“The arts community is generally dominated by liberals because if you are concerned mainly with painting or sculpture, you don’t have time to study how the world works. And if you have no understanding of economics, strategy, history and politics, then naturally you would be a liberal.”
— Mark Helprin, 8/10/2005Fight Pad, Elfless, Bill's Star, Demi surprise!
DanSora 12
Ok, I was wrong about how the last two episodes would play out, because there was only one. And yet somehow they ran out of story and padded it out with multiple exposition scenes that explained all the details and implications of what just happened. At least Aiz’s seiyū finally got to show emotion for more than a split-second, even if it was limited to rage.
Seriously, even Finn is jacking off to Bell’s heroic spirit now?
Eromanga-sensei
I didn’t realize last week was the finale, because it didn’t end so much as just stop. Fun little series, but I guess the source material didn’t have an obvious spot to end the season. I presume fistfulls of cash have been waved around for a continuation, so they didn’t really think it was necessary.
Doctor Who 10.12
I have no words. No, that’s not true. I have a lot of words, but they’re not very nice, and I don’t want to clean spittle off my screen. On the bright side, at least I got my wish; she was dry and showed emotion.
In the middle of the episode, my Amazon Echo thought it heard the Doctor ask it to tell a joke. This turned out to be more entertaining than the actual dialogue. Perhaps next time he should ask for a decent storyline.
I think the best way to understand this season is as a metaphor for suicide. The trailer for season 8 boasted, “I’m the Doctor. I’ve lived for over 2,000 years. I’ve made many mistakes, and it’s about time that I did something about that”, but he never does. Instead, he becomes more and more self-destructive, even trying to throw away all of his future regenerations by jumping into a rift to hold back a trivial threat.
It’s a chronicle of hesitation marks and cries for help. He’s torn between wanting to end it all and wanting someone, anyone, to save him. Which is Missy’s role, the frenemy he calls in the middle of the night after swallowing a bottle of pills and slitting his wrists (“across is for attention…”).
So maybe I did have a few things to say without spitting. Much. 😄
Demi-chan 13
This more than made up for the weak end to DanSora, the possibility of several seasons without Elf, and the cut-and-paste DW climax that had the emotional impact of a cheese dip recipe. Demi-chans are always welcome. More, please.
Amazon Japan understands me...
Today’s “recommended for you” email from Amazon Japan was all photobooks, and led off with Pai-nyan, which is exactly what it sounds like:
Not to be confused with Neko to Futomomo, which is also exactly what it sounds like.
The list also included Naked Gems, Tokyo Lovers, Cute Skirt-Flipping, and the creatively-titled Thigh Photo Studio 3.
(Update: just noticed that I wasn’t paying attention, and that last title is “photo studio 3” not “photobook 3”)
Cheesecake: with pie
Gelbooru just isn’t meta enough for me to fill a post using only the cheesecake tag, so I added pie as well. If you want delicious cake, you’re on your own…
"Fun" with Jira
Twelve days after moving the company from Bugzilla to Jira, it looks like we’re mostly out of the woods.
Except for people whose workflow is built around archived links to Bugzilla URLs, and still try to use it even though I’ve made it read-only, moved it to a different URL, and replaced the old URL with a list of links mapping old bug numbers to their new issue IDs.
And people who crash the Jira server and take down corporate email by using the bulk-update feature to rearrange hundreds of imported bugs at the same time on their own initiative, without disabling notifications.
Bulk updates are now restricted to three users, not including the admin group. Naturally, the person who sent 8,000 emails on Monday abused admin privileges to add himself to the new bulk-update group and send 4,000 more this morning, costing him his admin privileges (and his consciousness, if I could have reached through the Internet and throttled him). Perhaps another day I’ll do an “ambitious Russian developer” rant, about the sort of contractors who would rather break into a server to restart a daemon than send email to IT.
The #1 problem with Jira is that it sends out notifications every time a user picks his nose, so even when people aren’t abusing the bulk-update feature, users are complaining about getting five notifications when someone edits an issue.
My response is to say, “this is what you asked for”.
Even More DanMachi
A few months ago, I observed that DanMachi must be doing well, because there were two series of spinoff novels, in addition to the manga and the anime.
Well, guess what? There are also two 4-koma manga series (1, 2).
Pretty sure the second season of the main series is on the way, although I don’t see any announcements.
Zyr's Law
The ancient wisdom passed down from father to son was “don’t stick your dick in crazy”. In the 21st Century, a new truth emerges:
“Don’t let crazy stick zyr dick in you.”
Dragon Crush, Cock Twister, Heartless Regen, and Groundhog Day
DanSora 11
Good Lefiya: well, that certainly qualifies as “casting while moving”.
Bad Lefiya: just beg for a piece already, sheesh.
Bonus Lefiya: congrats, you finally ended up sleeping with somebody.
More and more, I wish they’d made Tiona the focus character. She’s the most interesting of Aiz’s gal-pals. There’s a novel in this series that’s focused on the Amazon twins, but we’re not going to get anywhere near it this season.
Eromanga-sensei 12
In which sinister dom Sagiri abuses Elf and Dere-Dere-Dere Muramasa in the service of her muse, leaves her subs to suffer as she discovers The Secret Rival, then finds a new ecchi hobby that she doesn’t know dick about. In the aftermath, Megumin provides definitive proof that she is both a virgin and a total noob, and Muramasa demonstrates that she pays attention in art class. Even with her help, though, Sagiri still has a hard problem to solve before she can really nail this new style. Maybe Elf can swipe some videos from her brother, although that might lead to other problems.
Also, bookstore-chan tries the just-kidding-only-serious method, which Our Hero is naturally oblivious to.
If this ends next episode, I’m guessing the big finale will be Sagiri setting foot in the front yard. By the way, if that’s the Aunt in the OP, she’s running out of time to show up.
Slight change to the ED this week, revealing more about Our Hero.
Doctor Who 10.11
The beginning of the end, with terrible Zathras impression. Also, more third-rate meta.
Could they have found a less-convincing way to stage Bill’s death? “Okay, I need you to stand right here so the Doctor can get into position to not help you, while we flashback and flashforward to complicate this very simple setup for turning you into a crude Cyberman. Now, be sure to keep standing for a long time after the blue guy blows a giant hole in your chest, because we really need to pad this out to make it a three-part finale.”
Dark Matter 3.4
I guess every writer and director has a Groundhog Day episode they need to get out of their system. While nothing can live up to the ones done by Xena and SG-1, this wasn’t bad, and made good use of Three’s character development and Anthony Lemke’s talents.
Quote saved to use on Rory:
“No. You can’t just make up your own words. You have to actually repeat the words that I say.”
$10 says Old Five’s future-spoilers turn out to be 90% nonsense that they threw out just to sound cool, and the other 10% are cribbed from the upcoming scripts for this season. Aside from that, since the time clock is lit up in the future, Android obviously didn’t destroy it when she shut it off.
