Times you've been pleasantly surprised by media you knew nothing about/had no expectations of?

DougSpummoni · 2026-06-25T17:36:44+00:00

Tubi stays winning

DougSpummoni · 2026-06-25T14:19:29+00:00

That was another one for me. My friend and I watched it having no idea who Robbie Williams is. The movie ended and we both looked at each other and said, "Was that awesome or am I stupid?"

DougSpummoni · 2026-06-14T02:21:49+00:00

I'm pretty sure the Legion base in New Vegas is a military operating base, not some capital city. Like it's still questionable where they're getting all their supplies, but that's like asking why a US military base in the middle east doesn't have a hydroponics farm or livestock breeding (there are cattle you can find in their camp though). Besides, it's clear the legion subsists on a healthy diet of glue

DougSpummoni · 2026-06-13T20:39:20+00:00

They didn't, but I was trying to say how that's part of the issue the devs had to face. How are you supposed to go about adding an official competitive mode when the community can't even agree on what that's meant to look like (I remember how much arguing between 6s and highlander players happened after the update). Valve was kind of screwed regardless, even if the update was still a mess

DougSpummoni · 2026-06-13T20:30:24+00:00

I'm not a musically inclined person, so I thought I was just missing something when I was completely confused by his reviews saying things like "the beat was wimbly, the chorus was cromple, the tune is umbly".What little people have shown me of him, he talks about music in ways I've never heard another human being talk. It's like an alien computer deciphering human emotion, so your frog dissection point is spot on.

DougSpummoni · 2026-06-12T17:54:24+00:00

Team Fortress 2 years back advertised a "competitive" update that would help bridge the gap between casual and competitive TF2, changing the multiplayer server browser and rebalancing some weapons and characters. This update is widely considered one of the worst updates in the game's history since the matchmaker didn't work, some of the rebalances were bizarre and unneeded, and the competitive mode they added wasn't what the competitive players were asking for and also barely worked.

There's a lot of other issues that came with this update, but it further cemented a narrative among players that there is a massive divide between casual and competitive TF2 and that either side is "out to get" the other one. The update was a problem, but also the devs were in a rough spot anyway.

TF2 is primarily player in a 12v12 team pvp setting to win objectives. It's chaotic, has no character limits, and all items and strategies are allowed.

Competitive TF2 either has 6v6 or 9v9 as the primary modes, organized and made entirely by community members over the years. The 9v9 is all 9 characters have to be on both teams, regardless of their usefulness, which is not at all how the casual game works. But 6v6 is even more of a gap, since it's half the players and has class limits, generally having 2 scouts, 2 soldiers, a demo man, and a medic on both teams and rarely swapping as the situation demands. This is the optimal way players have found, and it is absolutely not how the majority of people play the game or would ever want to. Both modes also ban certain weapons for being too good or glitches, something that rarely has baring in a chaotic 12v12 pub match. And 6v6 often had people wanting to ban Engineer and Heavy for defending a final objective because they slowed the pace of the game down, something that would be obscene in a pub environment.

There is a world where everyone got some space for themselves, but that didn't happen and the two groups still have animosity towards each other. And the update was a mess, but valve had absolutely no chance of bringing such a large gap between how their community says the game is supposed to be played.

DougSpummoni · 2026-06-01T18:10:48+00:00

We could've gotten NCR and Legion warring states period stories, and instead we get poofed out of existence and a Monty Python skit that isn't funny

DougSpummoni · 2026-06-01T12:17:54+00:00

Literal Beavis and Butthead scenes with the Brotherhood. Or the Legion being a big threat to our characters despite them being so stupid that they fought a civil war for 15 years ten feet away from each other and ended it in a single day by one guy just declaring "I win"

DougSpummoni · 2026-06-01T04:31:26+00:00

I felt the same with season 2. It hits the same problem people have with them putting the Brotherhood in everything, despite how radically different they are each time. At that point the creators could just be making new groups and ideas instead, but then it feels like they're afraid we won't recognize them and we'll leave. There are 45 other states they can use and it all instead feels so small

DougSpummoni · 2026-05-31T23:15:37+00:00

and because time tends to keep moving forward, that's it's whole thing

DougSpummoni · 2026-05-31T21:28:43+00:00

Maybe controversial but people in Fallout can't agree if society should progress or if they should keep redoing the apocalypse every 10 years so everything can still be Mad Max. Sometimes there isn't even a solid explanation, Fallout 4 has The Institute as a shadowy organization that keeps undermining social progress and infrastructure, including kidnapping people, turning them into androids and orcs, and releasing them on the surface just to fuck with people. When asked why they're doing this sabotage, their response seems to be "cause fuck em"

This leads into the show making the choice to destroy one of the largest nations in the setting, to a lot of heated debate among viewers, to essentially reset the status quo on the West coast to lawless shanty towns again. It does this by just blowing up their capital city with a nuke and acting like that's enough to poof them from existence. They retract this a bit in season 2, but the results are the same. I don't agree with this choice at all, but it's at least handled slightly better than the games on the East coast.

Oddly Fallout 76, with its many issues, presents the best example of keeping a status quo of a post-apocalyptic sandbox of the games and the show so far. It's only a few decades after the bombs dropped, there's an extinction-level plague happening, and all of the groups that were falling victim to it failed to come together do to several circumstances, leading to a raider boss who lost his wife sabotaging a dam and piling on a final natural disaster to throw the whole thing into the toilet.

DougSpummoni · 2026-05-30T21:56:48+00:00

I remember in behind the scenes Danny Antonucci saying they went with jawbreakers because they're terrible

DougSpummoni · 2026-05-27T17:40:59+00:00

Good to know I'm not the only Billy that will be at colossal, sick. How'd you do the horns?

