Lurker > Zeus

You know, if you boil things down enough, all stories can fit into like 7 archetypes >_>

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There are precious few at ease / With moral ambiguities / So we act as though they don't exist.

It's weird how far past Poe's Law society has gone. Some of these would have been considered too outlandish or silly even by the standards of the Onion in the 2000s.

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There are precious few at ease / With moral ambiguities / So we act as though they don't exist.

The result is usually INTJ

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There are precious few at ease / With moral ambiguities / So we act as though they don't exist.

Judgmenl posted...

I finished Nozaki-kun today. I don't think it was good enough to pick the manga up for (I'm still trying to pressure myself into reading Hitoribocchi), but I had a few good laughs. Also the ending was really comfy and feel like I heard it somewhere before.

I kinda feel the same way, although I hope it gets a second season. (Then again, I haven't checked anything out about the manga so I'm not sure how long the series ran or has run.)

Well, that and I just learned the original format was a 4-koma which I don't feel works for that kind of story. I'm less likely to get into 4-koma in general. I didn't even read Lucky Star's manga and I really liked Lucky Star. Now *that* I really wish got another season. Considering that it had a good deal of merch at one point, I'm a little surprised that they didn't do another season... although it looks like it has a "net animation" now?


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There are precious few at ease / With moral ambiguities / So we act as though they don't exist.

Unless people are bartering in bullets, I can't imagine that there'd be an actual currency since nothing would be terribly practical. Yes, certain things -- water, food, weapons, medicine, and even people -- would be the kind of stuff people would trade for, but that's more of a barter system than an actual currency. For something to be a currency, it would realistically need to be small enough to easily carry, stay in good condition, and -- because you no longer have a central body regulating the value of a currency -- actually need to be practical. Bullets check off all of those boxes.

Otherwise it could depend on the nature of the apocalypse. Certain things might become commodities or treasured. And the nature of trade could vary greatly depending on how humanity was spread out afterward, or if whatever ended society was still around. In something like Under the Water and Mutated Fishes (which technically was still an ensuing disaster less than an apocalypse, although you still have colonies of survivors and trade where I was reading), basic resources like clean drinking water and food are major issues so nobody would be interested in batering people. However, medicine and bullets would be a big thing. By contrast, in a post-apoc where society is starting to re-establish itself, you could see a return to an actual currency of some sort that wasn't tied to a practical item.

And, in general, I guess it could be a matter of time until a post-apoc society becomes just a new society and a lot of the outlaw stuff goes out the window.

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I_Abibde posted...

*headscratch*

I think you're talking about Kull the Conqueror here, Zeus, which does star Kevin Sorbo, but has nothing to do with Krull.

Whoops. Yeah, similar name >_< Looking over the wiki for Krull, I'm sure that I've seen it. I think I would remember if I had, even if I'd only caught part of it on tv.

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I finished that 2018 Men's Elimination Chamber. I've only seen maybe 4-5 elimination chamber matches, but that one was probably my favorite (if you exclude the aftermath from New Year's Revolution 2006's elimination chamber which, iirc, might have been the first elimination chamber). Most of the performances looked credible, you had a few stories going there, Braun was a fucking beast, and while I wasn't on board with the outcome, it works within the context of the match.
..
I then watched the 2018 Women's Elimination Chamber match (which they referenced throughout the men's match). It was also great, particularly given the way the announcers built up the idea of three team-ups.

Alexa Bliss was fucking awesome in that. Bliss may be my favorite female wrestler at this point, and it's amazing how far she's come over the years. When she premiered in NXT, they had her with that stupid fairy gimmick that played up her background as a cheerleader. Then they flipped her heel and used her as the boss-valet for... I think Dawson and somebody? I can't remember. It was a forgettable tag team that she helped get onto the main roster. In the process, she earned some heel heat from me. There aren't many wrestlers who get that from me (Edge when he first got the title, Cena when he was doing that white rapper gimmick), and it's a lot harder to get that when you know the whole thing is a work. (Go away heat, on the hand, is VERY easy to get -- Mizz, Roman Reigns, etc.) But NXT had built up the Vaudevillains and Enzo & Cass so I actually cared about them (imagine that, making fans care about wrestlers instead of holding meaningless matches where nobody gives a shit about anybody and you have "Fight forever" chants going), and she was running interference for her team. (And even the addition of Blue Pants -- NXT's absurdly over job girl -- couldn't even the score.)

NXT used Alexa Bliss incredibly well at the end and while the main roster transition was a little rocky, she got over well as a heel. I should probably start following her stuff in the WWE, but I know that she's got a shitty storyline going with Bray and RKO.

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LuciferSage posted...

Krull was terrible, and I loved it as a kid.

I enjoyed Krull, but I recognize it was really bad. However, I can enjoy it while being okay with its lousiness because it starred Kevin Sorbo who literally just did that with H:TLJ. And it's a fucking shame that Sorbo's career was effectively cut short, first by illness when it was taking off and then allegedly because of his religious views although, honestly, it was really more the illness costing him time when he was his peak relevance.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I was a big fan of that film as a kid. It probably helped that I was always into Greek myths in general.

Sam Worthington can choke to death on a sack filled with 1000 dicks, though. The remake is trash.

I loved the original and I'm strangely impressed how the remake can take a much larger budget and make such a worse movie. The design choices were goofy and the story was somehow more of a mess than the original. The special effects were kinda neat, though.

I haven't watched the remake in a while. I might give it another go. The sequel was so kinda forgettable that there are times I'm not sure I even watched it.

