SecretAsianMan

Furby ghosts and goblins sounds like it somehow fits into the Five Night at Freddy's lore. The piano duel between Daffy and Donald in Who Framed Roger Rabbit was only possible because of the stipulation that both ducks be depicted as equally talented. And for another movie that has a lot of characters from different companies, Wreck-It-Ralph was the first one that came to mind. You have various characters from Mario, Q*Bert, Sonic, Pac-Man, Capcom, etc. (Edit: someone pointed this out already) When Jake started talking about a piano and approximating human voice, I thought for sure he was going to mention Voder, a device created by Bell Telephone in 1937 for synthesizing human speech. I can't get behind the main motivation for the cold shower capper because I don't shower in the morning. Evening showers make so much more sense to me.

I finished the second season of Flash which is all that's currently available on Netflix. Barry's ability to be a "hero" continues to puzzle me. He has noble intentions and acts like the classic comic book hero but I think it's making him a crappy hero. He never thinks ahead and just rushes into every situation as though he's just going to win by default cause he's fast. He's supposed to be intelligent yet he never seems to figure out on his own how to win, instead he's entirely reliant on his support team. Contrast this to Oliver, who relies on his team to gather information but when it comes to kicking actual butt he usually handles it on his own. Granted Barry is facing people with powers while Oliver is fighting skilled but otherwise human opponents. I also think it's really creepy that he wants to date what is basically his sister. He even thinks of Joe, Iris's biological father, as his own dad. One thing that consistently amuses me is that I've never seen anyone write anything down on a piece of paper, yet literally every time Barry zooms out of STAR Labs stacks of paper go flying everywhere. It's like they keep paper around just so it can be tossed (which on a production side is probably the case). Starting Arrow season 4 now. I've already forgotten the events that have lead up to this.

My postcard finally arrived! I was worried that it got lost or thrown away by accident.

I finished up the first season of Flash and I can't get over the stupidity on display. I feel they're going out of their way to create situations that need resolving. The biggest example I have is transporting the metahumans from the their prison under STAR Labs. Barry goes out of his way to ask for Cold's help which was clearly unnecessary and only got them in trouble. They had no trouble sedating them before moving, I don't see why they couldn't have been kept under the whole time. Speaking of that, I have issues with their method of incarceration too. Oliver has killed which is a debated subject on both shows, but I think it would be preferable to how team Flash treats their villains. Locking them in a tiny room until who knows when seems like very cruel and usual punishment. It's pretty much permanent solitary isolation. They make vague references to rehabilitation but they show nothing to indicate that's what they're doing. Gripes aside, it's goofy fun which is what I currently need in my life.

Watched a couple more episodes of Flash last night. I'm still mostly enjoying the comic-bookiness of it as a silly piece of entertainment, but there's more things that bother me so of course I'm going to talk about those. It was kind of weird seeing the first Arrow/Flash crossover in reverse since I had already watched Arrow season 3. I don't generally like superhero vs. scenarios because 99% of the time the conflict could have been resolved if they just talked for 10 seconds like actual human beings would. Putting Barry under the influence of a rage inducing metahuman isn't a much better excuse to me since its sole purpose was to force a fight. And that fight was the entire point of the episode. They completely skipped the part where they actually work together and catch the guy which I frankly would have been more interested in. Speaking of rage guy, they clearly identified how his powers worked before Barry went off to find him, yet they still didn't bother to come up with some kind of countermeasure beforehand. Some light filtering lenses would have solved the problem. Or when he fought evil Colossus he could have hit him with something harder than his fist meaning he wouldn't need to break the sound barrier to achieve equal force. Or maybe just knocked him out with a sedative which is probably what Oliver would have done. Barry is supposed to be more intelligent than Oliver but his solutions still boil down to "I'm gonna hit that guy real fast". I realize I'm overthinking this but when they go to the point of trying to calculate speed and angle to produce the proper force it begs the question why aren't the simple, more obvious answers occurring to these geniuses?

