Mod Post - Off-Topic Tuesday

[icon_uk]

In 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.

First off, to those who celebrate Chinese Lunar New Year, a Happy New Year of the Pig! A little googling tells me that as the twelfth, and last, sign of the Chinese Zodiac, the pig is a symbol of wealth and good fortune. (Apparently he got last place on the Zodiac because he overslept and didn't make it to the Jade Emperors banquet until late... though other stories suggest he had to rebuild his house after a wolf destroyed it before setting out, which seems like a fairly justifiable reason to me but it wasn't my call)

Since last week, the US has been hit by a Twin Polar Vortex... which sounds like a video game special move, resulting in Hell freezing over (Hell, Michigan that is... their town council clearly has a sense of humour). Britain has hit -14 in some places, and Queesnland Australia has seen extraordinary levels of flooding, notably in in the memorably titled town of ummm... Townsville, where authorities are warning  residents about the risk of crocodiles and venomous snakes washing into town!

Theresa May is running around telling everyone that's SURE she can secure a better deal from the EU, to the bemusement of pretty much everyone else, including the EU.

She's not helped, though at this point I'm not sure what short of Divine Intervention could, by Nissan cancelling a multi-million pound investment in the UK, blaming a number of factors and including pointed reference to "The uncertainty caused by Brexit". This would be bad enough, but now a 2016 memo has been found in which, despite repeated claims to the contrary, the UK's Business Secretary promised Nissan £80 million pounds of taxpayers money to ensure they kept business in the UK. Oops!

The US has suspended its compliance with the 1978 INF Treaty with Russia, citing multiple violations by the Russians over the past several years (A stance supported by other countries). To the surprise of no-one Russia has now followed suit. Well, I feel SO much safer now, don't you?

Whilst promoting his new movie, in which his character is motivated by anger at the loss of a loved one Liam Neeson gave an interview which has sparked controversy on the topic of race as he outlined a story from his past, the details of which I won't go into on an Off Topic Tuesday post, but which can be found at the link above. NB Trigger warnings on the link for discussions of both racism and sexual assault.



I'm not even going to start on the Venezuelan situation, which gets more and more complicated with each passing day.

"Scandal in the world of Tennis match-fixing" is not a phrase I ever thought I'd type, but here we are.

The Superbowl happened and one team won, and the other didn't. That's all I know, and I won't pretend otherwise. If you wish to discuss it in more detail, go wild!

Kingdom Hearts 3 has come out to what seems to be a lot of ooh-ing and aah-ing from fans of the franchise.

Well, I finally remembered to finish all available episodes of "Seven Deadly Sins" at long last. Am now trying "Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign" which seems to be the usual combination of effete, but ultra violent, vampires, teen-angst ridden child soldiers and unspoken UST between two male leads.

I also finally got around to watching Venom. As a non-fan of the comic-book Venom, this was a surprisingly fun film! Somewhere between "The Mask", "All of Me" and Warlock's rough-around-the-edges country cousin coming for a visit to Earth. (Now I want to see Doug and Eddie go out for dinner to discuss the ups and downs of morphing alien symbiotes, which Warlock and Venom discuss the problems of just how squishy humans are)

Comments

[lordultimus]

Superbowl was disappointing. So little scoring and constant punting made me feel like I was watching an even less interesting version of soccer. Plus the Squidward cameo during the halftime show was such a tease that it may have led to probably the biggest dislike bar I've seen in a non-video game related Youtube video. While there were some good commercials (especially movie teasers), most just felt content to hire a celebrity or two and call it a day.

But hey, the Patriots won, so I won a bet and got fifty bucks, so it wasn't all bad.

[bradygirl_12]

Tom Brady won Ring #6, so it was extra special for a Patriots fan like myself. :)

He and the Patriots have tied the Pittsburgh Steelers organization for number of Super Bowl wins. It took the Pats 18 years with 1 quarterback and 1 head coach while the Steelers took 34 years, 2 quarterbacks and 2 head coaches.

Today's the victory parade in Boston! :)

[lego_joker]

One guy on Twitter put it best:

[icon_uk]

Okay, that made me chuckle rather a lot!

[freezer]

Hamberders!

[joetuss]

It wasn't a bad game, it was just a game for football purist.

[freezer]

Football purist here. Shit sucked.

[joetuss]

Not if you appreciate defense.

[scorntx]

Real life continues to horrify and terrify in about equal measure.
Especially when evenings are spent watching brief glimpses of the news and speculating on just how much worse it will get.

