clyde

I felt that sense of the conceit being unreliable from the Counter Strike level in the beginning; I didn't think that was a level-file actually pulled from another game. So the entire game felt like awkward preachy rhetoric to me, but I came to enjoy that sensibility. I liked the idea that the narrator was a creation of Wreden that was depersonalizing themself through the levels in the game and a "Coda" of their own fiction. Simply put, the conceit being absurd is what triggered what I eventually came to like about the game.

I'm starting to want a rail-sliding animation for all the characters. There are a lot of rails to slide on.

We bought a table-griddle thing and we've been cooking on it as a way to spend more time looking at each other and talking while doing something simple. Fake hot-dogs were what we cooked on it last night. It's very easy to clean too. We also cook pancakes on it. For both of those dishes, we slice up an apple and throw them on the griddle when waiting for other food.

They should name the new map "Dewar" to honor the person who bought all the loot-boxes that payed for this.

I haven't played the game because of these concerns. That said, this thread is really interesting for me. PlasticFlesh's metaphor of the game basically being an exploration of a folder-structure in a first-person game form is a concept I'm totally into. On launch-day I looked at a few streams and all of them were in what amounted to a very pretty loading-screen and so I decided that I am too impatient to play this game, but From what I'm reading, No Man's Sky is illuminating some fascinating discussion. I'd be really interested in players being able to affect the universe in ways that were apparent and interesting to other players. I heard there is going to eventually be a base-building mechanic. My assumption is that the structures that other players create won't populate everyone else's game automatically (perhaps requiring an invite instead), but I like thinking about the side-effects of trying to impliment a shared, effectable universe. I would imagine that they would have to reverse the procedural-generation by creating some sort of compression algorithm that could condense player-structures into something that could be produced procedurally which might corrupt the structures in interesting ways. For instance, maybe it would just record and reproduce the placements of corners and fill in the tile-choices as defaults. Would players start to exploit these corruptions in order to shortcut construction-processes? I think that type of thing is interesting to think about.

Master's Sun has the best chemistry between actors imo. It can be slow at times due to the structure of the episodes (it's kinda like a 16-episode Quantum-Leap show where they are solving a problem each episode, but the romance does progress in the background). This is the only one I've watched where I looked for fan-fic after it was over because I needed more. I think Playful Kiss is the best because everything that happens in it is essential to the overall message, it's a joy to watch, and the story manages to actually communicate something that I feel is significant and applicable to real-life. Both of the main characters in the show change each other in believable ways. Unfortunately, the lead male-actor is a scumbag in real life. I really enjoyed Coffee Prince. The inner tension of the male-lead due to his homophobia is a really effective device (in this case) for showing how strong the attraction is, but I could see that being really offensive for some folks. My Lovely Sam Soon is probably the most mature story among my favorites. The ending feels less idealistic than the fantasies I'm recommending. Kim Sun-a's performance really impressed me. I never came around to liking the male-lead's character, but I can believe that Sam Soon is smitten. There is a lot of fat-shaming in this one, sometimes it feels like an expression of the culture the characters are dealing with while other times it feels abusive (if I remember correctly). Dream High was a lot of fun. Don't judge it from the first episode (first episodes are typically horrible anyway, but this case is extreme imo). This isn't a romance, but they try to shoehorn a few in. The appeal to this show was that it's glamorous to see the social and academic lives of high-school age idols (I don't think it is realistic, but I enjoy the fantasy). If you like things like Fame and Highschool Musical, then give this one a shot. You're Beautiful also has a musical appeal, though it doesn't establish itself completely in that sense. This is one of the campiest of my favs. The premise will tell you whether or not you want to watch: a nun has to pretend to be a boy and live with a boy-band while her twin-brother gets eye-lid surgery in America. I included a mixture of DramaFever and Viki links, if you prefer one to the other, you can probably find all the shows on either but they might have slightly different titles. If you find any that you like the first 5-or-so episodes of (they often fall off the cliff quickly), please tell me that they exist. THANKS FOR ASKING!

She's got a point, he hasn't shared his gamertag.

Pocket Card Jockey

I'm interested in doing a BigScreen Beta meet-up with any of y'all who are interested. The frame-rates of the displays are very much internet-speed dependent though. My download-speed is 3Mbits/s and upload is 0.5Mbits/s. So that means that I'll be able to see your displays at about 10fps and you'll be able to see mine at around 1-2fps. STILL! I think it might be fun.

PSA I just read some Reddit posts about how the displays in these devices can easily get fried when sunlight goes through the lenses and burns the display. It hasn't happened to me, but I didn't know this was a big vulnerablity.

IU is badass. She was actually in Dream High with Suzy. I enjoyed very much after the first episode even though it's not really a romance. JYP plays a really fun character. I wonder if it is significantly different than how Disney controls their child-stars like Britney Spears. I've been really into Primary lately

I wonder if the behind the scenes standards will get more abusive or less abusive as it becomes more popular internationally.

