Mod Post: Off-Topic Tuesday
Dec. 2nd, 2025 09:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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scans_dailyIn the comments to these weekly posts (and only these posts), it's your chance to go as off topic as you like.
Talk about non-comics stuff, thread derail, and just generally chat among yourselves.
The intent of these posts is to chat and have some fun and, sure, vent a little as required. Reasoned debate is fine, as always, but if you have to ask if something is going over the line, think carefully before posting please.
Normal board rules about conduct and behaviour still apply, of course.
It's been suggested that, if discussing spoilers for recent media events, it might be advisable to consider using the rot13 method to prevent other members seeing spoilers in passing.
The world situation is the world situation. If you're following the news, you know it as much as I do, if you're not, then there are better sources than scans_daily. But please, no doomscrolling, for your own sake.
I hope that those who celebrated Thanksgiving did so in as harmonious a manner as possible.
In the UK, our own Right Wing extremist wannabe cult leader, Nigel Farage countered claims of Anti-Semitism and racist behaviour in his school days by saying that he had "never directly racially abused anybody"... which managed to make the word "directly" do more heavy lifting than an Olympic shot-put team.
However bad your workday was, the odds are that it was better than whoever at the Office for Budget Responsibility pushed the button which accidentally released a detailed response to, the UK Government's Budget report, several hours before the UK Government actually announced it's Budget report.
The Terry Pratchett Estate has announced that in Discworld terms, following 2025 being "The Year of the Luminous Lemur", 2026 will be "The Year of the Curious Squid".
Stranger Things, Season 5 Pt1 dropped. Having forgotten to actually watch most of Season 4, I made do with the recap and don't think I missed too much. I suspect a lot of shippers will be unhappy with some choices being made but, whilst sympathising with them of course, never having been that invested in it myself, I think I actually liked the realisation at the end of the last episode of this part. I've also seen these episodes described as being "A lot of build up, but not much actually happens", which is probably fair but that's what happens when you split a season in two for marketing purposes)
Hey look, they've made a sequel to the weird by excellent (IMHO) 2022 Norwegian monster movie "Troll" and it's on Netflix!
Talk about non-comics stuff, thread derail, and just generally chat among yourselves.
The intent of these posts is to chat and have some fun and, sure, vent a little as required. Reasoned debate is fine, as always, but if you have to ask if something is going over the line, think carefully before posting please.
Normal board rules about conduct and behaviour still apply, of course.
It's been suggested that, if discussing spoilers for recent media events, it might be advisable to consider using the rot13 method to prevent other members seeing spoilers in passing.
The world situation is the world situation. If you're following the news, you know it as much as I do, if you're not, then there are better sources than scans_daily. But please, no doomscrolling, for your own sake.
I hope that those who celebrated Thanksgiving did so in as harmonious a manner as possible.
In the UK, our own Right Wing extremist wannabe cult leader, Nigel Farage countered claims of Anti-Semitism and racist behaviour in his school days by saying that he had "never directly racially abused anybody"... which managed to make the word "directly" do more heavy lifting than an Olympic shot-put team.
However bad your workday was, the odds are that it was better than whoever at the Office for Budget Responsibility pushed the button which accidentally released a detailed response to, the UK Government's Budget report, several hours before the UK Government actually announced it's Budget report.
The Terry Pratchett Estate has announced that in Discworld terms, following 2025 being "The Year of the Luminous Lemur", 2026 will be "The Year of the Curious Squid".
Stranger Things, Season 5 Pt1 dropped. Having forgotten to actually watch most of Season 4, I made do with the recap and don't think I missed too much. I suspect a lot of shippers will be unhappy with some choices being made but, whilst sympathising with them of course, never having been that invested in it myself, I think I actually liked the realisation at the end of the last episode of this part. I've also seen these episodes described as being "A lot of build up, but not much actually happens", which is probably fair but that's what happens when you split a season in two for marketing purposes)
Hey look, they've made a sequel to the weird by excellent (IMHO) 2022 Norwegian monster movie "Troll" and it's on Netflix!
