Mera'din

That episode was excellent despite the lack of action overall. Yelena is such a great character. Was easily the best part of the Black Widow movie, and she continues to be a great addition. Really look forward to seeing more of her all around. That whole snap scene was excellent too. Definitely a unique perspective on it that was super cool to see. Actually took my brain a second to realize what was happening. Saw the dust and at first my brain was like "WTF was that? Did she just somehow resist the..." and then you see the paint on the wall changing and what happened hit all at once and I was like "Oh no..." The emotion behind it was projected really well too, she felt like she was on the edge of extreme panic the whole time. That end scene though despite the focal point just being a grainy cell phone pic.

20.) Halo (Master Chief Collection version) This is a game I'd honestly thought I would never play, but I've had the game pass thing for a few months and I tried and didn't hate the Halo: Infinite multiplayer so I said fuck it. Might as well play through them. First game expectedly dated but wasn't the worst FPS experience I've ever had. The graphical improvements were pretty nice for the re-release. Had the button that lets you switch between the redone and original graphics and boy was it noticeable when I accidentally hit it a few times. It's always a little jarring seeing just how far graphics have come over the past 20 years or so because in my head I always felt like it looked like the nicer version and then you see what that stuff actually looked like after so long and it's just such a stark contrast. Game was fine. Didn't hate it. Probably won't ever play it again though. At least interested enough to play the rest of them.

Oh, hey Sony. Great timing. https://www.ign.com/articles/sony-executive-fired-after-pedophilia-allegations https://www.polygon.com/22798781/playstation-sony-gender-discrimination-lawsuit

Spider-man 2 is absolutely the best of all of them because they balanced it better overall, but they doubled down on the other shit with the whole wedding thing and all that. Alfred Molina needed to be Doc Ock purely so he had enough arms to carry that movie.

19.) Road 96 This was a fun little indie game. Kind of a procedurally generated, rogue-lite Telltale game is the best way I can think of to describe it. XD You play as a randomly generated teenager who is attempting to flee the fictional country of Petria due to the totalitarian ruler there who routinely disappears teens to the iron mines. You have you make your way to the border by any means possible (calling for a taxi, taking the bus, stealing a car, and of course hitchhiking). The greater story unfolds around the cast of characters present in the game that you run into on the road, many with connected pasts who are instrumental to the fate of the country. Who you run into and when is never set (which is where the procedural part of the game comes into play) and as you try to make it to the border you can die or be arrested in the process and your journey is cut short, where upon you switch to playing as a different teenager on the same mission, keeping only a handful of skills you had the potential to pickup along the way (and there's the rogue-lite element). Choices you make throughout each run will eventually start to effect the story based on whether your choices and actions support people voting for a new leader in a typically rigged election, pushing for change by force, or maintaining the status quo. Even if you manage to escape the country, you will proceed to play as other teens until the date progresses towards election day and the fate of the country comes to bear. Was a pretty interesting game overall. Nothing super fancy in terms of mechanics, but the characters are unique and a bit over the top and I had a lot of fun playing it. There are some pretty heavy themes going on mixed in with some rather ridiculous events that really kept things going and each run felt radically different at times.

I've been rewatching all the old movies with my 8-year old since he hadn't seen them. I honestly forgot how kind of bad ALL of them are. Like, even the originals as much as I loved them when there wasn't anything else are just depressing half the time. They're all just Peter being mopey and throwing a pity party for like 50 min. with a handful of Spider-man action sequences between. The villains are doing all the heavy lifting in all of them (which is part of why 3 is extra bad). We still have ASM2 to watch yet and I'm legitimately dreading that one though. >_> Marking spoilers due to trailer related comments and some stuff from other movies:

Firing Kotick would still only be a face value thing anyway. They need to remove him and at least half the people on the board of directors as well considering they're close friends of his who have also known about and allowed this shit and full out backed him up even after the stuff about him came out. As nice as most of this stuff is at face value, it's a bit meh overall when you really look at it. None of these have been "announcements" and none of them have committed to pulling support for the company. They've all been "leaked" internal memos and e-mails and shit that let them not actually be accountable for anything that is said. It's just like the Geoff Keighley with the Game Awards shit "What they're doing is wrong and they won't have any participation in the show this year... except their games still have nominations and can win awards... " and one of their executives is still part of the advisory board for the show. We'll see if the ones "evaluating" their business relationships with the company actually ever go anywhere.