Part of the overall problem is that the remake came out at a time when they were doing a LOT of dicey things with fantasy. We also got that Egyptian Gods and Monsters movie around the same time, which I don't think I've seen the full thing but I kinda want to at some point for the setting and effects.

The general problem with the remake is that there was no real sense of magic or mystery. The original mutilated myths like crazy, but there was a sense of lore that so lacking in the remake, probably because it went so barebones with the story so it didn't feel like you were stepping into a different world.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I kind of stopped doing that sort of stuff once I got older, though I did have a moment about 10 years ago when I made all the rings from Green Lantern/Blackest Night out of plastic piping and a wooden bezel (which I still have displayed in my "gaming lounge").

I geeked out a little when they were selling the cheap plastic ones years ago. I kinda want to get either a legit-looking SC ring or an OL ring, but I hate wearing rings so it'd probably be a waste.

I almost bought the large SC lantern replica, but I finally settled for one of the smaller $30 versions with a matching light-up ring.

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"It works if you believe in it and doesn't work if you don't. You never hear people say that about penicillin."

I'm not a big believer in the concept, but maybe it's possible at some scale although just not the stage magician-level crap. If it was something that could reliably work and be useful, I imagine the government would be using it.

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HornedLion posted...

But Ive never known someone who I cannot trust ANYTHING they say.

You mean you've never been on the internet?


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ParanoidObsessive posted...

This isn't really a valid argument, considering he didn't really talk about much wrestling other than those two even before the pandemic. He mostly talks about the two most significant mainstream companies, and only really talks about other companies in the context of his own direct personal relationship with them in the past (TNA, MLW, NWA,RoH, etc). And the rest of the time he's talking about anecdotes from 30+ years ago during the territory days (which is where he's the most interesting/enlightening, IMO).

It's the same reason why most wrestling YouTubers don't bother making review videos to cover Impact shows, but will cover WWE and AEW. Because that's where the interest is. He talks about AEW because it's popular enough to justify it. Not because he's got nothing else to talk about and is begrudgingly giving attention to something he otherwise wouldn't be giving the time of day.

Except if he actually wanted attention and to chase the crowd, he wouldn't go with AEW -- a show that can't even pull in a million viewers per week -- he'd focus on either Raw or SD which pull in close to 2m or over 2m viewers per week. (And it looks like lately SD's numbers might even be better than Raw's at times? I guess because it's on Fox now?)

The only thing AEW has going for it is that it's easier to mock most of the time, although Bray Wyatt's goofy nonsense gets attention at times for how bad it is.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Though this leads me to another minor tangent - it might be worth an aside that I've never entirely bought into the philosophy that kayfabe is the END-ALL BE-ALL of wrestling anyway, because I honestly can't remember a time when I ever thought wrestling was real in the first place. PART of that might be because I grew up in the Northeast instead of Memphis/Mid-South/etc, where Vince was putting on ridiculous shows (and Hulk Hogan had his own cartoon!), part of it might be because I was always pretty smart/cynical in general even from a young age (and had a skeptical father who tended to encourage that style of thinking), maybe it was because having Mister T and Cyndi Lauper show up (while Captain Lou was hanging out with The Goonies) made it hard for me to assume any of this shit was real, or maybe for some other reason - but I feel like as early as the mid-80s I was blatantly aware that it was all acting and predetermined storylines. I was certainly aware of it by the time the Undertaker was murdered, rose to the Heavens, then reincarnated as two different people and he had to fight himself to reclaim his identity. All while Leslie Nielsen investigated in-character as Frank Drebin.

Even in 1998 and 1999 I still ran into fans who -- despite watching the WWE -- thought wrestling was real. >_> So kay still somehow existed at least a little bit.

And yeah, region certainly mattered because tri-state was big on comedy bullshit wrestling so people were less likely to take it seriously, whereas other parts of the country played it straight. (And this was BEFORE you had things like the Undertaker, even back when Vince Senior was running things... although it's worth noting that Vince Senior -- unlike Junior -- had his limits. Vince Sr supposedly hated the idea of wrestlers getting into entertainment because he was allegedly worried about exposing the business. VKM had the opposite opinion, he always wanted to be the Walt Disney of wrestling so he tried to promote partnerships with the media.) Then you have fucking Mexico and lucha which looks like highly coordinated hokey bullshit, and when wrestlers started bringing that crap into the US and it caught on that helped make wrestling look like crap nowadays.

It's like watching a movie, where you can either get lost in a fight scene or distracted by the hokey dumb shit in a fight scene where your suspension of disbelief keeps getting killed.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

There was a time when Westerns were the most popular genre ever - and then suddenly there was a time when they weren't. Pirate films went from being really popular, to utter cinema death, to popular, and then back again. The popularity of superheroes seems to go in cycles as well, at least in comics themselves. Like it or not, pop culture tastes are always changing. Maybe wrestling (which itself used to peak and dip in cycles!) is simply an idea whose time has passed, and no style of wrestling will ever be as popular again.

The idea that things just happen to get big and then they just happen to go out of fashion is magical thinking. And wrestling isn't like a film genre or tv genre, it's a separate beast entirely. It'd be more comparable to a sport than anything else. And back when it was massively popular and people believed it, it was treated as a sport.

However, when things go from being popular to tanking, there's a usual trend where as something grows you get cheap imitators and knockoffs which choke the market and ruin things, ultimately alienating the fanbase and killing the popularity. Cue the mud shows, which could kill entire territories. AEW is a modern day mud show. It pops for a very small demographic who really love that crap, while turning off everybody else. (Of course, the irony here might be the fact that WWE itself effectively killed a lot of territories by virtue of playing in those territories and making wrestling look like crap, so if AEW's garbage wrestling did hurt Vince by killing wrestling's overall fanbase with its hokey & stupid product, it would be almost karmic retribution.)

