majestic

I've just got an invitation to join the Illuminati. It's a little strange that they'd recruit people from random e-mail addresses, but that's probably because they require a leap of faith or something. I'm sure nothing bad will come out of giving them my credit card details, right?

That certainly was a valiant effort at the time, and while they may have won a battle, there's no winning the war against Scooter. Proof: And just to add one more thing: They also have a new album called "God Save The Rave" so make of that title what you will. Heh.

I originally had "and Zoisite and Mercury" then realized it looks weird when I put the Guardians first all the time and wrote in another Mercury without taking the old one out. Yeah. I think one of those short stories was adapted into one of the Sailor Moon mini-specials for the anime. The one where Ami suddenly becomes an Education-Nazi competing with some random Umino-like person. You know, the one good thing coming out of SuperS (the SuperS movie is debatable, although certainly better than the season).

Wait, did you just say I make animes or games that I like sound like garbage? A couple of those, actually. Short stories of various degrees of canonicity, and a bunch of artwork for it. The biggest deviation of Sailor Moon Crystal from the manga came in the form of using a non-canon idea of hers that it wasn't just Princess Serenity that was in love with Endymion, but also the Sailor Senshi with Endymion's friends and protectors, the four heavenly kings, the original name would be on the filter, but hey, kanji power: 四天王. The pairings were, I think - not sure and I can't check right now, so maybe not 100% accurate, Mars and Jadeite, Jupiter and Nephrite, Venus and Kunzite and Mercury and Zoisite. Metalia ends up killing them all after the power of love (tm) restores their memory and they don't want to fight the guardians any more. 100% sure on the first two, not sure about the latter two, but Kunzite seems to be a better fit for Manga!Minako, so there's that. Also, yeah, Crystal is... bad.

No pressure. No pressure. No pressure. No... *mumble* I'm pretty confident that the second season is less frustrating and more consistent than the first one. It does have bits and pieces that are ups and downs, but outside of the first arc of Cardcaptor Sakura, which show doesn't? I already mentioned that some faults in the setup remain, but overall the second season was a lot more enjoyable than the first. What I am not confident of is just how much you'll end up liking it, if at all, but that's something I've said like ten times now, so yeah... That it really is. I expected it would make fun or be a scathing exploration, and it ended up being a really interesting take. There is a non-canon side story from Naoko Takeuchi where Makoto has a daugther. But that's... non-canon. Oh, hello White, how are you today? *mind control*

In a way, that does make sense, sadly. It's victims of (violent) abuse, for instance, who often turn out to be abusers themselves later. Often the bullies at school come from a broken home, and repeat what they experience at home. It takes effort to break the cycle. In a way this seems to hold true, whether slights are real or only perceived, and that followed into this entirely new and really alien incel community that sprang up around this. In other words, a marginalized minority has by definition an easier time lashing out against some other marginalized group, or minority group, and for nerds, that more often than not is still women and girls both within their community and without. There's a nice video essay on the Incel community by ContraPoints, and it's not made the way you think (unless anyone has seen it already, it really wasn't at all what I expected initially), because she's pretty understanding and references her own issues with it, and draws parallels. I watched it a while back in spite of not being able to deal with her videos all that much. I want to note that I have nothing against her personally, nor about what she does, makes videos about or what she is. There's something else, I also understand just how easy it is to fall down into that mindset of just blindly turning around and "retaliating" on unrelated people when you suddenly find yourself being able to. There's also the constant wear on the community as more and more people want in on it all of a sudden. That's - for me - the most baffling thing about it. Do I really get angry when I see nerd chic people with fake glasses pretending to be a part of the community appear on YouTube because it's all the rage now? No, but it's really easy to understand how that can happen. I mean, take your fake glasses and leave. I've had to wear them ever since I was six to be able to see and reaped all sorts of abuse over them, and now you're showing up with fake glasses as chic accessory? Are you kidding me? And that's usually the same people that turn around and complain about ableisms here, or something or another there on Twitter. What? See how easy that goes? A little further and you could just type "I'm going to break your face when I see you and stuff your glasses up your arse!" and we're right at threats, and I could easily justify that to myself in the same way the Twitter mob justifies ruining existences. Never mind that the getup of random YouTuber #10 is probably not even his or her idea, but the one of their producer, because the videons on the channels in question are more often than not produced professionally. That's not even the point I was going to make, but it's really the same thing - or something similar anyway. Fans of A Song of Ice and Fire that came from the TV show? Yeah, those are lesser things that shouldn't be here in the first place. It doesn't take much, and it forms a dynamic all of its own, and suddenly you're part of a reactionary force of complete buttheads willing and able to lash out at anything that's remotely encroaching on their domain or different, or whatever - or anyone telling them that they're a bunch of reactionary asshats. I had my eye opening moment when it came to that a long time ago, and I made a very dear friend over it that I still regret losing contact with, along with some of the things that happened which are now coming back to the surface. Sigh. I think three or four years ago I already wrote a post on it, but I can't find it, and I'm not in the mood for another several pages long post. The moment (which was unrelated to the post I wrote) lead me to take a step back and ask myself what the hell I really was doing at the time. I decided for myself that I'm better than this, took a step back and started over. Because what's the point when I'm no better than the others? What IS the point when you go on an heap the abuse you got yourself right back on others? Yes, absolutely. The problem with fringes is it is alluring to fall down the rabbit hole, and a lot harder to get out of them than going in. That's in an entirely different ballpark alltogether. It's something that a lot of women in streaming or on YouTube end up having to deal with when the fandom suddenly finds out that they're married, engaged or otherwise in a stable relationship and maybe have been in one right from the start. "Fans" start feeling deceived and there's this sudden realization that they've donated to someone that you may have imagined as being... available, whom their own obsession was based on, and the insane idea that you're special for the interaction you at worst perhaps even just imagined, or at best bought. Although in all fairness, that's not behaviour limited to men, it just appears to be that way online. While I don't personally know anyone involved, there've been suicides over boy groups breaking up, which is a similar thing, just taken to an extreme in in terms of self-harm (the other extreme is stalking).

