You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
Well, maybe something like the Winchester Mystery House.
You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
The Wendy's up here originally had one Coca-Cola Freestyle machine, but they had to get a second one because...well, people would go up to it, see literally over 100 drink choices, and kinda freeze up. Meaning there was always a queue of people waiting to get drinks.
I'd poke fun at you for that, but I drink Steel Reserve too on occasion. Great beer for getting drunk, but not much else.
It's a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine, I actually think it tastes OK. But it definitely has a not so great after-taste that's only made up for for it's high alcohol content.
I'd have to agree with that. The main taste is mediocre at best, but I will agree with the aftertaste part. Though I do like the Black can more than the silver one. Also, Steel Reserve won the Gold medal in the category of 'American-Style Premium Lager or Specialty Lager' at the World Beer Cup in 2012. Never would have guessed that.
Yay! Validation! It does have more of a "taste" going for it than most American Lagers, that could be why.
It feels nice to not wear a shirt when it is this hot. :] But, I cannot do this all day, sadly. I prefer to be fully clothed around other people! Also I am finally reading Gunnerkrigg Court, due in part to Andrew Hussie recommending it to his fans. It is enjoyable so far. :D Also, aspects of it are very reminiscent of Harry Potter, even though it is not about wizards.
The best description I've heard of it was "It's like Neil Gaiman wrote Harry Potter".
Doctor Who reference in Pokemon B2W2? Headcanon accepted.
OH BOY
Following a month or two of rumors, Square Enix has confirmed that it will re-release Final Fantasy VII for PC. With achievements. And cloud saves (not to be confused with Cloud saves).
And... a character booster, which it seems will allow you to pay real money to boost your characters' stats. ("Find yourself stuck on a difficult section or lacking the funds to buy that vital Phoenix Down? With the Character Booster you can increase your HP, MP and Gil levels to their maximum, all with the simple click of a button, leaving you to enjoy your adventure," saysthe official website.)
tl;dr Square is re-releasing a spit-shined turd of a game
I don't mind that SE is doing this, but I say that as a PC gamer who likes a couple of SE-published PC titles (Just Cause 2 and Deus Ex: Human Revolution).
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
I'm actually would like to see an improved FFVII. If anything, that's overdue given how much fans have been wanting a graphical touched up version.
The REAL news here is that Square-Enix has decided that saved game files (which probably only consist of a few dozen kilobytes ) warrant being on a sever they control. This would be understandable if there was an online element where players could cheat each-other, but unless they're adding that to the game, It seems it's just there to force people who don't have the patience to grind to buy their way to the ending of the game. -_-;
Doctor Who reference in Pokemon B2W2? Headcanon accepted.
I'm one of those humorless jerks who thinks FF 7 murdered the franchise. Like everyone else, I played it with FF6 being a relatively fresh memory and being quite the FF fan, I didn't have any prejudice towards the game or franchise. Hell, I even built a new computer for the Eidos/PC release, a P5/233 overclocked to 266 with 80MB of RAM and even an AWE32 soundcard with samples loaded in from the game. In the end, FF7 at 640x480 wasn't much of an improvement (except for the polys), they just scaled the backgrounds x2 and it showed. When the scenes were entirely 3D was when it shined.
Anyway I started the game with enthusiasm and cheated at the end just to get this chore of a game over with, expecting the ending to really wrap things up and make it worth it. It didn't. Long story short, SE doesn't get my money anymore (unless they release a decent sequel to Actraiser.)
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
I'm one of those humorless jerks who thinks FF 7 murdered the franchise. Like everyone else, I played it with FF6 being a relatively fresh memory and being quite the FF fan, I didn't have any prejudice towards the game or franchise. Hell, I even built a new computer for the Eidos/PC release, a P5/233 overclocked to 266 with 80MB of RAM and even an AWE32 soundcard with samples loaded in from the game. In the end, FF7 at 640x480 wasn't much of an improvement (except for the polys), they just scaled the backgrounds x2 and it showed. When the scenes were entirely 3D was when it shined.
Anyway I started the game with enthusiasm and cheated at the end just to get this chore of a game over with, expecting the ending to really wrap things up and make it worth it. It didn't. Long story short, SE doesn't get my money anymore (unless they release a decent sequel to Actraiser.)