I thought that sounded familiar. And he was clearly supposed to BE someone we'd know. Didn't show him for a reason. I really hope you're right because that would be fantastic.

18.) Vampire the Masquerade: Parliament of Knives Another text adventure style game. Stats were a lot more condensed in this one than in the other two, and fewer starting clan options, but the storytelling was a LOT tighter which made the story a lot more compelling IMO. Probably my favorite of the three so far. Relatively high replay value like the other two as well. Really wish these had music to go with them at least. Didn't realize how much music in a game did for me until I played these. XD

Oh fuck. I forgot this was coming out already. Too much shit has been dropping these past few days. X_x Guess I know what I'm doing later today. XD

Been playing too much perpetual online shit lately. My completion count is suffering. XD 17.) Guardians of the Galaxy This game was absolutely hilarious. Wasn't expecting too much going into it after Avengers (different dev, but another one owned by Square-Enix was was expecting the same kind of greedy shit that had) and was pleasantly surprised. This is to Avengers like Jedi Fallen Order was to Battlefront 2. Which is to say a surprisingly well made and properly entertaining single player game with no BS online shit or microtransactions vs a shining example of the worst of those things. They even have multiple skins for each character in the game that are all earnable IN THE GAME. Even the pre-order and deluxe edition skins are just "early unlocks" and you can find them all in the game from what I understand. Good mix of original designs and comic and movie inspired ones. Game had a really good story and it featured a LOT of characters I wouldn't have expected to see in this and the humor was great. Tons of good banter between everyone while exploring and in combat, and didn't really notice much repeating of combat lines until later in the game. Would really like to see them do another one of these. Great music too, and they even recorded an entire 80's metal-style album by a fictitious band called Star-Lord for the game that was actually halfway decent. Combat was a little clunky to start but smoothed out later on. Some of the button command stuff was a little awkward (mostly for Peter's own abilities), but not terrible. Game also ended up being a fair bit longer than I was expecting. There were a couple places I was expecting it to end and then it just kept going. Not in a bad way though. The whole thing was pretty well put together and had solid pacing. They overused their sliding mechanic thing a fair bit though. They must have been really proud of those sequences. XD Gonna do a 2nd quick play through to wrap up the handful of trophies I had left over and maybe try some different dialogue options.

Looks like it's Nintendo's turn.

I would consider myself a super fan. I even have replicas of the Heron Mark blade and the Ashaman pins that I wear at Ren Fest. >_> Anyone who expects them to not change things is dillusional. Nothing done here so far is particularly different from the kind of things they did with LotR and The Hobbit or The Witcher. It's easy to nitpick, but the spirit of the books is there and there is clearly passion put into it. It could still absolutely go south depending on how they proceed, but I see a lot or promise so far.

