majestic

Fixed that for you.

Some of the jury votes were, but not all. The popular vote was pure politics though, with 439 out of a possible 468 points awarded to the Ukrainian entry. Prior to the event our TV hosts this year speculated that Ukraine would win this one even if they just sent nobody and we'd sit in three minutes of silence, and what do you know, three minutes of silence would have been preferable to this year's winning entry. On the bright side, it's marginally less terrible than 2016's political winning entry which was three minutes of howling. Sorry, I meant so say, a three minute touching ballad that rightly won an apolitical music competition! Sorry, mea culpa. Not that the competition isn't a joke by far and large anyway, and has been so for a long while. Some years it's just more of a joke than in others. edit: Technically the winning entry should be disqualified by the rules of the ESC due to, well, the artists yelling Slawa Ukrajini at the end, but hey, ain't nobody got the balls for that. Wonder how the UK feels, the first time after years of zero pointe entries that they got a potential winner and an actually decent song with a nice artist, and they're upstaged by a bunch of clowns that would not have won if it had been an entry by any other nation. edit 2: Not to mention that the UK will most likely be asked to host the next event, without winning it. So that's a double whammy. Losing to... that, and having to bear the burden of hosting the next competition. Sheesh.

It ain't over until Drosselmeyer says it is over. Feels a lot longer, was it really just a couple of months, not like a little over a year? With nobody else watching the series and you not continuing, there's no real need to hold back any spoilers, so I'll just not mark them. The reason why Ahiru and Fakir are the only two characters that feel like, well, actual characters in the story proper (Edel and Drosselmeyer exist outside of it, and Edel is an automaton designed to extend Drosselmeyer's reach within the story) is because they are and nobody else is, and that's fairly intentional, although the series doesn't actually tell you that until a decent ways into season two, which is unfair to anyone watching animes primarily for the characters. Mytho seems like a primary candiate for some character development, given his state of being utterly without desires of his own at the beginning of the series, and nothing ever happens until the very final episode of season two. Mytho is a story element that might as well be a locked door or a golden apple, or more traditionally a sleeping princess waiting to be kissed awake by the prince. The same goes for the Raven, who doesn't really show up in the first season anyway. The reason why Fakir is an actual character is because he's a distant relative of Drosselmeyer, he is part of the story, but a part of the story that can affect the story in ways outside of what the author wills. To be honest, that's one of the more clever things the anime does as a commentary on authorship, highlighting the way how sometimes characters can change the story written, because the writer(s) at some point might no longer feel that what they had planned fits their characters. Ahiru meanwhile is Drosselmeyer's chosen protagonist. He gives her free reign within a story constriction that is designed to hurt her, just because he enjoys tragic tales. The second season has a scene that exemplifies what happens when someone else arrives at the town, a group of people arrive, come through the door, and some of them are turned into animals, with the kids asking: "Mom, have you always been an <animal type>?" - that is to say, once someone arrives, they're turned into window dressing for the story. Drosselmeyer is already dead, because the villagers he lived with did not like his stories, and they punished him by chopping off his hands so he can no longer write. Turns out that didn't quite stop him. He simply went on to create a device that wrote the stories for him. Season two ends with that device being destroyed and the town being restored to a regular town, reconnecting it with the world at large. Rue is the Raven's daughter, or at least she believes such to be the case. She's just a human child abducted by the Raven and raised as his own, although Raven does become increasingly annoyed at her inability to finish the tasks he gives her. The more Rue fails to do the impossible (i.e. she is tasked with moving ahead the story by the antagonist, while having no agency over the story at all), the more the Raven tells her how much of a failure she is, and that she's only human. Which she is, after all. Rue ends up marrying Prince Mytho, by the way. Oh my, but why not? Hey, don't hate on Edel here. Poor Edel. She died in a fire to save a duck, and all she gets for it is what, disdain? Not that I disagree with Ahiru and Fakir's interactions being the only truly enjoyable parts of the series and the way the rest of it can make anyone turn off. Like I stated before, even if you get all the displayed reference and themes, and that's extremely hard, if not impossible without reading up on them, the show itself never achieves a state where that would be interesting enough to truly appreciate it. As such it's a constant waffling between having nice moments and having moments that should be interesting, and sometimes are on their own, but never really are as a whole. The sum total of the show is so much less than the promise of its individual parts. I already wrote a ten page post about that. Just one question, if Mytho was not a character but simply a door that Ahiru would need to retrieve keys for to unlock, would that change anything? Obviously a door would not talk or try to interact with the other characters, but that's besides the point of the question. Would you be as angry at the Ring of Power in Lord of the Rings when it's not a real character? What difference does it make that Mytho the story construct can talk? Not trying to be contrarian here, it's just something that I actually thought about while watching this, because Mytho is annoying more than he's interesting, or anything else, really. I wonder though, why do we actually feel less bothered by story constructs when they're inanimate? What's the difference beween a door, a ring, a crystal, some holy sword or whatever else, and Mytho? Is there any? Should there be any? Mytho is the implement that makes Ahuri and Fakir grow close, in a similar way as the Ring tries to divide Sam and Frodo (and affects Gollum, of course), but it's a ring, even with a fraction of Sauron's essence in it and some devious intelligence in its will and doing, so why is it easier to accept a thing serving in such a role than it is to have an animate character doing that? Ahiru's primary reason to be in the story is arguably simply to fail, not really to save Mytho. Drosselmeyer set her up to either follow through with her desires and return to being a duck, or being a human while being unable to find any true happiness in it. By the end of the series, she does not find a way out of this dilemma, by the way. Ahiru goes back to being a duck. Not because Drosselmeyer wanted it, but because she chose to. Yes, more or less, but in reality it resolves the larger storyline, both in and out of universe. Mytho is restored, defeats the Raven, marries Rue, Ahiru goes back to being a duck because for the former to happen she has to give up the pendant that turns her into a duck (it's part of Mytho, a twist I'm sure nobody saw coming, what with the red gem in it). Fakir comes to terms with loving a duck and being a relative of Drosselmeyer, and once the story is over the animals go back to being real people, or animals, depending on what they were before. The cat teacher is seen running around with his children - well, kittens, really - implying that he finally found someone to marry. Or maybe not, because cats don't really bond for life.

