Best posts made by Solstice

This is hardly news, but if you're getting Moderna 2, just make sure you're okay to be incapacitated for awhile. I kinda ignored that, and now I'm sitting here with a fever and chills and baring my fangs at god.

Blech, that's... no. I would feel ashamed to leave a rental property in that condition, nevermind to show one in that condition.

@cobalt

Most importantly: Congrats!

@ominous said in Good Anime:

Paranoia Agent

I'm pissed about this one for one reason and one reason alone:

Literally the only thing stopping me is that I can never find where it's streaming. Right now it's available for purchase on Prime for 1.99 per episode, but meh for pay-for-play TV in 202X when I'm subbed to so many services already.

I've heard such good things about this one, consistently, that I'd love to sit down and watch it when it gets a friendlier distribution source.

I need my Satoshi Kon, people.

Bo Burnham's Inside absolutely demolished me. Gloomy comedy with a healthy dose of all the shit we've been feeling in quarantine. Hit me really hard, as I have a lot of the same issues he's coping with. Well worth the watch, but don't expect it to be light or always particularly fun. (Trigger warning for depression, anxiety, suicidal musings.)

It's quite fucking great, though.

Available on Netflix.

@sunny said in 2021 E3 Hype:

Also excited about the Final Fantasy origins announcement; watching them take the franchise in yet another direction means that the whole line will benefit from whatever that game does. As a FFXXIV player I'm really excited for what that will do for us (much like the development of 15's party AI was).

Personally, I was more interested in the pixel-art-'improvement' rereleases, even if FF6 deserves an actual honest-to-god remake. But I am a total curmudgeon who has hated every Final Fantasy past 9 (Excepting FF14 ARR and expansions, but the MMOs don't really count for numbered franchise entries to me.)

Since it's been brought up that this particular maker mostly focuses on female-presenting characters, there are a whole lot of others! (Bring your google translate.)

@roz

As someone who spite-watches entire shows that are deemed of cultural significance, my answer is usually so I have a well-informed counterpoint when someone interrogates me for not holding it in quite the same esteem!

That coupled with nothing better to do.

The Summer season has finally kicked off! And that means a new batch of me watching almost every single episode one that exists and then whittling it all down into what's remotely watchable, because otherwise I might miss something worth watching.

I don't have a review site I personally trust, so watching everything is the only way.

Had to be me.

The story so far:

Sequels

If you enjoyed Beastars (finally out of Netflix Jail!), My Hero Academia, My Next Life as a Villainess, To Your Eternity, or Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid, you'll continue to do so. These seem to all be in solid shape in maintaining their quality for their continuing seasons. The latter is thriving under a new director after the former director was killed in the senseless arson attack at Kyoto Animation's headquarters, and it's good to even see a Season 2 at all, let alone one with ludicrously high production values for what is just a (lightly servicey) slice-of-life comedy reel at its core.

What's New and Good According to Solstice

Eesh, gonna level with you... not much this time around, so I'm glad for the sequels. There is an awful lot of generic isekai garbage and pandering crap this season, so not much has managed to break out of that yet except for...

• The Aquatope on White Sand - A burned-out idol who got all but shoved out the door of the industry can't bring herself to go home just yet, and after doing some soul-searching about where she wants to be and what she wants to do, decides that the place she'd most like to be is... working at an ailing aquarium staffed by an energetic and passionate young owner. The direction is on point, and the artwork is colorful and clean. PA Works doing PA Works things.
  
  

• Kageki Shojo!! - The deeply competitive, highly exclusive Kouka Acting Troupe is known for putting on some hecking good shows, and our main character has always wanted to play one of the male leads in the shows they put on. Standing a head above her other classmates, our lead character is oft-ridiculed for her gawky appearance at a ludicrously tall 5'10" (snerk), but is unabashedly putting her all into showing the other girls that she's got the stage presence it takes to make her dreams come true. It's so unabashedly shoujo and I just love it. It's not the deepest story, but I watched two episodes in a go and was ravenous for more.
  
  

Honorable mentions that have redeeming qualities but aren't for me:

The Dungeon of Black Company seems like a goofy little show that might hit the mark for some folks, Remake Our Life! seems a fun romp into the 'what-if' genre of what you'd do if you had a chance to redo college, Sonny Boy is arthouse and weird and crude, and I have no idea where it's going yet.

Dishonorable Mention:

Wonder Egg Priority's delayed final episode was a messy stumble across the finish line that was an utter disappointment. If Odd Taxi was a case study into how to finish a show, this was how not to finish a show.

So yeah. I really thought this post would end up longer, but hey. Not every season is a winner, and at least I narrowed the field. Nothing wrong with coasting on the existing franchises!

ETA: A million small gif formatting tweaks.

@de-villefort

I mean, that hardly makes you a filthy casual. Anime is a medium. People find things to jive with inside of it, and no two tastes are alike.

