What I’ve been watching recently, more or less:

Doctor Who

Better than last season, mostly due to the relative lack of Missy. The high point for me was coming up with a decent way to bring back Osgood and tie into the excellent 50th-anniversary special. The most recent episode, however, left me nodding off repeatedly due to the laconic pace, and the whole Louie Punch solution was... "disappointing". The one before that was only notable for a tediously drawn-out gratuitous death scene, and the special-effects animation in Clara's bra.

Heroes Reloaded

Frequently whiny and borderline incoherent (due in part to the expectation that of course everyone watched the web-only mini-episodes featuring the loser whose name I can never remember), the nicest thing I can say about it is that the often-dead female cast is quite attractive when they're not trying to look fierce. Or dead.
   I never had a big investment in Heroes after the writer's strike took the show down, but I agree with the critics who've been saying that they still think the things they pioneered in season one are fresh, rather than tired clichés overused by everyone else since then. The Japanese dialog has been quite odd in places, with only a loose relationship to the English subtitles, and often seems to be at the wrong level of politeness. Also, the whole meet-cute between Miko and Ren felt like they left out about an episode's worth of interaction.
   On a related note, Kiki Sukezane can actually do a decent fight scene ...in her demo reel on IMDB; the stuff they had her doing for most of the season was utter crap by comparison. (her training is in Tate, a school of dramatic stage fencing, which doesn't seem compatible with how they staged her fights)

Agents of SHIELD

I originally dumped this during the train episode in season 1, then used the wiki to catch up because people told me it got better. The current season started off with a major emphasis on Daisy's bustline, and even managed to get Gemma stripped down and pushed up. Oh, and there's some kind of story involving the outbreak of Inhumans; I'm two episodes behind at the moment. Doesn't suck, but I hope they wrap up the "rival agencies" crap soon.

The Librarians

They ran a marathon of season one a while back, so I whimsically set my DVR to record it. Quite good, actually, and the only thing I actually watch as soon as a new episode shows up.

Man In The High Castle

Watched the pilot when it came out, loved it. Watched the second episode when it came out, loved it. Haven't sat down and watched the rest yet, but expecting to love them.

Grimm

I'm still a full season behind, but that one's now free on Amazon Prime, so I'll catch up soon. I'm completely in love with Rosalie, of course.

Supergirl

My DVR failed to record episode one, but I happened to catch the second one. Wasn't as good as the original teaser trailer promised, but I'll try to record the inevitable reruns and catch up some time.

I love the question at the bottom left.

This magazine apparently lasted only six issues, so apparently by 1987 we’d reached Peak Ninja.

I know things are getting really busy this holiday season, but please don’t fudge your delivery statistics by claiming that you delivered three packages to my house today. I’ve been here all day, and I know you’re lying about showing up at my house at 8:48pm and leaving them on my front porch.

[Update: they quietly delivered them very early the next morning, so they must have spent the night on the truck.]

Dear Amazon, I think you’ve got your wires a bit crossed…

I just don’t remember any reindeer, red-nosed or otherwise, in Brian Daley’s debut fantasy novel.

Do not wear power armor when starting the quest The Nuclear Option. The only “workaround” is to revert to your previous manual save. (my autosaves and quicksaves somehow ended up all being after the critical point, and this is not uncommon due to the way the save system works).

The other glitch I ran into getting to the final quest involved Tinker Tom’s piloting skills; somehow the “land the vertibird” trigger failed to go off, and he kept flying in a straight line, right off the edge of the world. Fortunately, the autosave had no opportunity to wreck that one, and I was able to just redo that one quest stage.

The encounter designers for Fallout 4 love to scatter mines and boobytraps around. That’s in addition to giving your enemies an infinite supply of grenades and molotov cocktails, and arming the occasional raider with a nuclear grenade launcher (that whistling sound as they’re incoming is tied with the beeping of an approaching Super Mutant Suicider for my “ohshit” reflex).

Still, most of the time you get sent out for a Cleanup On Aisle One (“defeat $BADGUYS”, “rescue $SETTLER”, “clean out $NEWTOWN”), you don’t need a lot of radiation protection on your armor. You can line your Tuxedo with ballistic weave, pull out your trusty tommygun, and earn some caps by busting caps.

Then you run into someone who’s scattered a few of these around their base:

If you see one of these before stepping on it, retreat and put on your best anti-rad suit before returning; the people who use them have other glowing surprises waiting for you, too.

In other news, here’s my current list of most-wanted mods for the game (official or third-party):

1. Face-Saver: let me copy/paste any human face. It's hard to make your character look good, and every hand-designed NPC in the game could be used as a starting point.
2. Just Tell Me Who To Kill: hit a key to skip past the long, repetitive NPC dialog at the start, middle, and end of every quest or vendor interaction. You could do this in Skyrim, but in F4, you have to wait through every speech before being given the opportunity to respond, or to receive credit for the quest. And if they wander off in mid-sentence, you have to do it again.
3. Don't Stand So Close To Me: NPCs shouldn't speak their stock lines unless you're right next to them, facing them. Having Danse in your settlement is like an endless stream of Brotherhood propaganda sound bites, and Marcy Long is going to get fragged some night to put an end to her constant bitching. Worse, if an NPC is standing near you when you activate a crafting station, they'll keep spamming you for the entire session; the default placement of the weapons station in Sanctuary practically guarantees this.
4. Searchable Map/Inventory: ’nuff said.
5. Money Ain't Junk: put pre-war money in the Misc category so it doesn't get recycled for crafting.
6. Planet Of The Hats: add the ballistic weave modification to more hats. Right now, the only one I can find that accepts the mod is the Trilby, which is a great hat, but doesn't go with every outfit. Something colorful to go with the Summer Shorts would be nice (since it leaves the arm and leg slots free for additional armor...). Bonus for adding weave to the upgraded version of the Silver Shroud costume and its matching hat.
7. Make ’Em Glow: highlight lootable corpses the same way the power armor mod highlights active creatures.

[Update: #3 = No NPC Comments, #5 = Hey That’s Not Junk. Something I didn’t have on my list, but definitely like, Faster Terminal Displays (the long pause after unlocking/disabling something is still there. I tried one of the additional-music mods, but it was “poorly curated”, to put it kindly.]

So, this is your Thanksgiving recommendation for me?

As pleasant to look at as Mio Takaba (link NSFW) is, there always seems to be a challenge in her eyes that promises a need for UPRS should you disappoint her.

That’s Urgent Penis Reattachment Surgery. Seriously, even when she’s smiling there’s usually a predatory gleam, and her sultry look makes you want to lock up the kitchen knives. I’ve actually left out the most obvious examples, so I don’t scare you (and because several prominent cheesecake tumblr blogs have vanished recently, so the archives are a bit thin…).

NSFW after the jump, with a special present for Steven…

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