Lurker > ParanoidObsessive

Dmess85 posted...

"Only you can rescue Christmas!"

https://youtu.be/ARDhJ2dpuYU?t=47

Judgmenl posted...

Only time of the year I can live stress free.

For most people, this is the most stressful time of the year.

Nichtcrawler X posted...

Almost like Disney wants me to be spoiled by Youtube, instead of seeing the new Spider-Man in someway that makes them money...

The problem is, the US isn't really going into full lockdown yet. European nations going into lockdown doesn't mean much to Hollywood. They'll need to see domestic gross take a hit before they start to lean heavily back into streaming.

Just do what most other people would do - take it to the pound and make it someone else's problem.

Could be SAG related - you're supposed to have a unique name if you're part of the union, so they'll actually ask people to change their names if someone else already has your name.

That's why "Michael Douglas" became Michael Keaton. And why "Michael Andrew Fox" always went by Michael J Fox. Because their names were already taken.

I've been an old man since age 12.

Revelation34 posted...

We'll get Galactus now.

Nah, they're pretty clearly setting up Kang.

Maybe Galactus will be Phase 7-9 or something.

I'd honestly prefer it if the new movie didn't have anyone in it from the old ones, and it was set hundreds of years later when the next "The One" is born and around, but I feel like that sort of defeats the entire point of nostalgia-whoring, which is the only reason this movie is going to exist.

OhhhJa posted...

I sometimes feel like I'm the only person who's burnt out on the superhero worship.

A lot of people are kind of burnt out on the MCU post-Endgame.

Mensis posted...

Nah hes gonna become the Hobgoblin

No, he'll be revealed as the Hobgoblin, only for it to turn out later that he was framed by the real Hobgoblin. In spite of that being kind of stupid.



Kotenks posted...

The villains are all caricatures of themselves, most notably Dr. Ock. He goes from bad to good because they essentially flip a switch.

To be fair, that's pretty much an accurate description of his arc in the movie he was originally in as well.

"Hi, I'm good. Oops, I'm bad now. Wait, I'm good again! Urk, I'm dead!"

hypnox posted...

Its like they don't realize that having a library of completed series is better than trying out a new show and canceling it just because <insert what ever their target percentage is> watched the show in its first month.

This isn't actually true, though, and they have the market research to prove it.

They get more subscriptions out of the allure of new content than they do "complete" series. It's always more profitable for them in the long-run to cancel shows after a couple seasons (after outside interest/hype fades) than it is for them to keep pumping resources into something that is no longer spurring new adoption. They're much better off using those resources to create new projects that might draw in new eyes.

And if a product is so bad or so reviled that it isn't drawing any new eyes, or is actively turning people away, they're far better off mercy-killing it than they are nursing it along in the hopes that it will eventually stop sucking.

It may not be the ideal scenario for the viewer, but Netflix doesn't actually care about the ideal scenario for the viewer. Their job is to run things in the ideal way for Netflix to profit.

I rewatch and replay (and reread) things all the time. I don't necessarily have to learn anything new or unknown to put it in a new context to prompt me to do so.

I'll probably watch Spider-Man when it comes out on DVD. I'm interested but not super-enthusiastic.

I'll probably read a plot synopsis of The Matrix on Wikipedia. I'm curious but not really interested.

Solid Sonic posted...

What fucking site bans you for complaining about the rules? That's just an excuse for tyranny.

Lots of sites, honestly.

Hell, you can get modded for complaining about moderations here, same difference.

Metalsonic66 posted...

I actually like Movie Carol better than Comic Carol

Especially after Civil War 2

Comic Carol after Civil War was about as big a piece of shit as Comic Tony was after the original Civil War.

Though more difficult to redeem, because her stance was always dumber, and because more people actually liked Tony and wanted to see him salvaged (and they still had to basically erase his memory and destroy his life to fix him - whereas Carol... didn't even really apologize all that much for all the wrongful imprisonment and destroying innocent people's lives. But it's okay because he felt a little bit guilty, and then later helped prevent Hydra from taking over the world... conveniently ignoring that it was her screw-up that helped them pull it off in the first place).

