Lurker > MrMallard

Also I love that we're arguing the semantics of why Suicide Squad was terrible while absolutely no-one steps up to bat for Morbius.

To be fair, Suicide Squad gets plenty of shit from all angles.

"This is Katana. I wouldn't recommend getting killed by her. Her sword traps the souls of the people it kills."

Rather, I think it's fair to say that Suicide Squad Joker was the fault of both Jared Leto and Warner Bros. The depiction was absolutely a crusty mess dripping with corporate cynicism and desperation, and the way it was, I don't think many people on Earth could have salvaged that performance.

But I also think that it's a an issue with Jared Leto for going along with it. The only way the Joker role would have been made better is if the actor portraying the Joker actively tried to improve it - if they said "I don't get this, I can't work with this". Granted, that's them putting their neck on the line for a role in a severely compromised product, but it would have actually meant something. It feels like Jared Leto "method acted" it out like he was a crazy person, read his lines, got his check and bounced.

Tim Burton's Batman, in hindsight, was an insane success based on gimmick casting. Michael Keaton was a comedic actor whose most recent effort was a movie called Mr. Mom. Jack Nicholson was Jack Nicholson, playing a clown that robs banks. But it actively tried to be a good movie, from the script to the direction to the set design. The Dark Knight was a prestige movie from one of the greatest filmmakers of our time, and the Joker was played absolutely straight by a talented actor. Both portrayals were well-written for their settings and acted to terrific effect.

Suicide Squad was a corporate turd that focused on quips and licensed music to disguise a dogshit script and washed out, ugly visuals. That is absolutely an aspect of it all, and the only people on earth who could have saved it would have had to move the heavens and the earth to get WB to rewrite the movie, reshoot it, do anything to make it even remotely palatable as a product.

But that being said, it doesn't feel like there was any pushback on what Suicide Squad was or on how the characters were portrayed. Everyone did it for a paycheck, except for maybe Margot Robbie who steered hard into the role. Jared Leto let the studio have their way, they did him up like a trussed turkey, he drooled and fucked around with the role and he got paid. There was no artistry from WB, but there was no attempt at artistry from Jared Leto either. It was a shit sandwich any way you sliced it.

Totally agree.

I remember when I was a kid, I was trying to get a Houndour in that patch of grass next to Celadon City. I feel like I was grinding for hours, but eventually I got one, and it was a fucking shiny. First ever natural shiny, and it was the exact fucking Pokemon I had been waiting for.

I hit it once, it was a critical hit and it fainted.

I grinded for like five more minutes before I gave up. I was absolutely crestfallen.

pegusus123456 posted...

I don't necessarily blame Leto for those movies failing, the roles were garbage from the get-go.

Oh yeah for sure. Suicide Squad was a strong contender for worst DC movie, and it might have won out if Zack Snyder and Alex Kurtzmann's perennial turd BvS wasn't as big of a stinker as it was - it was like Warner Bros. execs blindfolded themselves and hit themselves in the face with a hammer until they couldn't stand it any more, then signed off on both movies because they were just so grateful that the immediate pain was over. And Sony have been milking incomplete rights to a franchise, praying for a dark horse victory that they can spin off from Spider-Man and make its own thing, after they absolutely botched their own rebooted Spider-Man franchise. The stories of both movies are incompetent, short-sighted, greedy companies shitting out box office poison out of spite for their main competitor who hit on a winning formula and made all the money in the world.

That being said, I'm still really put-off about the whole viral Joker method-acting thing where Leto mailed live rats and used condoms to his co-stars on Suicide Squad. It was hokey viral filler that failed to have the impact the studio were hoping for, and it tarnished Jared Leto's reputation in my eyes.

I don't know how good he is in other movies, but his prospects certainly weren't helped by the drooling, brain-dead executives and creative directors those movies were attached to.

Whether they phoned in a one-shot performance for a paycheck, like Jeff Goldblum or Hugo Weaving, or appeared in multiple movies/franchises like Natalie Portman or Idris Elba.

Jared Leto played one of the most famous comic book characters ever, a role that the previous actor had.won an Oscar for. He then played the lead character in a movie that was meant to spin off its own franchise.

