Reading

Entry tags:

dark souls,
games

"Don't get vored"

For fans of body horror and/or excellent boss design, please enjoy the Gaping Dragon:

Look, I just love its whole vagina dentata/Venus fly trap/ribcage/entire-body-as-maw/spine-snapping-backbends thing, okay? And it’s a fun fight, despite its absurd number of hitpoints and ability to kill you if it bumps you with a leg while it’s charging.

For anyone curious about how the process of figuring out a Dark Souls boss fight can go, some samples:

https://youtu.be/nnZP6WkKRpg?si=M3abOUFachMgs6cP&t=1143
https://youtu.be/u2U5mlfI6zM?si=Scx5xCM_Z7lB4bbX&t=5560 (after getting Capra on the second try, Mapocolops enters the Montage Of Despair zone)

Important context for some of what’s happening: Dark Souls has no animation cancelling, so if you press the “light attack” button twice, your character will swing twice, and if you press the “heal” button they will start the (slow) flask-drinking animation, even if you’ve subsequently realized this was a terrible idea and are now frantically pressing the buttons to dodge and screaming at your character to move. This is part of what requires you to be more deliberate and tactical; you can’t button-mash your way through even if you can mash buttons quickly.

(Also, both Reggie and Mapo started off summoning an NPC for assistance, but the trouble with it in this fight is that the NPC AI is not very bright and tends to stand in front of the dragon and get eaten early, leaving the player dealing with a boss that still has the extra HP to make up for the summons.)

Conversely, after having a horrendous time with Capra, Symbalily reads the fight near-perfectly on her first try: https://youtu.be/ByTGX1NRFs0?si=VBbn5DLh0hK-Gqp5&t=3183

(Team Halberd for the win; that two-handed R2 is so good.)

(no subject)

An excellent teaching experience today; the kids were more engaged and we had fewer tech snafus (and were better prepped to pivot for almost all of them), the one downside being that I did not act fast enough before the kids descended like locusts on the leftover lunchboxes and therefore I gotta get my own lunch.

But at least I had already prepared to buy myself dinner as a "yay you did a teaching!", so I can just get a gyro wrap and fries instead of bánh mì and spring rolls without any kind of emotional agonies.

A friend's yard sale is tomorrow and I have successfully offloaded a surprising number of things for that — two curtain sets! branded mugs! IKEA plates! — and I need to set up folks to care for the gherkin while I am away, and someone to pick up the corms for a public beautification project that is also happening then, and after a followup call, the Parks Department has finally finally admitted to looking at my pollinator garden plans and has feedback, which I gotta respond to. Also laundry needs to happen.

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Location: Munich

Entry tags:

Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light (TV Series)

German-French channel ARTE also put up the complete Wolf Hall, so I was able to watch the six parter they did based on Hilary Mantel's third Cromwell novel at last. What I thought of the novel itself, its plusses and minuses and how it deals with the history, you can read here, so this review is mostly about how it fares as a book adaptation and tv miniseries.

( Spoilers have heretical opinions on Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell )

Entry tags:

life: judaism

it's 10q time again? already?

As per usual: I am not even a little bit ready for the Days of Awe! Emotionally. I'm pretending that the cleaner was scheduled yesterday so I could start 5786 with a clean house. It's gonna be real weird to be with my mother for Y"K, although really most of that day will be spent on the ferry, which will actually be a lovely way to pass the time thinking about Y"K stuff.

I have eaten my apples & honey and gone to the river and filled my cup with friend time, and that's a pretty good way to start the year. L'shana tovah, friends.

further in Gilmore Girls experiences

Block party yesterday extremely good: I met someone who keeps bees on his garage roof, and may have acquired volunteers for the pollinator garden, and talked about needlework with someone, and ate delicious fried chicken and upside-down peach cake. A+ community experience.

Today the cleaner is taking a crack at my dishwasher filter because I could not face a further attempt, and I am doing the interesting parts of my job (discussing copyright in archives! writing semantic HTML in preparation for writing modern CSS! prepping for a teaching commitment later this week!), and tomorrow I will go to the river for Tashlich first thing, and then have a co-writing sesh with H., and then the apple tasting flight with local honey (not from the garage bees) with friends in the park.

There is a constituent meeting with my state senator I am planning to go to later this week, he seems mostly useless but not actively evil, wish me luck.

