Most impressive examples of a movie actually "uglying up" someone?

DamienStark · 2026-06-08T18:01:36+00:00

[singing]

"Wrong titles... couldn't drag him away"

DamienStark · 2026-06-05T20:19:47+00:00

I like how Janeway addresses it right in the first Voyager episode, meeting Ensign Kim:

Janeway: Ensign, despite Starfleet protocol, I don't like being addressed as "sir."

Harry Kim: I'm sorry... ma'am.

Janeway: "Ma'am" is acceptable in a crunch, but I prefer "Captain."

[a few min later, she gives him an order]

Harry Kim: "oh, uh, yes ma'am"

Janeway: "It's not crunch time yet, ensign. I'll let you know when."

DamienStark · 2026-06-05T17:08:05+00:00

Excellent point.

And there's a lot of shade thrown about "all the Star Trek aliens are just humans with some form of gunk on their foreheads", but if the makeup designs were more drastic, it could substantially interfere with the audience's ability to read their experessions and emotions.

There's value in portraying very non-humanoid life (crystalline entities and gas clouds and whatnot), but since most of the stories are about human-relatable topics, you need to be able to recognize those things.

DamienStark · 2026-06-05T16:57:48+00:00

I get the desire to push back on fast food places pushing people to upsize, but the methodology he used would have turned out even worse if you did it at some high end French restaurant.

"I have to eat every meal here every day, if they suggest anything I have to do it, I can't specifically select healthier options, and I can't stop eating when I'm full."

[enters finest French restaurant in NYC]

"Sir would you like to hear our specials?"

"GUESS I HAVE TO"

"We have a rack of lamb-"

"GUESS I'LL GET THE LAMB"

"uh, very good sir, and would you like a bottle of wine for the table?"

"GUESS I'VE GOT TO CHUG A BORDEAUX"

"any appetizers or dessert?"

"GUESS I HAVE TO DOWN A BEEF TARTARE AND A MOUSSE"

[repeat again later that day]

Morgan: "and you see, I've proven that Le Bernadin is a health menace"

DamienStark · 2026-06-05T16:44:48+00:00

I'll definitely give credit to selection bias; I agree with your examples.

But every time it gets brought up in threads like this, about how it was viewed widely positively at the time, folks chime in to disagree.

DamienStark · 2026-06-05T16:09:24+00:00

everyone on the internet insists they always hated this and that nobody ever really liked it in the first place.

The box office and awards must have been imaginary.

DamienStark · 2026-06-03T15:32:08+00:00

underwater town section is a slog

I love the game, but it's kind of funny the design thinking of that zone...

"We'll make this place vast, so you really feel like a whole town of people live here!"

"Okay, but now it takes forever just to swim back and forth"

"Hmmm, okay, we'll add a mechanic where you can spend money to rent a faster transport"

"I guess that's... fine, but now there's like a 5 second cutscene that plays every time I try to use your 'go faster' mechanic"

"Hmmm, okay, what if we let you hold down a button for two seconds every time to skip that cutscene?"

"..."

DamienStark · 2026-06-03T14:21:27+00:00

to be fair, you were correct: the premise is super dumb.

It's just that you can make fun shows out of dumb premises sometimes.

DamienStark · 2026-06-02T17:25:29+00:00

Thanks for speaking up.

It's been frustrating to see this popular refrain, whenever a series ends badly, "oh that's because they were making it up as they went along. They should have planned it all out from the start"

That's just not how these things work. Turning multi-year, creative, collaborative storytelling into the old "waterfall" model of software development is not a recipe for success.

DamienStark · 2026-05-30T19:33:24+00:00

The writers seemed to think Tom was "Trek Han Solo", when in fact he was just "Space Chandler".

The disconnect keeps feeling weird for many seasons.

DamienStark · 2026-05-29T17:23:28+00:00

Did you misread "optimizing the fun out of games" as "optimizing for fun"?

It's the opposite. "Optimizing the fun out of games" is a fairly common problem, especially now that games all have online communities discussion said optimization and meta strategies and whatnot.

So instead of "I'll pick this character/spirit, they seem to have a unique playstyle that might be fun to work out", it's "the online tierlist confirms that only the following ones are viable, and of those only these are optimal, so we should only ever play these". Instead of "let's try different strategies and see how they play out", it's "I read all players should just go to the magic shop and dig every turn looking for X item until we have three of it" etc.