That's generally a problem with patches in many games in recent times, or at least for games I played a lot. Hey, I know it's a bother, but perhaps I don't want your gameplay changes to apply to my game? Well, for single player games, anyway. Obsidian could have really added an option to Pillars of Eternity: [ ] Make the bad combat in this game worse by adding "balance" from recent patches.

Same here.

More than that, even. 着る and 切る (both kiru, but 切る inflects differently) are homonyms, meaning to wear and to cut, respectively. キル, as written in the title, (キルラキル) can also mean kill if kill is used as a loan word - it's how you would write (and say) kill (the English word) in Japanese. It's mostly used for computer game kills and to mean terminate (to close, etc.). The title is funny indeed, considering Ryuko fights with a giant scissor blade. In plain Japanese, kill and wear aren't homonyms though, to kill/murder is 殺す (korosu). /weeb

You should look at Kill La Kill. It sure is lighthearted... sometimes. Among other things.

Nah, it'll just mean you'll fall through the world only half as much as in other releases, and maybe it'll not be as broken as Fallout 76.

I heard someone called for a DIO video?

I wrote a book report on Rage and held a presentation back in high school. By far and large because I already read the book and didn't want to spend any effort, and our teacher was okay with picking a King Bachmann novel. Didn't some school shooter have a paperback edition and King had it pulled from print over that?

Strange New Worlds, episode two. Wow, these people are in life and death situations and they crack jokes, don't pay attention to their surroundings, start touching things willy-nilly and simply start going on extended smalltalks IN THE MIDDLE OF A GOD DAMNED CRISIS THAT MAY AS WELL KILL THEM AND THE MILLIONS OF PEOPLE THEY'RE TRYING TO SAVE. What the hell is wrong with you? Are you Starfleet's finest, or are you lot stupid ass teenagers yapping about? Man, seriously, you make Scotty starting fights over insults to the Enterprise look professional, and the crew (and Scotty) got dressed down over it. Also, erm, did everyone except Pike and his first officer forget how to act or is the direction (for the actors, scene composition and camerawork is fine so far, at least) in this show even worse than it was in Discovery? edit: Unneeded action scenes, and Uhura has a dark and troubled past because of course she does. Yeah, no. Ugh.

Gamers Nexus generally knows what they're talking about, there's some really hilarious teardowns on the channel too.

That's going to be the season finale. The wind will hike up Komi's skirt, Tadano will get a nosebleed from seeing her pristine and white panties while either Dragon or Dog Girl will block Stalker Girl's view, leading to her having a heart attack or a stroke.

Komi continues to be nice enough when none of the utter nutjobs are in the scenes. Please just focus on Komi and Tadano. Pretty please?

Not sure I agree, you can choose between Brave New World and 1984 at the moment. Comparison's not perfect, but much close than it should be.

I have tried. Really hard. Tried. Then paused, tried again. Tried harder. I can't. I'm just dead inside, and while I wish I could share some of the more positive impressions I've read here, but it took me all of 15 minutes to switch playback to 2x speed just to get it over with. Yes, I mean to say that I've watched the first episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. For half the episode I even took notes on the things I hated, until I realized that I just hate them because I finally arrived at the point where Mike from RLM is too. I just hate watching Star Trek by now, and nothing they can do will ever be good enough for me to not poke holes at everything and complain about every ridiculous minutiae. Recently I watched a couple of episodes of Star Trek Voyager, and in the second episode of the series they encounter a silly space anomaly, a quantum singularity, and Voyager punches a hole in its event horizon to escape it. That's the sort of stupidity I'd complain about in nuTrek, but in Voyager it was a minor quibble in an otherwise decent episode mostly about crew interactions and tensions between the Maquis and the Federation crew. Plus some really fun moments with Bob Picardo as the doctor. Yes, punching a hole in an event horizon is silly, but that's only, like, the final part of an otherwise interesting concept. And, as a caveat, until Star Trek Enterprise came out, I considered Voyager to be the least of all the Star Trek series, by far and large because the writers never figured out what they wanted to do with the characters, especially Janeway who ended up being a bipolar schizophrenic in a captain's chair. She should get treatment for that, but hey, nope, she's captaining the Voyager. Then there's Chakotay, every fan's favorite racist native American stereotype, and some other really pointless and bad episodes, including the infamous Threshold where Paris transforms himself and Janeway into degenerated lizards and makes babies with her. Anyway, enough about Voyager. Back to my notes, I'll just put them in spoilers because they are: Yeah, so, this episode was probably not nearly as bad as it felt for me, or could have been, I guess, but really, no. Just, no. Wish I could say I'm done with this crap, but apparently I'm not. Oh glorious joy, how many episodes will this steaming pile of excrement get in this season?