Well, here goes a follow up. Warning, contains some more discussion of porn. Minor follow up to the discussion about anime and subculture: edit: Yeah, that was it.

It is indeed incredibly from how little so much can follow. I've probably spent as much time in these threads posting about the things I've watched than actually watching them overall, and in some selected cases a whole lot of time more. You can bet writing about Sailor Moon Crystal took at least twice as long as watching it, but probably more like three or four times as long. That Sailor Moon Eternal post took a total of six hours or so. In a way your watching Sailor Moon was one of the best things to happen to my entertainment consumption in recent years. Sure, there's some crap - okay, make that a lot of crap - I've had to sit through as a result (mostly indirectly), but also a lot of great stuff too, more than I would normally have found. Speaking of comfort zones, have I ever mentioned that watching Steven Universe was that for me? I wouldn't have touched that with a ten foot pole simply because of its looks and the plot blurbs one can find, and it ended up one of the best things I've watched in a long time - and probably the best Western animated TV show I've watched. Yeah, scratch that probably. While I still can say a whole lot about its quality, the distinction is fairly meaningless though to be honest. I don't think I've actually... watched a whole lot else outside of Galaxy Rangers and Bravestarr, and while I liked the sci-fi element of those when I was kid and they were on TV, I was rather not treated to the condescending moralizing that is present in these. Overcoming preconceived notions isn't easy, even when you're used to questioning yourself and your motivations. Funny how that quote was the reason for the essay and I forgot to add it. How silly of me. Time to fix that! That's fine. It's a fun little show that I already find has too short a runtime, although I don't know how long you could possible draw out that concept. In a way it's probably good that it only has 13 episodes, but it could have had 26 or something before growing stale, I think. There are films or TV shows that I like in spite of that making no sense to anyone, and not me either. Yeah, you posted that before and @Bartimaeus replied that he appreciates the art more than whatever else artstyle we were talking about at the time, something about a wandering elf wondering about human existence or learning to appreciate humans beyond the usual elven racism, but I don't remember what it was and I can't find the post right now.

I originally wanted to spend the evening either playing some more Grim Dawn to grind reputation, which is about as fun as it sounds, or watch an episode or two of something. Perhaps a movie. Lord knows my backlog is large enough. Then you guys went ahead and a started a discussion, and while everyone contributed a piece of the puzzle, the larger picture is as of yet incomplete, so an idea formed in my mind, and it'll be another essay. I expect this will take me two or so hours to write, but that's fine. I hope I'm not going to lose you at some point, but even if I do, please appreciate the effort and like, subscribe, leave a comment and follow me on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter! Without further ado, please follow the white rabbit. Post obviously contains no spoilers, but is just spoilered for brevity and structure.

Sure Roy, sure...

You've watched My Dress-Up Darling and How Heavy Are The Boobs You Have? at the same time already, haven't you? I know, I ignored the warnings and now have to suffer the consequences of not heeding them. I hope this doesn't come across the wrong way, but while I know why I like it (I do enjoy my absurd shows, after all), for what it is worth, it makes no sense to me either why you like it. I mean, by all means, you should... not enjoy it. Hate it? No. But enjoy? That she was indeed.

