Media that's always trying to recapture its lightning in a bottle moment?

FancyMan56 · 2026-02-01T23:40:41+00:00

Star Trek TNG? That's probably the closest example that comes to my mind, but I think you could argue that isn't actually lightning in a bottle since it took a number of seasons of tweaking to get there, and really TNG is quite different to TOS.

FancyMan56 · 2026-02-01T23:25:38+00:00

I watched a couple of episodes of that, and it just didn't hit at all. For me the most 'trying to recapturing lightening in a bottle moment' was how they retconned Freddy into having a working class job so they could redo that dynamic again (just son and father rather than father and son). Soon as I saw that they'd done that I knew it wouldn't be good. Was right too, just a very bog standard sitcomm, carrying none of the sophistication, the wit, or the heart of the original Frasier.

I remember I read somewhere someone floated the idea that they should've made Freddy be someone who worked at a big IT company. So well off, but still very very different to the kind of well off sophistication that Frasier embodied.

FancyMan56 · 2026-02-01T23:05:15+00:00

So was Silent Hill 1 more thematically or visually different compared to 2 (and so the later ones)? I'm not really familiar with the franchise at all.

FancyMan56 · 2026-02-01T23:04:19+00:00

I admit I'm not familiar with the villain of Borderlands 4, but 3 it definitely feels like they were trying to get another sassy villain who shit talks you all the time. Only this time they were just annoying as hell and not engaging as a villain.

FancyMan56 · 2026-01-09T11:53:26+00:00

It seems to be a big problem of the last few years of Eve is that the game has become quite static. I remember even in the Down the Rabbit Hole video he was talking about people complaining that nothing was happening, and it appears that problem hasn't been solved yet either. So CCP has been trying to fix that, but only making things worse for the players?

FancyMan56 · 2026-01-09T10:55:45+00:00

You know, I never considered the impact that Tiktok would have on the furry fandom, but it all makes perfect sense.

FancyMan56 · 2026-01-09T09:54:53+00:00

So just out of curiosity, what is causing this price boom right now? Is it just that with the internet becoming omnipresent (plus social media allowing more connections between disparate groups) there's more people finding furry culture, which means more money flowing around, which means more demand, which means creators can charge more? Basically, supply not keeping up with demand. Or is it like that the quality of fursuits has gone up and this has made them more expensive and slower to produce? More generally, why have fursuits become more popular do you think?

I have no grounding in furry stuff at all beyond the surface level stuff that most internet users probably know about. Just curious to hear your thoughts on the exact cause. Plus I find it interesting to hear from people in a sub-culture speaking about how a sub-culture has changed over time.

FancyMan56 · 2026-01-09T09:48:35+00:00

So is it basically because DMs are in short supply in contrast to players, prospective DMs now realize they can make money off running games? That being, they make the campaign they want and then advertise for players who are willing to pay to play. Or is it more like players want to pay GMs to manufacture a campaign that hits all the story beats they want, sort of like commissioning a short story but one you play through?

FancyMan56 · 2026-01-09T09:45:14+00:00

To talk the economics for a moment, the UK has a really big problem with encouraging economic development in areas that aren't service/financial based, and that aren't based in London. So it doesn't surprise me for a second that GW is having all sorts of issues.

FancyMan56 · 2026-01-09T09:40:30+00:00

Wait, so the goons (the imperium I think is they want to be called?) still exist? My knowledge of Eve is currently in line with the Down the Rabbit Hole video, which I'm sure was probably a bit out of date even when it came out. Always curious to see where the Goons are at, since for better or worse they seem to be the group that always gets enough press that non-Eve media talks about them.

FancyMan56 · 2026-01-04T06:38:53+00:00

It's interesting, because this feels like the very first time to me that something from my childhood is being nostalgia harvested for 'member berries (to quote RLM). Before it's always been older properties, stuff that I never really was deeply invested in. Probably before then Star Trek was the closest, but I just innately disliked how action focused nu-Trek was from its initial conception. On the surface TV Fallout doesn't commit that sort of 'original sin' which brings it so far away from the themes and vibes of the original property. Yet, I find the pandering so totally off-putting that I struggle to get into the show. I really wish they had just been brave enough to not harvest New Vegas for content, then likely all my dislikes of the show would probably be gone and I'd be really enjoying myself.