His version of the Joker, a hissing, sucking freak with a scene of him trying to pimp out his girlfriend and cuckold himself, was so alienating and personally off-putting that he was essentially fired and stricken from the canon. In a later movie where Harley Quinn breaks up with this version of the Joker, he wasn't shown on screen and the Joker character doesn't factor into the plot of that movie at all aside from the break-up. His only other appearance was as a glorified cameo and sequel hook for a franchise that isn't getting another entry, as if Zack Snyder was going "fuck you, my Joker is awesome! Look at him in the post-apocalypse working with Batman, imagine how high the stakes must be!!" He fucked up the Joker right as superhero movies were reaching their peak in popularity.

Then years later, he stars in Morbius as a scientist who becomes a vampire. The movie is box office poison to such a degree that the only recognition it got was people making fun of it. Then the studio released it in theatres again to capitalise on the meme momentum, and it flopped again because people didn't even want to see it as a joke.

Jared Leto played the most unappealing version of the Joker in live-action history, and then he headed a multi-million dollar franchise movie that only just made its money back and became a global laughingstock.

Terrence Howard might have gotten fucked out of future MCU movies over money, but his role was well-liked enough before he went off the deep end and tried to convince the world that the number 0 didn't exist. People might prefer Don Cheadle, but I don't see Terrence Howard being actively hated. Jared Leto got two chances to portray some of the biggest comic book characters in the world - Morbius only counting because it was a big budget movie that Leto was headlining as the main character, that Sony was explicitly positioning as a breakout title in a Spider-Man-less Spider-Man franchise - and both times, the roles were cringeworthy, widely mocked flops that negatively impacted the movies he was in to the tune of tens of millions of dollars.

Seriously, name an actor in a superhero movie who's flopped harder than Jared Leto.

inb4 they release 7 second snippets of the show as individual NFTs

Really? Jared Leto?

*claps his hands* "I'm a computer program"

Well that explains why the site keeps going down.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/8/8/3/AAbh80AAEGqr.jpg

I only started working on Hunter this past Saturday. I went from level 9 to level 42 in the span of a week, thank god for birdhouses.

Current plan is to build up thieving so I can finish some quests, craft and enchant some jewellery, get some adamantite and runite ore from the Motherload mine and hopefully get the last few skills I need up to level 50.

Hopefully someone's selling a Bandos chestplate on the GE, because I emptied my coffers in the hopes of picking one up. Now I need to save up 20 million gold for the pants.

Oh, I didn't.

I was playing Runescape

Sounds like it's about Resident Evil 7

Persona is like a related series of games in Dragon Quest where the adventures are wholly standalone but they take place in the same world as the other ones.

So like Persona 3 and 4 happened and are canon in the world of Persona 5, and you might get a neat cameo or easter egg that gives you a wholly cosmetic look into how characters from those other games are doing in the time since their adventures. No spoilers, no continuity lockout - Persona 5 is an entirely self-contained game that you can enjoy without playing the others. Same with the third and fourth games.

I would honestly recommend starting with 5. It's the latest one, so it has the most polish and the best quality-of-life functions. The cutscenes are fantastic, the dungeon-crawling and dungeon designs are really good, the banter and characterisation is thick, fast and enjoyable - and frankly, the UI design stands head and shoulders above the other two, considering that Persona 5 was the last big game release for the PS3 and P3 and P4 both came out on the PS2. It's night and day.

Persona 5 is the gateway drug. I really like Persona 3, which is extremely edgy and melancholy, but I think you're gonna get way more bang for your buck out of Persona 5 initially and you'll have the other two games to play once you've finished it. I've never played Persona 4, but I'm going to buy it on Switch and play it really soon.

All of them are amazing, but 5 is probably the most accessible one on the market. Go with 5.

I really have been, jeez. We've been keeping up with the workload all week and I'm totally fried.

I'll think about it over a couple hours of Runescape.

I've been letting things go for a while, but a work friend wanted to hang out last Saturday so I went into overdrive and cleaned shit up. Looked back on the progress I made and was like "holy shit I did that". It was a good feeling.

I like it as like an outsider bloodsport. That being said, people have died from it, so it probably shouldn't be a big televised thing.

Okay, idk if you're familiar with Final Fantasy XIII, but these are fanfics using characters from that series of games.

Lightning is cold and aloof, Fang is very chatty and snarky and friendly. It's like a defrosting ice queen who's married to the job/rambunctious wolf girl pairing, because Lightning is a soldier and Fang is a hunter-gatherer from a different society.

