Posts made by Mariano

@SwampCreature I went to a small tech/gaming convention back in 2016 because a friend of mine was competing in a live League of Legends tournament. It was a lot of fun, and I got to have my only experience with VR to this day, but I really hope to see something of the scale of a SDCC or NYCC.

@mianngu I'm definitely with you on that one, I switch to fanfic immediately, but the hop back to novels always feels impossible I can for sure relate to sticking with bad books, but my worst weakness is books that I know are good, and everybody loves, but my brain and eyes will not keep reading (or worse with a series that "gets really good on book 3" )

I tend to burn out from reading pretty easily, whether it's because I've been doing it too much, because I started something way too long and the dauntingness surpasses the excitement once that starts fading off, or because I force myself to keep reading something that's not too enthralling.

I'd love to hear your experiences with these burnouts, how you've been able to get our of them, and whether you had any book recs of something short and gripping that might get me back into the habit. I tend to prefer SciFi/Fantasy, but I'll take any recommendations if they're applicable.

@SwampCreature Two of my favorite scary games have to be:

• Until Dawn: maybe gameplay-wise it doesn't hold a candle to classic series like Silent Hill, Resident Evil, Amnesia, etc, but the slasher movie pastiche really resonated with me. Amazing graphics for the time, recognizable actors in Hayden Panettiere, Rami Malek and Peter Stormare, and decision-making that decides who makes it out alive, were all a perfect combination for it to remain the first answer I thought of, almost a decade later.
• Alien Isolation: I guess the mid-2010s were the apogee of horror games, because less than a year before Until Dawn, this game came out. Probably my favorite horror game when it comes to both mechanics and immersion, definitely the scariest for me; and the Xenomorph AI(s) are really an outstanding combination of creativity and tech ingenuity, which I really appreciate.

Honorable mention to the Five Nights at Freddy's series. I haven't played them and I'm not the biggest fan of the gameplay, but they really didn't need to go as hard with the lore, but it's made for outstanding content where people are trying to figure out what's happening behind the scenes.

I watched waaaay too much anime last season, and honestly I don't know if I learned my lesson; I only went down from 15 to 12, but I think the quality of the shows this season is significantly higher (copium). Here it goes, don't judge me:

Definitely watching

• Jujutsu Kaisen Season 2 (2nd cour): The Summer cour was outstanding and I'm looking forward to seeing how this arc ends; mfers even had me playing Fortnite in 2023.

• Rurouni Kenshin/Samurai X Remake (2nd cour): The first cour didn't blow me away, but it was a really good adaptation and it's been enjoyable enough not to drop it.

• The Eminence in Shadow Season 2: I binged Season 1 last month and was very impressed; very much looking forward to this one.

• Spy x Family Season 2: One of my favorite shows last year, very cute and entertaining, and genuinely has a very compelling plot.

• Shield Hero Season 3: Season 2 didn't hit as hard as the first one, but it's still a high quality show with some of the better worldbuilding among isekai in the last couple of years.

• Doctor Stone: New World Part 2: Really looking forward to this one because Part 1 felt like 75% setup for this coming season.

Probably watching

• Shangri-la Frontier: I love VRRPG isekaindas (?) because SAO was one my gateways into the medium, and this one looks awesome!

• Under Ninja: Dark horse pick for this season for me; I try to add to my list anything that remotely sounds appealing when it's not an isekai, and high school ninja with seemingly high quality animation checked enough boxes.

• Goblin Slayer Season 2: I'm halfway through Season 1, and while it's okay, I'd heard so much about it when it was coming out that my expectations were a lot higher. Depending on how I feel when I finish it, I'll decide whether to watch it or not.

Maybe watching

• The Demon Sword Master of Excalibur Academy, Tearmoon Empire, A Returner's Magic Should Be Special: I love trash isekai. However, if there's a trope that might be even higher in my list, it's people going back in time/reincarnating and using their knowledge to be awesome in this second go. I must not be the only one since these three shows are coming out. When I go through the synopses of the shows coming out in a season, sometimes it feels like ChatGPT spits out paragraphs for a show that I know will suck, but that I'll watch every episode of; and these line up with that. Maybe I'll be strong and won't start them. But who are we kidding?