They definitely sped up the pacing of events, but this is understandable considering the intent at the moment appears to be fitting the entire series into 8 seasons. Also, I don't know that the books' success has much to do with that. One of the biggest complaints I see about the series (especially later on) is how slow moving some of it is. At one point, there's at least two entire books that revolve around the same period of time and it wears on you a bit when reading it. But yeah, they aged everyone up. Originally they're like 15 or 16 in the first book. Perrin is very much not married, Rand/Egwene are (I believe) betrothed (or will be before much longer) and are very much a thing, but there's no insinuation of a sexual relationship, and Mat doesn't have an implied bad home life. The changes to Perrin feel awkward, but I believe it's setting up to help speed some things along later in the series as the books rely VERY heavily on internalization of a lot of feelings and Perrin especially is a bit of a mess in his own head and what they did here will really help externalize a lot of those feelings and make it easier for audience to pick up on that without a lot of exposition. The Rand/Egwene thing was probably unnecessary, but once again, probably easier and more expedient to show a "strong" relationship this way than to spend excess time focusing on it later (which they seemed to do anyway? So once again, maybe unnecessary). Perhaps this was a larger studio thing that got pushed? IDK. This is probably the weirdest of the core group changes IMO. For Mat, I feel like making his home life a rough one helps feed into how his character is, and the books also had an issue of presenting people with unstable homes growing up as all being the "bad guys" and all the people who had good, stable homes ended up being the good guys so I think this was used to rectify that. ======= Not going to spoiler the rest since I'm covering too many different topics, so anyone who hasn't watched, you've been warned. Just show spoilers, no book spoilers past what has been in the show. ======= As said, Moiraine was just viewed as a noble woman. I get expediting the process of revealing she's Aes Sedai, but I wish they would have left in more of her "investigating" the characters to try and figure out who she was looking for. Her giving them the coins to track them especially since that's something that was semi-important later. They also lightened up on everyone's suspicion of her more than I was expecting. They expediated a lot of the stuff in the Two Rivers in general which is understandable. Having two episodes dedicated to them just chilling and staring at the weird lady before leaving would probably have been terrible pacing for a TV show. XD Thom was also supposed to be in the Two Rivers and leaves with the group when they go and plays a bigger role in what was covered in these 3 episodes. This is one of the parts I'm most disappointed in. As cool as his intro was in the show, it rubbed me the wrong way for a few reasons, but I'm hoping they do more with him going forward, but I feel like this will really lessen the impact of some stuff that should happen somewhere in the next episode or two. Also, he better have a damn patchwork cloak hidden somewhere. The introduction of the Fade felt awkward too. Originally, you first meet it when Rand is trying to get Tam back to town after he's injured by the Trolloc. I'm assuming they skipped that because it had too much of a "Hobbits hiding from the Ring Wraith" LotR vibe to it maybe? It was such a powerful scene in the book though. Just seems like a hooded rider at first, but it's a windy night and Rand notices that despite the wind, it's cloak does not move at all and it felt like it would be very powerful imagery for a show if done right. Also, Tam's fever dreams and stuff he says in his sleep kind of give up the ghost on a number of things they're trying to keep secret longer in the show. But even so, it showing up during the Ferry Scene was a lot more potent imo, and would have been a better introduction in that case. The random scene with it just didn't have much impact. Also feel weird about the design choices for them as well. In the books, they look like normal (if really tall and super pale) people in sinister black armor while their hood is up and pulled over their face. You don't really see the problem until you can see they have no eyes, though the leave you with an unsettling feeling even if not seeing their face. The design for the show just keeps making me think of Voldemort. XD The rest of the events are also pretty expedited. They left out them reaching Baerlon which is unfortunate. This is where they encountered the White Cloaks initially if I recall, also Min a character who becomes MUCH more important later (understandable to leave her out at this point though really) and they also re-encounter Padin Fain, the peddler who was in the Two Rivers. There was some stuff left out in Shadar Logoth (Trollocs actually DO press into the city for example, but it does not end well for them, and there's another person that appears in there that might have made for a fun scene). I'm not sure what town it is supposed to be that Rand and Mat find themselves in after though as the part with the Darkfriend happens at a different place in the book, later on so I was a little confused here. Things with Moiraine are a bit different too (I don't recall her being injured at all) but it's a better visual way of making her useless for a bit than just "she's tired", so I can see why they did this. Seems like they'll be cutting out a character that Perrin and Egwene meet as well that should have popped up before they run into the Tuatha'an but probably isn't SUPER important just yet. There's probably some other stuff, but some of this may just be rearranged and will come into play later which is fine if they do it right. Overall though, stuff that was left out is mostly fine. While watching I wasn't shouting "WTF WHY DIDN'T THEY DO THAT??" and didn't notice some of it until after the fact. The Children of the Light felt sufficiently dickish (their uniform designs are super cool, but feel impractical. Would have liked that for the Inquisitors, but left the normal ones in legit armor), Shadar Logath felt sufficiently ominous and creepy, and the part with the Darkfriend was well done even if in a weird spot. I'm definitely enjoying myself. My biggest concern at this point is that they're supposed to have the entirety of the first book in this season and it's only 8 episodes long and that feels like just not enough time to cover things properly. 10 episodes might have been enough so I'm worried at what else will need to be shuffled/cut. Also, Loial will probably be really easy to screw up, but we'll see. >_> Side note: I'm clearly a bit of a fan. This series is actually where my username comes from. XD

