Mangela Lansbury
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Everything posted by Mangela Lansbury
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I Had a Random Thought (About Video Games)
Mangela Lansbury replied to tegan's topic in Video Gaming
In my defense, it's more complex than turning on turbo and putting a rubber band over the A button! -
I was using meta to mean sexy above all others.
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would call this a meta-problem
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I Had a Random Thought (About Video Games)
Mangela Lansbury replied to tegan's topic in Video Gaming
Well, obviously it's a submarine. -
I'm flying next Wednesday and I accidentally bought the kind of ticket that doesn't let me upgrade to priority boarding. I am super bummed out. I hate being in that final crush of people trying to board the plane, having to make the choice between maybe being forced to check your bag if you just wait and get on last and fighting disgruntled businessmen and stressed out families for a spot in the line to board. The ever-tightening arc of people nonchalantly standing around the gate like, "oh, don't mind me, I'm just here checking my phone, not much going on, just chillin at the airport and picked this spot for no real reason," is just the worst.
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I Had a Random Thought (About Video Games)
Mangela Lansbury replied to tegan's topic in Video Gaming
Trash mobs in WoW dungeons require you to be present, pay attention, and engage with multiple systems. First, you engage in the party system, then you engage with positioning mechanics, then you engage with threat mechanics while going through a DPS rotation, keeping people healed, tanking, or pulling. But these are still trash mobs, even if they require you to engage with multiple systems -- you can usually mindlessly go through the trash, and you aren't going to wipe on them. Engagement with vital systems isn't a good metric for defining what a trash mob is. Even if you're not presented a challenge, you're still playing the game. -
I think people use more in a self-reflexive sense -- not necessarily referring to itself, but speaking in a way that arcs out of the narrative and back onto the medium or genre. A meta-narrative in a film doesn't necessarily mean that the narrative refers to itself, but rather to film (or the genre of the film) at large. For instance, Jurassic World has a meta-narrative about consumerism. That is self-referential in a way because of the way the message is presented, but it's more a reflexive statement on the state of Hollywood.
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I Had a Random Thought (About Video Games)
Mangela Lansbury replied to tegan's topic in Video Gaming
RPG trash requires engaging with the game enough to select your attacks from the menu system when prompted (or however it works in any given game). In something like FFX, trash requires you to perform an action with a character, then switch them out for another to maximize your experience gain -- but it's still just annoying, worthless trash, even if you're engaging with multiple systems in the game. I don't really see why engaging with one battle system would merit something "not trash," but engaging with another combat system wouldn't. Trash is trash no matter the game, and I've killed a lot of trash mobs in both Halo and Final Fantasy. -
Idle Thumbs 218: Yanis' Last Move
Mangela Lansbury replied to Jake's topic in Idle Thumbs Episodes & Streams
Where does FFXIV fit into the MMO update discussion? -
I Had a Random Thought (About Video Games)
Mangela Lansbury replied to tegan's topic in Video Gaming
Do MUDs count as MMOs? -
I've heard all kinds of bad things about that county's court system -- everyone I know whose had to deal with it has said most judgments come down to whose bank account is bigger and who keeps their lawn tidier. Big commitment to keeping things Stepford. But that judge, man. That's just disgusting. I hope someone gets some expedited action in there to get them out and get that judge off the bench.