Anyway... speaking as one of those Kingdom Hearts fans, spent last week playing KHIII, and...
Well, I'll try and avoid massively spoilering everything, but... it was a good game (barring one or two minor quibbles).
There are a few bits at the climax which are... more than a little ludicrous in the "tears off shirt, drinks a bottle of something strong and manifestly stops giving a single toss" sort of way, but... at that point it doesn't really matter. And it's the finale of a game that is part-Disney, part-Square Enix, so it's really got to be expected at that point.
The gameplay's fun (well, mostly). The levels are gorgeous. The writing actually has several moments of humour, even charm.

Buuuut... as with all Kingdom Hearts games, especially when the Disney levels try to recreate the movies, it gets a bit... teeth-grinding.
The Frozen level isn't too bad (aside from feeling the need to recreate That Part, with the main characters added in going "oooh"), but the Pirates of the Caribbean level is... it's bad.
Though the quality of Johnny Depp impersonator has definitely improved. So there's that.
(It's easier when it deals with Disney movies you haven't seen, so the Tangled level was actually pretty fun. Or when it doesn't just try to recreate the film's plotline.)

Also, Rutger Hauer was not the best casting choice at all.

[coldfury]

Aww, I thought the PotC level was pretty high in production quality. I wasn't a fan of running around collecting crabs, but the area is *enormous* and beautiful. The cutscenes were amazing, and the grittiness of it made Sora look even more lifelike, if that makes sense.

Meanwhile, my biggest problem with Frozen was that the story's pretty much the worst type of story to adapt for Kingdom Hearts. If you have Sora, Donald, & Goofy contribute at all it ruins the themes of the movie... so they didn't. They just ran around trying to help out and failing. Combine that with the giant ice maze level (uuuuugh) and the falling off the mountain *multiple times*, and that level was pure frustration to me.

Strong agree on Rutger Hauer. I'm not sure who they could've used to replace Leonard Nimoy's gravelly voice, but he was definitely missed.

[roxas832]

I really liked that Sora actually got a pirate costume in this game.

[scorntx]

Oh, the PotC level is very pretty to look at, but then everywhere in III is pretty to look at.
It's just it takes a chainsaw to the movie's plot, cuts out everyone's motivation for doing pretty much anything, and throws in some pretty bad imitators for most of the main cast.

(Though I will give it props for having Jack just assume the trio are a hallucination, because... well, how else would he explain a talking duck casting magic?)

[remial]

does it pretty much end the story?

[scorntx]

To make a long story short:
Yes.
But...

[onsokumaru]

I felt the same about Venom. The reason I liked the movie is probably that I'm not a fan of Eddie/Venom to begin with.

Watched Glass yesterday. That was quite the borefest. I guess Shyamalan's twists don't work for me anymore. The Hord was entertaining, though.
Finished watching Titans. Way better than I expected, I especially loved the Doom Patrol episode.

Seraph of the End... I mostly remember a mix of good and very bad animation. And an annoying MC. Oh, and those vampires that smile at you friendly while they are trying to murder you.

[icon_uk]

The Doom Patrol episode was a standout.

Hoping the series lives up to the premise. I see Alan Tudyk is playing Mr Nobody, and Crazy Jane will be added to the mix, so it should certainly be interesting.

[cyberghostface]

The Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark movie looks pretty good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdaW28kp2f0

[informationgeek]

That last TV spot... *shivers*

[lordultimus]

Man, they nailed the look of the illustration of the lady in the next to last clip.

[owlbrigade1]

On the subject of Brexit, the usual suspects have been frothing at the mouth over the EU calling Gibraltar a British "Colony" whose status is disputed. This is despite the fact that Gib's status is disputed and also that the UK itself used to refer to it as a colony (and put that on their precious blue passports too) as recently as 1983, when the UK changed its terminology.

It'd be funny if it wasn't so damn tragic.

In other news, I've been looking through online training courses but I am completely bamboozled by the variety of "qualifications" some of them claim. As I'm trying to get a useful qualification for returning to the job market after over a decade of ill health, I am struggling.

[owlbrigade1]

Oh, and offbeat comics review site "The Outhouse" has announced that it is closing down at the end of this week. Which is sad news, as I liked that site. It was a lot more off-the-wall than most comics sites, and its community was always warm and welcoming. It is always sad when a beloved website closes down. No matter how many years I've been on the net, and seen hundreds of sites come and go, I'll never get used to that sinking feeling in my heart when it happens.

[informationgeek]

After nearly 13 years, ScrewAttack is dropping its name and identity. The site is probably fairly well known for putting out the original Angry Video Game Nerd episodes, at least to me. They produced a lot of loved content over the years and many personalities came from them or had connections, like MovieBob and PeanutButterGamer.

It feels weird to see James Rofle outlast another organization he was associated with, last time being GameTrailers.com. maybe the next will be Channel Awesome... which might be for the best at this point.