Back on the topic at hand, I started Flash last night. I'm about 5 episodes in. I'm glad I have a working knowledge of the DC universe because all the foreshadowing would drive me nuts otherwise. Arrow drops a lot of hints and nods but they're usually pretty subtle. Flash episodes end with teasers. Working in clues to future events is one thing, having Wells interact menacingly with a gorilla in a cage labeled Grodd is another. I'm also pretty sure I already know who Wells is as a result of all this. I kind of appreciate the attempts at science (comic book science but still) such as Cisco trying to work out the minimum speed to run up a building or on water. But then I think about how Barry says his suit is friction-proof. Without friction he wouldn't be able to run at all, he'd move like he's slipping on ice. Also Cisco making a gun that achieves absolute zero would actually mean the end of the universe because that's how you get absolute zero. I'm also a bit disappointed that this doesn't equal a lot of common sense stuff, like bringing a gas mask to fight a villain that becomes poison gas. I admit though I was amused at their attempts to get Barry drunk by giving him super moonshine. I don't totally get why he can't tell Iris who he is. Keeping it from Joe would make sense to me since he's a cop and was already clearly concerned about his safety. Iris is obviously gonna keep digging into it no matter what. Telling her up front seems like the best way to get her to stop. I guess they're gonna go the Arrow route and keep lying until it blows up in their face.

My main motivation for wanting to reverse the middle door is because it's hard to tell if it's occupied or not. Turning them into a combination lock would be a fun exercise.

That sounds rough bjorn. If you need to talk to someone and want it to be a little more private feel free to message me.

I personally think the Arrowverse shows should be on their own, separate from Gotham or any other shows specifically because the Arrowverse shows interact with each other so much that at times they're all one big show. If they were all stand alone then I'd be ok with this being the DC thread but because of the interconnection and crossing over of story/characters they're pretty inherently tied to each other. It's also the reason I think there should be one Arrowverse thread rather than individual show threads because it'll be easier to reference them in one place instead of jumping between threads.

There are 3 stalls in the men's room at work. The doors on two of them open out while the middle one opens in. I'm really irritated by this and am seriously considering bringing some tools from home to make them all open out.

I am vaguely watching them in broadcast order to attempt some kind of story continuity. I'm starting Flash season 1 which aired concurrently with Arrow season 3. What I'm not doing is jumping back and forth between individual episodes of shows because that's too much of a hassle. The increasingly unbelievable ways the flashbacks tie into the present are what bother me about them. It's like there are two parallel timelines and something can't exist in the present until it's been shown or referenced in the past. Hopefully the fifth season will be the last to have them since he was gone for five years.

I started watching Arrow after finishing the Netflix Marvel shows up to Iron Fist. It was a big difference jumping from the super serious and ultra violent tone of the Netflix stuff to the comic book soap opera that is the Arrowverse. I just finished season 3 of Arrow and am working through the first season of Flash before I move on. As usual I'm going to do a big dump of things that annoy me. There are spoilers ahead but since this thread is for these shows specifically I'm not going to tag them unless people think it's necessary. You would think by this point they'd learn not to constantly lie to each other. It's a recurring theme in the show that lying eventually catches up to you and causes major problems, yet everyone keeps doing it. Except Felicity, I think she's the only honest person there which makes me like her. I dislike Laurel. She's really judgmental even when she has no real moral high ground. Thea was a lot like that in the beginning too (your brother just got back from what you know to be five years alone on an island and you're comparing your privileged life problems to his?) Laurel's also a bad fighter. I get that she's a rookie hero and just starting out but she constantly has this "I'll handle him" attitude and then proceeds to get her ass kicked. Oliver's arrogant in that way too but at least he can back up him claim. Black Canary is supposed to be one of the best hand to hand fighters in the DC universe but this one kind of sucks especially considering she seemed able to handle herself before becoming a costumed fighter. At times I think the show should have been called "Everybody loves Ollie". Seriously, the only major female characters who don't fall in love with him are the ones he's related to or are otherwise spoken for. The way people pronounce Ra's al Ghul drives me nuts. Half say "Raz" the other half say "Raysh". I'm pretty sure it should be "Raysh" (as the members of the League of Assassins on the show say it) but I wouldn't care as much if they'd just make up their damn minds. It's not even like you see the name written down anywhere so I'm not sure why there even are two pronunciations on the show. Sara being bi is pretty cool. Playing into the trope of killing the LGBT character is kind of shitty. The flashbacks to Oliver's time away are really getting annoying. I would have preferred it to be more Castaway and less Lost. Ok rant over. I actually am kind of enjoying the show, I just had to get all that stuff of my chest.