I DO like FFVI more than FFVII, though, I wouldn't say VII killed the franchise so much as gave some people at Square permission to make super-convoluted story-lines.
Final Fantasy Tactics, which was released a few months later in Japan wasn't too convoluted if memory serves, though many of the other titles are perhaps a little too complex for their own good.
Doctor Who reference in Pokemon B2W2? Headcanon accepted.
Basically Square wasn't bound by cartridge limitations anymore so they threw everything plus the kitchen sink into the game which made it into a giant, wordy, incomprehensible mess. But Aeris died and Cloud was Zack and Zack was Sephiroth and Sephiroth (who was Cloud and possibly phone) flew around with the avian equivalent of an off-centered racing stripe so that makes it deep I guess
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
Huh, you'd think Square Enix would spruce it up, being its 15th anniversary and all.
I find it strange considering how many fans FFVII has that they wouldn't improve the graphics, I doubt there's much of a possibility they wouldn't make tons more money than any it would take to make it look better.
Was that "Final Fantasy = non-indicative title" thing an old joke? Because it still made me smile.
So this is way late, but I wanted to kind of address the reviews that Lumine posted the other day but I was feeling stupid and inarticulate at the time and ended up posting some nonsense about Deboss instead. So anyway.
As a kid, I loved those books. I didn't actually start them until I was already around 9 or 10 and had started on books aimed at older readers, and Rowling's prose had a kind of warmth and vividness to it that I felt was wholly lacking in Pratchett and Conan Doyle, as well as in other children's books I had enjoyed. I guess that's fan gushing, but to me the world in Harry Potter felt very tangible and picturable; I could almost allow myself to forget it was all words on a page in a way I just couldn't with other authors.
I guess now that I'm older I can look back on this more critically I can see that this wasn't all a question of quality. For one, the books were obviously more relevant to me than a lot of things I read; the kids in Harry Potter actually spoke like normal children, minus the cuss words and the "your mum" jokes. The kids in the Narnia stories, and the ones in Enid Blyton's books, had all these posh-sounding slang words and goofy expressions that I doubted children had ever really used - "Simply splendid!", "Oh what beastly rotten luck, chaps," etc. - and everyone was unabashedly sexist. The Animorphs books weren't really any less, uh, alien, because all the teens in those kept saying trendy teenagery-sounding things like "way cool" and "kick some butt" and making esoteric allusions to Xena: Warrior Princess and David Letterman and other exotic things that flew right over my head because I wasn't sufficiently cool and American to know about them (I figured).
And, I guess the elements that now register to me as "bad writing" probably also made the books seem more vivid. Rowling uses a lot of adverbs and a fair few hackneyed expressions, and she's also way too fond of shouting in block capitals. But to be honest, as a kid, none of these things were familiar clichés and if they make it more vivid for child readers, I'm not sure why any of that would be bad. It's a children's book. It's supposed to communicate a story to children, and it does that very effectively. Adverbs and familiar phrases supply clarity. As adults, we are taught that they are bad. That's not some intrinsic property they possess.
And at the same time, I think the books do also have a particular quality that made them special to me, as a reader, and that is that the Harry Potter books are extremely mimetic, in spite of all the absurd and fantastic elements. The environments in them are described in very visual terms, nothing too abstract, and best of all, there are all these entertaining details, many of them completely non-essential plot-wise, that give the books a verisimilitude and charm that I still don't believe I've seen in any other book I've read before or since.
Of course, these details also serve as an effective way to disguise foreshadowing and introduce red herrings, which perhaps isn't very clever but certainly helps ground the books in a plausible continuity, which I think is important not only to the story itself but also for building the feeling of a rich, solid fantasy setting. Rowling also used those details to incorporate humour, which ranges from obvious and puerile gags to fairly clever injokes, as well as wacky absurdism. This adds to the fun of the books.
Anyway, I don't really like Harold Bloom, but I don't think his review was all that bad. I agree with the counter-review that it's daft to complain about children's fiction getting a separate column when, y'know, that's a totally different demographic which ordinarily doesn't overlap that closely with adult readership. I also think he's right to point out that the books are very middle-class, although to be honest that also probably contributed to their relatability for me when I was a kid, as well as adding to the comic absurdity. If anything, I don't think he's harsh enough on the demographic front because the books also have an ethnic bias; Hogwarts takes all the magical kids from all over Britain, so why do so few of them have Asian names? And one of those is "Cho Chang", which is kind of racist, really. Would it have been so difficult to come up with a real Chinese given name for her?