[zachbeacon]

https://youtu.be/4QKtfdAE-EM

Don't see it as a big deal. They've mostly been about Death Battle for ages now. The Top Ten Lists moved to The Know and that was the last bit of non-DB programing they had. They were pretty upfront about that move having more to do with YouTube algorithms than anything else.

Admittedly the recent Machinima closure has people on edge and I believe both companies are ultimately owned by Time Warner. It's never a good thing when you have a few giant corporations controlling all the media.

[deh_tommy]

Eh, I thought the whole Channel Awesome debacle was (for the most part) really overblown and not really worth the misery that brought.

[informationgeek]

Also, I have officially gotten back into Pokemon Card collecting after 15 years almost. Send help... but preferably lots and lots of Pokemon cards, like from Team Aqua Vs. Team Magma or Neo Discovery or Fossil.

[lordultimus]

The Oscars are to have no host this year, for the first time in 30 years.
https://tvline.com/2019/02/05/oscars-2019-no-host-kevin-hart-replacement/

[wizardru]

Lately this whole nonsense makes me just want to crawl into a fetal ball under my desk and just NOT. 10 years ago I was mostly concerned that we weren't able to extract ourselves from the previous 8 years of mess. Now....now I just don't know if there's any way for the world to not be a horror show for the rest of the forseeable future. And given that there is a war in the rear view mirror and a world economic collapse, that's saying something.

I always was worried about evil people in the world. Now I'm not even worried about angry people, just STUPID, UNCARING people. It just drains the joy from everything, some days.

[icon_uk]

Have to agree, a banal lack of empathy has always frightened me more than actual evil. The chances of you meeting a truly evil person are low, but it's frighteningly easy to find uncaring people.

We just have to cling to the words of the Doctor I guess;

“Winning? Is that what you think it’s about? I’m not trying to win.

I’m not doing this because I want to beat someone, or because I hate someone, or because I want to blame someone.

It’s not because it’s fun. God knows it’s not because it’s easy.

It’s not even because it works because it hardly ever does..

I DO WHAT I DO BECAUSE IT’S RIGHT! Because it’s decent! And above all, it’s kind! It’s just that.. Just kind.

If I run away today, good people will die. If I stand and fight, some of them might live. Maybe not many, maybe not for long. Hey, you know, maybe there’s no point to any of this at all. But it’s the best I can do. So I’m going to do it. And I will stand here doing it until it kills me.

And you’re going to die too! Some day.. And how will that be? Have you thought about it? What would you die for?

Who I am is where I stand.. Where I stand is where I fall.

Stand with me. These people are terrified. Maybe we can help a little.

Why not, just at the end, just be kind?"

-  The Doctor, The Doctor Falls

[matrix_dragon]

David Tennant delivered a great line with a similar concept in this weeks episode of Gen:lock.

"Needless aggression, unscrupulous greed, unchecked hate. To have the images, the headlines, incessantly thrust at you, hour after hour, years at a time, you normalize to it. They want you to go numb, become indifferent or lose your self in distractions, for it to feel like the evil in this world and all its machinations are too big to challenge. That loss of control leads to despair. To re-engage, to claw back even the tiniest sense of control, you don't have to save the world. You just have to make a difference where you can, with the opportunities you are given."

[deh_tommy]

Oh, poop, gen:LOCK is out? How is that so far, might I ask?

[matrix_dragon]

Pretty damn good, in my opinion. There's some mechs anime cliches, sure, but they're done well, all the characters are nifty, the animation is good, and the gimmick behind the mechs has already led to some very interesting scenes and concepts. For that matter, the thought given to the technology of 2068 in general is impressive as hell. I can't remember the last time translation tech wasn't just handwaved as 'everyone hears fluent English'

Also, Cammie is a foul mouthed Scottish teenager and I adore her.

[zachbeacon]

I've said it before and I'll say it again. At this point I'm having a much harder time than normal differentiating between my depression and the world REALLY being as awful as it seems.

[lissa_quon]

WORD - I started a med adjustment when Trump was sworn in. I still can't tell you if the meds are working or not. I just take it one day at a time as I can.

[thezmage]

After over 30 years, the 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo is finally getting a finale in movie form. I’ve only watched the first couple minutes so far, but my expectations are high

To get prepared, I rewatched the entire series over the weekend. It... wasn’t good. Flim Flam takes up a lot of space and isn’t very interesting, the plots are pretty dull, and the fourth wall breaks are just dumb. I did find myself enjoying it more the more that Flim Flam and Scrappy we’re out of focus, and I can definitely see the bones of what I enjoyed in it back when I was a child and, thus, a less discerning viewer. My mind is kinda rewriting the series with Fred and Velma in it and a few tie ins back to Mystery Inc that, if I were a capable writer, I’d put up on fanfiction.net.

