miffy495

Yeah, I never completed the game back in the PS2 days, stopping around 8. Earlier this year, there was a form-based group playthrough of SotC, which prompted me to actually finish it. I played the HD version this time, and it's really good. You should play that shit if you never finished it before. Or just read the thread from the spring. Whatever. I can't tell you how to live your life.

The HD is real good, speaking from having been involved in playing it earlier this year.

Finished Mario & Luigi: Dream Team yesterday. It's really good. I put 42 hours into that game and never once felt like it was repeating itself or being boring. Especially after Paper Mario Sticker Star being fine but a bit meh, this is a great game for anyone looking for something rad on their 3DS. Bowser's Inside Story is still probably the best of the series, but this is pretty great.

The CBE paid me! It only took a month and a half, rather than the two to two-and-a-half that it could have! I was able to pay my rent for next month, pay off the credit card that had been tallying up during the period since the last time I had money, and have some stashed that can be used to fix my car up a bit (though not enough to fix it up all the way). I'll need to set some of that aside, as student loans start to come due next month, but I feel like I'm actually in a pretty survivable state right now. Pay is monthly where I'm at now, rather than every other week, so what I have left has to last me until the last week of October. It'll be a little tight given that this cheque had to go to two months' worth of expenses, but I can make it work. Thanks once more to the super generous forumite (again, not naming names in case they wish to remain anonymous) who came out of nowhere with some cash to get me through this month. That was one of the nicest random gestures I've ever experienced and made it possible for me to make it through the period in which I was not being paid without incurring crippling debt. I will be paying it forward when the opportunity arrives, and you are an impossibly kind human being. Good luck on your interview, Twig!

A Scanner Darkly is an excellent movie and you should watch it whether or not it is cyberpunk. Now I want to watch it real bad. I think I lent my copy to someone like a million years ago and never got it back though.

Jesus dibs, I need to use that Louis CK tactic on a few people I know. That is fantastic.

The issue of paternity leave, and mothers typically being considered the "default" parent in a custody case, and pretty much any other legitimate complaint that someone may bring up as a "men's rights" issue is typically something that an exasperated feminist (at least one who subscribes to beliefs similar to my own) would respond to with "Fuck, OF COURSE it's bad. And it's a direct result of men and women being viewed differently by society! If we were actually viewed as EQUAL this shit wouldn't come up because neither the mother NOR the father would automatically be considered the better parent." Feminism is also fighting for men's rights in the sense that by breaking down that shit and treating people equally for reals, you're throwing out the assumptions that society makes about both sexes. That's positive assumptions too. The same way that saying "all Asians are good at math" is considered a problematic statement by anyone who is the least bit sensitive to racial issues despite the fact that "being good at math" is viewed as a positive trait, "all women are good parents" is viewed as problematic by feminists despite the fact that "being a good parent" is a desirable trait. It's a faulty assumption based on an essentialist view of the sexes. As you seem to be sympathetic to the MLK argument re: silence being damaging when you agree with a cause, I'll drop my own reason for identifying as feminist on you. I'm a straight white guy. Straight enough, anyway. I've always been more attracted to more "alternative" women. My partner shaves her head, wears "male" clothes, and tends to confuse the elderly when they can't immediately discern her sex from looking at her on the street (honestly, some of them have come up to her and complained that they couldn't tell). This means that our friends are also largely in this alternative crowd, and very few are straight. Hell, I don't identify as 100% straight, it just so happens that I only have sex with women. Hanging out with this crowd, I've seen my share of confrontations. Angry drunks who think that because a woman is bald she can be called out and ridiculed in public for not conforming. People harassing a lesbian couple that we were hanging out with. I've been beaten up on grounds of assumed homosexuality. I always kind of knew that the status quo view of women and homosexuals was a root cause of this, and didn't like that, but it took a long time for me to realize that as a normal looking mostly-straight white guy, I have a super power. Those clowns who harass the people I love? Because of my straight-white-male-ness, they'll actually listen to me for a little bit before they realize that I'm a feminist. That is JUST enough time to seed some ideas in their heads that may actually create change. This is something that most of the people I hang around with won't get to experience. No matter what they say or how they say it, they'll be dismissed immediately. I won't. It's a shitty state of affairs, and an extra sign of how privileged I am, but that's how it is. Since I disagree with it, I feel like I have an obligation to say so and maybe, just fucking maybe, I'll change a mind every few years. Enough people do that, and we can do some good. For that reason, I'm proudly a feminist and have started to feel that there is a moral obligation for those who disagree with the status quo and are white and male enough to be heard by the masses to say something. While that label may make you and others uncomfortable, without a flag to rally behind, there's no movement. With no movement, there's no progress. As long as we all have the common goal of equality between men and women, we need to stick together and that label is one of the best ways to show that we are united in that regard. There are feminists who don't think that transgendered people should count, there are feminists who don't want my white male voice to be joined with theirs, but there are many more others who just believe in an ideal and want to make shit better. I'm joined up with them. ...and now I fade into the shadows once more because every time I turn my back this thread grows 5 pages and it's really hard to keep up with.