no subject
Date: 2025-12-02 10:24 am (UTC)The games I covered this week were mostly free games, doujin soft and demos, most of them romantic in nature, but usually with distrurbing elements. My two favourites were Saihate Station and Endless Black Song. Saihate Station is a Japanese psychological horror about two coworkers stuck on a paranormal train station that describes itself as bromance, but in my opinion can be equally considered a gay romantic story, and in fact this approach smoothes up a few plot elements that otherwise appear kinda rough. It is an exciting example of a reverse mystery – from the beginning we know who did it, but we only gradually learn what the ‘it’ was, with the final piece turning our understanding of the case upside down. The game is very athmospheric and psychologically deep, with the cute, simplified art style serving a delightful contrast to the grim events of the story and making gory scenes palatable. Highly recommended. There’s also a paid expansion subtitled Twilight Railway, which I plan to purchase after I am finally done with my game backlog.
My second favourite game this week was Endless Black Song, a Chinese doujin soft mixing the characters of Alien Stage with the setting of Song of Saya, and with some elements adapted from The Summer Hikaru Died. The game feels as if it were made specifically for me, as the three titles are currently among my greatest obsessions. Like Saya, it stars a boy who after traumatic brain injury sees the whole world as made of meat monsters – except for a single person, a man whom he sees as an adult version of his classmate and childhood friend. The game provides four endings, only one of them having all the characters survive, but due to other events it can hardly be called a happy ending. The game is simply phenomenal in its writing, with several events being portrayed only on a single route, giving the player an incentive to play the game fully. If I were working for a visual novel company I’d contact the creators tbh. Highly recommended, but please mind the warnings. Eating humans is not the worst thing to happen in the story.
Ebi-hime is a visual novel developer who works in a variety of types of stories. She caught my attention with the demo for Out Of The Ocean, a game about a girl meeting a runaway mermaid and agreeing to take her home. It’s cute and VERY pretty and I intend to purchase it once it’s out. I’ve also played several of her free games:
-It gets so lonely here is a story where no matter the choice the heroine makes, she will end up killed by a woman so afraid of loneliness that she’d rather kill her to ensure she never leaves. If the heroine decides to fight her fate regardless, the author gets to know the context of this suffering tango. Greatly recommended for horror yuri fans.
-Lynne us a story about a teenage girl suffering from depression, feelings of inadequacy, and terrible nightmares. As the amount of stress on her increases, she has more and more trouble discerning reality and her horrifying dreams. The game is a kinetic novel (no choices) and feels like a bad end in a yuri game. Recommended.
-The sad story of Emmeline Burns and Once on a windswept night are two sides of the same coin, as both stories focus on a contemporary girl helping a ghost lesbian reconcile with her lover and finally pass on. Emmeline is a contemporary story with regular historical segments, while Night is a fantasy story. Furthermore, Emmeline is kinetic while Night is a visual novel. Strangely, it is Emmeline that requires more content warnings. I highly recommend both stories and recommend reading them one after the other.
-To have and to hold is a kinetic novel about two cousins who hook up on their aunt’s wedding. While it sounds like an excuse plot, and the story utilizes several fanfic cliches, it is also a well developed romance, looking into the psychology of main characters and realistically reasoning why they act in a certain way. I really liked the characters and am planning to eventually purchase the full series of visual novels they feature in. I can see why they are the creators favourites! Also, it’s rare to see really dark complexion in anime style games, so it was a breath of fresh air to me.
-Six days of snow is a historical romance between a middle aged married writer and a teenager girl living and working in a remote mountain inn. The two find a lot of common interests but know they cannot have a long term relationship. I really enjoyed that the story portrayed a holiday fling in a positive light, and the language of the game was very pleasant, a literary quality fitting the characters.
Over this week I plan to cover the rest of the demos provided by ebi-hime and ertal (studio of My Burning Heart mentioned below), and maybe finally play Heaven Will Be Mine.
