majestic

Yeah, who could that possibly be? I may have expressed a certain dislike for Lynchian pseudo-intellectual masturbation in film and TV while watching Revolutionary Girl Utena, a series directed by someone who long held a desire to collaborate with David Lynch, and it really shows in the, uhm, show. Edit: This is true for all art forms, not just film. Take something like White on White, for instance.

What he doesn't say is that if you have a Brown-Fur Transmuter Mercenary with Elemental Barrage and you use that character to cast Geniekind on someone else (BFT's special ability - cast personal only transmutations on other characters), it actually uses the BFT's Elemental Barrage. As a bonus, you can get the buff to last for a full day (24 ingame hours) with the right Mythic Abilities and equipment. Feel free to buff your already ridiculous main character* with a BFT's Dragonkind III, Frightful Aspect and 4x Geniekind (although not in this particular order, Geniekinds first) and watch your character go to town with 11 (or so) attacks per round each dealing four different types of elemental damage. BFTs might just be the most broken thing in the game. Don't leave home without them. *Can also do that to your pets for added hilarity, but you're probably going to run out of Arcane Reservoir points before long.

It might not be impossible to do Sadistic Game Design on a full Unfair run, but I'm certainly not going to try. Part of the frustration came from wanting to rush to the end and be done with it. One of them alone wasn't a big issue, but the packs that have two of them were a bit problematic. The biggest problem is the duality of their insane area of effect spells, using Icy Body to stop Cone of Cold is one thing, but when one of them randomly decides to use Firestorm instead that doesn't go so well. This is one of the instances where playing on RTwP is much easier as you can just have Ember delete one from existence while rushing the other before they can act.

Done: Finished the game and did the secret ending. The final few fights were really weird, even for the unbalanced madness that Unfair is. Never touching that difficulty level again. Like ever. Sheesh.

Got an offer from my energy supplier that, quite frankly, was too good to refuse. Sign up for another year for half of the current market rates of all other suppliers, plus 130 days of free energy. Looking at the current price hikes, having a year of basically 'only' a 50% increase in energy prices, well, not going to say no to that. I'm guessing they're banking on the EU getting their sh*t together in the timeframe and being able to sell for more than market rates down the line. I'd call that a very optimistic bet. No thanks, give me the fixed energy prices for a year.

The manga is about a private investigator that just happens to be a cute girl, right? RIGHT?

I'm running a Brown-Fur Transmuter, so I could just cast Icy Body on someone else, no need for scrolls. At this point in the game I usually just blast through enemies in RTwP mode, but one of the rogue packs got lucky like three times in a row, killing various party members and once my main character. It's kind of ridiculous, but that's game RNG for you. Yeah, casting Selective Sirocco solved the issue. Generally things are a little wonky in the game, I guess that's from loading a savegame from April, from before a couple of patches. Nenio has a lot of Weirds thrown at her, and she should be immune - except when she suddenly isn't and instantly dies. Beats me. I just want this stupid puzzle pyramid to be over. I'm almost done now. Sigh.

All this talking made me go back to the Unfair game I parked in Enigma. Two observations: Enigma is still from the arse, and rogue cultists attacking for 300+ damage are too. Concealment, super high armor class, nothing of that matters in case the enemy lands a lucky crit. *rolls eyes*

Yes, it is as 'good' as the thumbnail would suggest.

Rings of Boredom: Going through the motions I expected to hate this, based on the critique linked earlier, but it is arguably worse. It is boring. Pretty, sort of, but boring. Plus, it looks much closer to The Hobbit in style (particularily the characters) than Lord of the Rings, which is a pretty negative in my book. The dwarves look comical, the elves aren't at all glorious, aloof or any of the other things they're supposed to be (even Liv Tyler was a better elf than the cast of elves here), the humans are just simply there and the Hobbits... why are there even Hobbits in this, other than BECAUSE IT IS A LORD OF THE RINGS SHOW. So far this is what this show is, it is showing us quite clearly, and quite loudly and very often(ly ), that is it has something to do with Lord of the Rings. Galadriel: Ninjas Die Twice Well, that one made me facepalm, but it then quickly gave way to the ennui that accompanied the rest of the two episodes. Galadriel is a ninja elf capable of singlehandedly killing a troll where her entire troupe of warriors - presumably at least semi-competent - fail. Following the fight, she faces desertion of a sort. None of them want to keep following her. She's also capable of swimming across half an ocean. Or almost. Certainly is preciously little reason and reasoning in jumping off a ship in the middle of the sea, but this Galadriel is more brawn than brains anyway. The Dwarves: A tradition So, well, with Gimli being a mostly comic relief for Lord of the Rings, there's preciously little option than to make them comic relief here too. For a noble dwarv, Durin sure has no table manners and lacks any diplomatic tact, but at least he's a jolly good fellow, which nobody can... I mean, which the series somehow needed. Still, eh, there's only so much of Durin and Elrond doing a stone breaking contest over a perceived slight I can take. Motions So, eh, yeah. This tries really hard to check off all the boxes. There's a troll, dwarves are loud and silly and have beards (or not), men are racist against elves, elves are racist against men, there's a romance, it's all... very, very Lord of the Rings, with a touch of The Hobbit insofar as that the characters look like they're straight out of The Hobbit, rather than Lord of the Rings. Which is a detriment, I would say. To think that I once complained that Liv Tyler isn't very elven. In closing Well, I'm not going to talk about the casting choices when it comes to casting minorities. There's a black elf, a black dwarf and a black hobbit so far. The characters at least don't feel entirely like token minorities (unlike Gay and Gay Too, the gay couple from Discovery, whose only defining trait is being a gay couple). We could debate about how there are no black elves in Lord of the Rings, because Tolkien's mythology has a light vs. dark / good vs. evil theme that very literally expresses itself in looks, and that a black elf would quite frankly be spoiled by evil, but that's been co-opted by weirdo white supremacists and whatnot, so nope, not interested. Other than that, it's fairly meh. Nothing much of interest happens, except something falling from the sky, in a rather literal manner. Oh, and yes, the first two episodes are full of Star Trek: Picard season 2 flowery talk, except it is much more fitting for elves to speak that way than for Q and Picard. Could have been worse, I guess. Still, not sure why this is a thing, other than Jeff Bezos wanting his own Game of Thrones. Turn it on if you feel like watching two hours of mostly nothing set in Middle Earth. It'll be 50 hours at some point anyway.