I think it is not much of a coincidence that he 'disappeared' after he called Hurlshot a Californian pedophile not worth explaining himself to. I'll bet you dollars to donuts that he got beaten by the ban hammer for that. Maybe he'll eventually be back as SonicComrade or YellowMage117, who knows.

By the way @KP wants Blue Velvet have you ever watched Six-String Samurai? It's set in a post-apocalyptic alternate reality where a nuclear attack by the Soviet Union made most of the planet uninhabitable. Only Lost Vegas (formerly Las Vegas) remains, being under siege for decades by the Red Army. Having run out of ammo and resources, the siege is going nowhere. After the death of Elvis, Lost Vegas' king, a guitar battle for the throne of Lost Vegas is called. The film follows Buddy (guy looking a whole lot like Buddy Holly) and his trusty sidekick, on their way to Lost Vegas to claim the throne. On the way they run into strange zombies, cannibals, the Russians and even Death himself, who, armed with a Stratocaster, tries to vanquish rock and claim the throne of Lost Vegas in the name of heavy metal.

Someone's afraid of needles.

For the past three or so years, I've been going through The Blacklist. The show has a few ups and downs, and a fantastic performance by James Spader that kept me entertained for much longer than it ought to have. The storyline has been showing signs of kudzu-like* growth since season three, but it went full kudzu in the fourth. Still, someone who sat through all of X-Files isn't going to be deterred by a decently entertaining show developing signs of the Chris Carter effect**. It easily overtook X-Files in the last two seasons though, and by now I'm sure Chris Carter is, in silent and contemplative moments, in awe of Jon Bokenkamp. Somewhere I've read that season 8 was supposed to be the last one, but NBC ordered a ninth one. Without Jon Bokenkamp running the development, though. Anyway, I'm at the last two episodes of the eigth season and the show went full NGE finale*** for them, or at least, the one I just watched. Time literally freezes while the female lead character starts interacting with a whole host of characters both alive and dead trying to piece the puzzle together. And, uhm, the final plot twist - or what probably was meant as final plot twist, anyway - is shaping up to be hilariously**** stupid. Time to go see it confirmed, I guess. Anyway, I could talk more, but what would be the point. The weak points of the series are some of the characters and the actors behind them, especially Megan Boone, the female lead, playing Elizabeth 'Liz' Keen, someone the show asks us to care about, but no one does. Or at least, I didn't. In the first few seasons she's paired with Mr. Boring who I... Anyway, guess there'll be a ninth season to watch after this too. I thought I'd be done by now, but hey, yeah, apparently this still rakes in enough ratings for NBC. *sigh* Footnotes:

These analog controls aren't helping! — Rios What, would you rather fly the drones with a D-pad? Or worse a touch screen D-pad? I hate this show. I hate everything and everyone. Gah! Shut up Wesley, shut up! SHUT UP! Dear god go away. Project Khan. Figured. Go die in a fire everyone involved.

It didn't match any expectations at all even after your description of it, and no, I did not watch that other anime. I just saw this is one that started to air fairly recently, one of these where I have to wonder why this is even a thing. Baffling.

Trapped in a Dating Sim: The World of Otome Games is Tough for Mobs, episode 1. I figured it would be time for more Isekai after The Vision of Escaflowne proved to be such a wonderful anime to watch. In this one, a salesman hits is head, dies and is reincarnated in the game world of an Otome game he played. Using his knowledge of the game world, he manages to snag some loot and becomes wealthy, being able to defy the mandate of the world that all men either become obedient husbands, or playthings for the female royalty. A setup you could probably make a decent anime out of, actually, if it wasn't some 少年 nonsense, right? Well, if that doesn't make you want to watch immediately, then I don't know what does. It's the best thing since My Dress-Up Darling! Well this was... I think it's time for me to enter my safety cupboard: So, now, for real, Texhnolyze, episode one, which is something new. Watched the first episode, and really, can't say anything at all, other than what's been posted before, so hey, yeah, can't add anything, other than that design of the characters reminds me of something. I feel like I've seen that character design before, but I can't put my finger on it, and I'm really sure I haven't watched Texhnolyze before. Or even caught a glimpse of it. Or anything, really. This be really accurate for the first episode.

There was an image of an old man wearing a gray hat captioned "WUT?" that got used often, but I'm not sure if that ever was an actual BISIMG or just something else that came up.

Surly you naughty boys are suggesting import places that carry licensed goods ?