Fics:

A Blessing in Disguise: The story of Lightning's first crush in her adult years.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/41047143

My Sister's Special Friend: Serah comes to a very late realization between her sister and Fang.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/24934114

Like A Flash of Lightning: Lightning has never been one for relationships. Ever the loner, just as she prefers. However, many things are not as they once seemed for her -- and she has found that a woman from Gran Pulse has captured her elusive heart.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/20800115

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Serah's: Honestly, it'd be easier for all parties involved if Fang just asked, but it was too nice of an afternoon to bother getting scolded at for not paying attention.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/17418521

Dreams and Hot Cocoa: A particular dream has Lightning up and rattled. Luckily, Fang has hot chocolates. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15339879

Ratings are between General and Teen. I found some better sounding ones that were Mature, but I didn't want to risk it. One of them had Lightning as a celebrity and Fang as her chauffeur.

I'm saving up for a holiday in April, and I'm already doing a pretty lousy job of saving my money. Should I take the plunge and buy Persona 4 now, or should I wait for a week and get it when I get paid?

Happy birthday! I don't have any Yuri, but I can skim the Lightning/Fang FFXIII category on AO3 and post some stories or something.

Inb4 "what about White history class?!?!?"

People are taught in school from a young age that police officers are meant to help people, that if you're lost or in trouble finding a police officer is the best thing you can do. The police force is postured as an upstanding group whose job it is to uphold the law and be pivotal figures in the justice system - protecting the innocent and arresting the guilty.

A lot of childhood bluster ends up flying out the window as you get older, and as naivety runs out, people see the cracks in the foundation and accept the world as the flawed place that it really is. Santa Claus isn't real, rent is horseshit, the economy is rife with fraud, corruption and frivolous speculation that makes it next to impossible for you to buy a house without going into disgusting levels of debt. The ideals of justice and hope die after a while.

But that's not an excuse for police to not even bother trying. Like you have cops making internet videos where they're crying in their cars - not because they went through something harrowing, not because they were made to feel like scum for doing their best, but because they didn't get preferential treatment at McDonald's. Because their fucking McMuffin was late. That's not an exaggeration either, that actually happened: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ officer-viral-video-complaining-about-fast-food-order-draws-ire-n1231353

It is not at all unfair to ask an officer of the law to try and uphold the law in regards to their colleagues. It should never be seen as unrealistic to take action against police officers who are breaking the law. If we're at a point where we're asking if it's reasonable to expect a cop to throw their career prospects away by doing the right thing, the reaction shouldn't be to accept that cops are going to sell drugs and send innocent people to jail, and that the people who speak up get fired for trying to uphold the law. If a cop isn't truly as dedicated to the ideals of justice that the position is socially expected to operate by - that the position is framed in from early childhood - then what business do they have being a police officer in the first place?

And it's made worse when you hear about cops killing other cops. A cop who ratted out several colleagues for participating in a gang-rape was killed during a trianing exercise, and one of the alleged rapists was on-site when he died. The reaction to that shouldn't be "oh jeez, I don't want anyone to die! I guess we should just let the bad apples rape people so no-one else gets murdered!" - it should be to question why rapists, drug dealers and abject murderers who hide behind the badge and spent years fighting against mandatory bodycams are given any leeway to enforce the law at all. It should be to question the rot, not expect it.

Yeah, the police are pretty fucking dogshit and they have been for a long time. That's no reason not to strive for better policework, for more accountability. Good cops dying and getting fired for acting against bad ones shouldn't inspire apathy. It should lead people to attempt greater reform of the justice system so that the bad actors can actually lose their jobs and the actual enforcement of the law doesn't become a sneering conservative taunt to defend pigs who beat up on innocent people out of prejudice, or murder suspects who've been shown on-camera complying with police demands before being shot and killed.

Expecting American cops to do the right thing should never be seen as unrealistic or unfair. It should be the bare fucking minimum of what's expected of them.

Would you believe that you're the only person who's shown any sort of familiarity with that phrase the entire time I've been posting it as a shitpost?

milk milk lemonade

Tyranthraxus posted...

No need to. Everyone got 100% refunds.

Okay, based.

I stand by everything else I said, but at least they had the balls and the common fucking decency to put this right with their audience.

I feel bad for the people who bought into it. That being said, Stadia came out of nowhere one E3 and postured themselves as the future of gaming, and nothing about it felt organic or like as grand of a step forward as they were making it out to be. It was always confusing how much attention Stadia got right out of the gate.