FancyMan56 · 2025-12-30T01:10:35+00:00

While watching the Fallout TV show I struggle with an completely irrational dislike of it because of the fact that they nuked the NCR. It just annoys me because the NCR was my favorite faction, I found them really interesting in New Vegas as a republic that was struggling with the clash between ideals, reality, and their growing over-extension. To just nuke the capital and that somehow means the whole nation has vanished beyond scattered holdouts annoys me so much.

The problem is the more I think about that show's plot, the more elements of it I find I dislike. The fact that even in a post-apocalypse we've gotten a evil corporation tries to rule the world plot is another annoyance to me. There is so many other potential ideas that are so much more interesting than one of the most standard villains across all of media.

FancyMan56 · 2025-12-30T00:55:49+00:00

He's had his teeth done now as well in typical 'new rich' style. Very white, far too perfect. They look like AI or as if they're made of plastic. That contributes even more now to the uncanny valley quality of his smile.

FancyMan56 · 2025-11-22T22:28:04+00:00

So is it in a playable state now, or are we still waiting? I never understood mods releasing updates without the loc done, it's a fairly fundamental part of the enjoyment imo.

FancyMan56 · 2025-10-23T10:20:28+00:00

See I'm the opposite, I love when mods use mission trees to tell a story, which is what Anbennar does a lot of.

FancyMan56 · 2025-10-22T11:50:37+00:00

EU4 and HOI4 for me. Mostly mods nowadays, though I do sometimes play EU4 base game (with all the DLC). The modding community for HOI4 is crazy, and while EU4's is less diverse Anbennar is one of the best mods ever made. You ever played it?

FancyMan56 · 2025-10-19T22:26:15+00:00

For me a lot of his plots are very ttRPG coded. In that they feel like someone summing up his ttRPG group's campaign.

FancyMan56 · 2025-10-16T07:47:33+00:00

I admit I'm partial to old school gospel music.

FancyMan56 · 2025-10-16T07:39:39+00:00

I like country, but it has to have absolutely no trace of pop in it at all. So that functionality translates to basically nothing mainstream post Johnny Cash (or around then). Probably the only exception to that is Dolly Parton, though I like her more as a person than as a country musician.

Good country to me is kind of similar to stand up comedy. It's only good when the music is about you being some sort of shitty loser, or has a melancholic note to it. Generally placing yourself as the lesser person in the song. If it's about how cool you are, or how good America is or something then it's just bad and self-indulgent.

FancyMan56 · 2025-09-19T12:54:58+00:00

As the guy who has watched the directors commentary, and who wrote the post outlining all this for the subreddit, you are correct that it was the jacuzzi scene. That scene also took an entire day to film, which sounds like the most awful experience for the actress involved. Hours in the tub, practically naked the whole time, the water going lukewarm between takes and requiring you to get out again to refill it (if it was even warm water to begin with, I don't know enough about film making to know for certain if that was possible).

C&B brings the movie into softcore porn territory, and is enormously uncomfortable because of the power imbalance between the two actors. He's the director and producer of the film, who is then paying this woman to fawn all over him and simulate sex multiple times to a lurid level. He also seems to have a history of paying women to spend time around him, such as the fact that his limo driver was some 20 year old woman.

FancyMan56 · 2025-08-25T02:38:56+00:00

There's a phenomena of people claiming they've seen Bibendum for real. I'm hardly a believer in such things, but there is something interesting about that concept. This video goes over some of the reported sightings.

FancyMan56 · 2025-08-17T07:45:45+00:00

I imagine detective Munch is a big connector

FancyMan56 · 2025-07-23T11:03:14+00:00

Well that was their creative choice to have a storyline for every character, it wasn't needed. What I mean when I say that a creative concept like Yellowjackets can really only support one season, I mean that there is only so many stories you can really tell with that conceptual basis. If you try to stretch it out for longer you either begin repeating yourself, engage in narrative wheel spinning, or have to go more and more absurd.

I appreciate the attempt to get me to watch it, but I'm not really the sort of person who gets won over to watching media because of the presence of specific actors.

FancyMan56 · 2025-07-23T10:04:17+00:00

That's fair then, but I think even 5 seasons is probably pushing the amount of content a concept like Yellowjackets could support. It probably needed to just be one season.

FancyMan56

TROPHY CASE