Entry tags:

life: for a given value of

Did I get dropped into Gilmore Girls for the past twenty-four hours or something?

I impulse-made pasta dough in the stand mixer last night, and then today, I:

went to the farmer's market, where the good sourdough vendor was in attendance and recognized me, and I also picked up an apple tasting flight (Macoun, McIntosh, Honeycrisp, and Gala) and honey for Rosh Hashanah Tuesday, as well as a dozen gorgeous multicolored eggs, a purple cauliflower, and various other vegetables;
meandered around the neighborhood in perfect early-fall sunshine, following the treasure map of local yard sales, and one house was giving away their stuff, including an adorable little pitcher and stationery and stamps and linen napkins I'm going to turn into embroidery projects;
did some gardening and met up with a friend and her kid, and hung out with them for a few hours and made play-doh shapes;
came home and rolled out half the pasta dough and made ravioli and took a hot bath.

And now I'm going to drink some mint tea and lie on the couch and read a book and cuddle my cat. Tomorrow there is a block party and more fresh pasta to roll. This all feels suspiciously idyllic.

Current Mood: bouncy
Current Location: on the train

Entry tags:

jane austen,
review

Miss Austen (Miniseries)

Miss Austen: is a delightful four part miniseries. Now with the exception of the excellent Miss Austen Regrets, featuring Olivia Williams as an older Jane A., biographical media on Jane Austen has suffered from the usual flaw of biopics or bio series focusing on female authors, i.e. insisting on inflicting plots of their most popular work on their life. Miss Austen also avoids this, not least by the fact the titular Miss isn’t Jane, it’s her older sister Cassandra, played in middle age by a superb as usual Keeley Hawes and in flashbacks when young by SinnØve Karlsen, who is so versatile that despite having seen her being very good as Clarice Orsini, Lorenzo de’ Medici’s wife in Medici and superb most recently as Bayta in Foundation’s third season, I didn’t recognise her until googling her. (In addition to great acting, I blame the regency outfit and hairstyle in the flashbcks. *g*) Jane Austen is played by Patsy Ferran who is also great, both when being mischievous and witty, passionate about writing and her sister, and depressed (for various reasons, not least the early lack of success). In fact, this miniseries has led me to the conclusion that Jane Austen is like Benjamin Franklin in that the best way to treat her is as a supporting character where she can shine and leave the audience asking for more, whereas when Ben or Jane get the main character treatment, the increased focus reduces their charisma and attraction.

(This is also why back in my Highlander days, I never wanted a Methos spin-off, despite being as fond of the character as any other fan. He is perhaps THE example of a character who needs to remain a recurring guest star in order to maintain what makes their charm and mystery.)

( Attend the saga of sisters and a sister-in-law… ) The script manages to avoid the obvious quotes while coming up for Austenish sounding things the characters to say, and does great both with the social comedy of manners and the emotional drama. All in all really superb. Anyone either German like me or French: I watched it on ARTE, which also offers the undubbed, original version. Enjoy!

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Location: Bamberg

Entry tags:

Alien: Earth 1.07

In which it's very useful to know the numbers of pi by heart. Or eye.

( What have you done? )

(no subject)

Current Mood: sad

Raindrops keep falling on my head....

RIP Robert Redford. A fantastic run of movies especially in the 70s as an actor, later as a director never made an uninteresting movie, founded a film festival of several decades running, and to the best of my knowledge never abused his fame and status and instead used both to help others.

Watch on YouTube

Current Mood: chipper
Current Location: Bamberg

Entry tags:

To start the week with

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds finished its third season, and you may have deduced from the fact I didn't review the remaining episodes that for me, it did not take a turn for the better. The Ortegas episode was probably the most, in lack of a better term, Trekian, not to mention the long awaited one with a focus on Ortegas beyond "I fly the ship", but it shares with far too many ST: SNW episodes the way it is just incredibly derivative, of both other franchises and earlier ST. And the series finale chose to pick my least favourite DS9 plotline and scenario, sigh. To complete my turn to an old grouch, the feeling of this season as Star Trek: The Rom Com didn't help, either. Anyway. I'll always have Discovery and Prodigy in terms of new ST that manages to unite both affection for the past AND originality and the courage to try out new paths and characters.
*****

Given the daily horror show that is the news, it's all the more important to find joy in fannish things, so I was delighted to discover this new Sense 8 vid. Now there was a show celebrating joy and diversity:

Sense 8

Voice in my Throat

***

And on another joyful note: Yuletide nominations have started!

