I’m rewatching inuyasha and have no one to talk to about the fact that Kagura should have lived and by doing so the entire Sessh/Rin weirdness could have been completely avoided. Like I have trouble picturing Kagura pregnant but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen and half the time in fairy tales of all locales the kids pop out of the dad’s migraine or some shit and honestly they’d also make amazing godparents (or whatever the equivalent is) to a half dozen adopted mortals and their bloodlines. I’m mad about it and commenting on ao3 fics for this fandom is like screaming into the void.
Mario is better than sonic as both a game to play and as a mascot
By extension it follows logically that if youre Sega instead of Nintendo I hate you and everything you stand for.
How’s this for an “I’m getting old” moment: sonic 1 was released on the Genesis in 1991. Sonic Adventure 2 Battle was released on the GameCube in 2001. Sonic has been on Nintendo consoles for over twice the time he’s been a Sega exclusive.
From the perspective of not having a dog in this fight that is an unhinged level of fucks to give about this and in the context of this thread I love that for you.
Intellectually I dont care any more and I understand its fucked from the beginning, but I was just old enough to engage in tribalism when it was kicking off and apparently its a permanent feature now.
To be clear, if I did have a dog in this fight, it would be the supertux games.
Sonic sucks.
The guy is supposed to “go fast” but the levels are absolute nonsense that inhibit your ability to “go fast”, and then once you play the game enough (which you shouldn’t) to memorize the levels (what a waste of brain matter) and “go fast”, the game ends quickly because you “went fast”.
Fundamentally terrible games. People who like sonic are weirdos.
I have a tangentially related thing. I got big into steampunk decades ago when it was still young. Back then, it was a maker culture, a loosely defined idea of cogs and boilers that gave you a fun little world to practice your craft in. It wasn’t just form, it was function. Hammering brass to make functional goggles, learning the Victorian techniques to whalebone corsets, clockwork to accomplish something we only do now with variable controllers.
Now I look for my people and I find a rusting husk of I knew. Gone are the color and texture, replaced by brown on brown in cotton and leather. Where once gears and cogs were carved to spin and move, now they serve only to be glued to cheap accessories. The gleaming promises of brass and copper and steel, userped by soulless luster of plastics.
We should Never have let the world in.
Relevant song: Just Glue Some Gears On It and Call It Strampunk
Came to share this
I’ll have to listen to this after work, but I already feel at home in the comments.
No that’s valid tbh. Genres are 100% a part of fandom. I always admired the steampunk aesthetic but never had the resources to get into it. I’ve loved the bits that overlap with stuff like stardust though!
I’m much the same. When I got into it, the brass goggles forum required you to hand make and chare your goggles to be a full member. By the time I had the skill to do that, the forum had died and the fandom was a tag on Etsy for dropshippers.
Maybe you could help a new generation learn the value of intentional steampunk :) bring some of the passion back to the hobby, as it sounds like many just accept it as presented. Share it as a “when I got into this, we made this shit” and how you did it. I might be wrong, but I’m weirdly confident you’ll eventually find a cross section of steampunks that would be interested in the creative element
It’s not quite the same as you describe, but I do carry the tenets of that old steampunk to my modern crafts. Right now I’m making an electric hurdy gurdy cello out of a broken guitar, a kitchen mixer, and 3d printed models of my own construction. If steampunk taught me anything it’s that anything worth doing is worth overdoing.
I love that you didn’t give up the complex creations. Unlike the other commenter I have no idea what a hurdy gurdy is, but I can appreciate the value of overmaking stuff. Glad to hear that you didn’t let the capitalisation of steampunk kill your passion 😊
Oh you are in for a treat! it’s an antique instrument with a very distinctive sound.
I don’t know what it says about me that I already knew what a hurdy gurdy was lol
That you either passionately love or viscerally hate droning instruments.
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Given how Serenity turned out, firefly’s cancellation was probably for the best, making the reavers the intentional by-product of alliance experiments completely destroyed the nuances of the factions in the war of independence.
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Inuyasha ran out of ideas 10-15 tankobon in, and Takahashi just kept milking it for the money.
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Every fandom that accepts the “x is for everyone” motto is accepting enshittification and casualization with open arms. Air and water are for everyone, even bread has people who dislike it, for something to be unique it necessarily will have haters. The right word is anyone.
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Archer had a bit of a dip when Adam Reed left the writing team but it recovered and had one of the best endings possible for a series that long lived.