I also think Harold Bloom is much too clever to be fobbed off with the feeble explanation Dumbledore offers for leaving Harry with the Dursleys in the first chapter of book 1, but then, the real explanation was a pretty major plot point from a later book. If you're only going to read one book in a fairly lengthy series before writing your review, to my mind, you're not in any position to complain about unanwered questions. Still, it seems kind of rude and presumptuous to suggest that Harold Bloom, of all people, might have found a children's book "demanding". He's one of the most famous literary critics in the world. And I mean, give the man a bit of credit; he didn't complain about the lack of sex, merely noted its absence. Sex is a common preoccupation of the popular fiction he so likes to trash; he clarifies that it is not a preoccupation of Harry Potter.
Other aspects of Bloom's review are clearly a matter of personal preference. He found Hogwarts tiresome. OK; a lot of people didn't. I certainly didn't. I thought it was a wonderfully imaginative and witty invention.
I also don't agree with his suggestion that the books have no educational value. They do incorporate a lot of clever wordplay and interesting allusions that can introduce curious children to new concepts. The first one features Nicolas Flamel and the philosopher's stone as major plot elements. And, remembering that they are children's books, they also have a lot of positive messages that kids might well find inspirational in some way.
And of course, Harold Bloom can't end his review without a jab at his more liberal academic contemporaries, but to associate Harry Potter with the destruction of "humanistic" study seems kind of a stretch to me. If the books are taught to children in schools, they'll probably get a lot more out of them than they will out of having books intended for adults or written in vastly different cultural contexts foisted on them when they're too young to understand them. I wouldn't expect adult critics to study the books in search of some hidden wisdom, though I see nothing wrong with studying them if curious about the cultural context that produced them, which seems a valid inquiry to me. So that part of the review came off as scaremongering to me.
And this ended up being a lot of waffle and I should probably get a blog or something but oh well.
Comments
I woke up today with the last couple lines of a poem in my head.
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
from so long ago
Following a month or two of rumors, Square Enix has confirmed that it will re-release Final Fantasy VII for PC. With achievements. And cloud saves (not to be confused with Cloud saves).
And... a character booster, which it seems will allow you to pay real money to boost your characters' stats. ("Find yourself stuck on a difficult section or lacking the funds to buy that vital Phoenix Down? With the Character Booster you can increase your HP, MP and Gil levels to their maximum, all with the simple click of a button, leaving you to enjoy your adventure," saysthe official website.)
tl;dr Square is re-releasing a spit-shined turd of a game
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
I've played several FF titles, even beaten a few, and cannot tell you a single thing about them.
They are just, painfully, painfully generic to me. Maybe it's the Seinfeld Effect, I dunno, but they just...playing them is like watching paint dry.
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
I thought it just had a bunch of fangirls squeeing over that Sephiroth fellow.
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
-my friend Patrick
Also, Firefox does not recognize sephiroth as a word. Its lack of Jewish mystical knowledge disturbs me
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
I'm well aware of that, but he doesn't play Touhou.
You're talking to the world's biggest Yukari fanboy here.
got back from the baseball game for AMERICA
it was good, very baseball-y
Was that "Final Fantasy = non-indicative title" thing an old joke? Because it still made me smile.
So this is way late, but I wanted to kind of address the reviews that Lumine posted the other day but I was feeling stupid and inarticulate at the time and ended up posting some nonsense about Deboss instead. So anyway.
As a kid, I loved those books. I didn't actually start them until I was already around 9 or 10 and had started on books aimed at older readers, and Rowling's prose had a kind of warmth and vividness to it that I felt was wholly lacking in Pratchett and Conan Doyle, as well as in other children's books I had enjoyed. I guess that's fan gushing, but to me the world in Harry Potter felt very tangible and picturable; I could almost allow myself to forget it was all words on a page in a way I just couldn't with other authors.