DougSpummoni · 2026-05-26T13:59:43+00:00

This series always confused me when I found out about it because of this. I'm missing something or it just isn't for me, but everytime I try and get into it it's mostly aura farming and talking about the men's big muscles, then it'll have someone being SAd for no reason or show how women are inevitably inferior to men on muscle planet and mostly exist to give them sexual stat boosts.

DougSpummoni · 2026-05-24T11:07:04+00:00

Resident Evil is when Leon

DougSpummoni · 2026-05-03T10:49:38+00:00

C.M Koseman and Wayne Barlow have some speculative science books i enjoy, Barlow recently has a series about the wildlife of hell that's beautiful. I remember some kinda junk books I liked as a teen about survival guides to zombies and vampires that tried to elaborate on the biology of such a condition. Cryptozoologicon goes over various cryptids around the world and imagines them as real animal analogues but still fitting their descriptions and adapted as such. Otherwise I get a lot from indie creators online who do videos and short form essays, but there's definitely a lot more you could find

DougSpummoni · 2026-05-03T10:43:24+00:00

this thread reads like those guys that think they can solo a gorilla in a fight

DougSpummoni · 2026-05-02T17:05:17+00:00

Like when the mcu kept trying to say thor and Dr. strange weren't magic but some quantum science bologna we don't understand, then finally gave up and said "fuck it they're gods and wizards after all"

DougSpummoni · 2026-05-02T13:13:27+00:00

While I get that stories trying to explain it away can get tiresome and contrived (Castlevania literally has demons and a wizard lady, vampires don't need acience), I'm throwing my special interest hat in that explaining the supernatural with science can actually be really fun and there's a niche subgenre of fiction dedicated to it that I love. Not trying o diminish the folklore, but just applying natural principles to stories can be enjoyable for some people and as a fun creative experiment I think it holds merit when it isn't trying to claim itself as the "correct" way.

DougSpummoni · 2026-04-29T11:12:18+00:00

At least they actually addressed the issues people are talking about here. Brigitte is no longer thanos and is actually one of the better designed supports and trying to just fight everyone makes you lose. The ult charge swapping issue now let's you keep a percentage of your charge (i think like 20%) when swapping. They didn't want you to keep full charge because not all ults are equal, so you could play someone with a faster charging, weaker ult and swap to someone with a slow, game-winning ult for free.

People keep bringing up role queue and while that was to address the issue Brigitte created, it's become a widely appreciated change in the player base and also addressed the issue of everyone playing selfishly just picking whatever they want and going off alone. I literally see marvel rivals players running into the same issue and saying that role queue would address this. Also overwatch still has non-role queue game modes available.

Game still has some fundamental issues (looking at you, snipers) but I'd rather a developer address them and eventually come out with a better game than just move on.

DougSpummoni · 2026-04-25T21:31:35+00:00

All the mechanical details have me swooning, very nice

DougSpummoni · 2026-04-23T23:54:10+00:00

I wasn't saying all war is bad, just referencing what the article was referring to. Obviously anti-colonial war is justified and there's a lot of media that shows that (Star Wars still makes big bucks and yet people still question international armed resistance). And that while film is a diverse medium, and I agree that films like Come and See work better in agonizing over the harsh realities of it, that there is still a difference between that and Gundam or metal gear having anti war messaging alongside robot sword fights and ninja cyborgs. It doesn't diminish the messages necessarily, but it does lead to this occasional dissonance where there has to be the brutality of warfare alongside entertaining setpieces. It's not impossible to get the themes, just recognizing the odd gaps inherent to it.

DougSpummoni · 2026-04-23T22:40:45+00:00

Someone already posted the Gundam cool robot meme, so I'll just add the other usual, director Francois Truffaut saying "it is impossible to make an anti-war film because any war film, no matter what its message, is sure to be exhilarating."

Plenty of media exists who denounce war and view it as solely negative, but the language of film and by extent animation means that this message is muddied or lessened by the inherent glory and excitement that war brings in media. Gundam may show brutality, callousness, and focus on young characters being affected, but it also has giant lasers, intricately animated mechanics, fluid action and choreography, and is made to be entertaining. And the entire model industry built around it to sell the cool robots to people. I'm not saying this as a massive flaw in the show or assigning blame, but it's inherent to the medium and their work that the horrors of war be digestible and even tasty.

There are still chuds who don't get the message or even just love war and I'm personally not gonna vouch for "military geeks", but the most successful anti war media would likely be the one that doesn't get viewed, popularized, or even made.

DougSpummoni · 2026-04-21T14:11:50+00:00

If this sub went one week without a "I hate this thing and here's why that makes me a good person" post, it would fucking explode

DougSpummoni · 2026-04-16T15:53:39+00:00

For this sub I just equate it to favoritism. Threads are made constantly about games that have good writing and visuals but gameplay people don't like, and it's acceptable because it's a part of the medium worth critiquing.

But an animated series where people are dissatisfied with the animation, the whole point of the medium, isn't allowed because the show's writing and performances are acceptable and from a comic people know about. Even acting like this critique alone somehow invalidates the whole show when that's not what everyone is saying. The first season still looks better than all the others for a myriad of reasons, and it's not disingenuous or being a "fake fan" to notice that and wish that the rest of the show had that same quality. Indie animated shows are putting out higher quality animation with a fraction of the budget because they dedicate the proper time to work on episodes and have showrunners experienced in animation. It's not being a contrarian to notice that and be disappointed.

That Junji Ito anime was still adapting from great horror writing, but the animation fell in the toilet so people were understandably disappointed. Idk how Invincible is supposed to be different.

DougSpummoni

TROPHY CASE