One of the writers of Freely (maybe Tim Minear?) did a blog post many moons ago where he outlined what some unresolved plot threads were and future episodes. You’re right that it was better off being cancelled. Even Nathan Fillion has said that the reason it’s so beloved is That it never had the opportunity to become bad.
Let me give you the example that stood out to me. Remember in the pilot where Inara gets out a syringe when she hears about Reavers being nearby? Everybody assumed she was going to kill herself. Nope. There was going to be an episode where they got boarded by Reavers and Inara was left alone with them. The crew move heaven and Earth to get back on board and when they do they find Inara barely alive, surrounded by hundreds of dead Reavers. The syringe was full of a Companion drug which kills anybody who has sex with you. So Inara killed then all by letting them rape her.
Mal would have been sweet and tender during her recovery, and that is what would have brought them together.
Probably for the best that one never got made.
Honestly the idea itself, as insane and barely disguised a fetish as it is, isn’t even that bad, to me.
It’s the planned aftermath that is pretty horrendous?
The idea that they would need that for their relationship to evolve in a positive direction when they’re already basically a couple by Shindig is genuinely sad, if they wanted that grim a story beat they should probably place it after they’re already an established couple and Mal has gotten over his shit about companions, then there’s some good meat on the bone in terms of character dynamics to explore.
making the reavers the intentional by-product of alliance experiments
They were the accidental by-products, so I think some nuance is still there for the factions, although still clearly the browncoats were in the right …
Right, I should’ve said “accidental byproduct of non-consensual experimentation on the population” but yeah, still beyond the pale.
I’ve just started rewatching Archer from the beginning. I loved it at the time, and I agree that it ended very well.
I hope Reed takes some time to contemplate another project to get passionate about, because I loved both Archer and Frisky Dingo.
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Beetleborgs was better than Power Rangers.
Community (2009): Annie was the (2nd) ass crack bandit and Abed took Troys cracking with a shocking amount of grace.
All the major character replacements on MASH were better than the characters they replaced. It’s not that I don’t like Burns and Blake, but Winchester and Potter were just so much more interesting. Trapper John was kind of a rapey creep even for the time, so there’s no question BJ was the winner there. Honestly as much as I love Radar, even Klinger taking over his position was an improvement. There was only so much more they could do with his Beaver Cleaver Goes to War shtick.
I agree wholeheartedly. I like the original characters enough, they fill their purpose. I’m a little sad when the changeover happens, but quickly fall in love with the new ones. A very well done show, infinitely re-watchable, in my family’s opinion. We grew up watching it, and we all rewatch it every other year or so.
In fact, I’m due for a rewatch right about now.
Shmups are fun and should be revived as a genre. I’ve been saying for years that Nintendo should make Star Fox into a 2D scrolling shooter.
Though playing Megabonk earlier today made me realize that it and other clones of Vampire Survivors are like shmups in many ways. You gain powerups that you lose when you die, you have little to do other than move, and maneuvering around the level is a big part of the gameplay.
I’m still salty that the season 2 ending cliffhanger of The Sarah Connor Chronicles never got to go anywhere.
I have some very hot takes about the efficacy of the Sailor Scouts given exactly how much Tuxedo Mask does. This is why my ex-wife and kid, who only wanted to enjoy a magical girl show, stopped watching Sailor Moon around me (it had a good three or four beginning to end rewatches before that though).
I have some very hot takes about the efficacy of the Sailor Scouts given exactly how much Tuxedo Mask does.
How much he does? He throws a flower and talks.
There are so many times where the Scouts would straight-up die and/or Negaverse cronies would win the day if he didn’t show up, throw a flower and talk. Enough times to the point where I wondered “Hey, wtf is the message here exactly?”
The message is “we need a deus ex machina right about here.”
Yes, but in a show with major themes about women’s empowerment it’s a weird device to lean on that much.
That Blake’s 7 fandom was materially better before the show aired in the States. They had gone through the painful sorting out of characters and characteristics and relationships and were developing these really interesting themes of psychological trauma and manipulation that they were beginning to explore - it was really interesting and the themes were fascinating. Them the show aired in the States, they went wild over Avon and all the stories and themes starting revolving around him. I don’t mind him as a character; I do mind his character taking over all of fandom. It’s sort of like if all the Harry Potter stories suddenly and inexplicably became Ron-centric; it’s not necessarily wrong, but it’s weird and people who liked other characters got left out in the cold, and some of us still resent that.