My reading adventure is rounded up by two very short games: Trapped with jester, a micro visual novel that can be completed fully in a few minutes and while athmospheric, it is too short to be really impactful, and the demo of My Burning Heart, a BL visual novel where the main character is a sultan’s sex slave, but despite what the description suggest, the story seems as wholesome as possible in the setting. I do plan on purchasing it eventually – I really hope that Steam won’t be banning all nsfw games until I finally have time, money, and free disc space :( …
Finally, time for the elephant in the room, Dasaku. It’s a yuri visual novel with only bad endings, deeply psychologically unwell cast of characters, and outrageously shocking sex scenes that were however non-repulsive to me due to heavily stylized, cutesy illustrations that made dismemberment seem like silly cartoon sheanigans. Yeah, it is guro through and through. Definitely the most deranged yuri visual novel ever produced, and very likely most deranged yuri period. However, among the sheer offensiveness the story incorporates surprisingly deep themes regarding gender (main character is an intersex girl who tries and fails to live as a boy, and one of the love interests is a realistically portrayed transgender girl), justice vs revenge, as well as false kindness. I probably missed a lot due to reading the game in Japanese, a language I am not fully fluent in. Like, did Alice died at the end of her route? All the other chosen girls did, but in her case it wasn’t explicit? And was Toboso a drug user or did the game creators misunderstand how hormones are applied??
Overall I find the last week productive. When I was not reading games, I’ve produces dosens of scrapbooking illustrations, baked a delicious berry tart, took care of four new plants in my room, sent a christmas present to a friend in another city, bought a lot of meds I need that are difficult to get, and had a portrait made of me! My boys seem to be healthy, and I decided to make a tiny winter garden in my room, consisting of four garden plants I didn't plant on time and the wintering water lilies. Hopefully boys are not interested in them so far.
no subject
Date: 2025-12-02 11:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-12-08 10:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-12-07 05:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-12-08 10:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-12-02 11:08 am (UTC)And ruined the search results for anyone trying to look up Troll 2!
You know I've found some details about the live action Avatar The Last Airbender TV shows I'm sure it's fans would like to know. So I'm just going to keep those to myself....
Well someone was selling a copy of Arrowsmith volume two for $14 so naturally I got it.
It was published 19 years after the original, and you know what? It was actually a pretty good story and expanded the setting a fair bit. But it ended abruptly clearly intending for all these plot threads to actually be resolved in the next miniseries.
And then the series artist and co-creator Carlos Pacheco died, so at the very best that's going to be delayed.
Watched the rest of Rome season one. oh boy Julius Caesar getting stabbed to death on the floor of the senate, no wonder this moment captured the hearts of artists and writers throughout the centuries! It has to overshadow every other assassination in Ancient Rome.
hmm I notice how this season is set over the course of six years but Vorenus children don't seem to get any older.
Well I watched the Karate Kid Part 5 (or 6 depending how you count it).
We begin with the scene in Karate Kid Part 2 where Mr Miyagi explains the origins of Miyagi-Do karate (inaccurately dated to 1986 the year of the films release, rather than 1985 the year it's actually set).
It then explains that Jackie Chan's family were the ones who taught Mr Miyagi's ancestor karate, and since then the two families have had a special bond (I should point out that Cobra Kai implied that this story was actually just a family legend, while this movie treats it as true).
Anyway you might think this is about 'a kid who learns karate from an old master' but it's actually about a kid who already knows karate teaching an ex-boxer karate so he can win the money he needs to pay off the evil karate loan shark.
Honestly it seems like the movie wanted to do it's own thing, which made me think the 'Daniel-san and Jackie Chan team up to mentor the kid' stuff would feel out of place and it did.
(Not that those parts of the movie were all that great, like they have the mandatory Hero Breaks Up With Love Interest Due To Contrived Misunderstanding bit, but it's resolved in the very next scene).
The film is pretty light on fan-service and references so the fact it's main gimmick is merging the original Karate Kid films and the 2010 remake into a single continuity is weird.