But otherwise part of wrestling's overall decline is the WWE's decline. Partly because -- as you mentioned -- of all the hotshotting which threw everything out that you could possibly use to impress people in just a few years, but also because they can't recognize or build credible talent any more.

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I was watching the 2018 elimination chamber match and geez they had some awesome spots involving Strowman. That four-man Shield Powerbomb into a four-man pin that he kicked out of was fucking great. As was Miz climbing the chamber to escape then Strowman climbing after him. There's really nothing like a monster heel played like a monster heel.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

You're kind of missing my point. Because Cornette's bias is so strong, and because he's your main source of information about AEW, you're only hearing about the worst aspects of the company, and they're being painted in the worst possible light, so your own impression of the product is far more biased than you actually realize.

It would be like you watching MSNBC and The Young Turks as your only news sources and being convinced that you fully understand every facet of modern politics.

His "bias" against the company is nowhere near as pronounced as many claim. The stuff he complains about are all logical things to complain about (although a few are clearly style choices). And while you could argue that he might highlight the bad more than the good, that doesn't excuse the bad. If George Clooney was doing a million volunteer functions, but also drowning small animals, I wouldn't hold it against somebody for focusing on that drowning small animals part of his persona because that other shit doesn't excuse it. Or, as was noted in Clash of the Titans, 'A thousand good deeds cannot make up for one murder'

Otherwise it's fundamentally different from TYT, MSNBC, etc, in that when I see the actual thing they're talking about, it's nothing like what they're claiming. When I find an AEW clip -- and somestimes not even the one they're referencing -- it's usually been shit. Instead of exaggerating like the media does, Cornette is understating some of it.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

He felt threatened enough to immediately counterprogram against their show in a desperate attempt to cost them ratings, and his show is regularly beaten by them in the ratings every single week. When you take demographics into account, their show is actually right on par with Raw, his beloved baby.

You mean NXT is beaten by them in ratings. Raw and SD both trounce AEW in ratings. In fact, if you took AEW's rating and tripled it, AEW ***STILL*** would come up short against Raw and SD most weeks.

Raw is the A show. SD is the B show. NXT is the C show. You're making a big deal about AEW beating the C show. The only way you could set the bar any lower would be if NXT was beating it as well.

And your attempt to say, "Well, if you look at the demographics," is just weird.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Hell, even Cornette and Brian Last themselves have freely admitted that for all that they hate AEW, they still tend to like it more than the current WWE product. WWE really isn't attracting new fans, even NXT (which was the trendy, smark-favored brand for years). Regardless of what you might think of the product, AEW is.

Cornette has repeatedly gone on record as preferring NXT to AEW. And the only new people AEW gets watching the program are people Cornette sends there with his criticisms to see if the program really is as rotten as he claims.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Cornette's mentioned that the Montreal Screwjob was his idea (though it's up to the individual to decide whether or not he's lying - considering other people have claimed credit for it as well, I'd argue his version of the story seems the most plausible). Or that, at the very least, he's the one who gave Vince the idea.

I've listened to the omnibus and individual Montreal videos a few times in the past, I don't remember Cornette claiming it was his idea (and a few of the videos phrase things in a way that suggest he wasn't really involved). Some of the clips even discuss how he believed that Brett would honor his word.

And on that subject, some of the WWE's performers and staff at the time have gone on record claiming that they think the Screwjob was a work and that Brett was really in on it, so... there's also that craziness.


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The Wave Master posted...

The only other rings I will mention are that Darby Allin's whole gimmick is that he's a goth skater and they wear faded, washed, and ripped black jeans. Those were some of my best friends in high school during the 90's, and holds true even today.

He wasn't wearing jeans, though. I thought they were jeans at first glance, but he was just wearing jean shorts with black spandex tights underneath (presumably because you don't have the flexibility with jeans). Had he been wearing jeans, I wouldn't have batted an eye (although it's an impractical choice for wrestling).

It reminded me of some Peter Pan shit.

The Wave Master posted...

The other thing is suspension of belief; in that when MJF kicks out everyone that the camera person isn't everyone, and doesn't exist at all, and that no one watches back stage segments in wrestling.

It was Sammy who kicked everybody out. Had MJF asked the cameraman stay, it wouldn't have been so goofy... although I guess it would have been goofy regardless because there was no reason to make a big deal about the phone with the camera there.

The Wave Master posted...

Yes, it doesn't make any damn sense, but it's wrestling.

It's not hard to do wrestling and have it make sense. It doesn't have to be an either/or. "It's wrestling" shouldn't be an excuse for shitty writing. Keep in mind that for years a similar excuse was used for cartoons, up until better-written cartoons started kicking the shit out of the poorly-written crap.

The Wave Master posted...

These people beat the **** out of each other every week without the law getting involved or people dying. Pretending a camera person doesn't exist isn't going to end the suspension of belief. Within the wresting universe it's as common as tables under the ring every week... why? Or a sledgehammer... Looming at you Triple H.

Which is basically why extreme rules wrestling was barely seen until they broke kayfabe.

The Wave Master posted...

Raw and Smackdown were worse if we're looking at the whole business for critique.

And believe me, I'm not going to bother watching either of those to test that theory... well, maybe I'll try Smackdown. I'm not touching Raw, though. I'm drawing a line there, even though the Hulu edit isn't nearly as long as the actual Raw.

I'm honestly not sure how anybody could manage to sit through all of the American promotions on a weekly basis, let alone the international ones.

