Lurker > Paratroopa1

I actually think MN9 is better than MM8

I don't think it's MUCH worse than MM11 although it is worse

I don't understand how it's even possible for there to be a speculative market on this all of a sudden

Shouldn't the insane influx of cards on ebay totally crash the market in a matter of days

HeroDelTiempo17 posted...

It's been 2.5 years since the first episode of a game no longer planned to be episodic, and one of those years was 2020. That's a bit of a hasty assessment!

edit: Actually I guess it is going to be episodic after all but still, we haven't even hit the length of the gap between Undertale and Deltarune Episode 1 yet

Keep in mind also that as of the last Deltarune update Toby was talking about how he's like, dealing with long-term injuries that make it hard for him to work

I'm gonna give the guy some time

I would imagine that they intended to lead off with something more conventional in Falcon and Winter Soldier before testing the waters with something more experimental in WandaVision but then it didn't work out that way (and it didn't matter). I could be wrong though!

My condolences

PerfectChaosZ posted...

It will cover one month of rent for some literally no months for others. No where in the U.S. will it cover rent for two months.

The headline is bad, but read what the actual infographic says

Maniac64 posted...

Uh...what riot was he at?

The same one that he claimed was actually antifa agitators a while ago

xp1337 posted...

holy shit this is a take

https://twitter.com/American_Bridge/status/1370434031532314625

Ron Johnson (R-WI) on January 6: "I never felt threatened, because I didn't. And mainly because I knew that even though those thousands of people that are there marching to the Capitol were trying to pressure people like me to vote the way they want me to vote. I knew those are people that love this country, that truly respect the law enforcement, would never do anything to break a law and so I wasn't concerned. Now, had the tables been turned, Joe this'll get me in trouble, had the tables been turned and President Trump won the election, and those were tens of thousands of Black Lives Matter and antifa protesters, I might have been a little concerned."

Beyond even just the plain text that speaks for itself I feel there are layers here intentional and not.

Saying the loud part out louder

I wish there was more going on with 'Geraldine'. Like, they sort of made it seem from the way she introduced herself (hesitantly, like she was making it up as she went along), to the way she asked Wanda about her brother (which was... apparently Agatha probing Wanda? What was the point of this, this was weird) like she was in there as a spy and just totally rolling with the sitcom premise, which would have been kind of hilarious and awesome, but she was just mind controlled like everyone else.

Hbthebattle posted...

Unlike conservatives, the left is willing to disown one of their own when they do something horrible.

Cuomo's not one of my own, fuck that guy, he's a horrible piece of shit and always has been.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hc8ngiMlCto

The sentimentality leading up to this cheesy moment where it looks like Homer is somehow going to do the impossible, only for him to fail, and then for his failure to be lingered on for just weirdly long enough for it to be funny, and then once the tension is resolved, the kicker at the end with the ambulance - the comedic timing of this made me bark with laughter

Something about Ryota Hayami from Wave Race 64 is such a funny idea to me - would he ride his jetski into battle? Would he be like Captain Falcon and just have normal punches and kicks and have nothing to do with Wave Race 64 at all? I'm fascinated

-hotdogturtle-- posted...

Oh wait, this is what you were responding to me about earlier? I see where the miscommunication came from now, sorry. I was saying "the logic that makes someone pick a gen 1 favorite could be applied to any gen", but you thought I was saying "the hypothetical Pokemon which nobody calls their favorite might possibly be from gen 1", which wasn't the point that I was getting at.

Right, I agree with your logic that the same reasons someone would name Kakuna their favorite also apply to someone like Burmy. It's just that because gen 1 is such an institution onto its own, the potential pool of flamebearers for any given gen 1 Pokemon is way larger just due to nostalgia alone. There's always people who are new to Pokemon with any given gen, of course, but people are just gonna have gen 1 covered as far as each Pokemon there being vouched for. Gen 5 I think is the sketchiest - there are so many Pokemon, so many of which are three-stage lines.

Would "the sheer number of people familiar with Pokemon mathematically means each Pokemon must have a favorite" apply to forms, as well? Like, what is the likelihood that there is at least one person whose favorite Pokemon is specifically Unown Y?

Hbthebattle posted...

This is not quite as true outside of Gamefaqs as on it. Plenty of Pokemon outside of Gen 1 score very well on fanbase polls- Greninja alone has won multiple. Considering each new game comes with a bevy of new players, there's more than enough that someone is going to get specially attached to every one by pure math.