Thanks for responding. Your difficulties with the genre seem relevant to what I was trying to refer to about how they depend on a different sensibility than is typical in american dramas. The star-system does seem to be a huge draw for a lot of the fan-base (and I have come to enjoy it myself), but I find the consistent use of the same narrative with very similar characters to be part of the main appeal. When I watch k-dramas, I'm not really interested in what is going to happen in the story as much as I am interested in the shameless ways in which the production tries to make the characters endearing and then lines up the biggest trainwreck possible. For those of you who don't know, here is the basic formula of the shows I particularly enjoy: Hard working girl dreams of the good life which contrasts with her embarrassing or dead parents. She's typically got a little brother that she is largely responsible for too. When she is delivering chicken-dinners as a part-time job, she has an embarrassing run-in with a beautiful, rich, and famous male model. At first she is apologetic (if her situation is not too incredibly desperate), but once the rich boy (also known as a chaebol) begins to arrogantly insult her intentions, social-status, and looks... she will stand up for herself and embarrass him. These dudes are often portrayed as spoiled, uninterested, and inconsiderate of others; but our female-lead manages to pierce all that and he can't stop thinking about how much it stung. For some absurdly contrived reasons, the two are forced to be around each other in as many awkward situations as possible. One will realize that they need something from the other; then they switch roles a few times; and they eventually reach a mutual understanding of each other having accepted the limits of their own independence. All of this is filled in with how glamorous his lifestyle is, how endearing she is, and as many absurdly awkward circumstances as you can pack into 16 episodes. One of the things I really enjoy is seeing the level of gymnastics required by the writers to force the characters to need each other while increasing how much they are repulsed by each other. Another big appeal is the generic characters themselves and their adorable performances. Often the female-lead is immediately lovable in how diligent-but-clumsy and shameless-yet-prideful she is presented as. The male-lead is often selfish at first, but he is typically shown to be selfish as a defense against some past tragedy or a pressure he currently faces alone. Knowledge of the formula takes my attention away from thinking about what events might occur or how the story will resolve. This allows me to just hang out with the characters, and watch them react to each other. I think one thing that people can often find off-putting is that everything is over-acted and contrived. I have a hard time explaining why I like this quality of being willed in art. I suspect that I like it for the same reason as an infant likes baby-talk; it's a pleasurable pandering in which both parties feel capable and appreciated but no one is fooled. I like that it is not a convincing illusion. I like that it looks like a performance. So we just watched the fourth episode of Uncontrollably Fond and the writers went out of their way on this one by making both the lead-male and the failed love-interest That's going to make both romances really awkward. I haven't watched enough of the show to recommend it, but here is a link if anyone is interested. This is the band that Suzy (the female-lead) is in. In case you didn't catch it, K-pop and K-dramas promote each other with the same stars regardless of acting ability. They also had to make the male-lead sing.

I enjoyed this.

VR is so cool. I just spent an hour talking with a high-school teacher from Denmark, a pilot-in-training in Oman, and a highschool-student in Canada. I realize that there are similar mixes on internet forums and Twitter, but it feels significantly more intimate to have a conversation in VTime.

This morning I realized that Ripley's Believe It or Not! had a huge impact on my taste at a young age. I am interested in having a discussion about what the appeal is of these exotic factoids, their accompanying relics or illustrations, and the aesthetic of an explorer travelling to every place in the world to confirm or disprove things they've heard that seem impossible in the early 20th century.

I just watched this hour-long documentary. I wouldn't recommend it, but i enjoyed it.

Playing Overwatch with Idle Thumb Readers last night was super fun.

I heard this story about ballot-order this morning and I was surprised how much it matters: http://www.npr.org/2016/07/27/487577930/why-the-first-name-on-the-ballot-often-wins

I started following the RBioN! Twitter-account. I prefer the dated-look of the older strips, but the contemporary strips do sometimes deliver. https://twitter.com/ripleys/status/758225749102899200 Yesterday I found a few complete episodes of Mondo Beyondo on Youtube and I realized that it has a similar appeal for me. I think I may have gotten pulled into RBioN! by the sense of incredible coincidences and unbelievable feats initially (this was in elementary-school where we would sit and read and discuss factoids from Guiness Book of World Records during lunch), but I think it helped me develop an attraction to the aesthetic of concise reports of exotica with newspaper-illustrations brought to me by a mysterious guide. The Mondo Beyondo comparison really points out to me that a guide-character is important to me. I like being introduced to off-centered wackiness by an ring-master of some sort. I'm not sure how much RBioN! markets the world-traveler fantasy anymore, but that was a big part of the appeal for me, a context to put all these strange instances within.

What does this mean?

I went to the one in San Antonio, Texas when I was in junior-high and it felt pretty amazing at the time.

Then you won't be watching this:

I actually had a useful sharing-of-perspective conversation with my republican-voting father-in-law this weekend. He opened up to subtlety from his typically dogmatic slogans largely because I agreed that Hillary Clinton was a crook when he accused her of being one. I was able to then talk about how I'm also disappointed in some of Obama's decisions, but that George W. Bush's fuck-ups were significantly more harmful to the U.S. and our victims. After admitting the faults I perceive in Democratic leadership, he was more willing to listen to my concerns about Trump's misogyny, white-supremacy, and isolationism. He'll still vote for Trump, but I appreciated getting a chance to have a more substantial discussion than the two of us just waving flags at each other.