I haven't watched BW but I think Shang-Chi actually looks like it's going to be pretty good (early reviews are positive as well but those are the most important ones to view skeptically, they don't want to lose their screening access).

Recently we've decided to watch the live action Disney remakes because we hate ourselves. Aladdin was terrible. The Jungle Book was okay.

But what the fuck is Christopher Walken's Louie on about with calling Papaya as "Pawpaw" and then saying it was a stolen word? Papaya comes from a Taino word but it appears to be pronounced fairly close to how most pronounce papaya. Pawpaw is sometimes used to refer to the fruit (and to another similar looking but very different fruit). Wouldn't pawpaw be more the bastardization of the original word?

Also, the gigantopithecus version of King Louie is absolutely fucking terrifying as a concept but the animation is bad enough on most of the animals that it takes a lot away.

Superman and Lois continues to be great. Legends is still fun. Loki's been alright so far. Bad Batch has been fun but seems to be a vehicle to go "look a this character that was in that other thing as well!"

Golden Compass is one that had an absolutely awful adaptation and now has a decent adaptation, even though parts of it are still pretty meh. Switching adaptation goals from movie to series seems like a good idea for most book series.

After enjoying Earthsea, figured I'd try Le Guinn's sci-fi stuff. I've heard so many good things about Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed, but wanted to start at the beginning of the Hainish cycle because I do that. Got a collection. Rocannon's World was a fun one, but I'm having trouble getting started on Planet of Exile.

The Snyder Justice League was better than the previous effort, but still felt bloated despite the dearth of character development. It was a bad implementation of a unified DC movie series from the get-go, but at least this gives the Snyderverse an actual send-off and rights the studio's wrongs.

Haven't you heard? Now it's time to #restorethesynderverse

Finally finished Space Sweepers (started it like a month ago but got tired, not because of it, though).

An extremely fun movie with some great characters. My only sadness is that it's not an ongoing TV series.

After watching WandaVision, my wife brought up the movie Inkheart (also has Paul Bettany but also Brendan Fraser). It's not "good" but is a lot of fun.

that snow week was pretty fucked. we had intermittent powet but were fine. knew people who didn't have powet the entire week and had to head to motels or bunk at friends/family all week. also some busted pipes.

all because Texas couldn't stand the thought of its powet grid being regulated, and in not regulating didn't require winterization of any powet plants so the generator companies opted to save money and not winterize (shocker) since we don't get this kind of weather often (at least not across the entire state, my region gets iced once a decade or so but the rest of the state can offload powet in that scenario).

and if Texas had been linked in to the national grids (parts of it are, like El Paso, where powet was not lost for most at all) we could have had help from other parts of the country.

oh, and now the mask mandate is gone and businesses can operate at 100%. our leaders fucking hate us.

How does Discord work? It appears to be something you can only access with an account, even the "public" Discords. And I find that off-putting. I get not letting anyone reply or only have specific permissions, but these days I just hate making new accounts for stuff.

It's a collection of chat rooms, but you have to know about the chat room from somewhere else. It also has decent streaming and audio functions (I've used it for playing Jackbox online during lockdown). Decent amount of customization options, including the security, but also stuff like custom emoji reacts. I'm not sure why gaming embraced Discord as hard as it did but gamers are basically why it was successful but I think it was the decent quality, fairly reliable, free voice chat.

There's also Slack, which I have recently seen described by some alleged GenXers kid as "boomer Discord."

Rewatching Cowboy Bebop. I want more space stories that I already know I'll enjoy.

Playing and enjoying Monster Train for awhile I decided to try Slay the Spire. I'm enjoying it but I prefer Monster Train. Having the extra decision of where to put your monsters on the train is significant and MT has a lot less trap cards than StS. Oh well, I'm still at least going to get everything unlocked.

I keep wanting to try Titanfall 2 or Battlefront 2 again, I started both of them and gave up on them shortly after. I should like these games but just didn't get hooked for some reason.