Dazzling Display is a prerequisite of Shatter Defenses. As long as you take that, it'll not be a wasted feat even in the light of Frightful Aspect. edit: @InsaneCommander if you give Ember the Red Salamander ring, she will have two different spell levels of Hellfire Ray, which you can separately bolster. If you do that and then later pick Favorite Metamagic: Bolster, you can add some more of them to her spell levels. Because even if all newly created Bolstered spells are now one level lower than before, the old ones stay in the book. She can cast LOTS of these things. At insane damage.

Speaking of Mami having her head bitten off - screw spoiler tags, entire thread watched Madoka anyway or doesn't want to - that was so clearly telegraphed it just wasn't surprising*. I have no idea how anyone could watch any appreciable amount of TV in general, not just anime, and not notice the ten thousand death flags raised prior to her death. Okay, maybe that's just one of these 'me' things, but one of them is figuring twists out in advance. There's only two types of twists, the one I see coming, and the ones that are so obscure they don't make much sense, or come completely out of the blue without prior hints. Every now and then there's a twist that is obscure but I still sort of predict it on an off-chance that the writers want to troll the audience with it. A certain vampire anime was like that. Heh. Okay, one part of that statement was a lie. There's a third type of twist that is telegraphed just right so that it all makes sense in hindsight but the reveal is still a surprise. To date, that happened once, and that was a certain wedding in A Storm of Swords. Upon re-reading the double meaning of many of the character interactions become quite clear. *The level of violence probably was. It's not every day heads are bitten off in 魔法少女 animes. The intro music is painful to listen to. Pretty much my reaction, of course I was intrigued by the mystery probably more than you were. The show keeps being like that for a bit yet. It could be a tad sappier, of course. Still waiting for the character voiced by Sailor Mercury to show up. Anyway, the series is so far fairly well crafted, things make sense - as much as they can in an anime about two hyper-competent girl assassins with broken or repressed memories - and even without any splatter gore it's pretty violent. How'd you like the second episode opening? Show sure doesn't hold back with the killing part, it's just not really explicit about it, and pretty bloodless unless it really needs to be (i.e. characters follow a blood trail). That's just for people who get shot in the face. edit:

Since I didn't do a full post, here goes nothing: The second episode was fine, actually. Matt Smith seemed more like Daemon and less than The Doctor, but I still don't care for Rhaenyra's direction, which still seems to have been "try to look like Emilia Clarke" for no particular reason. The character interactions were much better too, and the series did not try to one-up Game of Thrones in violence or nudity. The one thing I consistently dislike is the video game background feeling almost all of the scenes have. The soft-focused CGI backgrounds that are clearly distinct from whatever is in front of the greenscreens don't really work for me, but anyone else's milage may vary (much like with certain CGI animals in a film recently released). A little less grandeur, a little more real props and sets, and this would have looked much better. Looking forward to the time skip, hopefully Emma D'Arcy will make Rhaenyra her own. Also, hopefully, Rhaenyra will depicted as somewhat faithful to her historical accounts, because that would get a bunch of Dany fanboy's knickers in a bunch. No big surprise here, it'll be on the 'air' on Friday, September 2nd.

With Amazon's track record and after The Wheel of Time, do you even have to ask? The trailers sure looked terrible, and I half broke my brain trying to figure out when whatever was depicted is happening in the timeline, only to then notice that it never did, it's just fan fiction because spending a billion dollars on a TV show apparently doesn't buy one the right to all of Tolkien's world building. Baffling, really. I, of course, will be watching the series, but I'm sure confirmation bias will strike again and it will be as terrible as I expect it to be, even if it for some reason ends up being decent (like that second episode of House of the Dragon, that was fine, really). edit: Ninja'ed by @Hurlshot or @Hurlshort or whatever is going on with his user names, on account of verbosity. Sigh.