[thezmage]

Just finished the movie. They did a great job of balancing fan service for viewers of the original show with the modern sensibilities of Scooby viewers. I laughed out loud many, many times watching this movie.

[cygnia]

Did they have someone else voicing van Ghoul?

[thezmage]

Maurice LaMarche. Same guy who did Van Ghoul in Mystery Inc

[full_metal_ox]

Rule of thumb: if Paul Frees, Orson Welles, or Vincent Price voice-acted a role Back in the Day, figure that LaMarche is doing it now. (The Brain is a perfect storm of the three.)

[icon_uk]

I picked up the 13 Ghosts series when it went on clearance DVD over here. I got through three episodes before deciding that, with all respect to Vincent Price, who I'd pay to hear reading the phone, I wished I'd found a DVD of Vincent Price reading the phone book.

[thezmage]

While it would be accurate to say that the series did get better from there, it’s not accurate to say that it got much better. The two episodes I actually liked were “Scooby in Kwackyland” and “The Ghouliest Show on Earth” and I didn’t think they were all that good either.

But those first three episodes were terrible

[lego_joker]

Three episodes? I barely made it past the pilot.

Of all the Ghostbusters cash-ins of the late '80s, 13 Ghosts has to dangle pretty close to the bottom of the list.

[roxas832]

I'm really enjoying KH 3 but I'm a little disappointed at the lack of Disney bosses. I really wanted to fight Hades and Maleficent again. On another note, a new #metoo scandal broke out in another part of geek culture. This time in voice acting. Vic Mignogna, best known for his voice as Edward Elric in Fullmetal Alchemist and Broly in the Dragon Ball franchise is being accused of sexually harassing fans, some of them underage, at cons.

[tripodeca113]

The Super Bowl has come and gone once again. The people of the US have managed to determine the Supreme Bowl for the year.
I assume that's how it works.

Let's see I played A Normal Lost Phone for a bit, well I got stuck on the second major puzzle, checked a guide and found the solution was something I wouldn't have figured out.
So (in addition to not being engaged with the story) I got it refunded.

[deh_tommy]

Now, I'm probably just biased since I was born and raised in Ireland, but Brexit and the wave of isolationist, nationalistic attempts at propaganda and the resurging antagonism between the Irish and the British have me a rather miffed. What possible benefit is there to a no-deal Brexit? Heck, what benefit is there to a Brexit at all? I'm frightened by the implications. I don't want the Troubles to start up again.

On another note, the former Brexit secretary admitted he hasn't actually read the Good Friday Agreement in full.

[dejadrew]

I barely noticed superbowl except my social media feeds were suddenly full of pictures of owls and I realized people were doing the Superb Owl Sunday thing again. XD

My gaming laptop is in the shop and I'm coping poorly. I'm trying to get my little linux netbook up and running again so I at least have some mobility back for writing but the attempt at updates broke the OS. I installed a new and different distro, Lubuntu, but the first attempt turned out to be a pared down version with no graphical user interface, and the second attempt is running like molasses, can't use wifi, and won't complete any software installations. I am in a circle of hell specializing in misbehaving portable computing.

[remial]

if you are looking for a fun anime series, at least based on the first episode, give Endro a try. seems like a light hearted, fluffy, fantasy series that starts off with 4 friends, the Hero, the Mage, the Priestess, and the Warrior facing off against the Demon Lord and unleashing their most powerful attacks against him, only for them to fail and have to fall back on the Forbidden Magic winch will create a prison outside Time and Space to seal the Demon Lord away for good. This works, and the final credits roll.
Then the Hero is in her bed being woken up by the Priestess so that they won't be late for their first day of adventurer school.
Shortly after class starts they meet the new teacher, The Great Demo-
Mao, who looks to be about 10, and has horns, demon wings, and a tail, and TOTALLY is not a demon (except according to her inner monologue she IS the Demon Lord who was sent back before she tried to take over the world and the hero fought her. She remembers her past and is determined to see the hero fail out of school before she can become the Hero)
Character stylings are just a step above super deformed, comedy is light hearted, and fun. very much a shojo show, about the same mood as some of the early Sailor Moon episodes before any WAM episodes.

[skjam]

Have not seen Seraph of the End, but in the manga our main viewpoint character does an absolute 180% turn in his personality after a certain point. I remember looking at a chapter, "wait, isn't this the same guy who--when did that happen?"

Fell and bruised my ribcage a couple of weeks ago. Nothing cracked, but it still hurts when I breathe. Especially, as with tonight, I have to wait an hour in the falling snow for a bus.

Over at my blog, I review an old mystery novel that may be of more interest to rail fans: http://www.skjam.com/2019/02/03/book-review-great-black-kanba/