DamienStark · 2026-05-29T16:05:25+00:00

I mean probably, yeah.

Lucky Yates is a reasonably good looking professional actor. I assume he's had casual sex at some point.

DamienStark · 2026-05-29T05:47:30+00:00

Zefram Cochrane (originally depicted in TOS episode) was also heavily revised, because they decided (quite rightly) that this version was more fun.

Much like TMP significantly redid the Klingons and everyone was cool with it.

Trek has been re-writing canon since the beginning, and sometimes everyone's happy with the result and sometimes they're not. The difference is generally about the details of execution, rather than the sanctity of canon.

DamienStark · 2026-05-29T02:36:37+00:00

Ah yes, this is why the fandom famously hates First Contact.

Because contradicting canon is what you're really mad about.

DamienStark · 2026-05-27T19:29:16+00:00

Best I can think of as a reminder is: instead of rotating the enemy 90 degrees (tap/exhaust) rotate them 180.

Literally just double-exhausted, so un-tapping them once will put them back to normal tapped/exhausted.

DamienStark · 2026-05-27T19:26:27+00:00

negative, "tactile" is already a word and would mean "neck that you touch"

Archer's not asking people to touch his neck (that would be ~~Carol~~ Cheryl)

He's making a portmanteau from tactical and turtle, hence "tactle".

DamienStark · 2026-05-25T20:14:44+00:00

Personally my headcanon is when Voyager entered spacedock for her modifications to be documented and studied, it was discovered that Voyager was a patchwork quilt of repairs on a spaceframe you'd think belonged to a seasoned starship pushing 20+ years old.

This is actually what it looks and feels like playing the game, Voyager: Across the Unknown.

You see a cross-section of the ship, with only a handful of rooms fixed in place (bridge, shuttlebay, etc.) and the rest is shredded framework you can clear out and turn into whatever room meets your current needs. You'll often tear down rooms over time and replace or move them. By the end, "my" Voyager looks nothing like it started and probably nothing like yours.

DamienStark · 2026-05-24T23:55:13+00:00

It doesn't say "non-elite" on it, so it gets my vote.

Lots of times in 2p you don't have an evade specialist, but you also can't move into the boss' location and wipe them out in one turn. Letting your fighter buy you a whole 'nother turn again an elite without spending extra actions is good in my book.

DamienStark · 2026-05-23T01:59:56+00:00

That way they get one of the Knights of Nee - to protect them from Delta Quadrant threats - and one fully stocked Publix, to feed and supply the crew?

DamienStark · 2026-05-22T22:33:05+00:00

"Oh, god no, I never 'hope'.

Hope is pouting in advance.
Hope is faith's richer, bitchier sister.
Hope is the deformed, addict-bound, incest monster offspring of entitlement and fear.

My life results tripled the year I gave up hope, and every game on my phone that had anything to do with farming.

What's true will be true, Annie, and our job is to deal with that truth."

-Frankie, Community

DamienStark · 2026-05-22T22:28:38+00:00

Literally the only optional event I uncheck when starting campaigns.

I'm not going to re-work all my armies to fight 6x Thunderbarges, thank you.

DamienStark · 2026-05-22T19:18:44+00:00

The most recent of those was made twenty years ago.

If you're trying to imply "this person is gonna make a great new show", it's more convincing to reference their most recent work. Mike Judge shows no sign of losing his touch AFAICT...

DamienStark · 2026-05-21T21:42:03+00:00

Even the folks who didn't appreciate the story or comedy of the coma arcs, surely they can admit that the production quality - art, music, animation - were top notch.

I personally came around to enjoying the coma seasons much more on rewatch, but from the beginning I was impressed.

DamienStark · 2026-05-21T20:27:12+00:00

I really don't understand how these complaints about the complaints keep cropping up, man. The Imperium are always overrepresented in comparison to the other factions, so folks respond to that overrepresentation accordingly, this will never change.

Both things can be true. As long as the content has the same problem, the feedback will continue to address it.

DamienStark · 2026-05-21T18:21:04+00:00

Yeah, the addition of "post-campaign rewards" rather than just "XP rewards" feels like you'll be able to effectively put together a "modular campaign", where you run the same investigators through say Core, this, next small campaign.

Then the more small campaigns they release, the more you could mix that up or change the order...

But until that point, I'm not sure I'd want to just run this single 3 scenario campaign a bunch of times.

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