They must have spent a significant chunk of change making that entire E3 about them, and then they delivered a subpar product they couldn't maintain - they bought the most visible ads, and they spent god knows how much putting Stadia on everything they could during the E3 it was announced at, before absolutely shitting the bed. The technology wasn't there yet, at least not on enough of a scale for Stadia to be "the next big thing" across the broader market - and frankly, I don't think the technology is there even now.

And what makes the Google hype stupider is that we already knew the tech wasn't up to par with PlayStation Now trying and failing around 2014; Google's strategy was to go "don't worry it just works", then flounder for years not only to make it functional, but to get games on the platform.

And of the small handful of like 200+ games they had, each one was being sold at full price. No-one is getting refunded for those games as far as I can tell. People paid full price for digital games with an extra step of separation, and now they're losing access to those games forever.

I will say that Stadia is only shutting down as a commercial business that interfaces with the public directly. Like how Google Glass vanished off the face of the earth and became more of a behind-the-scenes specialist piece of technology, Google is allegedly shopping the streaming service around to game publishers as like a middle-man - like rather than Capcom making a Cloud Version of the next Resident Evil game themselves, they would upload it to Google's servers and Google would handle the streaming side of things. But Stadia, as a platform and as its own unique service, is being shut down.

Google Stadia was a hollow corporate scheme that lived and died on lies, platitudes and money. They spent big to advertise a service they couldn't actually maintain, and in the span of a couple years their incompetence and unwillingness to change or improve the Stadia service showed how little they actually bought into their own hype. I feel bad for people who threw their money away on this horseshit, but Stadia always had that disingenuous, fraudulent vibe around it and I don't know why more people didn't recognise the warning signs and save themselves the trouble. It is absolutely baffling why anyone would buy into this, day one or otherwise.

In closing, rip in piss Google Stadia. You were even worse than PlayStation Now.

However, Ahn Do is still around to share his stories and humor with the world.

I respect that you're doing this, but for what it's worth, the finale was one of the best episodes of television I've ever seen. Nothing has gotten me in such a visceral way as the series finale of The Good Place.

Remember when Blizzard banned a Hearthstone player from Hong Kong for saying "free Hong Kong, liberation of our times" on stream while the Chinese government moved in to strip his country of its sovereignty and replace their laws with that of mainland China? They banned him from competitive Heartstone for a year over that, and they nullified the prize money he'd already won in that tournament. They then cut their coverage of several college Hearthstone matches short because the crowd brought pro-Hong Kong signage and chanted pro-Hong Kong messages.

After simping for a foreign administration of authoritarian warmongers and covering up rape, sexual assault and suicide within the company, the CCP left them lying on the floor like a used condom and the company is known about as well for all the rape as they are for their vast library of franchises. The most notable news regarding Activision-Blizzard in the last year is that the company went down the shitter so hard that Microsoft might actually buy them.

I'm anti-CCP and I'm not a fan of Tencent, but frankly, fuck Activision-Blizzard. You can't escape the consequences of your actions when you've burned all your bridges.

wackyteen posted...

KFC Double Down

I would eat that daily until my heart explodes with such force that the Tsar Bomba would look like a firecracker in comparison

Do you guys have the Zinger Stacker in America? It's two Zinger fillets on a burger with lettuce, chutney and like three slices of cheese.

They also do a BBQ Bacon Stacker with original fillets. Basically imagine the Double Down on a bun with more sauce and cheese.

At best it's fine and at worst it's unnecessary imo. The people turning it into a life or death moral quandary or whatever the fuck are morons - not for personally disliking it, but for engaging with "pineapple on pizza discourse" as if it actually means anything.

People are going to have tastes that you don't agree with, and sometimes you've got to shut your fucking mouth, enjoy what you enjoy and let other people do their own shit even if you disagree.

Lorenzo_2003 posted...

Please continue donating to Hasan. In fact, you should donate all your money. It is a worthy cause and I know he will put it to good use.

The fuck?

Streamer drama is stupid and cringe.

idk if they've been discontinued, but they used to make little heatable pizzas in cardboard containers that you'd buy from the canteen. They also had jelly cups with the double-sided spoon. Also, Twisties released a butter popcorn flavored chip that was like puffed rice instead of the long snaky chips they usually put out.

I'm happy to report that two previously discontinued items have actually come back into my life lately. Lemon-Lime Solo, and Twisties Zig-Zag.