Carol tends to feel like a bit of a karma houdini. Which doesn't help people who already kind of dislike her to warm up to her.

Mensis posted...

Which I imagine Sony might. This movie basically acted as a soft reset for Hollands Spider-Man and the Sony villains.

It's like the thing people always used to point out about the Batman movies. You go to all the trouble of coming up with ridiculously over-the-top villains that often wind up being far more interesting or cool than the main character, who you'd love to see show up again, and then they kill them off and the end of their first movie so they can never use them again.

And then you get stuff like the end of The Dark Knight, where they seem like they'd finally wised up and kept the Joker alive, only to have real life get in the way and not be able to use him anyway.



SpeedDemon20 posted...

I think the saddest part is that Peter has to rent his own apartment in New York without any support.

That's pretty much the most comic-accurate version of the character. Peter was always borderline poor.

Part of the Superior Spider-Man storyline (where Doc Ock basically takes over Peter's brain) is pointing out just how terrible Peter is at life management. He's pretty much a genius, yet rather than use that to get a great job or even start his own business/research company, he just freelances for the Daily Bugle and lives at close to subsistence level, constantly on the verge of getting evicted.

Then Ock basically gets to be Peter for a few months, and by the end he's running a scientific company worth tons of money, because he goes out of his way to actually try and be productive and successful rather than just spending all his time Spider-Manning. Which ironically makes Spider-Man more effective, because now he has funding, tech, and isn't constantly worrying about getting thrown out of his apartment. And he probably winds up helping the people he cares about more as as scientist than he ever did as Spider-Man.

But status quo is god, so of course Peter eventually loses all that once he gets his life back.

GanonsSpirit posted...

It wasn't bad.

If anything, that was the problem. It was a mediocre movie needlessly shoehorned into the middle of two of the best movies in the MCU. It was going to draw criticism no matter who the lead actor was - Brie Larson kind of making an ass of herself on the PR tour didn't help, but it's far from the sole reason people crapped on the movie.



GanonsSpirit posted...

Most of the hate clearly comes from incels that were butthurt that mean, old Brie Larson said something not nice about men.

Just so you know, immediately dismissing all criticism as being inherently sexist is itself an incredibly sexist attitude. It's pretty much a combination of "Women are helpless and fragile and I must protect them" white-knighting, combined with the assumption that woman have literally no identity or value outside of their gender. You're basically saying a woman's gender is the only thing about them that matters, and therefore is the only thing anyone can ever possibly object to, and any other excuse or argument they use is just a cover story because they hate women.

(It also ignores, you know, all the famous female actresses that people actually like and respect. Almost as if their gender isn't the main thing that determines how people feel about them...)

It's like when people tried to defend the all-female Ghostbusters movie by claiming the only reason people were opposed to it was because it was all-female. Were there chauvinistic people who hated it because of the female leads? Sure, absolutely. But the vast majority of the criticism was coming from people who thought it was a terrible movie that shit on the entire past of the franchise, and was just another shitty callous Hollywood nostalgia reboot. Because it was.

You basically need to stop judging things based on the voices of the worst vocal complainers and the narrative Internet entertainment media tries to spin for you. Or you're going to have a very distorted and mostly wrong view of the world.



Metalsonic66 posted...

It's about middle-of-the-road for MCU movies. Far from the worst, far from the best. Briefly actually gave a better performance than everyone loves to claim

The real problem is that Carol Danvers is kind of a terrible character. She's bland as fuck 99% of the time when she's being written by anyone other than Chris Claremont. No actress was ever going to be able to pull a worthwhile performance out of the character. But especially not with the script we got.

It's part of why I said even at the time I'd have much rather seen them go with the black woman Captain Marvel (the one they basically cameo'd as a kid and then introduced in WandaVision), or the space lesbian Captain Marvel. Both were better female versions of the character than Carol ever was. And could have lent themselves to better stories.