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I Had a Random Thought (About Video Games)
Mangela Lansbury replied to tegan's topic in Video Gaming
Trash mobs often do provide incremental value to the player, though -- grinding through dungeons in Final Fantasy dungeons can be a bore and offer little challenge, but without going through that grind, you won't be strong enough to take on the boss at the end. I just think of them as the smaller monsters that you see a lot of and who may have rewards, but their main function is as a way to artificially inflate your time investment or as a kind of gating mechanism. Things like the inter-boss stuff in WoW dungeons that have a low, low, low but nonzero chance of dropping anything good, or really anything in an RPG dungeon that isn't a boss or miniboss. -
I Had a Random Thought (About Video Games)
Mangela Lansbury replied to tegan's topic in Video Gaming
The quasi-roleplay aspect of negotiating with demons in Shin Megami Tensei games made those fights fun for me. Almost every fight was challenging, and trying to convince your enemies to join your team made the frequent fights feel like they were still offering new rewards instead of just a rote gating mechanic to see if I had the endurance to persevere. A lot of RPGs seem to put in encounters for no reason other than to see if you have the wherewithal to make it through, or the encounters feel less like a design choice they made and more like a design choice that was dictated by their presumptions about how the genre works. When trash mobs are interesting or contribute to the experience in some way, I don't mind them. When encounters just feel like the designers are throwing garbage at you because they were lazy, of course it feels boring and bad. -
Michigan has one of those too! I really look forward to the Supreme Court fixing their immense fuck up in Hobby Lobby eventually. That decision led to all this misinterpretation of religious freedom.
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I pretty much hear from everyone that if Greece gets bullied out of the EU, that's pretty much it for the project. A long, slow decline would follow, but it would ultimately end in dissolution. And I heard a thing on NPR yesterday about how China's stock market troubles are a good sign, since the economy is gradually turning from one of production to one of consumption??? I only caught half the story, but it seemed interesting.
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Ouran Boast Club - Planning an Anime Podcast
Mangela Lansbury replied to Gormongous's topic in Movies & Television
I think mentioning seiyuu and all that is fine -- that's something a fan could feasibly know -- but maybe explain things that someone who doesn't follow season to season wouldn't know. It's a fine line to walk -- what would someone who's an anime fan would know, but what is something someone who doesn't follow anime season to season wouldn't know? -- but it's a line to notice, because at least I walk it. I don't know how many other people walk that line, but it works for me. -
It was my roommate's birthday today and his friend gave him a bottle of tequila and woowwwwwwwww this is not how I need to be on a Tuesday night
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this makes no sense whatsoever, how can anyone's actual view be that keeping the EU together requires breaking the EU apart
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Ouran Boast Club - Planning an Anime Podcast
Mangela Lansbury replied to Gormongous's topic in Movies & Television
I have a hosting plan that I never come anywhere near hitting the limits on. If y'all want to pick up a domain, I can probably set up access for a few different accounts real quick and you can piggyback on that. Or i can set them up not so quick, depending on how dumb I am about how the process works. -
This is the thing that's hardest for me to wrap my head around, even though I've read pretty extensively about the situation in the last few days. Is there any good reason for Germany to be as hostile as they are to the same kind of debt restructuring/forgiveness that got them out of their own economic hell? Or is it just the same greed that -- as I understand it -- pushed them to make untenable loans to Greece to bolster their export driven economy?
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So... Greece. What's up with that?
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Roller coasters fall into a weird space for me. Part of how I've come to cope with my anxiety about nothing is by projecting it onto other things -- like how I'm super into horror movies and games because they let me be anxious about that and have it resolve instead of being anxious about nothing/everything and having it linger forever. Roller coasters have that same kind of cathartic effect for me. I don't feel great while I'm riding them, but boy is it awesome to get off at the end.
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I had to stay at a friend's house last night because this girl was sending my (still hospitalized) landlady texts of a violent enough tenor that she said it wouldn't be a bad idea for me to go somewhere else for the night. But otherwise, the weekend was exactly what I needed after last week! Spent the entirety of the 4th drinking beer on a boat, so everything is chill and relaxed (aside from my knees and shoulders, which are sunburned as fuuuuuuuck).
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Really weird seeing Max Fisher, who covers foreign affairs for Vox, tweet about how GamerGate is bombarding him because he said something about whatever that weird Reddit drama over the weekend was.
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I think part of maturing is just realizing that you're shitty, and so is everyone else. Being reminded of that can be rough.