It's really hard to deal with that situation. I was talking to a friend yesterday who is suffering from that and somehow a fight happened from the fact I'd had a chance to buy an album I knew they wanted for less than $5 so I picked it up for them. I'm still not sure what the leaps of logic were that caused me to be framed as a jerk for that by them (thing about depression: it's not really logical), but I've known them long enough to know that all I could say to that was "I'm not going to fight you tonight. I'll talk to you later" and wait it out. This morning, I texted them back and we went on like nothing happened. This is how I've learned to deal after years of knowing this person, but if I didn't know them better and didn't know what they were going through, it would be really easy to cut it off altogether. Hell, there's still a big temptation to do that sometimes, but I value this person in my life too much for that. I do get frustrated much more easily now than I used to though, which troubles me. It's almost like now that I'm used to this person, it's easier for my brain to mistake it for them being a jerk. This is opposed to when they were new to my life and the fact that I didn't understand maybe made me pay more attention to the fact that it's beyond their control? I don't know, honestly. It's as irrational as anything else going on under the surface. Man, this just became me venting too. Long story short: I grok. Depression doesn't just suck for the person suffering, it sucks for everyone who loves them too. I don't think you need to be feeling particularly guilty about recognizing that you didn't feel equipped to deal with that, and ultimately if you knew that it wasn't going to last it was better to cut it off after a short time than to draw it out and make it worse for everyone. While I get that you want to at least apologize (from the sounds of it), given the way that it ended that's probably not a good call. So how about them dreams, huh? I've noticed that I've been waking up in the night exactly in proportion to how prepared I am for the next day of school. If I have everything planned out, I sleep just fine. If I'm counting on another teacher to have a lesson ready that I'm assisting with, I wake up three or four times during the night. And god help me if I have to teach a phys ed class (I suck at gym). I don't remember my dreams at all as a result, because I always wake up before they really get going now. Fun!

Red Dead Redemption is the absolute best for this, if you haven't played it. It is necessary that you experience it if this interests you.

I pre-ordered Wonderful 101 after the demo came out and I liked it. It is now on my coffee table. If/when I actually have time to PLAY the damn thing, I will report back.

I was another one. Turns out I'm very happy with the machine.

I also would have preferred that. I kind of wish they'd just take Chronicles and make a TV show out of it.

Yeah, I'm thinking of the mall havok scene from Excellent Adventure.

Not to keep bringing it back to Bill and Ted, but that's pretty much a scene in that movie, right?

I absolutely love Pitch Black and would count it as a favourite in the sci-fi monster genre. Chronicles I love for entirely different reasons, mainly as a person who appreciates a stupid action film and the Flash Gordoning that they were trying to do to the character (even if it didn't pan out). I saw Riddick on Saturday because of this. The Dahl (I assumed through the film that that HAD to be the spelling of her name, because no way would they actually call her "Doll") stuff was really distressing and disappointing to me, but if that character hadn't existed I'd probably be much more willing to say that was a good movie. There were so many callbacks to Pitch Black that it got grating (Johns' father in a nearly identical situation? Really?), but whatever. I enjoyed it for the most part. What really irritated me about Dahl was that I can envision another film where she COULD have been a great character, but instead they decided to spend every scene creeping on her and boiling her down to "she's a lesbian, but we all know she'll fuck Riddick sooner or later, right?". I may have rose-coloured glasses on, but I never remember Riddick being skeezy before. That scene where he's coming on to Dahl wasn't just stupid, it felt out of character. Anyway, whatever. It was also my first DBOX movie, and that was a kind of stupid that I can get behind. Bottom line: I enjoyed Riddick overall, but I'll chalk that up to mostly being a fan of the franchise. Even then, the film still did some stuff that made me wildly uncomfortable (and not in the way a better movie may make you uncomfortable) that makes it difficult to recommend. EDIT: I also saw The World's End. Good fun, that. Also, it was my girlfriend's first Edgar Wright movie and she loved it, so I think a Shaun/Fuzz marathon night is in order.

I just had the exact same problem, actually, but it didn't bug out until the last flying bit so I survived it and finished him off. That may just be a thing with that boss, or the gyro isn't supposed to be used as extensively as that boss fight requires. I found for the finishing move "guide Mario to the weak point with the gyro sensor" that if I closed and re-opened my 3DS, the gyro reset. If that happens to you again, give it a go?

Miffy495, like everywhere.

I'm in, and have Episodes. This can totally happen.

You may loop back there from a different screen? That happens some times. Weirdly, immediately after posting that, the trees started coming up again after 27 hours of not being in the game. The dream world I'm in now is full of them. Also, I gotta say that for being 30 hours into the game, the fact that I have not ONCE felt like I was grinding or doing an unfun errand is fantastic. This is a really good game, you guys.

I actually had a talk with my new class first thing this morning about how "Since we know that we're kinda better than that, even on days like Friday the 13th, we're still going to keep our agreement to own up to our behaviour, even when it's unhelpful to the class." They got it. The day went pretty smoothly. This came up because the first thing I heard this morning was "Mr W! It's Friday the 13th! Everything is going to go all weird!" and I felt like I had to put that down right quick.

Ah. I saw that when it came out, but yeah, it's been a while.

It's all about the angles. If you pull back really far, you'll go farther but have a shallower angle. I never reached a platform that I needed to go to that I couldn't hit, though sometimes it takes a few tries to find the right shot to get you there. Keep at it, you'll figure it out. If it helps, I'm nearly 30 hours in now and Dreamy Mushrise Park is the only place in the game that has had those trees, and all the subsequent Dreamy Luigi forms have been easier to use than that one.

I'm afraid that the reference is indeed lost. You still don't sound too much like an ass though. 72 hours in a computer game that is basically assisted guitar practice is a silly thing to be proud of and I accept that. Still, I'm happy that I've stuck to things enough this year that I'm still playing guitar so long after having started despite life being very full, and I am able to notice a good deal of improvement in basic skills that I attribute to this game, so pride exists.

I just had to bring back this thread to say that I just passed 72 hours of game time in the steam tracking for this game. I am proud of myself.

Party on, dude.