Regardless of where you fall relative to “neurotypical” the ability to have enough empathy to have compassion for the people you interact with is “basic fucking skills”. The lack of that empathy may be a clinical condition, or it just might make you an asshole. And I say this as someone who frequently fails basic…

I had that action figure. It also came with a sake bottle and a bento box which you could connect together into a gun. Talk about identifying with a character, right there.

I have this radical theory about filmmaking. It’s pretty controversial stuff, but stick with me: maybe actors can… y’know, act?

Cecile is forced to take on the Top, herself

For the ultimate cross-cultural pollination, Turkish pizza is one of my faves. It may not be quite a “regional” style, but a place that does it well is a treasure.

Ironically, if you saw one episode of either of those shows, you saw all of the episodes. I know it’s a different era of TV, and formulaic procedurals still have a place on TV, but those scripts were basically mad libs.

Whew, that backstory though. Just very: “Really, are we going to go with the murdered wife thing?  Isn’t that a little tired?” “Look, I just want to get straight into werewolf limb-tearing, so I’m gonna need you to get ALLL the way off my back about that.”

I mean, for most of the people holding GameStop stock, the goal isn’t really to make money, the goal is to say “fuck you.” It’s vandalism of market mechanisms, exploiting Melvin’s short position.

No hay banda!

“The Surrealator”: so we’re just taking Nathan For You bits and turning them into sitcoms now?

It would have been grand had they gotten him for it. The Karloff impersonator they god did an admirable enough job, but yeah. Speaking of Karloff, I’m a big fan of the mostly forgettable movie “Targets”. It’s from one of Corman’s studios, and they only had Karloff for like 2 days, so it’s mostly people sitting in…

I mean, yes, of course all dialogue is stylized, in the same way that all buildings are actually just boxes. But a good architect makes buildings that don’t feel like a giant box, and a good writer writes dialogue that doesn’t feel like dialogue.

It looks like a few years, yeah. Early or mid-70s at the end of the first season. I suspect it doesn’t jump straight to 1983.

For sure, stylized dialogue can absolutely work. Some of it is period, some of it is intent, and some of it is the surrounding production. More than that, some of it is purpose- something like Arsenic & Old Lace needs to be a gag-a-second because the whole thing falls apart if you actually start thinking about the…

I really enjoyed the first season, even though there were definitely points where it got real melodramatic and schmaltzy, the alt-history riff was still exciting.

I’m going to go a step farther: the show is memorable because of the actors. So much of that dialogue is bad, in the way Whedon dialogue is frequently bad: jokey, quippy, and writerly. Whedon writes dialogue, not based on how people talk, but based on how he wishes he was heard.

Indiana Jones and the Mysteriously Similar and also Well Lit Dungeons.

Link was in the article, but I’m glad I could highlight that part for you!

Blah blah blah, psychic blah blah blah don’t judge … with an aesthetic focus on the surreal works of Polish artist Zdzisław Beksiński.

Google Slides is a better VTT than Roll20. It doesn’t have a built-in dice roller, but it’s still better. I say this after spending hours trying to upload a card back for a deck of tokens which failed without error for no reason.