Normally there'd be a whole lot to complain about, like all the contrivances necessary for the episodes to work, but this ain't the type of show where that really matters at all. Like, where does Myao get her money from all of a sudden? How is it they run into hijinks every time, why do they always leave an episode and area together, but always seem to arrive seperately at the same point? It's baffling, and totally inconsequential. It's just goofy fun. Plus a whole lot of violence that is pretty cartoony. It sure is trash, but it's... great. So yeah, of course Myao can heal a broken neck be being scared of a (bad) faith healer and end up in his flock, and spend the rest of the episode walking around with that incredibly retarded "I know Jesus personally" look on her face. Heh. I'll watch episode nine soon. Probably once I get home, but yeah, office time today. Well, I imagine it'll be images like these: Akane sitting by the campfire at night, talking to Nanaka. Or Nanaka and Sae talking after Ayanojō rejected her. Perhaps a little bit of gay panic attack? Or a shot of the rather hilarious club uniforms they wear? Right? I mean... Oh...

edit: I'd rather watch My Dress-Up Darling, I think. If someone would force me to pick, that is.

Myao is really beginning to remind me of Nadine the Brain. I have no idea if there's a video of hers with subtitles, but let me check... yeah, no, but a short clip, it's not like you can't hear what's going on even without missing the meaning entirely. Unlike Myao, who is funny and all that, Nadine is real... and she has a kid. Yeah. Oh boy. Someone save the little bugger please. Anyway, great episode. edit: So in case you want to know what's she's talking about, she's saying that chocolate is good for children because it contains milk, bread and sausages don't make you gain weight because they contain no sugar, unlike organic vegetables. Yep. That's... yeah.

Carried by the Wind: Tsukikage Ran, episode 8: Myao breaks her neck (or else dislocates something), then runs into a faith healer promising healing if the villagers let go of their worldly possesions and join him and his clan in training. For show he "heals" two of his disciples, who clearly are in on the scheme, of their "pain" and Myao is so impressed she keeps bugging him into "healing" her of her neck issue to the point where the gathered victims villagers demand that the good healer work his magic on her. To the dismay of all his gathered inner circle, he agrees, then casually remarks that without proper training first, it might not work immediately, then does his spiel, Myao is startled, falls over backwards and the impact fixes her neck. Good job Myao. Good job.

To be "fair" to the OVA, I haven't talked much about the decent things there are. It looks good, the animation is good, like you already noted, Ms. IItō's character designs are really great in her own style, which also ends up being a detriment at times because they look so distinctly like "her" characters and reminded me a bit of Sailor Moon every now and then. There are moments in the OVA that are brilliant character stuff, but it's always in between Takeo summoning panties on his face, getting a nosebleed from seeing Sae, Nanaka and Akana in their swimwear or Sae flying a broom handle up Takeo's butt where I'm like: "Guys, I didn't find any of that funny when I was the target demographic for it, and it's not gotten funny in the meantime, how am I supposed to take the nice character moments serious now?" Sometimes I wish it wasn't so, and I could be one of the people who laugh at Takeo being penetrated by a broom handle. Ha. Ha. That's like laughing at Ben Stiller zipping up his asterisk in There's Something About Mary. Boy did I laugh when I was subjected to that film. Imagine me being like the Box o' Laughs from Day of the Tentacle. Ben Stiller has the distinction of having starred in, directed and contributed to a somewhat clever comedy film with Zoolander, and guess what? That one has gotten pretty mixed reviews and audience ratings. Figures. Yeah, so, if you want to look at her character designs some more and not be subjected to mind numbing torture, Princess Tutu does a pretty good job of that, at the expense of being more of a fairy tale than a nice character driven slice of life anime.

I know that's not really on topic, but 30 Rock was pretty great for a sitcom.

