Author: mdhughes

Daylight Savings Sunday Music

Nobody on the road
Nobody on the beach
I feel it in the air
The summer's out of reach
Empty lake, empty streets
The sun goes down alone
I'm driving by your house
Though I know you're not home

But I can see you
Your brown skin shining in the sun
You got your hair combed back and your
Sunglasses on baby
I can tell you my love for you will still be strong
After the boys of summer have gone
—Don Henley, "The Boys of Summer"

BlizzCon 2018 Summarized by Someone Who Plays Very Few Blizzard Games Anymore

I watched the opening ceremony which will only be up for a few more days, because promotional material should be hidden behind a paywall according to Acti-Blizzard-Vison.

  • Former CEO Michael Morhaime starts, introduces new CEO J. Allen Brack, former World of Warcraft exec producer, who's presided over some of the worst WoW expansions and the massive decline of WoW's subscribers (it's still huge, just less huge than 4-8 years ago).
  • Starcraft: Still dominated by South Korea. So now Google "Deep Mind" is trying to make AIs capable of playing against them. In the grim post-apocalyptic wasteland after the Rise of the Machines, only South Korea will be able to defend humanity from Google "capture" bots. Good luck. But seriously, why is this 20-year-old RTS still relevant?!
  • Heroes of the Storm: Inexplicably still running. Still charging you per character, in the most offensive monetization scam in the games industry. New character intro CGI cartoon is maybe the dumbest and most self-important thing I've ever seen. She's from the NEXUS, woo-ooo.
  • World of Warcraft: New exec producer seems like a doofus, may just be stage inexperience. New Battle for Azeroth "content" seems like more of the same crap: Wreck old zones, add some battlegrounds.
  • World of Warcraft Classic: Demo out today (as was known). Release date announced: Summer 2019! Much sooner than I expected, I figured Fall/Winter 2019, maybe into 2020 given Blizzard Time. Any WoW subscription gives Classic access, no extra fee.
  • Overwatch: Never watched. There's a long post-apocalyptic pseudo-Western CGI cartoon which isn't bad, though it has comically bad dialogue, but apparently you can't play most of those characters yet, because Acti-Blizzard-Vision needs to extract your money over the next year. Also: In what seems to be gameplay footage (but probably more CGI cartoons), they're fighting and automatically quip lines, but their mouths don't move. How pathetic is that, for a bjillion-dollar AAA title?
  • Warcraft 3 "Reforged": Demo at Blizzcon, release date "next year". I think I only played WC1, not 2 or 3, it's been forever and they weren't my thing, but I might try WC3.
  • Hearthstone: Meh. Least interesting Magic ripoff gets new cards.
  • Diablo: Mobile Diablo Immortal. Hilariously tacky lore summary, "Corrupted the Worldstone … turning Humans evil and violent"! Because Humans are so good and peaceful without evil magic stones, right guy? Lemme just check these facts: WAR. Oh.

    Mockery of the presentation aside, the mobile port looks fine and I like Diablo when I don't have to group. So… Can I play this solo? Or is it dependent on 3 other assholes none of whom know their role, and/or scream at you when you don't run your character the way they would?

    According to Diablo Immortal web site, the classes are Barbarian, Monk, Wizard, Crusader, Demon Hunter, Necromancer: No Witch Doctor! Well, I like Necros as well, but hmpf.
  • Finally, there were these cosplayers, with the greatest shoulderpads ever:

BlizzCon2018-cosplay

Propaganda Doesn't Work

Watching Twitch (Sh*utF*ctory plays original MST3K! The new guy is lame.) has exposed me to "advertising". Some are just DVD sales, like In the Mouth of Madness, Bill & Ted's, etc. Nice. Some are weird "comedic" ad placeholders for Sh*utF*ctory. But some are paid propaganda, and it's comically ineffective on me.

There's an imitation-muppet anti-vaping ad that plays an airhorn every time the stoner/vaping muppet says anything, while a bunch of preachy muppets give him no support for his interests. Now I want to start vaping, and also hit the pot and liquor stores.

