Lurker > ElatedVenusaur

In the vein of Hurt...the headline of David Bowie's last album, which he made while battling the cancer he ultimately died of.
It feels a bit like a dirge.

hollow_shrine posted...

yusiko posted...

to be fair advent children and stuff that came after the real main ff7 does try to give cloud that brooding personality

they also make tifa into a tomboy and aeris into a girly girl when really they only looked like that but aeris was more of a tomboy than tifa and tifa was more of a girly girl (who could suplex a tank)

I really loved the idea of Aeris as a Rosie the riveter type who seems dainty and vulnerable as a flower girl on the street, but who actually has a lot of worldly experience behind her and who knows how to hang with anyone. The way she comes up with the idea of having Cloud get into drag to infiltrate Corneo's mansion implies that she's way more fun than the expanded universe lets her be. She's always making fun of Cloud too for being dorky in the same way Zack was. It's such a refreshing dynamic, even now.

Yeah, they really play Aeris and Tifa against type, and it's really nice. Aeris is just this sweet, innocent-looking woman who is anything but, in a way that's believable(I've known people like that). Tifa looks rough and tumble, but she's actually naive and lacking in self-confidence. Barrett is a bit of a stereotype, but he's also a doting father(and loves wearing a sailor suit, apparently. I'll never forget the "he looks like a bear wearing marshmallow" line). Really, lots of media falls into the trap of making everyone "look" like how they are. It's a subtle way for media to subvert expectations and even add a little depth to a character. And keep the audience guessing. FF7 generally does that really well(the Turks in the Wutai sidequest are a great example of that too).

yusiko posted...

DD Divine posted...

She told cloud everything but he was staring at her tits the whole time and wasnt paying attention

cloud crawled into a hot tub full of men and let them feel his muscles
and then tried to seduce a fat guy while wearing a dress

i dont think cloud has ever looked at tifa's breasts

Cloud and Tifa totally have sex towards the end though. It's okay, Cloud's just down for anything.

Oh, I really, really want to hear what an "acceptable" method of resisting an authoritarian corporate government willing to intentionally destroy an entire section of their city in order to frame the resistance for it is.
Like, seriously, Shinra literally destroyed Sector 7 in order to frame AVALANCHE for it.

philsov posted...

Telling K-level kids "some boys feel like girls" and "gay people exist" should not be controversial, but oh well.

Also, "It's wrong for people to touch you there and if some one does, you need to tell an adult what happened even if the person touching you tells you not to."
Consent is an important concept for them to understand, even in typical kid contexts.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1994/07/he-was-a-crook/308699/
Really, don't take it from me. Hunter S. Thompson gave him the obituary he deserved.

He doesn't get bashed enough, if anything. Certainly Henry Kissinger doesn't. Nixon sold himself out to Strom Thurmond to secure the nomination in '68(he was afraid he would lose it to the star of Goldwater's disastrous '64 campaign: Ronald Reagan) and scrupulously appointed justices vetted by him and his cadre of ex-Dixiecrats. He intentionally and maliciously sabotaged(with Kissinger's help) Vietnam peace talks in 1968 to ensure he could hang that failure on Hubert Humphrey in the election, he did his utmost to sabotage integration and smeared both the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement, launched the war on drugs, interfered in the Democratic primary, etc. etc. etc.
Like, where do you end? Nixon was an evil psychopathic monster who craved power for power's sake, and that he was intelligent and charismatic only made him vastly more dangerous.

spudger posted...

Awesome posted...

yes, and muslim operated businesses, one man dead.

is it christians attacking muslims?

i always assumed sri lanka was dominant muslim

Sri Lanka is a Buddhist majority nation with Muslim and Christian minorities.

Twin3Turbo posted...

ElatedVenusaur posted...

Aeris has no such reservations and is very perceptive, so she picks up on the fact Cloud isn't telling the truth fairly quickly.

It's been a long time since I've played that game. I don't recall Aeris picking up on the fact that his story wan't 100% true. When was it shown that she realized this?