That being said, my biggest problems with the movie aren't even ones related to Brie Larson. I thought she was fine. One of my big complaints (other than the fact that the movie is mediocre at best) is how blatantly unsubtle they are when they're hammering home the "GET IT? IT'S THE 90's!! DO YOU GET IT?!!" moments. It doesn't tickle my nostalgia as much as it just feels a bit cringe. The same with some of the "Girl Power - grrr!" moments - a lot of them felt like a failure of "show, don't tell", where they could have done the job much more effectively if they did a better job of making the character feel cool, rather than having all the characters tell us how cool she is.

I also kind of dislike how the movie retcons multiple elements of the MCU and retroactively makes this new character the most important person evar - but that's not so much a problem with this movie or even the MCU as a whole and more a problem with comic books as a medium in general. Especially over the last 20 years or so, as tons of mediocre or terrible writers keep going back and retconning classic stories because they aren't creative or interesting enough to tell worthwhile stories of their own.

I also think the movie was really hurt by its placement. In the same way the Black Widow movie was badly hurt by coming out when it did (after she'd already died), Captain Marvel would have worked better if they'd put off her debut until after Endgame and not tried to shoehorn her so hard into the movie in a completely unnecessary way. It makes her feel like an interloper and is pretty much guaranteed to generate resentment. She doesn't feel like she belongs in a movie that is supposed to be the epic conclusion to 10 years worth of stories she wasn't part of (the same reason it would have been just as annoying if the Eternals or the Fantastic Four or even the X-Men popped up out of nowhere in the last act of Endgame for no real reason other than they're setting them up for future films).

Conversely, if they'd introduced her as a character much earlier (say, start of Phase Three, or even earlier in Phase Two), and integrated her into the world more, people would have been more comfortable with her by that point, and less pissy about her showing up out of nowhere.

It also doesn't help that they used one of the most overpowered versions of her character, pretty much outclassing every other Avenger. Which is a large part of where the cries of MARY SUE! come from. If they'd gone with the original more scaled back version of the character (ie, basically the powers Rogue has in most early X-Men comics and cartoons - flight and super-strength), she might have fit into the established MCU setting better. But they went with an even more pumped up version of her powers when she was Binary (when she was more of a cosmic character), which makes her feel like she really doesn't fit in the current narrative at all (she'd probably fit much better into a hypothetical "Cosmic MCU" with characters like Nova, Adam Warlock, the Silver Surfer, or Quasar).

Basically, so much of the film feels like a cynical exec somewhere said "We need a movie with a female lead so people stop accusing us of being sexist", and then once they started it they decided the lead had to be better than every other character so no one could criticize her for being too weak or inferior to any of the male characters. At which point they got so wrapped up in the message that they forgot to write a worthwhile story.

They would have been so much better off if they'd just made a Black Widow movie years ago when people actually wanted one. Or used any one of a bunch of better female characters Marvel has. Or if Marvel just stopped trying to push Carol as their "main female lead character/Wonder Woman analogue" solely because she has "Marvel" in her character name.

(If they hadn't wasted Mockingbird in Agents of SHIELD, that could have made for an interesting movie as well. Or She-Hulk, though that was probably hung up more by rights issues with the Hulk IP and Universal than anything else. And along those lines, it probably doesn't help Marvel that a lot of the strong female characters they have fall into the X-Men and Spider-Man IP groups, meaning Marvel didn't have access to them while Fox and Sony controlled the rights. But there are always better options than Carol.)

Monopoman posted...

Zelda II is an acquired taste, I remember when it was a newer title most people did not like it much. It seems like over time it's started to get this reputation is a misunderstood great game which is not accurate.

The only reason people hated it at the time was because the gameplay was so radically different from Zelda 1.

But by that logic, every single Zelda game ever made other than the first is total shit, because none of them really look or play exactly the same as Zelda 1.