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Well, they said it shouldn't be done, but I did it: I watched an entire episode of AEW Dynamite. And let me just say, those 90+ minutes of my life that I'm never going to get back just flew by >_>

I had around 6 or 7 pages of notes, but nobody's going to want to read that so I'll summarize things here (and I guess skip some of the things that happen between segments and also skip some of the smaller segments)

Darby Allen vs Joey Janella 2.5/5
Given that it was the first match in the program, I had about half a page of notes. Basically Darby Allen seems like a decent enough cruiserweight and he's got some things going for him... but I couldn't stop laughing when I noticed his jean hot pants and tights. And while he was reasonably good, unfortunately he was paired with Janella, who was kinda lousy (besides mugging for the camera). Outside of the opening minutes, Janella had maybe three good spots in the match and mostly dragged Darby down. The camera-work was also shit.

It wasn't until after the match that I realized Janella is probably the wrestler who Cornette routinely dismisses as Jelly Nutella.

MJF and Sammy talk 1/5
Sammy goes into a small room with the Inner Circle, asks everybody to leave so he can talk to MJF alone... but asks the cameraman to stay. And then he gets upset when he learns MJF recorded their conversation... but he's the guy who asked the fucking camera guy to be in there with them so he was ALREADY recorded! Wtf?!

MJF's acting was decent, Sammy's sucked. The scene was stupid and that was a tiny room for so many people.

Cody Rhodes & Lee Johnson vs some job guys 1/5
I got excited when I saw that I'd be watching a Cody Rhodes match, but unfortunately it was a tag match where he was really trying to put over his partner. Judging from the match and commentary afterward, Lee Johnson isn't ready for the spotlight or any light. His in-ring looked lousy and his mic work sucked. Of course, the smaller of the two job guys was way, way worse and was so bad that he made Cody look like shit at times. They need to get that guy off the air, or preferably out of the business. The big job guy looked pretty decent. Had it been a match between him and Cody, I might have been happy. However, if Cody is just going to be teaming with Lee, I'll have zero incentive to watch AEW again to see Cody.

Pac vs Hollywood Hunk or something Good for what it was/5
The preview for this match immediately grabbed me because I recognized Pac as being NXT's Adrian Neville. I had never liked Neville, but I was curious if he'd improved in all of those years since the WWE couldn't manage to get him over. (He was an early NXT misfire. He was rebranded in NXT before going to the main roster, where they tried to put him over as a superhero and naturally paired him against Stardust which sounded great but didn't really work out because the concept was too off-brand for the WWE at the time and he didn't have enough personality to be played as a joke character, like they did with Hurricane.)

His moveset was *exactly * what I remembered from NXT. Not a thing changed there... but even though he was doing the same shit, he's finally developed a little stage presence so those spots actually feel like they have meaning. In NXT, Pac was waaaaaay too fast-paced. Here he's slowed the fuck down. He stands over his opponent. He walks slowly and deliberately, which I don't remember him ever doing. He just looks a lot better.

I liked it, but I'm not rating it because it was a short squash match

Jericho & MJF vs the Acclaim 2.5/5
I have a lot of notes on this one because it was weird and confusing. However, The Acclaim was great, MJF was great, and Jericho was... lousy. I'd seen one or two other tag matches featuring Jericho & MJF (including that goofy one with the botches). MJF seems like a talent, but Jericho feels like he's here for an easy paycheck. His work is sloppy and he's not even taking care of himself at this point.

Otherwise I'll note that I liked the ring entrance (with the audience which looked like it was just the other wrestlers and staff singing and dancing). There was some closure on that earlier segment with Sammy. While Jericho's in-ring has massively declined (he wasn't anywhere near this bad when he was teaming with Kevin Owens/Steen in the WWE just a few years ago), he's still great on the mic. MJF is also a pro on the mic. Sammy is shit, though. He kept breaking when he was trying to deliver his lines.

Adam Page and Matt Hardy walk into a bar... 3/5
I was disappointed to learn that Matt Hardy is no longer broken, woken, or otherwise heavily gimmicked. Earlier in the show, Matt Hardy asks the guy out for a drink. The bar scene is short, but Matt Hardy talking directly to the camera made the segment fun.

Leyla Hirsh vs Thunder Rosa 1/5
I had never heard of either of them prior to tonight and had almost forgotten that AEW has a women's division at all. The two look great and they seem to have some personality, which is good because their wrestling is garbage. The match reminded me of those lingerie models that the WWE used to hire for its Divas division. Of course, I imagine that both of these girls probably come from a wrestling background (which was apparently when one did what looked like a hurricanrana) which makes this match even more disappointing. There were a few decent-looking moves, but so much of it looked sloppy and stupid.

Oh, plus they played a promo over the opening minutes of the match... which is the same thing they did during that Jericho match. Wtf?

Afterward they showed the Japanese side of the tournament, which I had heard about via a Cornette video and was moderately tempted to watch after all of that Maki Itoh nonsense (although even prior to that when Cornette was just trashing the thing I got interested). However, I can't see bothering with another normal AEW women's match after that garbage. It feels like such a massive step back for women's wrestling. Even a 1/5 feels generous. It really deserves half a point.

Kenta & Kenny Omega vs Moxley & Lance Archer 3/5
The intro packages/entrances were pretty cool for the guys who got them. The only one who kinda didn't was Lance Archer (the only wrestler I hadn't seen before), who was probably the most impressive guy in the match. At the same time, I figured that Lance *had * to be the guy who got pinned this match. On the plus side, at least they didn't make him look like shit it took 3-4 people to get him down for the count.

Despite hearing the match reviewed, I had forgotten most of what I'd heard (other than a few of the stupid spots, like the bed and the potatoes). I kinda have to agree with the general criticism of the format, especially given the ending. All that said, it may have been garbage, but at least it was fun. Some of the other matches felt like a chore.