If you go on the Golden Saucer date with her, she straight-out says she hopes she gets to meet the "real Cloud" some day. We don't know what and how much Zack shared with her, but anything he did share might make her doubt Cloud's story. That, the obvious incongruities, and the childhood friend's reaction.

No, she's just an enabler. Not because she's bad, but because Cloud is literally the only person left from her past, and she must have thought he was dead too. Now that she has him back, she's afraid of losing him again, and for that purpose, finding out he isn't "the real Cloud" would be the same as losing him.
Aeris has no such reservations and is very perceptive, so she picks up on the fact Cloud isn't telling the truth fairly quickly.

Smashingpmkns posted...

Turbam posted...

Something like Baten Kaitos where the cliche "there's a party member who is the traitor" trope in every RPG, and the traitor ended up being you, the main character was incredible

I'll probably never play the game but how did they manage to trick the player?

You're not actually Kalas, but a spirit that speaks to him and helps guide him. The ruse is pulled off by specifically knocking you out and implanting a false memory of what happened. Kalas was helping Melodia revive the dark god Malpercio all along.
Actually, come to think of it, Baten Kaitos Origins also cleverly manipulates the player's expectations, in a way that relies on what the player learns in the first game.
Throughout the game, the player is told they are Sagi's guardian spirit, and that your boss, Verus, who is opposing Baelheit's extremely autocratic technophilic agenda, is also a spiriter. In fact, the only character who is actually a spiriter is Baelheit(the seeming antagonist). Verus is merely lying to give himself more credibility, and Sagi is actually an "afterling": a human possessed by a shard of Malpercio's shattered soul(that would be you, the player)

Joe Biden would be a Hillary-esque candidate, yes. I happen to think he's more likely to win than not, but I don't think him winning would bring us anywhere good, other than giving us a brief reprieve.
Then 2022 will come along, with Biden having failed innumerable times "reaching out" to Mitch McConnell, and the Dems will get wiped in both the House and Senate(probably losing the latter for the foreseeable future). His best-case is passing a few piece-meal technocratic tweaks that nobody will really like, his worst-case is that he does bring Republicans to the table by offering cuts to Social Security and Medicare, like Obama desperately tried to do.

I don't see how you could do it straight live-action: you would need lots of special effects and CG to get the look right, but yeah. You could do it primarily live-action today.

Going to give this one last bump. Hope CE is enjoying their weekend!

Going to keep this up. I'll share my thoughts on Stellaris.
IMO, the best thing about Stellaris is that the galaxy really feels like this old, lived-in thing. There are the inscrutable and incredibly ancient fallen empires, sitting on tech they no longer understand and holding grudges over wars long-forgotten, the marauders who have lived in space for as long as anyone can remembers, the extinct precursor civs, and lots of other strange things. Random wreckage from nameless civilizations, research labs, anomalous solar pottery, The Worm In Waiting. GRAVITY IS DESIRE and TIME IS SIGHT. WHAT WAS WILL BE., The Infinity Calculator, even the end-game crises. The galaxy is full of really weird stuff, and the events and descriptions tend to be well-written. Aside from that, some of the special civics creates civs that play really differently, and you can recreate just about any fictional sci-fi race or make your own(I like my amoral science birds and religious communists, myself).
Most of the other systems are competent or exist because this is a Space 4X and every other Space 4X has it so Stellaris had to too(like the ship designer).
Really, the biggest problem now is that diplomacy is pretty lacking(and Federations are basically a trap) and the AI generally isn't good at much. That latter, at least, is a traditional failing. Oh, and all the cool galactic wonders and planet crackers and ascension perks and stuff generally show up too late to make much impact.

This one will be ignored like all the rest, I'm sure.

Gobstoppers12 posted...

ElatedVenusaur posted...

Mega Man 7 is one of the best games in the series.

By far the best in the vanilla MM series. MMX 1-3 are the peak of the franchise overall, though.

Yeah, I agree completely. MMX1-3 are superior to everything the Classic series has to offer.

I would further say that Mega Man 2 is overrated.

Hmm, okay. Fire Emblem: Echoes : Shadows of Valentia is the best Fire Emblem game since Path of Radiance.

