majestic

Yeah, like the Utena movie? I'm going to show myself out.

Sweeping up fallen leaves and burning them to bake sweet potatoes is something common in Japan, they're called Yakiimo, unless it comes from street vendors/food trucks that use hot stones to bake them, in that case they're called Ishiyakiimo (stone baked sweet potato). Magic nor no, that's not nearly enough leaves for that though, so no idea what she's doing there. Ishiyakiimo is something pretty similar to what we have in winter, except people here bake regular potatoes and sweet chestnuts. I wonder if any of the street vendors survived the COVID-19 lockdowns. Guess we'll see next winter, assuming there won't be any more lockdowns, at least.

We also have greenish lakes: The weather's been causing interesting skies in our part of Yurop recently: In theory you could call that a filter effect of a sort, I guess. Not a digital one. Loads of dust in the air. If things are like that here, @213374U probably has seen more spectacular versions of this in Spain this week.

No, and people who uncover war crimes and make them public should be tried as traitors to the fullest extent of the law, saddled with trumped up charges if need be, and we should all be doing a little happy dance when their last appeals fall on deaf ears. Right?

@Mamoulian War, @Gorth or @Amentep... please fix the article in the title. It's das, not der. That is all.

So, there it is, the final episode of Discovery, season four. The way the show meandered through being really stupid in the first half now paid off with an utterly rushed conclusion that has elements that make no sense, everything is resolved instantly and gets no time to breathe, but at least Michael cries twice in the episode. They also seem to have reused art assets for the new species they introduced there, because it sure feels like I've seen those before. I guess they really bought leftover Mass Effect assets from Bioware. Every frame is so dense. Wait, wrong franchise. I wonder if the Reapers ever assumed direct control over those guys... The conclusion: Yeah, it was dumb.

I watched a bit of the video to see the cuts, then turned it off. I agree with the cuts being weird.

Believe it or not, these newer videos of her are much better than the ones she made in the past. Not the first scientist to be bad at communication. Certainly not going to be the last. You also wrote one terribly long paragraph that you could have just summed up as: She's German. Yeah, yeah, stereotypes, I know, let me post a jab at our northern neighbors. She also makes terrible music:

Yes, and it's really problematic because it just gives the culture war brigade a readily exploitable point of attack. Almost 20 years ago, we were discussing Star Trek Enterprise on the Interplay forum and making fun of Ensign Mayweather, the token black guy on the crew, actually counting his lines and marking episodes down where he had more than one. He was so obviously a token character the writers wanted on the show for inclusivity's sake but didn't know what to do with - but at least the other characters on the crew felt a little more fleshed out. Discovery, meanwhile, feels like the entire crew was made to check every box on the token minority list, and not many of them are real characters beyond that. There's a gay couple, a body positivity girl, Michael is of course the token black hire, Michelle Yeoh rounded everything out as the Asian lady on the show. Half of those weren't even real characters, and the half that were got mostly terrible writing to work with. Subsequent seasons added a token trans character and a token non-binary and it's painfully obvious that the writers don't know what to do with them either. From there you can just so easily point to diversity ruining your show, while that has very little to do with it. These characters would all be crap even if they all were caucasian and cis-heterosexual. One could easily also get the impression that these shows are insulated from any professional criticism on account of their tokenistic approach, and I've argued before that this is perhaps one of the reasons to include them - or better put, to keep including more and more of them. Discovery airs to raving critical reviews all the time, while the show is just plain terrible. While such things are always subjective, Discovery has a writing and direction problem, and had so right from the start. I watch that, look up reviews and wonder what's wrong with the world. Then you watch a YouTube video by Critical Drinking Billy 'I hate cuckservatives' of Akkad III telling you that in the past, your favorite shows used to be better because critics treated them fairly and writers worked hard on them because the culture war garbage didn't force them to include every minority under the sun, and you might actually find yourself agreeing with it. It's insidious. Especially because in the case of Star Trek, it's a franchise that was always very progressive for its time. It would be the perfect vehicle, but they're just making an utter mess of it. Also, because I'm contractually obligated (but also want) to, I need to once again point out that most of these things were done better by a now 30 year old cartoon adaptation that had a group of girls transform into superheroes by putting on makeup and nail polish and fight evil in the name of love and justice - and yes, that was more than occasionally just about as campy as it sounds, but it also had real characters, almost always treated everyone as equal (and if anyone did not, it came from the villains) and never felt as if it was pushing an agenda. It wasn't perfect by any means, but it was a damn sight better representing equality and acceptance than Star Trek Discovery or that Captain Marvel film. I had a good chuckle at RLM's comment in their Midnight Mass video that I watched after the fact when they said it was the best Stephen King adaptation ever that wasn't based on an actual work by Stephen King. I made the same point very early in my posts about it, I think.

Since she's mentioned in the article, time for more off-topic stuff:

Yeah, maybe you're right, but still, better not having to find out.

Well, Prime gets that trash only on Fridays, but good to know I can look forward to more greatness.

Oh, oh, oh! Time to once more address the poster, not the issue! *snort* Hmm. Hmmm. Hmmmm. Why yes, you agree 100% here? What is this now, final mask-off, mein Führer? Feels good, right? Let it out. Give in. Purge the undesirables from society. Plus, beat some miners back to work. @BruceVC I also declare victory, but if you want I can call you an -ist first too: FASCIST. Oh and since you like videos so much, have one: But bugie surly you simply must agree that unlawful protests must be punished ? Their can be no exceptions ! edit: In all seriousness, the level of political repression in Russia is horrifying at the moment. To see people agreeing with that - no matter who that person from the KKKodex was, yeah. You know what, Biden might be a feckless idiot and a doddering old fool on the cusp of dementia (or even beyond already), but can you imagine how much worse this situation would be if Trump and his fascist coup brigade would hold the reins right now?

