Frieren, episode 7

In which there exist creatures who use language only to deceive their enemies, to create an opportunity to strike.

Also, Fern teaches Stark that getting what you ask for is not the same as getting what you want, but also reinforces Frieren’s flaws with positive feedback.

Verdict: more, please, both serious and silly.

Tearmoon, episode 3

In which no plan survives contact with the enemy, especially when it’s authored by two nitwits. Fortunately, Our Hollow-Skulled Heroine succeeds by failing, although her interior monologue remains quite shouty. This week, our compensation comes in the form of a steam-filled bath; I’m not interested in having 12-year-old Mia de-steamed as a Buy-the-Bluray feature, but I’d like to see more of Anne and Rafina.

Verdict: Anne is Best Girl, in or out of the bath.

Potion Loli, episode 3

In which the wisdom of an overworked office lady destroys the spirits of the queen and every noble lady in the kingdom, which was way too talky but briefly funny, and then Our Potion Loli shoves off to Yet Another Kingdom to build a quiet life as housekeeper by day, vigilante healer by night.

Verdict: changing the cast every week forces Kaoru to carry the show solo, and her monologing is getting on my nerves. Don’t know how much more of it I can take. This week’s new cast isn’t in the ED animation, but the ones she’s already run away from are, so…?

(no, not that potion loli!)

Rerun’s Special Magic, episode 3

In which my primary reason for continuing to watch this show did not appear even once, and the story is dominated by Our Obnoxious Twintail Who Didn’t Even Gainax This Week and Our Lovestruck Gay Shota Bunnyboy. Bonus negative points for the mustache-twirling (or at least beard-stroking) villains on the school board.

Verdict: this show makes me nostalgic for Vermeil In Gold, and I didn’t really like that show, either. Although it had its charms.

Starfield photography

You have to tinker with exposure and filtering, turn off clipping in the console to adjust the height of the camera, and the way the game emulates depth-of-field is painfully awkward, but you can take some decent snapshots in Starfield, and the reward is that they get used as loading screens.

So, I don’t remember the name of this particular moon, but this is what I saw the moment I landed on it:

And this is what it looked like when I turned around:

Back on Toliman II, this young lady really needs to get her priorities straight, because she was absolutely terrified of a gang of Spacers hanging out in an abandoned mine a kilometer away, but wasn’t even a little bit worried about the three Terrormorphs currently sneaking up on her.

(if you’re going to populate the universe with procedural content, you really ought to have some knobs and buttons to tweak, so you don’t end up with oblivious technicians hanging out in t-shirts in -18°C weather on a world where there’s a whole set of quests about how the entire population was wiped out by psychopathic mind-controlling xeno-critters)

(zero-atmosphere outdoor picnics are another common find)

Related,

If you buy the physical edition of Starfield for Windows, you get a DVD box with a Steam code inside, so you might as well skip the middleman. It’s only really useful if you need to buy it as a Christmas/Birthday present.

(I got it free as part of Game Pass Ultimate, but MS alumni price is half of retail if I didn’t have that, or if it eventually leaves the portfolio)

Before Firefly…

…there was Titan A.E.? There are plenty of reasons that this movie flopped, but it wasn’t the fault of the screenwriters: Ben Edlund & Joss Whedon. If they’d had any creative control, they might not have gone for the magical genocide ending, although they might have added some waif-fu.

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