-Speaking of Bloodlines, the combat system is mediocre at-best and the game puts more and more emphasis on it as the game progresses. Essentially, the game through Hollywood is 9/10 at least, but what comes after is more like 6-7/10. Also Chinatown was bad then and is worse now.

-Pokemon peaked between Platinum and Black/White 2.

-Mass Effect 2 is the best game in the series.

-NES Megaman is overrated and Mega Man 7 is one of the best games in the series.

-Mario is better now than ever.

I even read that the dude he interviewed with is a Tory. Sad that a Tory was harder on him than America's "liberal" media.

https://twitter.com/BernieSanders/status/1126913543352332288
Bernie has been on-point since before many of you were born.

EIiza posted...

How are they going to handle the fucking Don Corneo segment? Srsly tho

Make Corneo Trumpier? Give you Cloud's final outfit as an alternate costume?
I would hate to lose Aeris' character development in that sequence.

That would be pretty great. Also, Barrett's sailor uniform needs to be an alternate skin.
As long as Cloud won't touch Yuffie no matter what.

Twin3Turbo posted...

Why would Ellie be attractive in that game? Literally a post apocalyptic game that's trying to be realistic in it's design. She's lived her whole lie in a state of despair.

Yeah, I hate to break it to everyone, but in the post-apocalypse, everyone is going to grungy, dirty, smelly, and otherwise unkempt. Men and women alike. Long hair is also a liability.

Well, I mean, it's theirs, I don't see the problem?
But, seriously, I understand why manipulating the value of a currency is sketchy and skeevy, but I had to have a little fun.

King_Hutton posted...

Vita_Aeterna posted...

Also the guy that wrote the VOX article actually has a PhD in philosophy and political science, so I think that helped.

ElatedVenusaur posted...

myzz7 posted...

Ben Shapiro: Fascism is essentially an outgrowth of a European Enlightenment that decided to sever the bonds between certain Judeo-Christian principles and reason and then reason went off into a murderous direction.

shut the fuck up ben shapiro.

I'm always thrown for a loop by "Judeo-Christian". As if Jews were allowed to participate in European society on an equal basis and not viciously persecuted and often straight-up exiled or murdered by the Christian kingdoms. But, of course, I know why people like Shapiro have invented the term.

Yeah wtf is up with that. Jews didn't share the same values as Christians at all, there's a reason why antisemitism existed in Europe.

Pretty sure the point is for lil Bennie to paint it as us vs the Muslims

Yeah, that's 100% the point: the actual term would be "Abrahamic", but that's a bit too inclusive for him. And, of course, the only medieval societies that were even remotely pluralistic were the Islamic ones(not to say they were great, but they were better).

JE19426 posted...

ElatedVenusaur posted...

All are via Steam(aside from the Console Edition, obviously).

What the eff?!??!? I can't get the console edition on steam? What's the point in it.

In all seriousness I bought this game, but have been too into Imperator: Rome to play it. Also I also recently bought the last lot of EU4 expansions so I'll most likely play that next.

How is Imperator, just for general interest? I haven't gotten it and intend to wait for a sale, at this point, but enlighten the thread, if you want.

Oh, and as for Stellaris DLC: Utopia, Apocalypse, and Leviathans are the biggest and bestest ones. The rest are generally really good too, but smaller in scale.

Butt may be bad.

He'll whine, call the election rigged, throw a bunch of Twitter tantrums, and get his base all riled up, but, at the end of the day, Trump is a coward. He'll back down.

Bumping this for night CE.

I'm not sure, but I lean towards the late side. Certainly the woman takes precedence through the entire pregnancy, though less so as it progresses.

I was making less than that back when I was working full-time, and certainly am now that I'm working part-time and am in school. Even paying for community college was a stretch, but I just got a grant for the Fall that will cover my whole bill, so it's actually going really well now, at least.

Yeah, our system of government is increasingly unable to function. Probably won't be much longer before it breaks completely.

Bjork - It's Oh So Quiet


This weird Icelandic lady is...weird.

David Bowie - Black Star


The eponymous song of his last album. The video is trippy, but here's a hint: the astronaut is probably Major Tom.