Entry tags:

dark souls,
games

"If you like Dark Souls, it's hard to shut up about Dark Souls"

For anyone who may be Dark Souls-curious, here is a very long video essay of which I've only watched part (because I'm trying to limit spoilers) and of which I mainly want to rec part -- the first 30 mins or so, where the essayist discusses something that the mythology about the game’s supposed uber-difficulty tends to obscure, namely the gorgeous, generous array of different tools and options that it gives you for engaging with its difficulties, and how it tries to teach you to use them:

Watch on YouTube

I think this is some of the stuff that prompted me to declaim “Dark Souls loves me and wants me to be happy.”

The game is difficult, it is intended to be difficult (and I still don't know if, for me, it will at some point be insuperably difficult), and progressing and learning through difficulty and failure is the core gameplay loop. As mentioned, it took me a total of seven hours to beat the most recent boss, the Capra Demon. I am currently camped out in the Depths, where I intermittently fall through holes and get cursed by basilisks. I recently got invaded for the first time, by a player who watched as I ran directly under a slime and got enveloped, facepalmed*, and then waited politely while I extricated myself before murdering me**.

And yet my major feeling at this particular moment is of being spoiled (in the pampered sense, not the knowledge sense): I have too many good weapons to try (my beloved halberd, now upgraded to +7, a Balder Side Sword -- a rare and coveted drop -- and a Black Knight Sword)! I'm having to actively try not to over-level! I have so many upgrade materials! I have the world's largest stockpile of charcoal pine resin (purchased on my endless boss runs back to the Capra Demon, so I'd spend any souls I was carrying and not distract myself with losing or trying to retrieve them) so I can make my weapons burst into flame any time I want! I have opened the latest incredibly-convenient shortcut! There's a handy new merchant just before the next boss! I am holding an armful of presents and Dark Souls keeps trying to pile more on top!

{*I went off immediately afterwards to Google "dark souls how to facepalm”, but it looks like you have to join the Forest Hunter covenant to learn that emote and I have other plans. Still tempted, though.}

{**I had expected to loathe being invaded — and had initially planned to play offline mainly to avoid that, but did not for reasons which need to be a different post — but in the event, it was brief, non-inconveniencing, and actually pretty funny.}

1-800-fuck-it

Hi, yes, hello? Yeah, I'm encountering some bullshit and I wanted to get on the schedule for an Adult, can you tell me what the availability in my area is? Sure, I can hold.

...

Wow, you're booking that far out? No, it makes sense, I get it, can you also put me on the cancellation list? Like, I know it's a long shot but I'd really appreciate it. Thanks.

Okay, yeah, you've got my contact information and credit card on file, nothing's changed, sounds good, I'll see you then.

Which is to say, I tried to clean my dishwasher filter, and it was disgusting beyond words and yet the dishwasher is still not cleaning my dishes effectively, and I want an adultier adult.

Trapped in nostalgia

I keep looking at my old art and comics and being caught up in memories and enjoyment and I keep not working on the actual art I have to do now.

That said, I've learned why my old comics have more dynamic posing than my recent ones - I found a scan of an unfinished one from my youth and I used to construct and pose bodies completely differently, so I'm going to return to that.

I turned 40 this past 5th and it was a nice birthday with good food and company. No complaints!

On my birthday weekend I went to Winnipeg to watch my mom participate in boat races and she did very well, almost placing on the podium! I was very proud. I spent most of it sitting in my chair with its canopy and refusing to move under any circumstance or eat or drink anything so I wouldn't have to use the terrifying port-a-potties.

Saw many delightful dogs too.

Next week I'll be back in the pottery studio - got a lot of plans for that! Including gonna make little tiles OH MY GOD I finally remembered what I kept forgetting to buy! A square cookie cutter! Thanks, everyone!

I'll do a movie round up soon. It's gonna be friggin' huge.

Entry tags:

fic,
still game

Fic: Auld Man Yaoi

I wrote another wee ficlet in Scots, Still Game again. It is here on AO3 and here on Squidgeworld.

Title: Auld Man Yaoi
Fandom: Still Game (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Pairing: Jack/Victor
Wordcount: 200