They also don't reference any of the events of Cobra Kai or include any details that show established about Daniel-san's adult life (well I guess other than Mr Miyagi dying but they didn't have a lot of options there) ohg Wbuaal nyfb fubjf hc va gur raqvat fb vg'f xvaq bs vapbafvfgrag.
no subject
Date: 2025-12-02 11:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-12-02 11:47 am (UTC)scambubbletrend are starting, slowly, cautiously, to catch up to the reality that it's not really that good at the things that the CEOs keep saying it's good at, and that it's unlikely that GenAI companies can hope to ever make the fabulous profits theyliedpromised would happen as a result of cramming GenAI into every place they could, or even break even on the gobs of money, energy and time theyscammedraised in the long hype cycle.Most notably, 95% of enterprises that invested in AI have seen NO return on investment, and in order to become profitable AI companies will need to be generating $650 BILLION a year based on current projections, and adoption is already slowing.
And in case you're wondering if the tech is anywhere close to being reliable or good value for money, check out 9 GenAI clocks, generated by 9 GenAI models, every 60 seconds.
no subject
Date: 2025-12-02 12:27 pm (UTC)That said, if the GenAI bubble does burst, it'll probably be for the best. It requires an immense amount of energy to power GenAI data centres, and an immense amount of water for coolant purposes. That cannot possibly be good for the environment. Especially since countries such as the U.S. and Canada are doubling down on maintaining and expanding fossil fuel producution as opposed to cleaner energy options such as nuclear and wind. And as the Earth's average surface temperatures continue to rise, and fresh water sources continue to evaporate as a result, common sense would suggest that supercomputer cooling shouldn't be anywhere near the top priority for water allocation.
no subject
Date: 2025-12-02 12:37 pm (UTC)Trying to ignore the copyright nightmare which scraping causes is perhaps one of the biggest.
Court rulings stating that material spawned by GenAI cannot be copyrighted as it's own thing.
Pushing for venture capital on a technology which has proven problematic at best and unreliable as the norm.
no subject
Date: 2025-12-02 01:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-12-02 12:28 pm (UTC)Atlas Era Tales of Suspense/to Astonish. I am mostly sticking to the giant monster stories that Jack Kirby did. Simple, unpretentious fun.
Thor Epic Collection: In Mortal Flesh. A fun Juggernaut story is rather let down with some silly bugger trying to fight him with a skateboard. It also occurs to me that my favourite Juggernaut stories aren’t even from X-books.
Transformers Classics. The original Marvel comics. I think I am correct in saying that these comics first established all the important lore. The series was first intended to only be a four issue mini-series, but those four issues must have sold well so the series went on and on. Also, the series was a canon part of the Marvel Universe. Until it wasn’t.
Venom Epic Collection: Lethal Protector. I suppose the main attraction is Venom’s first mini-series. Everything else is padding with various guest appearances and the first appearance of Carnage. I used to think he was the coolest as a kid. What an edgy idiot I was.
no subject
Date: 2025-12-02 12:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-12-02 10:41 pm (UTC)Less literal translation: War for incredibly stupid reasons.
Rewatching that Young Justice on Netflix before it's removed at the end of the month.
(They're also removing Steven Universe, but given Netflix has removed it before, slightly less concerned about that.)
Read the rest of that Blue Beetle collection.
Oof, that got supremely Ditko fast.
Seeing the upcoming LEGO sets for next year.
Oooh, Silver the Hedgehog! Finally!
no subject
Date: 2025-12-03 12:04 am (UTC)Finally got to see Sinners during Friendsgiving - and it was really good. Wasn't expecting the Power of Blues to be a hinging plot point in it. Not complaining just wasn't expecting that. Also it was an interesting inversion. Instead of the Blues being a gift given of the Devil - the Blues is natural and the Devil wants it.
I have been working on my website design Foolish-mortal.com most of last month. Pretty happy with out it came out since had to build it from scratch. Still needs a few fixes but it works well enough for the holiday season. I'm not making a new Krampus card this year but I do still have a decent back log to sell.
no subject
Date: 2025-12-03 12:22 am (UTC)(Long story. Moving from one subsidiary of the parent company to another to do the exact same job has not exactly been easy.)
And I'm finally starting to shake this sinus infection I had for nearly a month.
So I had some things to be thankful for.