Let me know what your anime season will look like! Any new shows that pique your interest? Any old ones? I've been feeling tempted more and more by One Piece, but I'm not there yet lol

@Alexander-Salkin It's either been a lot of fun and time is flying, or your players are spending so much time exploring you feel like they're making a third of the progress you'd expected lol

@SwampCreature Last game I've played is Maplestory. I think I'd do well in the first three episodes of this isekai because I've played the lv. 1-30 areas for thousands of hours; but I would immediately do horribly in the rest of the game. Curse my lack of attention span and discipline, why did I have to keep making new characters?

@mianngu Omg I remember renting this movie from Blockbuster thinking it was going to be related to the seasons I was watching on TV and understanding 0% of it

@Alexander-Salkin I love the concept of cooking, I just wish I was good at it without all the work that would go into it. For the most part, I don't mind failing in my journey to learning a new skill, but with cooking in particular, it feels bad to be wasting food and to end up double disappointed when you fail because not only were you not able to do it, now you can't even eat to distract yourself from the failure

Plus, it's also difficult to try to get good at something that takes at least double to make/prepare than it takes to enjoy afterwards.

@Alexander-Salkin I feel the same way! Especially since the leaked footage got released. I'm trying to avoid major bits of news to be surprised by the game itself, so I'm thinking it's gonna get bad once it's out, but we'll see.

I think the reason why Skyrim was so huge is that, more than Bethesda pushing it, it was people playing it that were telling everyone how insane it was (at least that's why my friends and I started playing it), so maybe they're trying to go for a similar approach?

I was REALLY into Skyrim when it came out, so Bethesda coming out with something along the same vein seems very interesting. Are you guys planning to check it out?

@SwampCreature I would bring back 2009 Maplestory. The game still exists but they made a lot of changes that made the game less enjoyable to me. There's a lot of private servers running the old version, but if we can remake it and make it look nicer, it will also be easier for me to convince friends and loved ones to play with me.

@Alexander-Salkin Probably one of the best monster of the week show for kids out there (at least in the mid '90s).

@SwampCreature Understandable reasonings, pterodactyls are the only potentially rideable flying animal out there; in hindsight, it's the coolest Zord.

When I was a kid, I was really into Power Rangers. The first season I remember watching on TV was Lightspeed Rescue; but the first one I was a huge fan of was Wild Force. I think the last one that I really cared about was Mystic Force, though I did later skip a few and watch some RPM. Throughout the years I watched some of the seasons that came before my time, but any time I tried to give the newer seasons a shot, it was just too obvious I was too old to be the target audience.

HOWEVER, a couple of weeks ago, I started reading the Power Rangers comic books and they blew my mind! A lot more nuanced, keeping the good campy part of the series but remaining very entertaining and immersive for adults.

I'm curious about how this franchise intersected with your lives if at all. Any favorite seasons/rangers? Anyone else reading the comics?

@Ezra In a similar pursuit as yours, I started reading some Brandon Sanderson a couple of years ago since I heard he was very prolific and easy to get into. I started with Mistborn and ended up reading like 6 of his books that year: a reading pace I hadn't had since I was half my age

@SwampCreature Nintendo is the GOAT of OSTs in my opinion: particularly Pokemon stands out to me, but LoZ and Mario have a lot of bangers. Other than that, I was obsessed with the Last of Us OST when the game came out; and lately I've been listening to the music in Ooblets to work to.

@K-O Hide in the back of the house, in the hopes that neighbor kids think no one is home.

@mianngu I LOVE animal companions. I think one of the reasons it was so easy to get into A Song of Ice and Fire is that they gave all the main characters a direwolf at the very beginning of the first book. I love Ghost and I'm so upset he didn't get more screentime in the show

@Alexander-Salkin I hadn't ever written for fun until we started an epistolary (+ some prose) RPG and it was awesome! I've had time to try to write for fun here and there, and sometimes it coincided with sporadic periods of focus, BUT if you're giving me unlimited uninterrupted months of those PLUS inspiration?? Then I would love to know what I'd come up with if trying to write a novel.

I know it'd be dogshit but many writers have said you have to get the first one out of the way and this seems like a golden opportunity lol