As an aside, when Blake’s 7 fandom split up, that too was fascinating. As was usual in those days, there was a pro-slash contingent and an anti-slash contingent. When B7 fandom split up, all of the pro-slash fans went into Robin of Sherwood fandom, and all the anti-slash fans went into The Professionals fandom. The problem being that RoS was almost exclusively gen and Pros was almost exclusively slash. It was very weird.
What else? That the second season of War of the Worlds should’ve been an entirely different series: the people who loved season 1 were never going to like season 2; and people who had tuned in and disliked the series during season 1 weren’t going to Even try season 2.
That Krycek became such a big character on The X-Files due to one woman who saw his potential and kept talking about it to her friends, many of whom were popular/prolific fannish authors and artists. She convinced some of them (there was incredulity and resistance at first) but it gathered steam, Chris Carter was flummoxed but rolled with it, and here we are.
That the main follow-on series for Highlander: the Series should’ve been The Methos Chronicles and that one’s not even up for debate.
That the final episode of Miami Vice is a masterpiece, particularly with the echoes and parallels to the first episode - and that the show itself took a major downturn the moment they decided to kill off their comic relief characters. That having God in the final episode of Quantum Leap (the original) being played by an actor who was also in the first episode of the series made it much more interesting. That if you were ever interested in Space: 1999, the “Message from Moonbase Alpha” short has some really interesting implications.
That Space Rangers and Moon Over Miami were cut off entirely too early. That Quark is funny as hell for a science fiction fan of my generation, even if it’s extremely dated now. Similarly, The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne was hella fun and should’ve lasted much longer (though Michael Praed’s Shatner-esque line deliveries were exceptionally annoying at times!). That the Sonny Steel grave arc is majorly under-represented in Wiseguy fiction.
Almost certainly others, but those are the ones that came to mind.
Man, I loved Quark to the point I convinced all my school friends to play our own version of the show during recess.
lol blakes 7 is actually the fic I’m returning to work on right now.
I’m rewatching a Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood for the first time since I think it came out I guess. There’s two things that are striking me. One they all just stand around while bad things happen a lot, but I guess that’s just Anime. The other thing is I have no idea it was so long. It’s too long. I guess I remember it being like you know 28 episodes or something. This show is stretching so much. It should have been shorter.
edit Oh and one more thing, where are all the Alchemists? In a show called Fullmetal Alchemist outside of the first few episodes there aren’t any. It’s weird there’s not more running around.
I should read the manga, I’m curious to see how closely it parallels. I’m willing to bet that early weirdness is the same, and they didn’t come up with the overarching plot until later in the story.
Maybe a Quake movie can succeed where the Doom movies failed. Make Alan Ritchson Ranger and put Nine Inch Nails on the soundtrack. I could see Guillermo del Toro having a field day with it.
I’ll watch anything Alan Ritchson does. Dude is totally underrated as an actor just because he’s big and muscular. People act like he’s just a modern Sylvester stalone, but dudes got range and a great comedic ability. Sometimes overblown and blatant (blue mountain state, playdate) and sometimes subtle (titans, reacher), but he always hits the mark.
You might enjoy Noah Gervais’ video called “Playing Quake For The Plot”.
I suppose you think mega shark vs giant octopus was a “failure” too. I’d hate to live in such a picture of success.
The third season of Forever Knight completely ruined the show.
Zombies ate my neighbors needs a revival. A comical survival/horror game with a system that isn’t so convoluted and complicated that it’s limiting. Why do no survival games come with a usable tutorial to tell you how to do things in the game? It always just throws you into the game with 47 menus and you’re supposed to sus it out before dying.
I think it’s a cheap way to heighten the scary, to give you the feeling that you have no clue what you’re fucking doing but scary shit keeps happening.
I blame Minecraft for the lack of tutorials in survival games. Notch never added one before the game got popular enough to generate clones.
Gaming specific:
MMO’s were exponentially better when the co tent was more difficult, and things took a longer time to acquire. When WoW catered to the chronically casual- it became the industry standard to ship each game with a built-in “I win” button.
Basically, games like DAoC, Asheron’s Call, and EverQuest walked so the modern games could fall.
Agreed, I modern MMOs feel like they’re designed around a fast track to max level which leaves the game seeming more like a MOBA with a grind gate. We’ve completely lost the journey in favour of rushing to the destination.
Now at the same time runescape was grindy as fuck in a very unfun way but with all our modern advances surely we can make a progression that is long while having moment to moment gameplay thats fun in its own right? Warframe and Atlyss both manage this (though Atlyss is fairly short the gameplay would be fun even if xp requirements scaled 10 fold)