Zelda II was actually a very good game for its era if you could look past your own nostalgia, or if it was the first Zelda game you ever played. Personally, I've always preferred it over the first game, and rank it higher than most of the later games as well (except for LttP). But I also acknowledge that's partly my own nostalgia (Zelda II was the first Zelda game I owned/played, and the only one for years), and partly because I kind of hate Ocarina of Time and every game that followed it.

Nade Duck posted...

you just described a lot of the reasons that concerts are awesome. maybe they're just not for you.

Was going to say, I don't think the problem is the concerts, as much as the fact that blu is apparently a curmudgeonly old man.



mooreandrew58 posted...

For me concerts are about the showmanship. Like ive never been a kiss fan but I'll say ita been one of the better concerts ive been to.

Nine Inch Nails tends to have fantastic concerts, even if you don't like the band itself all that much. I went to the Lights in the Sky tour with someone who wasn't a NIN fan and they loved it.

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


Erasure's another band who tend to put on ridiculous shows for concerts. Though in an entirely different sort of way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ2nsy3wztI


Neither of those look anywhere near as good on YouTube as they did in person, btw. Concerts tend to be something you kind of have to be there in person for to really appreciate.

The real problem is that you're eating a shepherd's pie made out of M&Ms.

papercup posted...

Cool, let's shut down all those conservative private schools that are producing far right fascists.

Only if we also shut down pretty much every college and university in the US for producing far left zealots.

papercup posted...

I did not :0

Someone did. And I feel like the topic title was almost word-for-word the same. Some time in the last two weeks or so.

I remember because when I saw the topic I had no idea what Silksong was, so I looked it up, and then stopped caring once I found out what it was.

(Looking in my history, it was definitely some time in November, because that's when I clicked on the Wikipedia page for Hollow Knight:Silksong)

Lokarin posted...

But they're always slimy and gooey and don't boil, fry, bbq or microwave well?

...I've literally never had this problem?

Maybe buy better brands?

And also, stop microwaving hot dogs. That's just disgusting.

KodyKeir posted...

On the one hand **waves in the general direction of the Ethiopian Jewish diaspora**

It's also worth differentiating between actual "black Jews" and the "Black Israelites". The latter of which mostly being a lunatic fringe cult that hangs out on street corners in NYC and yells at white people.

I swear you posted this exact topic like a week ago.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/sparringmind/Legacy+Images/Cultivate+Consume/Amusing+Ourselves+to+Death.jpg

Veedrock- posted...

Dubs regardless of the anime.

Weebs hate me.

Regardless of their arguments for the purity of subs over dubs, dubs usually are better for newer shows.

The whole subs > dubs argument mostly started back in the 80s/90s, when no one really gave much of a shit about anime, shows being ported over had almost no localization budget, and you'd wind up with amateur (at best) voice actors and half-assed translations/scripting. So dubs would generally be kind of terrible.

But now that Western money is such a huge factor in the industry as a whole, dubs get a whole lot more money and attention, and the translations aren't appreciably worse than the original. At which point the added bonuses of a) getting to hear character voices you actually understand and b) getting some cultural stuff localized to something that makes sense to you are a much bigger selling point than "purity of the original vision" or whatever other argument most weebs will scream at you.

Though the obvious big brain play is to just watch dubbed anime with the original subtitles.

I usually get Ball Park bun size beef franks. I'm not really a fan of thicker-skinned hot dogs like Nathans/Sabretts/Hebrew National.

streamofthesky posted...

* Nick Fury was never actually in any danger at all
* Mysterio wasn't cleverly manipulating Fury for his own ends the entire movie after all
* A lot of Mysterio's plan had no chance of ever working in the long run b/c it wasn't really Fury in the first place

Ehh, I think that's a more negative interpretation than is strictly warranted.

Fury has clearly given Talos a fair bit of clearance to make things happen in his absence, to help keep up the charade. So if Mysterio manages to trick Skrull Fury into doing what he wants, he succeeds at his plan just as much as he would have if it was the real Fury. Even in the end, when he's going to kill Fury (which won't work because he'd be killing the Skrull, not the real one), it would still work for his plan - he doesn't actually need Fury dead as much as it will add to his overall narrative... and a dead doppelganger works for that just as well as the real one does. So even if the real Fury shows up later and is like "Nah, that wasn't me, it was a body double", Mysterio still "wins".