I forgot to post as well. Saw it in the theater. Glad I did. Easily one of the best Marvel movies to date imo. So many nods to other martial arts movies, great set pieces and action sequences, etc. Just a great film all around. Also love the completely platonic relationship that never veered into a romantic thing. Not often you see that.

Just got back from seeing it. Absolutely loved it. It hit the same sort of vibe as "The Force Awakens" where it was new but hit all the same beats as the original essentially. There were a couple points where it went a little to hard in that direction, but it always did a good job of course correction. The nostalgia was extreme though. I'm pretty sure I had a huge grin the entire movie. Ghostbusters was my favorite thing as a kid and Ghostbusters 2 was the first movie I remember ever seeing in a theater when I was little so it was a big deal for me personally too.

I'm sure that was the intent, yeah. And it's cool that it has the Ajah color for the stone on it, but if they're just going to color code how all of them dress it feels like a pointless feature at that point. XD Yeah, the books drag on in a few places and there is a LOT to follow by about halfway through. I personally loved them, but I can completely get someone having trouble getting through them. I liked what Sanderson did for the writing for the last 3 books though. Felt a lot better. The costume design is definitely really cool. I feel like they went a bit overboard stylizing some of the stuff (such as the White Cloaks) and I feel like that's going to hurt later on when there were some specific details to the styles of certain countries. It's still good though for sure.

I'm not expecting a 1:1 adaptation for sure, but there were some weird design choices that I don't get. They clearly color-coded the Aes Sedai, so I'm confused at why they had to change the ring design for example. XD Changes they've done with where Thom comes into the story were probably the only thing that threw me off as far as the plot goes. Also, if Thom doesn't actually have a colorful, patch-work cloak I may end up being a bit annoyed. >_> They've done a great job overall though. It's mostly aesthetic stuff that has bothered me and that has all been relatively minor in the grand scheme of things. SO much of it is done so well that I'm hardly going to hold my gripes against it. It is being handled far better than I could have hoped for with how long something based on the series has been in development hell.

I have a few complaints (some of it a little nit-picky), but overall it's been really good. I've been waiting for an adaptation of this for nearly 20 years so I'm super excited to see the rest of the season.

Sony did the same thing the other day from what I saw. Hopefully there will be more that jump on board with this kind of thing. Assuming they ACTUALLY "revaluate" their business relationships with them and aren't just doing PR damage control.

Yeah, that will be the real thing that will get something to happen at this point, so hopefully it keeps tanking.

Actually, this is both better and worse than expected from what I've read. These particular shareholders are an activist shareholder group that have been criticizing Kotick for a long time already (which speaks well of them), however their "4.8 million shares" between them only account for 0.6% of the company so unless some other major shareholders jump on board it's not likely to lead anywhere. ?

Of course they are. Jesus, what a fucking joke.

I wish you luck. It's so hard to avoid full on spoilers anymore, nevermind the stuff that's just in trailers and promotional materials. X_x