Back in the '80s, I might still have taken drugs (some of which are now legal, and anyway, statute of limitations) even if DARE had never shown up at school, but they made it almost mandatory: If those people were against drugs, they had to be good.

If I have any advice for young people, it's: Take drugs, drop out of school (I deeply regret staying in prison^W school), and disregard any authority telling you not to do things.

What I'm Not Watching: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina

Take Satanism and evil magic from medieval Christian superstition, rather than from Wicca or LaVeyan Satanism which don't believe in a real Satan. This is already a borderline hate crime.

Add bullshit high school drama and an anti-bullying, anti-transphobia plot that goes nowhere because nothing mortal matters. And it's weird: Everything in the show tries to look like the 1960s, but with random modern anachronisms. I think the writers and set decorators are not being clever here, they're just too stupid to understand how different the 1960s were.

Add bullshit boarding school, half-blood bigotry from Harry Potter. The Harry Potter fanficcery is strong in this, right up to the suggested shopping for familiars, and witch girls with black lipstick who might as well draw "SLYTHERIN" on their foreheads.

Add one very dark-haired bleach-blonde-but-gross-roots-showing weird-looking chick who does a lot of shower scenes for someone supposed to be 16 (actually 19). Her creepy, lumpy boyfriend (actually 23, and looks 25+) doesn't help.

Add maybe the worst Q&A with a "High Priest of Satan" ever (imitating Lucius Malfoy, but with all the charm of a bored accountant).

The dialogue's awful, like a Christian trying to write "spooky gothic". It's exactly like fucking Twilight.

I made it barely into E2, and gave up. This is the worst.

★☆☆☆☆

What I'm Watching: Castlevania S2E6-8

Finishing Castlevania S2, here's where all the slow burn finally pays off. And then back to slow burn.

The stand-up fight Carmilla's been plotting finally comes up, and… I'm a little dubious how powerful an undead Bishop (Matt Frewer!) can be given that in life he couldn't keep one vampire out of his church. But it's a really solid plan.

The Humans and Alucard finish dicking around in the vault, and then magically screw everything up for everyone, and have fun storming the castle. If I remember my boss fights correctly, the trick is to evade the fireball and whack him in the face three times. They don't go according to that plan.

But then there's a whole ep left. So everyone says goodbye to Alucard for a long time, and spends more long times deciding what to do next, and the surviving vamps work out their next moonlit holiday plans, and some very implausible violence—even considering what we just saw—sets up the lunatic as a new big bad.

Season 3's been announced, and there's plenty of vamps to stake, plus Dracula never remains dead.

★★★★★, altho I'd like the pacing to be faster, and I miss Godbrand.

What I'm Watching: Castlevania S2E1-5

Like Castlevania S1, the art is fantastic, but the animation varies from nearly Hanna-Barbera to perfectly smooth, mostly in combat scenes.

Much of the first few eps are in Dracula's court, with his hilarious Viking vampire subject Godbrand ("I like boats! I'm a fucking Viking! We're supposed to make boats out of things!"), slutty & scheming Carmilla, the human forgemasters (necromancers, more or less) Hector (a spoiled brat with… pets…) and Isaac (harsh disciplinarian religious lunatic). And we see much more of Dracula's character and his rage at humanity. Make no mistake, I'm sympathetic to his culling, not so much to the random way it's implemented.

In contrast, Belmont, Sypha, and Alucard are pathetic. Sniping at each other, barely have any plan. They sit around and do some research, they're very reactive. The Humans are the antagonists of this season, the Vampire court are the protagonists.

The idiots (Trevor, Alucard, Godbrand) all speak like Warren Ellis, noted drunk, misanthrope, and vulgarian. The others are some of his better writing, intelligent and broken in various ways.

The plot takes quite a while to get anywhere, but for the most part it's enjoyable. FAR better start than S1 had.

Up to S2E5 now, I'll watch the rest tomorrow.