Being a Stargate fan, I will never be able to see Momoa as anything other than Ronan (the barbarian) Dex

I realize I'm probably the only person who cares about this game but I'm gonna talk about it anyway. There have been a number of recent updates to the game including a new crossperk system that lets certain weapons apply to multiple classes if they fit that class's theme (for example the Support perk's benefits now apply to the Medic shotgun) adding a lot more flexibility. A new variation on the survival game type was also added called Holdout. Rather than have a single large, static map Holdout mode uses a series of interconnected rooms that randomly change every wave. Currently there's only one map for it but I expect more to come from the community if not TWI. And all these updates are free. The developers are currently not planning to charge for any future updates or content apart from cosmetic stuff via the in-game store. If anyone is at all interested in trying the game out I'm happy to help (on PC).

I might be inclined to agree with you except the Arrowverse (really hate that name) shows are all extremely interconnected, to the point that it's probably easier to have one place to discuss it rather than bouncing back and forth between threads. Also I'm not sure each show really warrants an entire thread to itself. I might make such a thread since I'm currently watching Arrow and Flash.

Nick telling Chris and Jake about a section of the Zelda map that's a big maze reminded me of Chris trying to explain Link's Awakening to his dad. "So the objective here is to navigate this maze"

Even if they do manage to eek out individual movies, they're all going to suffer following a team film because now you have to constantly answer "Where are the rest of your super buds?" and construct scenarios where the title character has to do things solo. Unless you make them all prequels or go the Marvel route and call it a Captain America movie even though it has a bigger cast than the Avengers.

I have the exact model of long shoehorn that Chris linked. I got it for my wife when she was pregnant because she couldn't bend over easily to put her shoes on and the standing shoehorn helped immensely. Since then it's been hanging on a hook next to the shoe rack and it is very satisfying to use.

I dreamt last night that Jake was a professor teaching game design at a high school. He still worked at Campo Santo and still did all things Idle Thumbs related, but was also teaching. For some reason I was visiting this high school and was very surprised to run into Jake (who in the dream had blonde hair and wore a white dress shirt and shorts but was otherwise Jake). He let me sit in on his class, half of which was conducted in Spanish for no discernible reason. At the end the students took a test and we chatted about random topics. I mentioned that I was planning to send more candy and asked if their address had changed. He offered to give me a tour of the Thumbs studio (even though I don't think this dream took place in San Francisco). He collected the tests and we were about to leave when my alarm went off and I woke up.

I've seen things like that before. The cure is worse than the disease.

I mean, don't get me wrong it works. It's just garbage that after decades of systems it still has to be done.

I am opposed to any kind of control scheme that forces me to adopt the claw position just to play it well.

This is true, but the main user base for consoles is going to increasingly skew towards people who don't have the same history and introducing a more functional controller would be an easier adjustment for them. Personally I didn't find it to be a difficult transition at all and I've been gaming since the days of Atari. Then again my brain might have passively prepared itself for this given how much I hate face buttons.

Gotham doesn't interest me at all. There's already enough Bat-media as it is. I have no desire for more, even if Batman isn't technically in the show. Unless it's a Kevin Conroy voiced thing. Then I can't get enough of it.

It's not in the same vein as Streets of Rage et al. but the box art for the SNES game Phalanx has always made me laugh. It's so completely incongruous with what the game actually is.