GoGo Yubari

Yeah, right now my play time is basically like doing one Constellation mission every couple days and otherwise just filling my time with side missions. I should probably learn how to set up an Outpost soon because I've got crew members who'd be best utilized on one of those, I guess mining resources or something like that?

Yeah, I haven't advanced the Constellation stuff in a couple days now in favor of doing stuff like infiltrating the Crimson Fleet or helping the miners on Mars get better equipment to work with (at one point I had to get myself hired as a shitty middle management guy's assistant and I was honestly kind of hoping I could just keep going back there and doing dumb officework in the middle of all the space pirating and whatnot I'm also doing). I'll probably start on one of those three missions for Constellation I was offered tomorrow.

Unfortunately I think I'm way too entrenched in how it functions as an adaptation to really have a good answer. I feel like the right answer is probably "watch the first episode or two and if it's not doing anything for you by the end of that it's probably not for you." If I had to guess who'd get into it would probably be people who like MCU stuff but are up for something a little more earnest and fantastical?

I'm three episodes in. I think they're doing as well as you can possibly expect anyone to do with a source material that hard to adapt to live action on multiple levels. The changes they've made to the story all make perfect sense to me as far as compromises to make or priorities to shift, and certain ways they've mixed little things up I think is pretty cool. The cast is strong. Inaki Godoy has won me over to live-action Luffy in a big way, he nails that indefatigable optimism in a way that fits the tone of the series rather than going full-cartoon with it. In general seeing a live-action version of a character tends to throw me for a loop for a bit -- it feels a little like coming across a really good cosplayer at a con in most cases -- but I feel like the style stays consistent in a way I respect. Like it's not a cartoon, but you'd never mistake it for being anything but an adaptation of a fantastical comic/animated series. Another thing on the way they're adapting it is...

oh people seem to like this game. This might be a really long week for me. EDIT: Mind you, "like" means stuff like 7/10 reviews on IGN and GameSpot. I'm literally just listening to two people talk about it right now. Sounds like unsurprisingly there's a bit of "reach exceeding grasp" on stuff like the exploration.

She wasn't just in it, it was her performance on it that helped inspire the character. And moreover I think you can also fairly say that her being so good and so distinctive in that role helped launch that character to what it is now. Obviously it's more than just that, it's also the brilliance of Bruce Timm, Paul Dini, and so many others, but the voice and the characterization owes so much to her. I was so sad when she retired from voicing Harley, Tara Strong is obviously one of the best, most prolific voice actresses out there but it always felt like something was missing to me once it was her in that role. 67 is much too soon.

Ben Starr, who played the most recent Final Fantasy protagonist, had a go at it: Sign him up, it's the fresh reinvention for the 2020s the franchise obviously needs.

Yeah, I've been waiting for it to be available at $10 - $15. I played it briefly at PAX last year and it seemed fine but obviously not up to the dizzying heights of SR3.

Hopefully you can settle for Eddie Kingston going "yeah the game's good, buy it or don't buy it, do what you like, I'M GONNA KILL YOU CLAUDIO"

Really like the way they've adapted Bryan Lee O'Malley's art style for this. Wasn't sure about it seeing stills but in motion it feels right to me.

tbf it's been over a month, I think at that point I don't really want to hear the game being hocked more than once a show. I'm honestly surprised that I haven't seen a discount on the game bigger than like $8. I'd be curious to know what the sales are and what the expectations were. I'm still very much like "once it gets down to $30 - $40 I'll probably pick it up" and I was kind of expecting it to be at that point by now. Next month would actually possibly be optimal for that because my guess is outside of Starfield I'll probably at most want to play something I can pop in on for like fifteen minutes and bail out on.

I'm still slowly working through Great Ace Attorney and it does a lot of really great things with the formula but I will miss I very much miss the big ridiculous cartoony villain breakdowns. There are breakdowns but practically everyone who turns out to be guilty has some tragic backstory reason for it rather than just being some petty evil jerk.

if you wanted to see every possible way Alex Morgan can look frustrated after not scoring a goal this has certainly been the World Cup for you EDIT: I absolutely cannot believe I stayed awake for that match. Dire.