Because I, too, am a tortoise. Right? RIGHT?

That indeed is a possibility. Mother and son writing a creepy romance together, just to round that image out. That sure was a what the hell moment. I think her romance is still possible, but I'm not doing this for the romance part, just for the achievement. Japanese loan words are so weird, it took me a while to realize what muunraito was supposed to be. If the possibility comes up, I'll switch to the resident ワイフ in a heartbeat. Not sure if Gromnir's suggestion is still available, I don't think I'm going to hit that hidden reputation counter, but who knows. Maybe next time, although probably not.

If you somehow stumble into the romance with Camellia... It was probably written by a 13 year old psychopath, or a mid 40ies housewife who thinks 50 Shades of Grey is the bee's knees. Not sure.

Kinda don't know how to get out of this mess, but I also want that romance achievement, so unless some other option comes up, ugh.

There's a bunch of bugs that keep happening for me, and some I don't even know if they're intentional maybe, or not, but I guess at least some of them are attributable to the game not working as written. My Angel Oracle got access to level 8 and 9 spells while unlocking Mythic levels 4 and 5. Not that I'm complaining, being in Chapter 4 and having access to Storm of Justice and Wrath of the Righteous makes clearing screens easy even on Unfair, it's just a little odd with my Oracle level being 14. I guess this has something to do with the game believing my caster level to be 18 (because Wrath deals 180 damage to Demons). I guess that's part of being Angel-overpowered. The Brown-Fur Transmuter keeps losing Arcane Reservoir charges during map transitions, it looks like they're either set to the base value before any modifiers or vanish entirely without using them. Not a big deal since Abundant Casting provides enough fodder for him to restore it as needed before big fights, but annoying nonetheless, given that the entire reason for having this character is to use otherwise personal Transmutation spells on the frontliners. Impassable doors in Turn Based mode were a problem too, but that disappeared for the time being. Turns sometimes spaz out during frame drops. Chapter 4 certainly doesn't get any less annoying when playing on Unfair, but it's fairly smooth now that I can pretty much spam room clearing spells that knock most enemies out of the fight in one cast. Also the first time I'm doing Camellia's quest stuff, and that girl ain't right in the head. I also probably should not do them as Angel, but eh... who cares, really.

Every time I see ridiculous capitalization like this it reminds me of Trump tweets and our own SonicMage117s running around here. What the Hell?

I find your lack of commitment disturbing.

Yeah, my cousin had one of those too. Well, a local variant, but they were all the rage back in the very early 90ies. Give them a bottle with water, then they make a mess of the room, sort of. I mean, yeah, in theory they were supposed to have diapers, but tell that to a four year old boy, he really liked spraying people and the room more than doing what he was supposed to. That makes Futari wa Pretty Cure look so pale in comparison it's painful. How many episodes does Emi have?

Ah, perhaps I misunderstood then, I seem to recall a conversation that hinted at you playing shooters with a gamepad because you can do so from your couch. It was about Mass Effect 2 at the time, but perhaps not limited to ME2. Anyway, point still stands, albeit slightly changed. Playing shooters with a gamepad is an excercise in frustration.

Some people wouldn't recognize greatness even if it bit them in the arse. Know that I shall henceforth ignore your opinions on input devices. Not that I didn't already after you said you prefer playing Mass Effect 2 with a gamepad to keyboard and while back, but even more so now than before!

To be honest I absolutely hate this trend towards having more and more and then some more buttons on gamepads, and I hate most gamepads to boot, so screw having another to or three more buttons to press. It doesn't enhance the gaming experience for me, at all*, and all it does is make the developers even lazier with control schemes than they already are. Four face buttons, two analog triggers and two shoulder buttons are the upper limit of what I can stomach (not enjoy, but... live with). Gamepads peaked with the GameCube for me**. That one was comfortable to have in my hands, didn't have an excessive amount of buttons, everything was easily reachable and hey, the games could be played just as well. Speaking of FromSoftware games, it's not like they playtest their games with the gamepads either, or else I can't really imagine how they think it's a good idea to default the healing items to the d-pad like it was for Sekiro (not sure if that was like that for DS too, I don't think so). If a fight goes sideways enough to need healing (happens to to the best of us ), and you already slow down when using healing, do you really want to let go of any of the other buttons or sticks? *WoW-gameplay doctrine from Cataclysm going forward. "Players enjoy having more buttons to press." Yeah, maybe, like, damage dealers do. I didn't. I enjoyed making the best use of the buttons that I do have, which is why I always played healers. More buttons, more stuff? Eh... please Blizzard, balance the buttons we already have. **But what do I know, people think the DS-style controller layout is fine. Maybe it is if you don't have spindly and overly long fingers, but with that layout, I can choose between "clawing" at the buttons and sticks (i.e. arching my fingers all the time, which is hellishly uncomfortable after a few minutes) or having my fingers touch all the time. Especially the thumbs when having to use both analogue sticks. Not cool.

Yes, there is, the newer XBox gamepads all die after a couple of months of use.