Overall 2/5
The episode was mostly lousy. There are a few things I liked that I didn't go into, but a lot more stuff I disliked that I didn't cover (The Forbidden Door! The Forbidden Door! Seriously, fuck off, Excalibur, you goofy-ass masked commentator).

While this episode didn't have a lot egregiously bad things (relatively speaking; I've certainly seen AEW shit that looked terrible), the whole thing feels on the level of TNA, if not a bit worse.

The following interested or impressed me:
Lance Archer
Pac
MJF
The Acclaim

The following may tempt me to watch another episode:
Miro (WWE's Rusev, who only appeared in a recap tonight)
The Japanese side of the Women's Tournament
Riho vs Serena Deeb next week (I liked Serena in the WWE and I'm a little curious about Riho)

And the following shit was a massive turnoff:
Thunder Rosa vs Leyla
Lee Johnson
Sammy's acting
The Young Bucks
Whatever is happening with the Dork Order
Jericho's wrestling


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There are precious few at ease / With moral ambiguities / So we act as though they don't exist.

You can be pretty fucking sure she wished Trump a happy birthday.

SantaKhala posted...

Well, unlike 99% of corrupt politicians who make hundreds of millions on a relatively meager government salary, Trump's net worth dropped from $4.5B to just $2.5B after his term.

...what?

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There are precious few at ease / With moral ambiguities / So we act as though they don't exist.

"Prime" more immediately conveys leadership than pretty much anything, though. Look at Optimus Prime. He has Prime in the the name so you automatically know he's the leader.

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There are precious few at ease / With moral ambiguities / So we act as though they don't exist.

Pretty sure most of the Sonic series -- except Sonic X -- had Eggman/Robotnik turning animals into robots. I can't even remember what was up with Sonic X.

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There are precious few at ease / With moral ambiguities / So we act as though they don't exist.

I'm going to read over the remaining wrestling comments, etc, once I've seen that full episode of AEW... if I can find a place to watch it.

The Wave Master posted...

Finally, Michelle Trachtenberg said there was a rule on set where she wasn't allowed to be alone with Joss Whedon. Dude is just a creep.

Well, who initiated that rule? Oo

Naruto_fan_42 posted...

You guys watch WandaVision?

Not yet, although I'm a little confused what in the MCU set up the fact that the two were in a relationship. I just vaguely remember that they'd been living together at some point (which I think was referenced in IW, which is strange because continuity-wise I think Civil War was last film to feature them before IW and there wasn't anything happening there), but I don't remember any real build-up to it.

Was there any build? Or is it just something fans are supposed to go along with because we know it was a thing in the comics?

I_Abibde posted...

I enjoyed Cornette on commentary on NWA Powerrr (until he made a gaffe that cost him that job),

It didn't cost him the job, he got annoyed at the management reacted to it -- despite the fact that they vetted the show beforehand and didn't find anything wrong with his comment (which apparently was something he'd been using for decades) -- so he took some time off then decided not to come back.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I literally said "I never really cared about Willow as a setting/story" and "I suppose if I watched Willow now I might have a different opinion of it" in my post right before yours. That seems pretty clearly indicative of my opinion of it.

Didn't like it, didn't hate it. Meh.

Well, I missed it because that part was several posts later whereas the post that I'd originally saw where you responded to the subject didn't cover any of that.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

But most of the rest of the films you mentioned were either blatant failures (Munchausen didn't even make back a quarter of its budget), or the sort of technical failures where they theoretically recoup production budget (and thus succeed, if only barely), but were actually failures when you factor in marketing budget. Beastmaster may have gotten a TV show 17 years later, but it was considered a commercial failure when it was released (and its sequel was a straight-up failure without equivocation). And that's not even including films you didn't mention, like Krull, Ladyhawke, and Sword of the Valiant. There were definitely a few successes (I never said every fantasy film in the 80s failed), but the majority did.

I'm not sure why you're so obsessed with commercial success as a metric. I was talking about fantasy was big in the 80s because there was a fantasy film boom (among other things). If we were talking about a single film and its relative impact, then you could reasonably look at commercial success. However, when you have DOZENS of fantasy films coming out, the fact that they exist at all is the most pertinent metric. Keep in mind that horror movies were also big in the 70s and 80s, yet the vast majority of horror movies didn't pull in huge amounts of money (and the ones that were massively commercially successful was often more the result of the low budget than the box office take; the original Friday the 13th making $59m may not have been "huge" compared to other movies, but it was made on a $550k budget so even doing $4m would have made it massively successful from a commercial standpoint although if it had a $4m take then it would mean that not that many people actually saw that one particular film).

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I actually agree with the idea that commercial success isn't necessarily the best metric for the popularity of a genre (and definitely not the creative or critical value of a genre), but on the other hand, it doesn't really matter how many films the studios are putting out if no one is going to watch them in theaters.

And that was mostly the point of my initial comment - fantasy wasn't really overly successful in the 80s. Most films failed right out of the gate, and even the ones that succeeded failed to spawn lasting franchises (and the few that managed to produce sequels almost always tanked at that point). People who were kids in the 80s may have loved 80s fantasy movies (I certainly did), which is part of why they became cult hits (and why some of them have gotten nostalgia-fueled remakes more recently), but that didn't really translate into success for them THEN.

I don't recall saying "successful," I said popular. And if everybody and their brother is putting out fantasy films, clearly there was money being made or they wouldn't be able to afford the habit. It's not like you just had a few films at the start then the whole thing collapsed, these were running throughout the 80s because studios saw a market for them (which in many cases didn't exactly materialize, unless the budget was bullshit).