Personally, I'm at my happiest when I can get people to realize that saying 'I don't like anime' is akin to saying 'I don't like sandwiches.' Getting ahead of the crew who are gluten-allergic, intolerant, or legitimately don't like sandwiches, I mostly mean that there's a slew of people out there who think of anime as a monolith, that they must love or hate in its entirety. Sure, you might not like a ham sandwiches, but you might like this peanut butter and jelly, or some avocado toast, or a bagel with cream cheese (Let's not lie to ourselves. Totally a sandwich).

Interspecies Reviewers was an unabashedly perverted masterpiece that knew what it wanted to be and didn't hold any punches.

Konosuba is some of the hardest I've laughed at a show!

Accessible and family-friendly? Fuck no. But worthy of mention for their own merits, and enjoying them doesn't make you basic or anything.

"First we were told about a fine of 50 euros per person per match, something that would have landed us a fine of about 4,850 euros," she said.

"We accepted that. However, just before the match we were told that we will be disqualified if we play like that. So we had to go with the bikini bottoms."

Oh, what the flying fuck.

@crawfish

Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I think that based on the trailer, I wouldn't have touched it. From a distance it reads as Steven Universe / Adventure Time (and there are certainly comparisons that can be made), but the older cast and millennial/Gen-Z-relevant angst actually resonated with me, and the emotional core is surprisingly pleasant.

Also, it's fucking delightful and has some clear Ghibli inspirations.

Wish these little waves of moving-related stress would go away. Like, Ikea being out of the desk I wanted to buy should not cause a toddler-esque meltdown in my brain, but it does.

...Probably because my desk currently looks like this.

@derp said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

@solstice said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

Fuck scalpers.

I am so sick of seeing every single thing I want to purchase go out of stock instantly from digital storefronts, usually after an hour of the store being unable to handle requests because it's being effectively DDOSed by bots running API calls.

This is so stupid.

Indeed. Fuck Capitalism is the undercurrent.

Lazy Macaroni:

1 Standard box of elbow macaroni.
2x 8oz Cabot Extra Sharp White Cheddar.

1. Bring water to a boil. Don't lower the heat. Lowering the heat is for people with time. COWARDS.
2. While boiling, grate the cheese. Lazier if done with one of those electric graters.
3. Add the entire box of elbow macaroni. Stir every couple of minutes, mostly just to get it off of the bottom of the pot so it doesn't stick.
4. Give it like 7.5-8 minutes, turn off heat and strain the pasta.
5. Do not rinse the pasta. Return it, steaming and furious, to the pot once it is no longer wet.
6. Immediately incorporate cheese. Fold the cheese into it, like you're making an omelette.

You're fucking done. You've got like 5-6 servings of this now.

Roux? Crumbled up bread bits? Cowardly. Adding calories that could have been cheese.
Baking it? Cowardly. The heat from the boiled noodles knows what it's about. Let it handle that shit.

Still yet to find any restaurant macaroni that can top this.

(Shhh. Don't talk about the calories from the cheese. This was the point. Now eat your dinner.)

@greenflashlight

Nah. It is a lazy recipe for difficult days. It's quick, it's slapdash, and it hits right where it needs to without any fuss!

@wizz

PREACH.

My YouTube recs are going through a similar thing, of being recommended some annoying transphobic 'doctor' who also advocated for like, 15 hour work weeks if you're not a lazy piece of shit. I keep smashing dislike, it keeps serving them up.

Thanks, algorithm.

Okay, I'm bad at thread upkeep, but I would be absolutely remiss not to signal-boost one of the shows this season that probably needs it least, because it's just such an absolute good time.

(Spy×Family) - (Comedy) A master spy is tasked with keeping tabs on a politician, and the best way for this to happen is through his son. Unfortunately, his son goes to a super locked-down private school, and no matter how good a spy he is, he can't pull off being a kid. His only choice? Assemble a family on short notice, and get the child past the school's rigorous and uptight entrance requirements, giving him the first foot in the door he needs to monitor his mark.

By virtue of 'short notice', he just so happens to accidentally surround himself with the worst/best candidates for this task by happenstance - a spy-thriller-loving telepathic young girl whom he chooses for adoption based on her intuiting his criteria for wanting to adopt her, and is absolutely on to all of their plans because... well, telepathy...

...and a perfectly average government employee who just happens to be an assassin.

Hijinks ensue.

Spy×Family is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

@arkandel

They're canceling themselves before they can reach a satisfying conclusion. Their specialty.

@Misadventure

Look, I see what you're getting at with this, but the optics are a tiny bit different because you're not someone who was deputized by the very party I'm criticizing.

I don't appreciate that dissent is being categorized as dehumanization, so yes, you're very much a human being - every bit as I am. We're just having a disagreement over who's shaking the keys to what was once a community and now is experiencing a painful rip through its center.

I am not someone who thinks people who I disagree with are somehow subhuman.

Cheers.