I've been watching The Expanse. Sorry for spoilery bits below. Naomi and Holden do not make sense together, glad they're currently apart at the point I'm in the show (mid season 3). Holden gives me wannaba John Snow vibes a lot of the time. I like most of the characters other than Holden. Was kind of sad that Thomas Jane was gone after a bit of the show. I never really noticed him in other stuff before but I think the haircut he had just really worked for me. The way his story (as far as I know) ended on the show was kind of BS, though, I felt. Kind of fulfilling an obsession he had with a woman, sort of? Amos is an intriguing mystery. Alex is good. Naomi is good. But really don't like Holden as a character, though he does work well enough as a plot driver. I do kind of wish the spy guy from season 1 had made it longer in the show. (I would ship Naomi and Camina. I do not ship Naomi and Holden.)

Intermittently have also been rewatching Cowboy Bebop. Damn good show.

bizarre

Had you seen Legend of Korra before watching ATLA? Since you're watching ATLA for the first time, I'm just curious. I mean, I know they say not to let sequels or whatever "ruin" the original for you. Like, "the original won't be ruined no matter what comes after it." But, man, LOK took a big fat dump on ATLA.

No. I watched Aang and then Korra. (Outside of the US ATLA is called Avatar: The Legend of Ang, which is neat.) I loved the Aang run so much and I really wanted to like Korra but I had some big issues with the show, mostly around how they dealt with the bad guys. Amon and Zaheer both were right about a lot.

Maybe a lot of Amon's followers would have been mollified if there were at least some non-benders on the Republic City council. Non-benders could command the United Forces, why not city council? If going for equal representation, maybe the council should have ensured there were always non-benders on the council (they did change to a single elected president in season 2 but I don't know that this solved the issue, though some form of council also still existed, this president seemed more like an elected king).

Some of Zaheer's core principles were awesome. Disbanding monarchies is +++ for me, and by extension not allowing for the hoarding of wealth. I don't agree with completely destabilizing the Earth Kingdom, though. If you're going to displace a monarch, you need to have a plan for how to either keep that powet vacuum unfilled or ensure whoever takes over isn't a fascist despot (eg, Kuvira). Preferably governance is democratized but it doesn't seem like the needed political theories exist in this world at this point.

Unalaq deserved to die but he was right about opening the spirit portals, which could have happened without his dumb ass getting eaten by a mega-spirit. It was a good idea. Kuvira was only right in that allowing the Earth Kingdom to become so destabilized, Zaheer did more harm than good. Sure, she helped build up some infrastructure, but the means of her goals were completely fucked. I really hated Korra's last scene with her where Korra empathized with her. It felt so disgustingly liberal to me. She told her she understood her not wanting her people to be vulnerable, but Kuvira literally exploited the vulnerability of her own nation, I just don't see how anyone could empathize with that shit.

Before watching the show, I'd hear a lot of people talk about how awesome Korra and Asumi were as a couple but it was just kind of a thing that happened at the end? There were hints towards it but it felt unearned to me. I had to consider it in the context of when the show as released and how little LGBTQ representation there was in that period. Still cool, though, and they make sense together.

Bolin>Mako. Mako is just a fuckboy, I guess, I can't figure out what it is I didn't like about him. Bolin's also cuter with his little nose and mannerisms.

In comparison, I feel like some of villains in Aang's story had more time to develop as characters, where we had such a short amount of time with the villains in Korra's story. Zuko's redemption arc felt earned rather than rushed like often happens in these kinds of stories. He saw the material conditions caused by his family's actions and realized he wasn't okay with it. Uncle Iroh in a similar fashion, though it seems most of his growth was before the story started. We aren't expected to empathize with the "real" villains (the Firelord, the earth guy) in the show, which end up being more like unmovable forces of nature than characters that can be reasoned with. I was good with that.

Anyway, I'm guessing you weren't expecting a wall of spit out consciousness and it probably wasn't that well thought out, sorry for that. TLDR: Aang>Korra.

I think for me it might be that I started sucking up the extra time with being depressed, which I didn't really do before the pandemic.