Bedroom with private en-suite bath available in my lovely 1100 sq ft two-bedroom in the heart of Los Feliz. The apartment has a washer-dryer plus little private patios in the front and back. Parking spot is included, and the building has a small gym. Your share of the rent would be $1450/mo plus we split utilities (typically less than $100/mo). Move-in date flexible; current lease goes to the end of August (may be renewed). Note that the landlords require good credit and stable income.
Photos here: https://imgur.com/a/3eey48e A quick note on common spaces from the photos: some of the art and furniture is temp -- I'm looking at you, awkward side table being used as a coffee table --as it left with the previous roommate; I'm happy to incorporate a new roommate's things and/or buy stuff as needed.
About me: I'm 32 and I work in tv development; I currently work from home, but expect to go back to the office later this year. I will be fully vaxxed around the end of the month. I have part-time custody of an 8-year-old corgi-beagle; he gets along with every person he's ever met, but not so much other pets (sorry!). I love tv, tai chi, traveling, cooking, playing games, and making overwrought puns. Ideally, I'd like a roommate who wants to hang out sometimes - e.g., watch the Expanse or let me give them a tarot reading.
I was working my way through Malhalla when I met a Skeleton Knight celebrating the end of all that is. The line in specific that clued me in was, "Saying that, there's no coming back after Doom's Day... No more being reborn..." There's a cycle of death and rebirth throughout Norse mythology, but there is no "after Ragnarok."
Then things started falling into place:
Malhalla is Valhalla.
Malroth's true form, the giant serpent that destroys all on Doom's Day, is Jormungander.
Doom's Day itself is Ragnarok.
Hargon is Loki.
The Hairy Hermit is Odin.
And the humble Builder, staring me straight in the face for the whole of the game, swinging his mighty hammer both to build and destroy, is, of course, Thor.
I'm not familiar enough with the whole of this mythology to draw out other inspirations more, but I'm sure anyone who is must see it.
When even the previous game had a World Tree (Yggdrasil) in it, I suppose I'm the last person on earth to realize this, but seeing this, I sat straight up and relished one more aspect of the game's writing that I love. The overwrought puns and tidy foreshadowing were only the tip of the iceberg.
A day is too much. I am tired.
Just survive the next 12 hours, then it will be bed time. That is doable. You can do that.
My pain is made up. It’s ridiculous. I cannot put my head around it.
The pain is real, we both feel it, and that is what matters. You’re going to try therapy again tomorrow morning. You can survive 12 hours. You are agitated, but you are safe. You can let yourself relax. You are not in danger.
-I would trade most of the Anti-Air Sites and Checkpoints for more FND bases to take over. They really feel like copy/paste filler content and there is almost no strategizing or emergent gameplay to take them over.
-Personal vehicle customization feels completely tacked on. Since I can just wingsuit everywhere, I never need to use the personal vehicle.
-The ammo types add more annoyance than anything. Just keep at least one weapon with Soft Target, one with Armor Piercing. Congrats you are super good at building loadouts.
-I cannot be bothered to switch Dani into any other armor besides the set with increased stamina, sprinters set. And even having to switch armor pieces for different abilities is inferior to a skill tree.
-There's a whole lot of guns, but you earn the better tier guns quickly enough to where there is no reason to use the lower tier ones.
-Supremos feel unnecessary. Although I will give props to the final Supremo/magic rifle that lets you wall hack enemies. Game started getting stale towards the end and I really appreciated just wall hacking a level and being on my way.
-Collectible regular vehicles also feel like there are too many for no reason. Am I ever gonna call for a regular 50's era car when I could either wingsuit or take a souped up super vehicle everywhere?
-Dominoes/fishing are straight up bad mini games. Also no reason to engage with hunting, plus it becomes trivialized to where you can hunt with automatic weapons and still get quality animal skins. (An example of a stellar Ubisoft mini game was Orlog from Valhalla)
-Characters are mostly pretty forgettable. Dani is cool as hell though at least.
In conclusion, playing 6 made me start a new file on 3, and made me appreciate even more how 3 is focused, to the point. They don't let you become an overpowered superhero nearly as early in the game. And even the second hardest difficulty is way more challenging and engaging than FC6's Action Mode.
Ubi, if you release a FC6 spinoff game, please boil it down to the essence of Far Cry instead of giving me a whole damn crockpot of mediocrity.
I’m not criticizing his abilities as a story teller or any other aspect aspect of him as a director, it is just that I think the “beauty” of Anderson films is a bit overblown. It’s certainly not the case that I don’t appreciate color and careful framing. I love the color-conscious look Eric Rohmer films, late Ozu films, Paris Texas, much Stanley Kubrick, etc...