So not only have the USWNT been pretty underwhelming but they'll now be missing Rose Lavelle if they advance (and frankly that's a real "if," Portugal look like they have it in them to win) due to a very soft yellow card. Yeeeeesh.

Watched the first episode back from Futurama. Woof. I think I chuckled three times, maybe?

Yeah, basically this. Though to be fair, Emily Blunt's big scene near the end is one of the only times that a character in the movie is unambiguously worth rooting for. I could actually feel the mood really lift in the theater for a little bit during that scene.

I did both on Tuesday and enjoyed it. I think doing it as a double feature with like an hour and a half of downtime to go to a restaurant and chill out made for a really good day, and I think in both cases I thought the movies were about as good as I expected them to be but had things that held them back from being better than that, and in a way that kind of made it good as a double feature because I didn't come out of it going "oh, I loved this one but hated that one." I think Oppenheimer basically justifies its length and the sheer amount of shit it's cramming into the story, it's probably the first one of his movies I've wanted to see a second time since... Christ. The Dark Knight or maybe Inception? That being said I can't recommend doing it as a double feature just to say you did it. If you're not into Nolan's stuff I think this is better and more interesting than most of his stuff has been for a long time (maybe the fact that it's a biopic/character study means that it keeps a lot of the stuff that sunk, say, Tenet at bay) but it's still a three-hour Nolan movie. (Maybe the biggest connective thing that makes them an interesting double feature is that Christopher Nolan is just no good at including female characters that don't feel like they exist to orbit around male characters, so pairing a movie where that's very much the case with a movie primarily set in a world where most of the male characters existing to orbit around the female ones is a big part of the plot is kind of interesting.)

Yeah, the Willa stuff is the one part that isn't working for me. Everything else is good, Boyd Holbrook is perfect and the actress playing his girlfriend/partner-in-crime is nailing that sort of stock Elmore Leonard book role.

Notably this was the first time someone guested on The Simpsons as themself. An incredible career and a life well-lived.

fuck's sake, Norway.

boy my heart sank when I realized I was in for another long month of Fox coverage of a World Cup. Unmuted the thing and it was some guy talking about sports betting. anyway let's go Norway c'mon Norway

You're fine going to movies, I imagine. It might be worth considering taking a month off something like Netflix or Disney+ and telling them specifically why you're doing it, but I don't think I've seen like a stated demand from the unions for people to start doing that either and obviously these things can be more complicated for people given shared accounts and all that.

I finished She-Hulk yesterday. First half is the most fun I've had with an MCU Disney+ series since Hawkeye, second half I think falls off (exception being the Daredevil/Leapfrog episode. Charlie Cox being back in the MCU is so very welcome and he adjusted his performance to the tone of the show really well); the humor's not as strong, there's a lot of ideas that don't really feel committed to, the whole incel gamergater villain thing feels less like a real comment on that whole portion of the fandom and more like Marvel trying its damnedest to drive up engagement. I respect the ambition of the finale but I think the fourth wall-breaking to that extent kind of comes at the wrong time in the lifespan of the MCU, a lot less fun to have algorithm jokes when the MCU algorithm is on a bad run of form. But man, what a breath of fresh air to have one of these Disney+ shows that actually feels like it wants to be a TV show and not a "seven-hour long movie."

Without having seen this one (one episode to go on She-Hulk and then I'll probably start Secret Invasion within the month?) yet, yeah, I think there is a general sensing of blood in the water and general audience fatigue with the MCU that is probably influencing writing about it to a certain degree. I guess I haven't read a full review of it (maybe I read Alan Sepinwall's, I don't remember) but I didn't really see anything saying this was the worst one so much as people saying it was boring but I don't doubt it's out there.

Reynolds isn't in the game, it's just Brodie Lee and John Silver. It's silly. If it's meant to tie into Uno's gradual heel turn/embitterment it's too much and if it's not it's just the most bizarre omission of them all IMO.