So far there are elements that are really good and some that I don't care for. It's not making me want to keep watching all the time like The Vision of Escaflowne did, but to be fair to anime series in general (or any series, that is), that only happens once in a blue moon. There's preciously little realism in the two girls being able to basically annihilate however many enemies are placed in front of them, but that's not any different from any action film.

A bit more Noir, the pacing of the storyline is really a bit glacial, but I have a feeling that's for the best. It keeps hinting at being some sort of secret society/prophecy thing with a splash of religious fervor, not my most favorite mystery combination. The next two episodes are a two parter though, I guess that'll move some things forward.

Well, I didn't know anything about this film, I was mostly thinking about Marriage Story - a film that surprised many people I know with Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson doing a really good job. Not surprising to anyone who has seen either in more than the MCU or Star Wars, but for many that was the only exposure. Yeah, well, and maybe that 'wonderful' Ghost in the Shell movie.

Scarlett Johansson is a (more than) decent actress when given good material, but usually everyone's brain turns off when looking at her, hence all the roles she gets where she's supposed to do the same for teenaged boys. Silly action in spandex.

Yeah, I can't think of many scenarios where I'd have Regill in the party outside of doing his quests, but the same is true for many of the companions. Probably all of them except Ember and Lann (whenever he fits into the party as Sacred Huntmaster). You win some, you lose some. Can now take the spells, but you can no longer take feats out of order/without prereqs. So no more Loremaster for Improved Improved Improved... Critical. Well, without playing a Trickster - with a Trickster MC you can improve Ember's ray crit range to ludicrous levels because picking up the regular Improved Critical via Rogue Trick works.

By the way, since you mentioned Ember and casting fire spells. If you give her one level of Cross-Blooded Sorcerer, that'll be an immense boost to her damage. Why? Looking at the Sorcerer and bloodline progressions, you might get the impression that only makes sense if you stay pure classed, or at least add levels in whatever prestige class that allows you to continue your bloodline, right? Well, no. Draconic bloodlines have a funny little aspect: They flat increase the damage per dice rolled of their associated element by 1, and it stacks. If you pick up the Gold, Brass and Red bloodlines from adding a level of Cross-Blooded Sorcerer and the mythic ability 'Second' Bloodline, you get +3 damage per dice rolled as long as it is fire damage. Make sure to give her a Skill Focus so you can pick Loremaster. It is fixed now and you can add spells from other classes, if you do that you can get Creeping Doom from the Druid book or Sirocco from the Wizard book. Selective Sirocco lets you plaster the entire screen with a damaging and crowd controlling firestorm and Creeping Doom summons a swarm of swarms to tank for you. Find swarms annoying? Yeah, enemies do that too. In fact, there are encounters that were designed to be ridiculously problematic, but a single cast of Creeping Doom auto-wins them.

Many, many patches ago Regill made a decent enough Court Poet, but the class never worked as advertised and was then 'fixed' by removing rage powers. Giving him a mount through Sacred Huntmaster is a good idea*, but I'd just keep him as Inquisitor for some utility, that way he contributes something useful besides charges. Not that they don't work, but we're getting into situations where it is hard to find a spot for Regill in the party and Domain Powers make a better argument than simple charge damage. Although it could be a fun build** when running a Trickster. Crit galore. @Gorth: It might not be obvious and shouldn't work, but you can add any class that has an animal companion without breaking the companion's level. That's why all these builds work, you could for instance also add a Sohei level to Regill for a bonus feat at an even level. *Could also make a small raptor Paladin, solving all the issues. Except you'd no longer have Regill in the party - or Seelah. Not the worst of trades, power wise. **Can do the same thing with a Paladin on a horse, and not only will that play better, it will also solve any Mark of Justice issues. As long as one doesn't only want to use premade companions, of course.

Executions are too clean these days. Freeze all their assets and force their children to go to a public school in a minority neighborhood. Not 20 years of jail time. 20 years hard labour at minimum wage, preferably in a cobalt mine. Make them a deal, if they manage to work off their time without getting a poor performance review that would get a regular worker laid off, their assets are restored to them, if not, then they're confiscated and paid as bonus to their fellow laborers, but they can go free afterwards.

The lawful requirement is only annoying in the game because 'lawful' in WotR is basically roleplaying a rigid, fascist law and order guy, and you have to pick some of the lawful options to stay lawful. Now that I think about it, @BruceVC should love playing an Aeon.

Hot Shots! Part Deux Gets another vote from me for being the better of the two.

That is actually what is supposed to happen. However, during the events of the show as they are depicted in the first two episodes, Rhaenyra should be eight, not 'a woman grown' as Viserys put it, and Alicent is supposed to be 18. The series plays in 112 AC, while the events depicted should happen in 105/106 AC (including the alliance that the final scene of the second episode hints at). The show is going to skip a bunch of years at some point in the first season. Probably as early as next episode, given the episode credits. Killer pacing there, pardon the pun.