I follow one person on Twitch, an Australian OSRS streamer from Perth. Literally the only person I watch on Twitch.

When I was more into Vinesauce I'd just watch the VODs, and I watch Snapcube VODs as well. ViewtifulJoe is right in the sense of like spending all your time in a turbo chat spamming emojis, who actually enjoys that? If I'm looking for enjoyable, popular stream content, I'm watching VODs. If I'm fucking around and want to watch gameplay, I watch the one streamer whose stream I like and whose whole atmosphere is chill, lazy and fun.

Crack

Is Suda51 in the running?

So are you.

So am I.

Fucking finally.

Trelve posted...

The UK Government says that there's already existing laws in place for the rest of the UK relating gender equalities. This act in Scotland would cause a conflict between two regions of the UK in regards to which law trumps which.

Seems pretty obvious how this could be settled without England taking a steaming dump on Scottish parliament: this Scottish law applies to Scotland, the other law applies to England.

If England doesn't like it, maybe they should let Scotland be an independent country and make their own laws instead of neutering their ability to govern their own country.

Andrew W.K. released a cover album of the original Mobile Suit Gundam OST, the one from 1979. Not just the OP and ED, selections from the show's score as well. I'd say that qualifies.

Trelve posted...

Scotland should not be able to put laws like this forward that affect the rest of the UK. That's the problem that Westminster have with it. They've overstepped their boundaries.

They should be able to enact laws that apply to Scotland. As far as I can tell, this law would recognise trans rights in Scotland alone.

Not my type of music, even if I did hear the rest of the song, but I'm almost positive that's just an opening thing they're doing and the actual music is about to start as it cuts off.

I wouldn't call myself an indie rock fan, but I do really like an indie rock band called the Weakerthans:

https://youtu.be/YVbUZJbxS2U
https://youtu.be/Pj8I21yAl1U
https://youtu.be/EDB64nF6rts

Let's go, Scottish independence!

ToadallyAwesome posted...

Why does this sound like such a wicked burn?

Australia doesn't have the same breadth of fast food establishments as America. Like we don't have Denny's, IHOP, Arby's, Olive Garden, Applebee's (lots of possessive titles in American fast food), Carls Jr. or Hardee's, Quiznos, Papa John's, Little Caesars, In-n-Out Burger, Popeyes, Five Guys, Shake Shack, Wendy's or White Castle. The best we got as far as international fast food conglomerates go is KFC, McDonalds, Burger King (we call it Hungry Jacks), Domino's, Pizza Hut and Subway.

And YET

Despite our outright TINY market share

One item we DO have is stuffed crust pizza. Of all the menu items in the world of fast food, that's one of the ones we've got.

Nerox "ACAB is a slur" Dante

So apparently, the domestic abuse charge has been ongoing for years. The charges are that he left his partner with "corporal injuries" (injuries being inflicted by a loved one resulting in a traumatic condition) and falsely imprisoned them either through verbal abuse or by physically not allowing them to leave. For the last couple years, Justin Roland has been going to court over these charges - it's only recently hit the news cycle, but the domestic abuse and false imprisonment charges have been going on for a long time.

His game studio, Squanch Games, also had to settle a sexual harassment lawsuit in 2019. Apparently when the victim complained, management said something to the effect that "that's just how men of this generation behave" and told them to get over it. They had to settle that lawsuit in court.

Both the ongoing domestic abuse court case and the Squanch Games lawsuit are on record. Both court cases have happened, and they started roughly around the same time period. They didn't just drop out of thin air, someone didn't drop hastily compiled receipts on a burner TikTok last week to "cancel" Justin Roiland.

That exists alongside a bunch of different text messages of Roiland speaking to women inappropriately, which are less verifiable. Personally, I think there's precedent that makes me believe he is responsible for sending inappropriate texts on top of a proven sexual harassment lawsuit and an ongoing domestic abuse court case.

In short? This looks really, really bad for Roiland. It's incredibly ugly. I said earlier itt that I didn't want to jeer because it was a huge bummer, but after hearing the scope of the shit he's been getting away with and the length of time he's been racking up these controversies, I'm mostly just disgusted. I saw a comment earlier about how many inmates are gonna ask him to do the Pickle Rick line, and that's probably the most positive scenario I would wish on him.

Questionmarktarius posted...

Great, now flashmurders are a thing.

"everyday I'm murdering"

*gang goes full Ides of March on some poor person while mediocre EDM blares in the background*