You can't exactly call something a dead genre -- which you literally did (and was the original point of contention) -- when you have dozens upon dozens of often big budget films (in fact, so big that they weren't profitable) coming out in that time frame. You can compare that to the 90s where you didn't really see as many fantasy films -- at least that I remember -- but then at the start of the 2000s Harry Potter and LotR tore the house down. (Which led to more fantasy films, many of which were adapted from book series yet never made it past the first novel (Eragon, The Golden Compass, etc). Offhand, I think the only other successful series might have been the Narnia stuff, which was pretty big... although I never saw a single one despite having read a few of the novels)


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Clench281 posted...

Because there was the assumption that the GOP wasn't just acting in bad faith.

Bill sat and gave testimony related to his impeachment.

Hillary provided testimony over ten hours of questioning about Benghazi.

Trump wouldn't so much as utter a peep about either impeachment because he's full of shit and wouldn't last five seconds without incriminating or perjuring himself. He isn't and never will be qualified to govern.

The irony being that there was more legitimacy to the Clinton impeachment than there was to either Trump impeachment and Democrats had been calling for Trump's impeachment before he even took office.

Clench281 posted...

Hillary provided testimony over ten hours of questioning about Benghazi.

Your conflations are hilarious. The Benghazi hearings are in no way comparable to an impeachment and, more importantly, Benghazi related to the biggest US intelligence failure since Iraq where there were some very legitimate questions and concerns. And if something like Benghazi happened during Trump's term, Democrats would have attacked Trump -- rather than his Secretary of State -- with the force of a thousand suns.

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I don't see any breakthrough in the near future given that the world has been derailed by COVID, unless the technology is something that facilitates remote work or something else inspired by COVID.

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DMX99 posted...

they are racist to other races, but not to your race.

Well, I'm in New England, so the only race people are publicly racist against is my own (and generally their own). And if you had to worry about dating racists anywhere in the Northeast US (or probably the entirety of the US for that matter), you wouldn't be able to date at all. More generally, though, the question largely comes down to the nature of the racism and how that racism is expressed. If they're randomly claiming that white people ruined the world in your average conversation -- which is considered a socially acceptable form of racism, along with other anti-white racism that people who complain about racism don't even bat an eye at -- that's something I'm going to distance myself from. I don't run into a lot of WTF racism where it's something so outlandishly offensive you don't even want to stand near them.

As a general rule, if somebody is racially-virtue-signaling (or signalling their politics) on a dating profile, that's a hard pass right then and there because there's no reason to do that and if that's how they're choosing to present themselves, they're either insufferable or devoid of personality. Either way, I don't want anything to do with them. Usually I prefer to meet people offline, though, where unfortunately you might not spot a deal-breaker right away.

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HornedLion posted...

Whats something I can breed for money?

Creepy.


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You mean it's got harder for you to stalk people?

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If they did, hopefully they'd combine the versions somehow. The easy way to do it in 4's case would be to remove the generic tournament Navis which had no business being there in the first place.

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Wait, are you talking about a streamer or a show/game/movie? Because if it's a streamer, I think the answer is obvious >_>

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Full Throttle posted...

His will states that the money wil be put into a trust for Lulu's care

So literally not the same thing as leaving it to the dog.

Full Throttle posted...

Do you think it should be legal to leave your fortune to a pet or should the courts take the money and give it to charity?

Considering they didn't do that at all because you literally can't do that, it's a stupid question. Of course, we all know that far-leftists like Duckbear don't want anybody inheriting everything and that it should all go to government.

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Well, petulant Pelosi and her petty partisans preened and postured to no pay off. And honestly, did you expect anything else? I was listening to the case "for" impeachment and at times I thought they were arguing against impeachment with the clips they were trying to present as evidence, which laughably included "Oh, he said FIGHT! That means he wanted them to fight!" despite the fact that just about every damn politician uses fight in their rhetoric. And it just went on and on like that, growing more ridiculous because there was never a real case for impeachment and everybody knew that.

The proceeding was a joke, Pelosi was a joke, Schumer was a joke. the whole thing was nothing more than a partisan stunt, and it made the US into a spectacle. And Pelosi flat-out lied about her motivations, claiming that it was to get Trump out of office before he could do any more damage yet she delayed in sending the articles until the last minute when they wouldn't be able to hold a vote before he left office and her justification about worrying that he's dangerous made no sense when she was doing everything in her power to try to provoke him. It was a partisan shit show where the only reason they delayed the vote is so they'd have some extra Democrats in office to make the margins look better when it failed because it was always going to fail since they had no case and they knew it.

And considering that ranking Democrats made this their big priority in the middle of so many bigger things going on is probably the best argument for term limits for senators and congresspeople.

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No collusion!

idk, this whole fucking thing was a stupid publicity stunt that only had one possible outcome because the opposition party that wanted to impeach him before he took office, had tried to impeach him on bogus charges once during his term already, knew that there was no way they were going to have the votes for their partisan maneuver and knew that the whole thing was meaningless because they had zero intention of voting on it while he was in office because they wanted the numbers to look better.

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I'd worry about the FPS knives myself.

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A little bit, yeah.

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If you've got a sign up that shows how the mask should be worn, fucking call them out on that. If you feel nervous, explain that it's policy and that you could get in trouble if it's not followed so you'd be forced to ask them to leave. And then if they don't do it, toss them out.

argonautweakend posted...

Just today we had somebody who just straight up walked out after being told.

That's fine. It's better than having him not listen and walk around the store, at which point you're forced to do something else. Frankly, if everybody would leave without buying something, your state would be better off for it.

argonautweakend posted...

