clyde

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.

This game helped me understand the absurdity of the trolley problem analogy more fully. Personally I feel like the situation is much more similar to Twitch Plays Pokemon

I thought Ivanka Trump's speech was pretty good. I don't remember the GOP ever having any interest in women's issues. I'm hoping that the two platforms will ante up more and more offers to women as this goes on and an expectations are raised in both constituencies. The structure of Donald Trump's speech seemed like it was intentionally conflating violent crime and immigration which is horrible. He also seems to blame Clinton for the last 15 years of foreign policy in the Middle East which is Rush Limbaugh's History of the United States.

I should have realized that Trump's plan was to delegate everything to other people and just be the face and ego of an administration. It makes sense. So I guess I should watch this election as one between Pence and Clinton. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/20/magazine/how-donald-trump-picked-his-running-mate.html?_r=1

I just read about that D.Va buff. How does it feel? It sounds really interesting. I don't think I'll be able to download the patch before I go to bed.

This game is so much fun. I spent the morning spotting tanks with laser-targets and repairing friendly tanks.

I'm surprised how far I can get with some of my older projects by just making the camera static and clicking on the Virtual Reality Supported box.

Tyranobuilder can be frustratingly wonky in some special cases, but I would totally recommend it if you want to make visual-novels and you are more comfortable with drag-and-drop visual scripting than text-based languages.

This is not a short game, but given that it has no save-system, I find myself playing it as one. Dondgynns Auv Ye Wyrdd

lol

glogwillette

I haven't played Rust in over a year, but I got served this video on my Youtube page: It's interesting to me that what are effectively states, are being formed and the more individualist players are concerned about their inability to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.

I imported a bunch of oculus packages or whatever a few months back when I was trying to make something for the Gear. I have no idea what I did in that time, but now all I have to do is install the Oculus utilities package, open a scene and start making a diorama. It surprises me every time I press play and my headset automatically works. The resolution settings in the build seem to only affect the desktop mirroring; that keeps it simple. It's kinda neat that I can just make and distribute a VR thing now. I'll probably wait until 5.4 is released before trying to figure out how to export for the Vive. I doubt I'll make anything I want to show before then anyway.