneechan for an English speaker, but it's actually oniichan. Oneechan is for older sisters. These terms plus Sakura using Shaoran's last name with -kun are some of the more intricate things to glean from Japanese honorifics and forms of address/politeness. 's funny what you pick up here and there over time. Speaking of that Sailor Star song, it's often thought of being called Makenai. Makenai means don't be defeated (literally) and in context of the song better translates to don't give up. By now I know that the shūshikei (an inflection category, this one is sort of like a base form) of makenai is makeru (to lose), and that it's a so called ichidandōshi, or one level verb (ichi is Japanese for one, and "dan" is level, which yes, is exactly that word from all the martial arts stuff, dōshi means verb). To build the polite way of saying makeru you turn into into makemasu and to negate that it's... yes, exactly makemasen. The meireikei (imperative) would be makero. Works like that for all ichidandōshi, which end in -iru or -eru. Like taberu - to eat. Tabemasu, tabemasen, tabenai, tabero... except when it looks like an ichidandōshi but isn't one, like kaeru. Kaeru is a godandōshi (five level verb), and that has different rules. Kaerimasu and kaeranai. Yeah. Bonus credit question, what's with the verb in the thread title then? That's part of what I meant with Japanese being really formulaic, there are very regular patterns that become noticable even without speaking a lick of it. Sure, there are exceptions... suru and kuru. Suru is somewhat important because it means to do, and the polite form for it is shimasu, which you'll hear really often when people ask others to please do something (onegai shimasu) and serves as indicator for the past tense in the form of sh1ta. Desh1ta means something did not happen in the past (mean word filter ftl...). Kuru (come) has its own set of rules (kimasu, konai, etc.). So for some reason I'm halfway through understanding the way Japanese verbs are conjugated, but I know a sum total of fifteen of them, maybe a bit more, but it's really interesting to realize when people are being polite, casual or give out commands.

All the best Shady, hope everything ends up being fine. Wait, what? I came in contact with a breakthrough infection at work, have so far done 3 antigen tests every day since Sunday that all came back negative (PCR result still pending). I like my colleagues, but not enough to call them family. My wife got exposed to the virus through her family. For the second time now. We're currently staying at separate aparments, you know, isolation and stuff...

Yeah, uhm... so... That's all I got, lol. Sure, that was noticable well enough in Dropkick on my Devil! too, but it's a bit more meaningful when you get the cultural background. Although that's true for an awful lot of entertainment, really. When I made that list of my favorite movies, there are two that would probably not work for anyone not familiar with local customs and habits. The road movie "Indien" is about two inspectors driving through the countryside visiting restorants for health, safety and trade regulation inspections. They do play the part, are pedantic, quite frankly ****, one of them is even jaded enough to let violations slip as long as he gets some extra food and wine (much to the dismay of the younger and still not so jaded colleague he's travelling with). They start out hating each other's guts but become fast friends by the end. It's an absolutely brilliant film with fantastic performances all around, and probably either boring or at least not funny at all for non-natives (and maybe not even for all of those). Probably as well as with the subtitles that constantly inserted Sakura's and Tomoyo's names when Shaoran talked to them, while in reality all he ever said to them was "you" (omae) or Daidouji at best (after Tomoyo starts helping him with his, uhm, not very well working attempts to approach Sakura). Assuming you start dubbing without knowing the entire show's run or without being told that this is going to be significant by the writer of the show, you'd probably need to come up with some other way or accept that it won't make nearly as much of an impact. I mean, hell, it might not have made for you if we hadn't talked about it earlier (what with Sakura calling Shaoran Li-kun all the time) based on the subtitles simply always stating Sakura instead of you. That moment was the whole reason for me making an long-ass post about it a while back. It would probably still have worked based on Meiling's reaction and body language, but not as well. It's not that often a single uttered name and a look to accompany it hits you like a sledgehammer. 😢 Once I'm done with my backlog I'll just rewatch Cardcaptor Sakura. No, but she was fairly tall and more, say... nay, let's turn that around, much less meek than Japanese girls should be.

Like so many things, that depends on the individual, but in general, yes, while the chance to catch Covid-19 rises a good deal after six months (for some earlier, for others later, obviously) protection against severe cases remains more stable. At least for the vector and mRNA vaccinations, not sure how well the Chinese vaccine works after a while. Still not a bad idea to get a booster shot after six months if you're part of a (high) risk group. Ever since dropping off my sample today I've been feeling gradually worse. Mild headache, some pain in the shoulder - things that are easily explained by having slept in an awkward position and not having slept enough, both of which happened to me tonight. Still... can't fully prevent my mind from going places right now. I've been on and off imagining a sore throat ever since I heard my colleague tested positive. Silly brain, really.