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Friday Fun Thread for January 17, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Anyone have a video game or a movie or a book or anything else like that that you want to get into, but you just can't every time you try?

For me it's Red Dead Redemption 2. I just can't get through the winter prologue. It has idiosyncratic controls that I can't remember and the fucking lasso just doesn't work after I rebind 200 different buttons to adjust the controls to ESDF. And there's no quicksave, so every time I watch people enjoy the open stage of RDR2 it wants me to replay a long enough segment before I even can try and fail to lasso a dude again. I guess I should just mod the game to skip it and try again.

As reminded by some other discussion here, Outer Wilds. It should be satisfying, but I can't get past the boredom of the initial stage into actively solving the mysteries. In a similar vein, Pathologic 2. The original left an incredible impression on me, but I can't muster the willpower to dive into this one.

For a non-game example, Legend of the Galactic Heroes. Sounds like a show I'd really enjoy, but each time I think about its runtime, I flinch.

LoGH is amazing once you get past the poor pilot.

By "Pilot" you mean the first episode, or the movie with roughly the same plot, because I found the latter rather enjoyable.

The first episode. The portrayal of the first battle is ridiculous and at odds with the rest of the show, iirc.

Really? I thought the first season held up fairly well compared to the end, where the author was desperately scouring Chinese history for ways to keep the fights interesting (black holes, space tides, fuck it, armies crossing energy rivers and crashing into space walls!!!).
Given the scifi bullshit about low detection ranges and signalling, the concept of catching encircling forces on the march was pretty good. Especially because it helped introduce us to the problems of both the alliance and imperial militaries; one full of glory hounds trying to reenact past victories, and the other basically halfassing the war by using it to play internal politics.