How does one gain this skill? I know I am 100% in the right for asking people to cover their nose, but even so I struggle with this.

This isn't about being assertive, it's about being consistent. After you put your foot down with the first few, you're going to feel compelled to do it when you see new rule-breakers. And if you don't fucking stick to a policy, you might as well not have that policy.

And if you don't feel like you can enforce your store's basic policies, maybe you should step down and let somebody else take over.

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I looked it up and Nipsey Hustle (who I'd never heard of before now) died less than two years ago so yeah, that's a little fast. And it's not like it was a lingering death either (where somebody might have already been in mourning all along and maybe a little faster to move on), the guy was murdered.

And if the news is coming out, I'm guessing she's several months pregnant now (because that's when it gets hard to hide) and it likely didn't just happen, so she might have already found somebody else within a year of the guy's death which seems very soon, especially when you consider that they'd been married about six years.

wwinterj25 posted...

My older sister died at 26 of cancer. She got married in her final year and her widow now is married again and has kids. I don't see this a issue. I actually want him to be as happy as he made my sister.....Celebs are no different.

Wait, what? A widow is a decedent's wife, but you referred to that individual as a him.

Otherwise I'm sorry to hear that. Cancer is a terrible way to go (a fact that a certain troll on this board knows and uses to mock people who have had relatives die from that), especially at such a young age.

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Maybe you need to stop failing reading. Even before the edits (one of which was prior to your post), the fact that you'd perpetrated this topic at least one another time recently -- and probably many times more than that -- is certainly relevant to the discussion. Now I dislike FA as much as the next guy, but that shit is just straight-up harassment.

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You did this one within the last few months, which was when Bligh jokingly suggested he would do serious bodily harm (or worse) to the guy. Real class act there.

Actually, I'm surprised you're still doing these topics at all, considering how many times you've been warned for this shit. At any rate, even one topic about FA is more than he deserves.

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I was going to ask if this was about you and friends driving home drunk after a party when you hit a guy on the street then tossed his body in the lake and now you're not really sure he died, but I guess what you actually did was also kinda stupid

And, speaking of stupid, I blind-bought Anthem after all of this shit was known about it (granted, I didn't pay much, but still).

keyblader1985 posted...

Well I backed Mighty no. 9. That shit is on my head.

What's the deal there?

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Not a whole lot, outside expanding federal power. Not that either party stands for much. They pay lip service to many of the same issues while being on board with other issues, although the politicians themselves can favor a wide variety of nonsense and then there are token issues that they use to sucker in voters. There are some differences on social issues where elected Democrats want to police everything under the sun while Republicans are like, "Yo, chill the fuck out."

Both Democrats and Republicans candidates will promote the same kinds of issues -- they'll both time about healthcare reform, they'll talk about prison reform, they'll talk about tax reform, they'll make some remarks about the economy, and so on. Then they have their separate approaches where Republicans try to shrink government (except the military) and Democrats try to government (often including the military). Of course, when a Democrat says "tax reform," it means hard-working Americans' taxes are going up (generally to pay more government employees or to pay people to not work), so there's one of your big differences.

Arcturusisnow posted...

And republicans kept preventing it. How interesting.

They had had control of congress, senate, and the White House around when Obama took office. They literally could have done it then, just like they did with the ACA.

GrabASnickers posted...

Most of them are either just true centrists at heart or centrist as a failed political tactic. They've wasted so many opportunities trying to find a mythical middle ground with a party that won't play along anyway when the shoe's on the other foot.

lolwut? First, most Democrats are too far to the left to be considered centrist in Sweden. Almost every candidate on the DNC's primary stage favored a wealth tax, something that even Sweden abolished and most of Europe got rid of. That's your baseline for candidates. At one point, the radicals were on the fringe for Democrats but -- like Republicans in the case of people like Ted Cruz who finished *second* in 2016 (although Jeb dropped out quickly) -- they've become more mainstream.


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FatalAccident posted...

Or is it like theres no legal way to do it cos its outside of work

On the contrary, there's no legal protection for keeping your job.

FatalAccident posted...

Meeooow Mead put them claws back lol

Start of a blood feud, tbh.

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Y'all getting... left below!


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Think? I know I'm very open-minded. If I wasn't, I wouldn't even entertain some of the batshit crazy shit I see people posting at times. If I see a claim that I'm not sure about, I investigate it.

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It's one of those things that probably sounds a lot cooler than it is. I imagine it's rather stressful having to worry about keeping that con going and then the feds on top of it.

Plus while you may have women throwing themselves at you in some kinds of cults, they might not always be attractive.

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What's the line being drawn from Halloween to Castlevania? Just the spooky setting? By that logic, anything with snow and cheer works for Christmas, so you could go with any number of snowboarding games.

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The Wave Master posted...

To switch subjects entirely, but not forever because I still have thoughts on wrestling. Thoughts that even a giant P.O. wall of text (That I fully read.) Can't stop me from expanding on a little later. However, we need to move on to apparent garbage human being Joss Whedon.

Yeah, I gotta read through that later as well, but I can't resist the subject of Joss Whedon.

The Wave Master posted...

This isn't surprising news as many of his former actors, producers, and crew people said that he's a terrible foot fetish obsessed little garbage person. People just ignored it Because he's "Talented."

He has a LOT of creepy-ass habits and fetishes. I get the whole "not judging a book by its cover," but sometimes you can look at a guy and know that they're a creep.