I must have missed the part of my own argument where I said Greninja isn't popular, interesting

-hotdogturtle-- posted...

I'm not seeing how your argument of gen 1 Pokemon being "more established" (been around longer) has any effect on someone picking a later one as their favorite.

I mean, gen 1 is just wildly, absurdly more popular than other gens. It had an entire several years in the late 90's where that was all there was and people only had 150 to choose from, not nearing 1000. Even if you're gonna talk about Go, gen 1's more established there, too. If there is going to be a Pokemon that nobody carries a torch for, it's just not going to be from gen 1.

StealThisSheen posted...

I fully believe people could come up with just about any stupid reason for why something is their favorite.

Yeah, actually, I'll grant this. Not everyone's obsessively thought about every Pokemon and come to a conclusion on what their #1 is after years of thinking about it, some people just kinda pick a fave for some reason and go with it. I think in my head I was approaching this more from a standpoint of durability, like "does every Pokemon have someone who would consider this Pokemon their favorite without changing their mind for a long period of time", but that's adding extra qualifiers onto the question. Every Pokemon has surely had someone call it their favorite at some point in time.

-hotdogturtle-- posted...

This doesn't make sense though, especially when you're saying "already". You think it's okay if someone played Pokemon Red when they were 8 and Kakuka is their favorite Pokemon ever, so by the time they play 4 more games they don't like any other Pokemon as much as they like Kakuka. But what if someone was 8 years old when they first played Pokemon Diamond and Burmy is their favorite Pokemon. They're not being "influenced" by the older games, they don't have to "already" like something else when they're discovering new Pokemon for the first time.

Uh, you seem like you're trying really hard to misunderstand what I'm saying, so I'm gonna stop here.

-hotdogturtle-- posted...

There's really no reason that "All of the gen 1 Pokemon are in the clear" for this particular question.

Yeah there is. They're vastly more well known and more established, even the 'obscure' ones. I don't have any doubts that you'll find a fair number of people that count any given gen 1 Pokemon as their favorite. Even, like, Gloom, or Shellder, or whatever.

Obscure stuff from gen 4 on is a weirder bag. There's a pretty significantly reduced audience for it and a large % of that audience already likes Pikachu or Charizard or whatever. I'm not saying that there's definitely nobody that counts this stuff as their favorites but I don't find it that unlikely that there is at least one Pokemon that not a single human being is vouching for. I don't know which Pokemon that would be, but there's a couple hundred candidates.

All of the gen 1 Pokemon are in the clear. The stuff that I find really dubious is stuff like Duosion, or Binacle. I think you'd have a really hard time scouring the earth finding someone who absolutely 100% vouches for one of those as their favorites and isn't fucking with you.

NBIceman posted...

That seems like kind of a complicated explanation compared to "there's less than 1000 Pokemon and millions of fans, including 3 mil on that sub alone, so the answer is probably yes."

It's not that complicated. Do I think every Pokemon is one of at least someone's faves? Yeah. Do I think every Pokemon is someone's absolute ride-or-die fave Pokemon forever? I find it unlikely. The question that people asked was framed in a way as such not JUST to find how many different Pokemon were everyone's favorites, and not just to share those results publicly, but on top of that, to virtue signal how much they like every Pokemon as a protest against SwSh removing Pokemon from the game. So people are highly incentivized to provide unique answers. The question isn't if people fudged the numbers and provided the most obscure Pokemon that is among their favorites, the question is how many.

Underleveled posted...

I'm pretty sure this settles it. If we've definitively narrowed out all but these four, I'd say that there's gotta be someone somewhere out there that has each of these as their favorite.

I'm not so sure. I think people are naming Pokemon that aren't their true favorites, I think there's a lot of people who are self-selecting for the most obscure Pokemon that are in their top 10 or so to provide more interesting answers.

I am glad you recognized Saki's good qualities. I just nominated her because I couldn't think of another bird waifu, and like, you can't deny she's pretty fine-looking

Nobody calls bird furries featheries

This is one of those tricky things where even just saying the words "bee tricks", assuming you emphasize the word "bee" normally, sort of requires you to make an "uh" sound on the way from making the 'ee' to making the 'tr' sound. there isn't really much of a way around it - the difference is how much you avoid slurring into that 'uh' sound and how you perceive the word.

