Native Jovian

I have mixed feelings on Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. It feels like it would've been better if it would get out of its own way. The Stand Alone episodes are excellent -- there's a very Bebop feel to them, where they just present the setting, the characters, and the action to you without any extra baggage and let you enjoy it. The Complex episodes, on the other hand, were a lot shakier. They felt almost deliberately confusing, as if they felt "deep" and "hard to understand" were the same thing. The second season was much more balanced, though -- the difference between "stand alone" and "complex" was much less stark, and I enjoyed it more overall.

It's not that I don't enjoy more down-to-earth character-driven drama, it's just that I thought Evangelion's attempt at it was shitty. Sure, the characters had reasons for acting the way that they did, but that didn't change the fact that none of them were very likable or relatable. Yes, the non-robot-fighting part of the show was about how shoving children into giant robot fights over the fate of the world will horribly scar them psychologically, but when your three main characters are a wuss, a bitch, and a stoic, it's hard to root for them. If you want to see teenagers breaking under the mental strain of giant robot combat, I'd recommend Gundam Seed. It's far from perfect (and let's not even mention the sequel, Gundam Seed Destiny), but it's a pretty stark look at what happens when you put the weight of the world on the shoulders of an unsuspecting teenager, minus the gratuitous religious pseduo-symbolism and general mindfuckery.

Evangelion also has really awesome giant robot ass-kicking sequences when they actually have giant robots kicking ass instead of deranged teen drama. Sadly, the latter was the huge majority of the show.

Dai-Guard was pretty entertaining. It's an amusing combination of your standard giant robot vs godzilla monster style mecha awesomeness, and a wage-slave's eye view of the same. There's a reason why it's tagline is "office workers saving the world!". Wasn't the best mecha series I've ever seen, but worth watching.

What does that translate to in terms of non-huntsman strange weapons? I have a bunch of strange-series crates, and I wouldn't mind spending a few bucks opening them to get strange stuff which which to trade for a strange huntsman. Actually, you know what? I'm probably not going to trade with random internet peoples anyway, so: if anyone has a strange huntsman, what do you want for it?

I don't really follow the trading market much. What would a strange huntsman go for? I suppose I could buy a key to get some strange item and then trade it for a strange huntsman...

Which makes me sad. I really want a strange Huntsman, but I'm not willing to pay $2.50 for a one-in-five chance to get the it, assuming I can get my hands on the appropriate crate in the first place.

...seriously? Seriously?

I asked for someone to do that when I was getting spyraped as an engy in the final part of Frontier and you made fun of me for it! Now I'm on to your devious game, sir. (Seriously, though. I don't always go pyro, but when I do, I prefer to be an engybuddy.)

So I realized something tonight. I really like TF2 with 4-8 people per team, but a full server fills me with incandescent rage. With a moderate team size, it's possible to play intelligently and actually feel like you, personally, are accomplishing something. With a full server, it's just a meatgrinder; there's too much going on to keep track of it all, so you shoot in the general direction of the other team until you get blindsided by something (usually about 10 seconds after you respawn). That, combined with the fact that a full server only makes the normal issues (lag compensation and the like) that much worse (I swear to Christ, I got facestabbed more times tonight...) and people become incapable of using teamwork once the team gets over a certain size, full server games just end up pissing me the hell off.

Sonofa... Valve is epic trolls.

So I was listening to NPR on the way to work this morning (don't judge me) and they were playing a story about the end of the climbing season on Mount Everest. What caught my attention was the bit of music they used to transition to the next story -- it was the first few seconds of , the music from Mount Gagazet in Final Fantasy X. A neat little reference -- and it was definitely a reference to the game itself, seeing as the song title doesn't mention the fact that it's a theme for a mountain location. (Unfortunately, they seem to strip out those little transition bits for the online versions of the story -- I haven't been able to find one with it intact.)What other appearances of video game music and/or remixes thereof have you guys spotted in non-video game related media?

I generally support round-limits rather than time-limits. Two rounds for PL and PLR, three rounds for CTF and CP is usually good. Arena works better with a time limit, though.