It’s just that Anderson’s scenes feel, to me, like a contrived, Apple Store version version of all those who came before him. Rohmer’s subtle use of saturated color seems like they melded perfects into the scene whereas Anderson’s seem overly ostentatious and self-aware, bordering on visual kitsch which may be partly what he’s going for but it just doesn’t resonate with me.
Personal examples: eliminated custom todo states that I never used, stopped over-categorizing todos, removed clocking from capture templates as I didn’t use the feature consistently,….
I've been trying to write a novel for many, many years, scribbling in half a dozen notebooks (so I can draw and freeform diagram), dozens and dozens of Google Drive documents, and have a really clear idea of the setting, the major plot beats, character arcs, motivations, themes, I even have a "grand timeline" of events that take place BEFORE the actual story to explain how the world ends up exactly the way it is - but all these notes read more like entries in a history textbook.
Every time I try to actually write real prose, I fall apart. There's so much to explain and exposit that I don't know how to get started focusing on the character's internal conflicts, or how to shape their basic personality, because I'm thinking about too many of the events that I've planned out in the plot that *changes* that. I don't know what I should explain first to prevent reader confusion, and what's better to reveal as the story moves forward. I have a clear idea of initial character motivations (seeking approval of father, seeking to escape servitude to a tyrant) but the character still just feels like a plot device, the motivation only there to get from point A to point B. I don't know how to flesh out who they really ARE, in the beginning.
I don't know how to write how the character feels, how the character thinks, how the character should act, at least in the beginning. I have a very strong idea of the main characters, but I don't know how to write secondary characters that establish relationships with the main characters to help flesh them out, maybe because it's way more subtle so I don't know how to plan it out.
A part of me understands that ultimately, these are not things that can be planned out. I need to truly let the character come alive, and then the prose practically writes itself. When I write without thinking too hard about what "needs" to happen, like when I'm just doing an r/writingprompts, it comes super easily. I can just inhabit a character I conjure in my mind, and then run from there, because I'm not thinking about where I need to get to, I just imagine what the character will logically do from moment to moment.
But I've spent so much time building up this epic scale world and setting with major events that affect the entire setting, and so much backstory to explain how things got to where they are, that when I try to write prose for *these* characters, my mind gets cluttered up trying to juggle a million things. I end up being unable to just
... keep reading on reddit ➡Hello all,
I first played Klonoa: Door to Phantomile (henceforth referred to simply as Klonoa) more years ago than I remember. People who have played it will know that I'll say it was fun. More fun than its exterior belied. But even back then, not long past the afterglow, it didn't take long to forget until recently I came across it and decided to play it again. And now, though my general opinion on its funness hasn't changed, I think I can see why it wasn't more successful and, perhaps more importantly for our purposes, why it hasn't endured like many who play it today wonder after their first encounter with it.
#Beauty in Simplicity
The best thing about Klonoa is its mechanical simplicity. You run. You jump. You effort-float. You inflate enemies. You throw enemies. The entire game is played with a total of two action buttons, but combining Klonoa's skill set in different combinations yields a genuinely fun means of traversing the stages. Pressing the jump button whilst holding an inflated enemy allows Klonoa to jump again, and pressing the inflate button whilst holding an enemy allows Klonoa to throw that enemy in one of four directions: left, right, into the camera, and away from the camera. This last bit is, in many ways, crucial to Klonoa's level design and charm, at least at first, but more on that later.
Platformers, perhaps more than any other genre, live and die by their level design. When one is running and jumping, the levels need to accommodate the character's abilities in a way that presents new ways of doing the same thing. Certainly, this is true for all game types, and I would argue that level design is the true unsung hero of the vast majority of classic games. But whereas, say, a shooter can present new challenge simply by means of increasing enemy count on the screen in that the presence of three enemies presents a different challenge than two enemies, a platformer must accommodate variety with a more deeply-designed layout; the presence of three platforms does not, in itself, present any more challenge than two platforms. And in this way, Klonoa understands itself, and, for the most part, succeeds in its vision (pun intended for those in the know).
#Half a Dimension Yields Greater Depth
Klonoa, somewhat famously, occupies the so-called "2.5D" sub-genre of platformers. What this means for Klonoa is that while player movement is restricted to the two traditional 2D platformer axes, there are elements of gameplay that
... keep reading on reddit ➡Hi, everyone. It's my birthday, and I'm still a thirty-something. Like many on their birthdays, I try to take stock of the past year when this day comes.
Needless to say, this year has been difficult for all. I've had to struggle with some personal issues as well as the larger socio-political and pandemic-related ones. But Housamo has been a great help to me in getting through this crud, for many reasons. It's rekindled my confidence in myself in many ways, as well as charmed me with its characters and endearing event quests, especially. After being somewhat burnt out on Japanese, even though I use it professionally, it has also helped a lot in making me excited to engage with it again on my own time and for its own sake.