Plus, you know, Peter and most of his friends would be dead, so it's not as if there's no stakes if Peter fails to stop Mysterio. They're just not entirely the stakes you thought they were. But things not being what they seem is pretty much the entire point of the movie anyway.



streamofthesky posted...

* Prior to the scene, Spider-Man was the hero who stopped Mysterio's nefarious plot. After that scene, it means Spidey's involvement was basically just being duped into giving Mysterio the murder drones and then undoing that mistake by getting them back.

That's literally Spidey's involvement regardless of whether or not Fury is real. Peter IS straight up duped into giving Mysterio the murder drones, and the only heroic thing he actually accomplishes all movie is literally cleaning up his own mistake.

If Peter had stayed home and just smashed the glasses in the first 5 minutes of the movie, he would arguably have accomplished more of heroic value than anything he accomplishes in the movie as-is. Mysterio isn't really all that much of a threat until Peter makes him one And that's regardless of whether or not Fury is real, fake, a ghost, or not involved at all.

streamofthesky posted...

And yeah, that post-credits scene pissed me off. Retroactively makes Mysterio look like a total chump, getting fooled by Nick Fury like that.

Ehh, I don't think it makes him look like a chump. The whole point of the Skrulls is that they're really good at disguise. And it's not like Mysterio knew Nick Fury personally.

Now, if it was established that Quentin knew Nick for like 20 years beforehand and didn't notice the change, then yeah, I'd agree that makes him look kind of dumb. But if you've never met someone and only really know them by reputation at best, you'll probably be fooled.

captpackrat posted...

Chrome isn't too bad about using RAM but Firefox has been horrible about it since version 1.

Chrome is just horrible about lots of other things.

I don't take pictures with my phone at all.

Metalsonic66 posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/3/3/0/AAFUswAACsca.jpg

https://youtu.be/dRWVJXOkMXI?t=7

Zeus posted...

Let's be honest here -- if somebody dropped out and they've gotten by fine without a GED, why would they just decide to go back for it later on? Unless they need it for something, they're going to go without.

This is definitely the case if you can get a tradesman certification of some kind, where they care less about what level of schooling you've passed as opposed to what practical skills you have in a specific field.

Apprentice to a plumber or an electrician, get a plumbing or electrician certification, and join your local union/guild, and you'll have a much easier time getting jobs in that field than someone who "only" has a high school diploma or GED will have getting jobs period. And the tradesman will probably be making more money from it.

The real problem is that we're currently undergoing a period of "education inflation", where the high school degree has been almost completely devalued in favor of the college degree, but the college education/degree has yet to become a basic service (the way primary school/K-12 is). So we've created this weird void where, if you just get the high school diploma but don't proceed on to a BA or BS (or something equivilent), the high school diploma/GED isn't actually worth all that much anyway. And then people wind up putting themselves into debt to chase the college degree that's effectively become the entry-level degree that the high school degree used to be.

The problem with technological revolution is that it usually takes at least a few generations (or a few dozen generations) for societal and cultural factors to catch up to the new reality. And technology is mostly advancing faster than we can adapt to it at this point.

hypnox posted...

poorly optimized software.

adjl posted...

Mostly because there's such a surplus of it that developers rarely put much effort into optimizing its usage.

This.

Back in the day you had to be efficient when coding because anything too bloated or memory-leaky wouldn't run on computers with much less memory. But now most computers have enough memory that devs have stopped giving a shit, so multiple poorly optimized programs overlap and eat up resources.

BlackScythe0 posted...

I had some fun with the first two and Fable 3 without question lands on my list of worst games I've ever played. I can't think of anything the game did well.

It's always going to be subjective, but I never found the game to be as bad as people imply it was. Or at least not bad in any meaningful way that wasn't also an issue with the previous games.