I am pretty optimistic in general that, while there will always be some standard superhero cliches (some of the parts of this last episode were a little too standard Marvel-superhero crash-bang-boom stuff), I think that everyone working on MCU stuff knows that they have plenty of room to tell the stories they want to tell, and I think especially now that we're in phase four, they're going to be looking for new and exciting things to do instead of telling the same stories over again. And I think they know that audiences will want to watch no matter what. I think WandaVision has proven that the MCU brand is bulletproof as long as the stories are well crafted. Yes, you can tell a story about Wanda Maximoff and Vision in a sitcom world and people will like it.

I think it would have worked really well if they wrote Agatha as an antihero who was trying to stop Wanda. I think you could have her character be arrogant and have the hubris of thinking that only she can control the Scarlet Witch's magic because of her particular abilities, and that she is worthy of it and Wanda isn't because she doesn't even know what she's doing, but it would still be subtly different from her merely being power hungry - I think it would be really interesting if Agatha's primary motive is stopping Wanda but she still had those villainous personality flaws. We would still root for Wanda, because we sympathize with her and we don't want Agatha to kill her, so we're still happy when Agatha is stopped and Wanda resolves the situation on her terms, but it would have made Agatha a compelling part of the story, given that they made Wanda a very grey character. I think they pulled their punches here, which is a shame because WandaVision was such an excellent opportunity to do something different.

Yeah, I think it was a clever way to give a nod to Agatha being her mentor in the comics. I like that they just made Agatha a villain here instead, but it's cool how Agatha ended up helping her to realize her powers anyway.

Also I do like 99% expect Doctor Strange and Scarlet Witch to at least have some kind of tussle at some point, kinda like Iron Man and Thor in Avengers 1, even if she isn't necessarily the antagonist of the film. Just kind of seems like something they'd do.

It's really funny in retrospect that this is the series where Vision really came into his own as a character. He's kind of an unimportant part of all the other films he's in, even Age of Ultron, although his moment at the end of Infinity War does have emotional impact. But here Paul Bettany was really the MVP of this last episode, he really nailed the sentimentality and brought emotional closure to this story even if there are some mechanical threads that were left a little loose. Vision has become one of my favorite MCU characters!

I feel like I'm more attached to Wanda by the end of all this too. The fact that we got a deep dive into her character as a miniseries, rather than a movie, really allowed them to slow down and take their time and really let us soak in a single character. Now I'm like, super excited to see her again, with all of the background of WandaVision behind her.

I have no problem with the Evan Peters thing at all, I loved it. I never thought for a second he was dragged out of the Multiverse somehow - I always assumed that it was simply a metajoke for the audience, and I think it's a brilliant metajoke at that. And it is still clearly teasing the idea of the Multiverse to us much how Far From Home did - we know from the ending, and the fact that she appears in "Multiverse of Madness", that yeah, they're going to do multiverse stuff. Just a little tease of it here, but it's not the central plot of the story and I just... never took it that way. I wasn't on the edge of my seat hoping to get new information about the multiverse.

I do agree that I wasn't a huge fan of all the crash-bang action stuff in this episode although they did de-emphasize that part a little bit. I loved the slow camera pan over to reveal that Wanda had set up runes on the entire hex though while she was fighitng Agatha - that was such a wonderful little setup and payoff and I love when fights are resolved that way rather than the hero punching the bad guy better. Agatha is a really cool foil for Wanda, too - Wanda is kind of overpowered so a witch that knows more about magic than she does and can siphon her powers makes for a really cool villain for her to fight. So I liked that stuff, even if Agatha herself was, as mentioned before, a bit thin in this episode - it's not really clear if she had a motive other than just wanting to absorb the Scarlet Witch's power, but even THAT she didn't make entirely clear as her motive. It's a rare instance where I would have PREFERRED that the villain had jawed on about wanting power or some shit.

I also really really liked that they did not have Wanda make up with the Westview residents at the end - they just had her walk off in shame. I was really worried they would get too schmaltzy and have them forgive her, and I think acknowledging that she can't so easily be forgiven really gave that moment more punch. I think it's cool that they honestly made Scarlet Witch seem kind of scary by the end of this - I could almost see her being the antagonist of Doctor Strange 2, or even possibly a future Avengers movie. Maybe. (Though a redeemable one to be sure, not an evil one.)

