I love Gugu Mbatha-Raw, which is why this is kind of disappointing. I wanted her to have a big role in a mainline MCU film, not a streaming series.

On the docket for this weekend:

I feel like that should have been the focus of the episode, rather than the concept of finality. Because I couldn’t buy that people would get bored of the green doors of endless possibility, but I could easily buy that people would be dissatisfied with experiencing all of that alone.

Two thoughts:

Yeah, that was probably the single most bafflingly bombastic and self-serious trailer I’ve ever seen for a family adventure-comedy.

Yeah, the total pullout (i.e. not even show-floor presence) leads me to believe that there’s more to this story than meets the eye. It might just be that some of the higher-ups in marketing have gotten gun-shy since Sony’s disastrous 2018 conference, but it feels like Sony is being overly dismissive of E3 in a way…

I haven’t been gaming much, because I’ve been watching AGDQ. Not as many super-fascinating runs as in years past, but there have been a few fun races, and I’m looking forward to tonight’s SM64 randomizer. That’s gonna be hilarious.

I’m going to talk about some games that I haven’t seen mentioned elsewhere in this thread.

Definitely one of the most unique games I’ve played in a long time. It friggin’ melted my brain.

I think Astral Chain has been kind of left out of year-end conversations not because it’s a bad game, but because it wasn’t what players were expecting. If you wanted something like the philosophy of NieR:Automata, you weren’t going to get it here, and this didn’t have the pure focus on combat of a game like Bayonetta.…

Just listened to it this afternoon. It doesn’t top The Kaleidoscope for me, but it’s still fantastic and one of my favourite albums of the year. Thanks for letting me know it existed!

I’ve actually listened to 31313, and it’s... okay. It’s not really my thing, but I’m happy to find someone else on the Internet tubes who know that Silent Siren exists!

Oh shit, there was a new Lemolo album this year? How did I miss that? Listening right away! The Kaleidoscope is one of my favourite albums of all time.

The problem with that logic is that “everybody’s talking about it, so I have to talk about it too” is a self-perpetuating runaway train. Would it have stopped if the A.V. Club had ceased covering Joker? Probably not. But they certainly didn’t make things *better*. I’m not going to ding the site for covering popular…

It tells me how much I biked in one session, which is basically just as good as verbal shame when I fail to hit my target.

For comparison, my stationary bike cost 1/15 as much upfront, plus it folds for easy storage. Peloton is ridiculous.

I’ve reached a pretty stable loop with Death Stranding where I don’t know if I’m actually *enjoying* the game, but I feel compelled to keep pushing on. For all the talk that Kojima just wants to make incomprehensible movies, Death Stranding’s gameplay systems are actually well-considered. That’s not to say that…

TV: Bent; Cougar Town

Better Off Ted was mostly last decade, but the last few episodes aired in early 2010.

Almost done with Astral Chain. Gonna try to finish it tonight.