7th Station ~TV, movies, games~

[erilaz]

New Amsterdam? Where is that, in Essos? Ulthos?

17th-century Manhattan Island, I thought.

[esm]

GoT

Spoiler: show

It was cool that Tyrion got to see Jaime and Cersei's bodies, but seeing how much of the Red Keep was overall fine (plus the number of bricks Tyrion had to pick up to find his siblings) after the destruction made it seem unnecessary for those two to die then in that exact way, but it's another one of those things that would eventually happen anyway regardless of how the events play out exactly. There's really no point in complaining about little details anymore, I guess.

Sansa getting crowned and Jon reuniting with Ghost were my favorite moments of the episode.

Anyway, moving on with life after GoT... the best series I've seen recently is Dead to Me on Netflix. I didn't like how the season ended, but it was excellent until that point.

Now I'm actually going through Breaking Bad because I watched like the first episode long ago and never continued, but I'm on season 2 now.

[Celedam]

Indeed, moving on.

I just finished Kill la Kill last night. From the makers of Gurren Lagann, it's very much like Gurren Lagann. In fact, one could reasonably argue they are the same story, except that Kill la Kill is the "magical girls" version while Gurren Lagann is the "giant mecha" version.

Our previous discussion of Gurren Lagann, starting here…

viewtopic.php?p=164174#p164174

Just replace all occurrences of "giant mecha" with "magical girls".

Anyhow, next up for me is Sword Art Online, before it too expires off of Netflix. In the aftermath of GoT, I'm taking a break from American live-action dramas.

[Nayoko-Kihara]

I'm interested in what you end up thinking of SAO. It's one of the shows that I've been teetering back and forth on watching for a while now.

[erilaz]

There's too much stuff for me to watch on Netflix. I just finished Season 2 of A Series of Unfortunate Events, but Season 3 has already been online for several months. I have 33 unwatched seasons of TV series in My List, and of course I have a bunch of movies queued up, as well.

[Nayoko-Kihara]

Definitely too much stuff that seems interesting, and it just keeps piling up. I've been on a self-imposed Netflix ban for a while, because the DVR is ridiculously full and it's 80% my fault.

[Zunu]

I loved A Series of Unfortunate Events, through S2. I've been setting aside S3 for just the right time, like waiting to finish the last bottle of that special vintage down in the wine cellar. I neither drink wine nor have a cellar but you get my point.

About anime these days, it seems to be so formulaic many times. I watched SAO, and I guess it succeeded in being a Big Deal, like D&D meets Ready Player One, but at the same time it felt like the rump to a merchandizing tie-in, which I don't know is even true, but that's how it felt. In that genre I preferred Gun Gale Online, which was less harem-y and now to the point with the action. More than that, I enjoyed Kado: The Right Answer, and Darling in the FranXX for having stories with imaginative premises.

[Celedam]

Anyhow, next up for me is Sword Art Online, before it too expires off of Netflix.

I'm interested in what you end up thinking of SAO. It's one of the shows that I've been teetering back and forth on watching for a while now.

I watched SAO, and I guess it succeeded in being a Big Deal, like D&D meets Ready Player One, but at the same time it felt like the rump to a merchandizing tie-in, which I don't know is even true, but that's how it felt.

Yeah, I'm only a few episodes into it, but I'm getting the same feeling.

Going back even further than Ready Player One, the Otherland series by Tad Williams covered much of the same ground, in much greater detail, about twenty years ago. So none of this is really new to me.

Continuing this tangent (because for the first time in weeks I'm not crunching to finish something before my daily stand-up meeting), I read the Otherland series as it was published because I had previously read and enjoyed Williams' Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn series. I don't know if would pick up either series today, however, because Williams is the sort of author who thinks "epic" simply means "long".

No, seriously…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tad_Williams#Big,_complex_stories

I ain't got time for that now. It's bad enough with George R. R. Martin and Neal Stephenson, and they're better writers overall. And I swear I found that link after I made the statement; I checked Williams' page just to see if he is still active today, and there it was. So it's not just me who thinks that.

(for any language nerds out there: yes, i am making a distinction between "author" and "writer". in my mind, "author" is a profession while "writer" is someone who practices the skill of writing. i am a writer — specifically, a business and technical writer — but i am not an author. to explain further would require a separate post, and i doubt anyone is really interested. i've blathered enough already.)

[Zunu]

I remember when Tad Williams was a big deal, or medium deal anyway, and I never took him up for exactly that reason. Every reviewer would hedge their praise with a mention of how his expositions of lyrical beauty took patience to get through. Then I'd thumb through the book in the store, and nothing would catch my eye in the wall of text. These days I mostly read either non-fiction if I want to think, or I'll get some 250 page SF/Fantasy off Kindle Unlimited that I can suck down in a night or two for fun. I still buy serious or well regarded fiction but I can't seem to find the time to ever finish it.

[Celedam]

These days I mostly read either non-fiction if I want to think […]

Augh, I get enough of that already, between work and current events. For example, right now I'm reading these for work…

Guide to Industrial Control Systems (ICS) Security
https://csrc.nist.gov/publications/detail/sp/800-82/rev-2/final

The Accidental Taxonomist
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1573875287/

…and they are in addition to my day-to-day stuff like spec documents and style guides.

I think the last non-fiction I read purely for pleasure was Bruce Campbell's first autobiography…

If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0312291450/

…and that was years ago.