I have not actually been able to load the episode for the last 40 minutes and believe me, I have been trying

Called it

I wonder if the last episode will just be titled "Series Finale"

Episode 3 is the only one that didn't really totally land for me, although it still had some good parts - every other episode I thought was fantastic, the first episode is one of my favorites!

Lightning Strikes posted...

This was really an episode about character building, and it was really incredible at that. The scene with the two of them on the bed watching Malcolm in the Middle is one of the MCUs absolute best. For what is grief, but love persevering is an incredible line.

The funny thing is, I dont think that this episode had a mixed response at all. Its the top rated of the series on IMDB, and literally every comment Ive seen outside this thread has been positive. B8 can be funny on the MCU sometimes - it did rank GOTG2 as a top 5 film after all!

I mean, GOTG2 is my 2nd fave MCU film and this last episode of WandaVision was maybe the best one so far imo, so

Talos is great but Demeter utterly wrecks

But yeah based on the sort of vibe you're giving me my recommendation of Outer Wilds is a big one - it's one of my favorite games and not only does it have this sense of like different, small worlds, but exploring and understanding them is the primary objective of the game. Seems like it would really be right up your alley.

This feels like too 'obvious' a recommendation but Wind Waker is another game that gives me this kind of sense; I have like sort of this chill that goes down my spine when I land on a very small island and I have this sort of sense that everything that exists in this small 'world' is visible and within a few steps - there's like a strange sort of 'coziness' to it that I can't explain. I feel this way about real-life islands too although islands in real life aren't *that* small

ctrl + f "Outer Wilds"

cool. Play Outer Wilds, please

Tom Bombadil posted...

I haven't played Mario Galaxy

This is probably the weirdest thing you could have said given the topic

I bought Crypt of the Necrodancer in early access completely as an impulse purchase having heard nothing about the game, while the community was still in its nascent stages, and it was the best choice I ever made

Prince - 1999

I honest to god thought E3 was already dead like two years ago lol

This would basically just be a date with Samus on her ship, I'm down

MetalmindStats posted...

I'm also skeptical about how much new non-video game media matters on this site, given the insularity Para and I both hit upon. That especially applies to Harley Quinn, as I think neither her new show nor her DCCU appearances are particularly popular even in broader nerd culture, let alone here.

Not very much I don't think. I think that Marvel has at least some edge here, thanks to the MCU being so ubiquitously popular and thanks to Marvel vs Capcom - but even then I'm skeptical of someone like Iron Man being much higher than fodder line. I think Harley Quinn is high fodder at best.

The non-video game characters who I think are hands down definitely above fodder line are Goku, Batman, the Joker, Spider-Man, and Darth Vader. Maybe Vegeta, Wolverine, Homer Simpson, and any of the TMNT. I think EVERYONE else is suspect.

Yes

Thing I noticed rewatching episodes 1 and 2 - the ending graphic for the show-in-a-show has a hexagonal border close around Wanda and Visions' faces

Also maybe I'm dumb but I didn't realize the toaster in the commercial in episode 1 was literally supposed to be like the bomb that Wanda and Pietro were buried next to, with the blinking red light. I thought it was JUST a reference to Stark Industries, but I didn't catch the significance of the blinking red light

Also, Agnes is retroactively hilarious when you realize that she's acting along with everyone else

Although I should add that I also think framing matters, it depends on if the contest is "best gaming character" or "best fictional character overall". The latter is much more fertile ground for superheroes and star wars - the former is not.

Yeah, I was basically making the point in chat that out of all of these characters, the only one who I have total faith in to actually put up big numbers is Goku - mainly because the insular culture of this site largely trends towards Japanese media and away from western, but it's even more specific than that. It's hard to explain precisely what I mean, but I think that cultural identification is big with regards to what people prefer to vote for, and I think DBZ is really the only BIG property that feels like it culturally defines our in-group. The superhero subculture is enormous, larger than ours, but it doesn't really have the same overlap and I think gamers here are not quite so likely to flock towards someone like Batman.

I personally think that Goku's ceiling is high, I think he can challenge near-elite status, I think he's beloved and strongly identified with rather than merely widely liked and I can actually see a critical mass of voters pushing him over the top, especially as new blood. But someone like Batman feels like they're vulnerable to getting picked off by a midcarder that's more gamer-y. I could be very wrong of course, but it's just a theory I have. We'll probably never get to see whether or not it's the case of course..