Which is why I tend to laugh in the face of anyone who praise the first two games (or especially the second one) for being fantastic but crap on the third one. It makes me feel like those people have very, very selective memories. Or they played the earlier games when they were children and the combination of lack of taste and nostalgia blinds them to anything resembling reality.

If anything, it's not so much that I'm saying Fable 3 is great as much as I'm saying Fable 2 was kind of shit.



BlackScythe0 posted...

But if you would like a refresher have one!

Two can play at that game!

https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=2105
https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=2106
https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=2108
https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=2109

THEGODDAMNBATMA posted...

Why is it pathological and not pathical?

Because it's the implied nature (-ical) of pathology, not that of a path.

I like the Offspring, but I don't love The Offspring.

I kind of put a lot of bands from that era/scene in the same sort of category. Like Everclear.



UT1999 posted...

What is your favorite song by them?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40V9_1PMUGM

Flappers posted...

Was steamed hams the best Simpson's bit?

Nah, it's just the one the Internet latched onto hardest.

Metalsonic66 posted...

Tell us more about the emptiness level in this cup you're holding

http://assets.sbnation.com/assets/61896/Cheeseburger.JPG

Nade Duck posted...

the first two fables were amazing. feels like whenever any series from that era hit 3 it was likely take a big hit in quality if it didn't outright turn to garbage. maybe valve was on to something.

Ehh. People praise the shit out of 2, but I think it was mediocre at best and kind of annoying at worst. I'd easily rate 3 as being the better game in pretty much every way that matters. Fable 2 had moments that were cool, but it's mostly pulled down by how incredibly stupid the plot is overall.

The first Fable wasn't all that brilliant, either - it was an enjoyable experience if you didn't go in expecting all the things Molyneux overpromised, but it was basically "Baby's First Hack-and-Slash RPG". The plot was fairly generic, combat wasn't anything extraordinary, and all of the touted NPC interaction (including the alignment mechanics) was simplistic as fuck and shallow as hell. Sure, you could have fun with it, but I'm not sure I'd even put it in the top 5 RPGs of its generation - and the original Xbox wasn't really heavy with good RPGs.

Kyuubi4269 posted...

People out of touch with how things work shouldn't be making theories.

So what you're saying is, most people under the age of 30 should stop talking about politics, economics, and social theory entirely then.

KodyKeir posted...

My bet is a netflix executive saw what they had planned for Edward on the storyboards for season two and killed it right then and there.

Probably more just a case that the only reason Netflix bothers to fund original series at all is to spur new subscriptions, and the reaction online was so negative that they decided the show was never going to lead to an appreciable increase in subscriptions (especially after the first season, where you might get at least some views from people looking to see a car wreck) so they just cut their losses early.

The only thing I know about Kingston Ontario is that it was mentioned in Vampire: the Masquerade. Where they described it as kind of a backwater with only about four vampire residents, who were mostly only there because there's two colleges and apparently a ton of prisons in the otherwise relatively small town.

Someday you'll be dead, and all of the things you're worrying about today will no longer matter anymore.

Entity13 posted...

I could have sworn Twilight Bracelet took place two years after the events of the first four games, or am I misremembering?

Four. It's 2014, the games are 2010.

Bulbasaur posted...

after rewatching .hack sign, sora definitely isn't a 10 year old kid lmao

So did you also rewatch the part in the end where he gets data drained, and you literally see him as a kid in the real world?



Entity13 posted...

He is, just like there's a 2-year-old playing a character in Legend of the Twilight Bracelet. <_<

Hey now, Mireille is supposed to be 3-4.

But yeah, the dothack universe is filled with overly precocious kids who don't act their age. Like Sakaki being a 10-year old in GU.

Bulbasaur posted...

po are you manually adding the quoted person text to your posts

No, I just delete the metadata.

Metalsonic66 posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/3/4/AAFUswAACsJu.jpg

This is what I was expecting.

CarefreeDude posted...

i recall people complaining 2019 was the worst year ever

People have been saying that for at least 10 straight years now, because the Internet has destroyed everyone's sense of perspective.