I can dig it, though I can't stay around for too long. I'll probably try to get on around 8:00 or so if anyone else wants to start earlier.

I'll give you a hint: it's earlier in your own post. Theeeeere it is.

The problem with RED/BLU servers is that we usually don't have enough people on at once to fill two servers. If we're going to have an "event" server at all, I think it'd make the most sense to have the second server be running stuff that's not vanilla TF2 -- whether it's prop hunt, vs. Saxton Hale, that TF2 Warioware thing from last thread, whatever. It'll still probably be empty most of the time, but I think that'll be the case regardless. As far as reserve slots -- what was the discussion last night about expansion? I wasn't around for that.

I really like the first season I Black Lagoon, but I felt like the second went too much on the "dark for darkness's sake" end of things. The first season seemed to have an attitude of "bad shit happens and the world isn't a nice place, but you can survive it and at least try to find something good", but the second season is more like "bad shit happens and the world is a terrible place, the end". Season two also focused significantly more on Rock and Revy, to the exclusion of Benny and Dutch, which I thought was a mistake. Black Lagoon needs its secondary characters in order to balance it out. For the record, I watched Black Lagoon in the first place because I saw . It's three minutes of every use of the word "fuck" in the series, so... y'know, turn your speakers down if you're at work or something.

Except that he's not saying "all this moe bullshit is destroying the anime industry!", he's saying "I've stopped watching anime because I don't like any recent stuff". That's a pretty important difference, there.

Sweet. I haven't played TF2 in a while, looking forward to getting back into it. We should decide on a time sometime this weekend to get everyone one the server for our inaugural event.

Yeah, I have no idea what the point of this is. The appeal of Elder Scrolls games and the appeal of MMOs don't overlap, like, at all. Nor do Elder Scrolls mechanics lend themselves to the traditional MMO mold. I'm not sure how they can do this and still have if feel like an Elder Scrolls game, except for having it be set in Tamriel -- and even that's going to be a thousand years before anything else, so how similar will it really be? As an aside, I wonder if they'll make Cyrodiil tropical again.

Doing things that way also has the effect of dicking people over who were just messing around or honestly didn't realize how annoying/disruptive they're being. I think a warning first is a better idea in all but the most extreme cases.

Top Gun: I was referring to grimdark in general, not anime specifically (or magical girl anime even more specifically). I just don't see the attraction of grimdark things at all. Moomba: Grimdark annoys me because it leaves nothing to look forward to. Either everyone's an asshole (so you don't care who wins, because things will be terrible no matter what) or the good guys are completely screwed (so you don't care what happens because there's no way it can end well for them -- barring an unsatisfying deus ex machina, at least, which I gather is the route Madoka Magica went). I don't mind dark things happening in a work, but I do mind the sort of all-consuming cynicism that refuses to let characters be sympathetic or heroes have even a chance of prevailing.

On maps: I generally agree with the "all Valve maps except the server-clearing ones (eg, Hydro) plus select custom maps". Any custom maps we have on our default map rotation should be popular enough that people can be reasonably expected to have it already. We don't want to force half the server to download the map when we switch. On plugins: pregame mayhem is always fun, and Powerlord's map plugin is good stuff too. On settings: The main thing I care about is default server size and respawn times, because messing with either of those completely borks map balance. Other than that, I like two rounds per map for Attack/Defend and PL/PLR maps, but CP, KOTH, and Arena are probably better off with three, given that they're a little more dynamic from round to round anyway. I'd prefer sudden death over standard stalemate, and melee-only sudden death over that. I'd say leave random crits and random pellet spread on -- they're part of the game by default and we're not a competitive server, so I'd rather keep them that way. On reserve slots: I like it when reserve slots just prioritize server regulars over random pubs in terms of getting on to the server when it's full. Maybe privileges like nominating maps or calling for votecrits/votemelee would be good, but I don't think they need any minimod powers like kicking people or setting them on fire.

Isn't Madoka Magica the one that turns a magical girl show grimdark? I never got the obsession with that. What's wrong with fiction where the universe isn't a cold, heartless void that exists only to destroy happiness? Seriously, go take some antidepressants or something.

That was Toonami: Midnight Run.