Magic User's Club, TV edition. Episode one. There are moments in life when you instantly regret something you've done. Like casually telling your wife that her sister is really attractive, or sitting down naked in a field of nettles, or you could perhaps attempt to use a needle and some ink to tattoo yourself instead of leaving it a professional. Then there are things like... the opening of this series, where you suddenly start to think that the sweet caress of nettles on your nether regions or swift kick therein by your wife is preferable to seeing Takeo and Ayanojō - in case you have forgotten my previous posts or repressed them, the former is the Magic User's Club president, and the latter is his really obviously gay friend who is voiced by DIO and had a nice talk about having a crush on someone who doesn't reciprocate it with Sae's friend Nanaka, which was one of the few highlights of the OVA - sitting on top of each other in a darkened room, softly moaning, leaving you only to wonder what sort of stupid joke they came up with to explain what's painfully obviously not the hot gay seks it appears to be. From left to right: Sae, Nanaka, Takeo, DIO Ayanojō and Akane. In case you can't figure out who DIO and who Akane is because they're on top of each other, keep in mind that DIO is the really, really gay one. Yep. If your answer was that Ayanojō is sewing a hole in Takeo's pants and Takeo moaning because his back hurts, then congratulations, you're as retarded as the writer of this travesty, but what would you expect from the same person that wrote Futari Ecchi, episodes of Princess Tutu and Serial Experiments Lain and an episode of Vampire Princess Miyu... wait a moment. What? Everything else is pretty much as the OVA left it, except it looks worse because they probably made 13 episodes and not 6 out of the same budget, and that budget couldn't have been high considering the screenshots I posted from the commercial "documentary" about the making of the OVA. Akane is busy slutting around and not coming to the club meeting, Nanaka is coming along with Sae but complains about it all the time, Sae tries to be confident but isn't, Ayanojō is really, really gay (did I mention that yet?) and Takeo... well, at least he didn't have a nosebleed yet, or at least I don't think being totally red in face from imagining Sae in a ripped club uniform counts. I'll admit that the premise of this episode, which is the club fighting a giant cherry blossom tree that is now where the alien ship of the OVA was, isn't so bad. Sae messes up the spell and animates the tree instead of turning it into petals, and big tiddies manga lady is off to negotiate on behalf of humanity because she thinks herself special after the aliens from the OVA fondled her with their tentacle probes. No, really, not only is that exactly what happend in the OVA, it's also what they went with in this episode. The mosnter tree is slowly moving through the city, and the military is attempting to intercept it. Sae, who befriended the tree in the meantime (sort of) wants to protect it, and so they cast a spell to save the tree from a helicopter borne misslie barrage by creating a sakura whirlwind. Actually, the episode wasn't nearly as bad as the post makes it out to be. The ecchi elements were toned down a lot, probably because keeping them at the OVA level wouldn't have worked too well with a TV release. The animation is understandably worse than in the OVA, which isn't much of a surprise. Giant breasted lady and the gay joke from the opening aside, this was as okay as you can reasonably expect an episode of this trash to be. I'll say one nice thing about it, and I hope that won't turn into regret in the next episode, that ending and Sae making friends with the tree was pretty nice, and Ikuko Itō's character designs are - as in the OVA, and as usual - pretty good. The voice acting and direction is also fine, but that feels like such an afterthought it barely matters. They used the old outro lullaby in the episode, instead for the ending. So boo. The opening and ending songs are okay, though.

Looks like I spent the last ten years not knowing that Scooter actually made an official music video to their New Kids Turbo theme song. Ah, to have missed perfection for so many years. Scooter is truly the apex of European dance trash from the 90ies, and they're still going strong. In the unlikely case that anyone here is not familiar with these glorious Germans, take a peek at their prime 90ies trash:

I'm a lot more worried that conservatives fall into the trap of focusing on critical race theory over the actual problem of evolution still being taught in school. When will we go back to properly learn that God Ancient Aliens created all life on Earth?

But, but... Pedosus was a cute romantic interest for Chibi-Usa, not a villain, how can you say such things?

Oh, is Lego getting a taste of their own medicine? How... satsifying.

This has so much potential, can you imagine integrating your Microsoft account with battle.net? Read mails, chat with friends, coordinate playtime with colleagues. Host video and voice chat in World of Warcraft with its newly built in Teams integration, and show your allegiance by buying Windows 11: Alliance or Windows 11: Horde! edit: Goldshire Inn virtual meeting room?

I appreciate the sentiment. I used to be really similar in terms of organization of my hard disks, I had neat partitions dedicated to certain things, some with backups, some without. Always enough hard disk space. I also was much like LC and complained whenever Microsoft updated something and introduced a new tool or whatever, spent all the time in the world removing it again, editing the registry if necessary, and set up my own personal LFS so it only has what I want. At some point, I just stopped bothering. If something new shows up after a reboot because update #123121 something installed a new image viewing tool I'm never going to use, then... whatever, really. If there's chaos on my hard disk, then yeah, that's just fine with me. In the same way, in this day and age, if I try some game or software and it doesn't work out of the box, then it doesn't work, end of story. All the enthusiasm evaporated. If anyone told me 25 years ago that I'd eventually sit in front of 10 year old hardware I'd have laughed them off, yet here I am, writing this post on my trust old computer powered by a second generation i5. My last hardware upgrade was going from a 560 Ti to a 970 GTX... and I had the card for three months before I could muster the energy and motivation to actually install it. I'm also pretty sure I mentioned that before.