If I can be frank, in an administration that has seen concerted effort to roll back hard-won rights for me and my fellow LGBTQ+ citizens, playing Housamo (and carrying it around in my pocket, no less!) has felt like my own raised middle finger to forces that would see people like me and many of us right back where we were only a couple of decades ago.
Since I joined Reddit a few months ago, the people here have vastly enhanced my enjoyment of and perspective on the game, as well as provided a community of fun and funny people to chat with. Thank you so much!
Sorry for rambling, but was kind of in a mood and wanted to express my gratitude to the game and its community. Here's to much more fun together!
The following is an idea that me and a friend had while discussing Doki Doki mods, and what we would like to see out of one. After enough brainstorming, we came up with a rough idea, which is what's below! Please let me know if you have any idea that you would add yourself, or what you think could be executed better!
Doki Doki Overwrought (Placeholder Title) is a mod that follows the Literature Club after the events of Act 1, with the exception of Sayori's demise. Rather, Sayori is on a downward spiral of depression that the player has little control over. They must watch as Sayori eventually loses all sense of herself and ultimately completely shuts out the outside world.
The other girls in the club aren't doing much better. Yuri starts out as she is in Act 1, but over the course of the story, she slowly but surely becomes more obsessive and her self-harming tendencies become worse by the day. Natsuki devolves into a husk of her former self as her friends crumble around her on top of her issues at home. And our protagonist is delving into madness as the Literature Club becomes less of a discussion of literature, and more of a constant effort to manage the girls.
Monika is a special case. She doesn't seem to be on the same downward spiral as everyone else; rather, she's thriving in the madness. In Overwrought, she doesn't have access to the fourth wall or any of the game-altering abilities that she has in the base game. Instead, she's a cunning manipulator who adds fuel to the fire by acting as the devil on everyone's shoulder while maintaining the façade of a strong leader to the protagonist and the rest of the Literature Club. Her reasoning is unknown, but that may change throughout the course of the story.
Gameplay-wise, the POV will mainly be the protagonist's. As dense as he is, even he'll know when things start to get really bad. When we're not in the mind of the protagonist, the viewpoint will turn to that of the other girls as to give the player insight for how they act. The rainclouds inside Sayori's mind, the constant desires of Yuri, the plight of Natsuki's internal conflicts, and how Monika has hurt them far more than she's helped them.
I won't post main story beats and other details right now: those are best left to the imagination for now. As for right now, any feedback, critiques, or any general tips and pointers help! Thank you for your time.
-u/Mayodump (galigya)
Never seen any of Paul Mazursky's movies, only know him as the card dealer who got capped in the Sopranos. But he's popped up a bunch in the old Siskel & Ebert episodes I've been watching to fall asleep, so I checked out his wiki. This is maybe the most irksome list of movie titles I've ever seen. Not sure exactly what bothers me, something about the overuse of Proper Nouns I guess. Every title is like one of the fake movies from Seinfeld. (Paul was in some Curb episodes too, Larry David must have been a friend/fan).
Check out this filmography:
- 1968 I Love You, Alice B. Toklas (oof)
- 1969 Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (ok fine whatever, this is supposed to be a solid movie too right?)
- 1970 Alex in Wonderland (dumb pun, hate it!)
- 1973 Blume in Love (what if everyone's favorite character Bloom was in Love??)
- 1974 Harry and Tonto (just two names, not so bad, one is a cat apparently, 'and' instead of ampersand this time.)
- 1976 Next Stop, Greenwich Village (dumb, I hate all this insular NYC/LA naming)
- 1978 An Unmarried Woman (fine, S&E liked this one, got some noms, might watch)
- 1980 Willie & Phil (two names again, fine. Back to ampersand this time? Willie is Sheriff Truman)
- 1982 Tempest (drop the the it's cleaner)
- 1984 Moscow on the Hudson (I hate this dumb naming convention. Hyde Park on Hudson too. Can we make movie names that people who don't live in NYC might appreciate?)
- 1986 Down and Out in Beverly Hills (It's no To Live and Die in LA)
- 1988 Moon over Parador (Ishtar-esque made up country, do we need the Moon to be over it on top of that?)
- 1989 Enemies, A Love Story (dumb joke)
- 1991 Scenes from a Mall (another fun S&E review. Dumb play on Bergman I guess? Woody Allen's only acting credit outside of his own movie until Antz or something like that. Dumb)
- 1993 The Pickle (some old VHS I had started with a trailer for this. Seems like a mid/late life crisis movie for Paul, dropping all his neuroses about movie-making onto the screen. Just a real bounce baby, not something anyone else in the world would have any reason to appreciate)
After that it's a bunch of movies he didn't write with very anodyne names. Don't mean to rag on this dude too much but it just struck me as a singularly bonkers list of movie title. I'm sure some of these are worth a watch! This has been Pod & Cast & Ted & Alice, thanks for listening.