I guess now that I'm older I can look back on this more critically I can see that this wasn't all a question of quality. For one, the books were obviously more relevant to me than a lot of things I read; the kids in Harry Potter actually spoke like normal children, minus the cuss words and the "your mum" jokes. The kids in the Narnia stories, and the ones in Enid Blyton's books, had all these posh-sounding slang words and goofy expressions that I doubted children had ever really used - "Simply splendid!", "Oh what beastly rotten luck, chaps," etc. - and everyone was unabashedly sexist. The Animorphs books weren't really any less, uh, alien, because all the teens in those kept saying trendy teenagery-sounding things like "way cool" and "kick some butt" and making esoteric allusions to Xena: Warrior Princess and David Letterman and other exotic things that flew right over my head because I wasn't sufficiently cool and American to know about them (I figured).
And, I guess the elements that now register to me as "bad writing" probably also made the books seem more vivid. Rowling uses a lot of adverbs and a fair few hackneyed expressions, and she's also way too fond of shouting in block capitals. But to be honest, as a kid, none of these things were familiar clichés and if they make it more vivid for child readers, I'm not sure why any of that would be bad. It's a children's book. It's supposed to communicate a story to children, and it does that very effectively. Adverbs and familiar phrases supply clarity. As adults, we are taught that they are bad. That's not some intrinsic property they possess.
And at the same time, I think the books do also have a particular quality that made them special to me, as a reader, and that is that the Harry Potter books are extremely mimetic, in spite of all the absurd and fantastic elements. The environments in them are described in very visual terms, nothing too abstract, and best of all, there are all these entertaining details, many of them completely non-essential plot-wise, that give the books a verisimilitude and charm that I still don't believe I've seen in any other book I've read before or since.
Of course, these details also serve as an effective way to disguise foreshadowing and introduce red herrings, which perhaps isn't very clever but certainly helps ground the books in a plausible continuity, which I think is important not only to the story itself but also for building the feeling of a rich, solid fantasy setting. Rowling also used those details to incorporate humour, which ranges from obvious and puerile gags to fairly clever injokes, as well as wacky absurdism. This adds to the fun of the books.
Anyway, I don't really like Harold Bloom, but I don't think his review was all that bad. I agree with the counter-review that it's daft to complain about children's fiction getting a separate column when, y'know, that's a totally different demographic which ordinarily doesn't overlap that closely with adult readership. I also think he's right to point out that the books are very middle-class, although to be honest that also probably contributed to their relatability for me when I was a kid, as well as adding to the comic absurdity. If anything, I don't think he's harsh enough on the demographic front because the books also have an ethnic bias; Hogwarts takes all the magical kids from all over Britain, so why do so few of them have Asian names? And one of those is "Cho Chang", which is kind of racist, really. Would it have been so difficult to come up with a real Chinese given name for her?
I also think Harold Bloom is much too clever to be fobbed off with the feeble explanation Dumbledore offers for leaving Harry with the Dursleys in the first chapter of book 1, but then, the real explanation was a pretty major plot point from a later book. If you're only going to read one book in a fairly lengthy series before writing your review, to my mind, you're not in any position to complain about unanwered questions. Still, it seems kind of rude and presumptuous to suggest that Harold Bloom, of all people, might have found a children's book "demanding". He's one of the most famous literary critics in the world. And I mean, give the man a bit of credit; he didn't complain about the lack of sex, merely noted its absence. Sex is a common preoccupation of the popular fiction he so likes to trash; he clarifies that it is not a preoccupation of Harry Potter.
Other aspects of Bloom's review are clearly a matter of personal preference. He found Hogwarts tiresome. OK; a lot of people didn't. I certainly didn't. I thought it was a wonderfully imaginative and witty invention.
I also don't agree with his suggestion that the books have no educational value. They do incorporate a lot of clever wordplay and interesting allusions that can introduce curious children to new concepts. The first one features Nicolas Flamel and the philosopher's stone as major plot elements. And, remembering that they are children's books, they also have a lot of positive messages that kids might well find inspirational in some way.
And of course, Harold Bloom can't end his review without a jab at his more liberal academic contemporaries, but to associate Harry Potter with the destruction of "humanistic" study seems kind of a stretch to me. If the books are taught to children in schools, they'll probably get a lot more out of them than they will out of having books intended for adults or written in vastly different cultural contexts foisted on them when they're too young to understand them. I wouldn't expect adult critics to study the books in search of some hidden wisdom, though I see nothing wrong with studying them if curious about the cultural context that produced them, which seems a valid inquiry to me. So that part of the review came off as scaremongering to me.
And this ended up being a lot of waffle and I should probably get a blog or something but oh well.