And, to be blunt, he's not even that fucking talented. Yeah, I enjoyed some of his work, but oftentimes the more control he's had, the worse shit has been. And he's been up his own ass with a lot of crap. And that asshole still hasn't given us a Doctor Horrible sequel. Doctor Horrible is pretty much his only work that I actually loved, and the only reason it exists at all is because of the writers strike.

The Wave Master posted...

I read on Twitter (Yes, that was my mistake and I'm sorry.) That Joss was and is under a lot of pressure while shooting shows and movies and that it's okay for him to be mean and rude and a little sexist. That same idiot also said it was okay for Joss to be Joss because normal people are terrible every day and they don't give us Buffy or The Avengers.

And, staight-up, Avengers was lousy. The only thing I liked less in the MCU than Avengers was Captain Mary-Sue. And Avengers almost single-handedly soured me on ScarJo.

That said, I don't know much about the current allegations, although I'm aware of some of the older complaints.

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Picked up a copy of Rise of the Dungeon Master, a graphic novel about the origin of D&D. I've wikiwalked enough times that I have a baseline knowledge about the subject, but the fact it was a graphic novel made it hard to resist.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I've said multiple times in multiple posts that I don't really have a strong opinion of it, because when I watched it as a kid it didn't really appeal to me. My opinion of it is basically "meh".

Just not here and now in response to the question about it? >_>

It was weird where instead of mentioning any thoughts you just started going into the commercial success of the film. I wasn't sure if you'd seen it at all. And I certainly couldn't remember any previous opinions.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

But I'm also open-minded enough to point out that just because I didn't like something 30+ years ago doesn't mean that other people can't like it now.

But even now just because you don't like something doesn't mean other people can't like it. Your opinion isn't stopping anybody from doing anything =p

ParanoidObsessive posted...

And most of them bombed (other than maybe the first Conan the Barbarian). Even Disney couldn't manage to mine the genre for success (Black Cauldron is literally used as the symbol of Disney's near-collapse as a creative force in the 70s/80s). Even the films that became popular cult hits that people still love and talk about decades later (like Labyrinth) failed in their own era (Labyrinth only made half its production budget back).

idk, the Neverending Story did pretty well for itself, didn't it? And what about Clash of the Titans? Are you going to sit there and tell me Clash bombed? And while commercial success is a potential metric for the popularity of a genre, I'd imagine the more relevant metric would be the sheer number of fantasy films coming out at the time. Some were massive like Conan and the Neverending Story, but you also had Legend, The Princess Bride, Beastmaster (which gave us a show afterward), Red Sonja, the Conan sequel, and the kinda-creepy Return to Oz.

And, just running a google search to see what I may have forgotten, I'm seeing Excalibur, Dragonslayer, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (which I'm embarrassed didn't come to mind because I loved that film), Fire and Ice, Deathstalker, and... well, I'm shocked that I've forgotten even that much. Then there are two dozen more films that I don't think I've heard of, but I kinda want to watch at this point.

Hell, you even had things like The Last Unicorn. (And Masters of the Universe, which is kinda the snake biting its own tail.)

ParanoidObsessive posted...

But none of that really matters anyway, because I was talking about fantasy movies, not fantasy as a whole across all media.

Well, you didn't specify.


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MICHALECOLE posted...

Just like Brock turner, the rapist, will forever be known as Brock turner the rapist!

Let's be real, how many even remember the name Brock Turner any more? The story might have still been big the last time you weren't suspended, but that was years ago. In fact, when you first said the name, I thought you were talking about the body guard from Venture Brothers.

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Assuming that the aliens were human-like, they'd almost certainly be attacked.

Kimbos_Egg posted...

I had an argument with a friend a few weeks ago about this. He was convinced they would attack due to looking so "similar", which i disagreed with because if it was based on looks alone, not only would they attack other zombies, but things like scare crows and mannequins would be an instant win against them.

Scarecrows and mannequins don't move. And keep in mind that even when humans are heavily covered (to insulate against zombie attacks) to the point where you can't tell it's a human under there, they still get attacked.

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CarefreeDude posted...

Say they broke in and were successful at killing pence, pelosi, and most house/senate members.

Considering they'd never intended to do that, it would be a very different event altogether. And had that been their intention, they probably would have been able to do it because they had numbers on their side and at least some of them were armed. Keep in mind what just *one* guy with a gun had done at a practice session for the Congressional Baseball Game despite having dozens of guards, including a security detail for the guy who had been shot.

Yellow posted...

Mitt Romney was || this close to getting caught by the Trump mob that was intending to murder any politician they found

THIS || CLOSE.

These guys are such pussies, they won't stand up to the guy that almost killed them all with little regret. They probably still wouldn't care if Mitt was bludgeoned.

And your opinion is miles away from reality.

MILES AWAY

Contrary to the rhetoric, it's unlikely that the disorganized mob would have tried to kill Romney or any other politician. Most of the rioters had no idea they'd even be entering the capitol building that day. There were a handful of people in that crowd who seemingly masterminded the break-in --- given that they were using radios to coordinate the break-in --- but even with those people it's not clear that they had intended to actually kill anybody.

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This raises all kinds of questions. For example, if it has multiple extensions, does that still count as just one?

Lokarin posted...

It was ruled unconstitutional in 2006 (AFAIK) and it not enforcable... but it's still part of the Texas Penal Code

Guess legislators were feeling pretty cocky at the time.

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Yeah, that victim-blaming is all kinds of gross and offensive. And it's common for people to be surprised when a loved one takes their own life. Most people can't predict that shit.

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Probably Lucky Charms.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=El4tHP5HdPA

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TheOkHornedRat posted...

it would serve them right after they hit numerous Colorado and California dispensaries with equally frivolous lawsuits because they had strains named "gorilla glue"

...that's not frivolous.


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