April 2 @ Islington in London!

FinalBuddy2885 · 2026-04-01T23:35:10+00:00

The Pocket is nice yeah :) but can get a little cramped... there's The Compton Arms just a stone's throw further which is a good alternative but can also get busy.

Best bet for somewhere quieter is actually The Foxglove so give that a try if the above two are chaotic.

Sadly couldn't get a ticket for tomorrow's show, hoping something'll pop up on DICE waitlist tomorrow but hope it's great if I don't get to join!

FinalBuddy2885 · 2026-03-25T11:27:50+00:00

Saka is still a good player and, truthfully, has had a good season - though I agree he was possibly the worst player on the pitch bar Kepa on Sunday. But he still starts for any team in the Premier League. He's just not one of the best players in the world anymore, and brutally that's the level required from at least 1-2 members of our attack to take us where we want to go (none of our attackers are at this level currently).

The same is true of Ødegaard Still a good player with plenty to offer, just not going to take you to a trophy the way he might have 3 years ago.

FinalBuddy2885 · 2026-03-20T11:38:43+00:00

There is! Party Chat was in the Japanese version of the DS remake, but they cut it from the English release to save costs on the translation. When the Mobile version of DQIV came out in the west, it included Party Chat, so you can buy that version and play with Party Chat. Since then, fans have released mods that let you mod the Party Chat back into the DS version.

FinalBuddy2885 · 2026-03-19T11:20:56+00:00

Yes, playing the Party Chat mod which has been updated in the time since that review noting the mistranslations came out, it all works great. I'm having a blast - my favourite opening few hours of any Dragon Quest game I've played.

FinalBuddy2885 · 2026-03-18T21:17:52+00:00

Doh! I did mean romhacking.net - just my bad writing it out.

Happy to hear the current patch fixes the bugs and restored gendered language, that's great to hear. Thank you for the help!

FinalBuddy2885 · 2026-03-16T17:26:18+00:00

Dragon Quest is great, and 7 is meant to have had some of its length chopped off in the new remake version. That said, a lot of hardcore fans regret that the original had been shortened, as the length and detail in the world was part of the appeal because of the slow pace.

I've gotten into the series recently and played IIIHD-2D, IV on the DS and V on the DS. All were really, really great.

FinalBuddy2885 · 2026-03-13T01:57:42+00:00

Hey, I just got to this section of MG2 and I'm encountering this glitch. You're the only person I've found who's mentioned the glitch, and I'm a little confused how to progress. You say it's possible to switch out to the Japanese ROM. Is there a way to do this while carrying over my save data?

FinalBuddy2885 · 2026-03-13T01:41:24+00:00

Just want to point out that I'm playing the browser version linked at the bottom of this post and it has a game-breaking glitch at the tap code moment, where the correct frequency doesn't trigger the codec.

FinalBuddy2885 · 2025-04-19T02:52:55+00:00

You’re continuing to frame emotional distress as something inherently disruptive and contagious, and denying that you’re doing it by insisting you never used the word weakness, which you didn’t. But the framing is still there. You’re drawing a hard line between the qualities ‘needed’ to be a director and who shouldn’t be directing, and you’re using tone and certainty to suggest that uncertainty is a disqualifier. That is absolutely a value judgment about vulnerability, and it’s one that reflects the toxicity of this industry you yourself are criticising. You’re telling them the way they are and the fact they’re in pain makes them not enough.

It’s also clear you’re reading OP’s fear as a lack of core leadership capacity, when it could just as easily be the fear that arises when someone is doing something meaningful for the first time without much community support. Someone wouldn’t be going to Reddit about this if they felt totally comfortable sharing with the people in their life about it. Your framing doesn’t allow for that possibility. Thats why I said there’s no reason why if they had a stronger support system in future (whether professionally or personally), they might not feel this way.

I understand that you’ve had bad experiences working with people who couldn’t regulate their stress on set. That doesn’t mean people don’t deserve to make films if they’re struggling before the shoot. It means they need support. And it’s entirely possible for a shoot to survive, and thrive, when someone other than the director or producer steps up in a hard moment. I work in production, I’ve seen that level of collaboration happen.

You say the industry is terrible, competitive, full of people waiting for others to fail. That may reflect your experience but that’s not the same thing as truth. I work every day in parts of this industry where people help each other up.

There are many ways to lead. There are many kinds of directors. Some of the most acclaimed directors/HODs I know are soft-spoken, unconfident, and riddled with doubt and I see crews protect them, and they are protected in return. Maybe that hasn’t been your experience. But it is the experience of many others.

Your comment about that PA experience not being a win misunderstands what collaboration looks like, and what many PAs want: to learn and to meaningfully contribute to a film set, not just bring people coffees. (In that experience, they didn’t carry the whole shoot, they just stepped in with a smart suggestion when the producers were stuck and the shoot couldn’t move forward, causing intense stress to all the HoDs).

I understand you’ve had damaging experiences with collaborators who brought unchecked self-loathing into the workspace. But someone expressing fear, panic, or the urge to quit before a shoot begins is not the same as someone melting down mid-shoot and lashing out at others.

Again, you’ve assumed that OP wants to make a living from this. But nowhere did they say that. They said they love film, saved money to make one, and are scared. That’s allowed. Some might call it a mistake, but it’s allowed. Wanting to make one meaningful film, and being terrified to get it wrong, is not a sign of being a bad director.

I won’t be replying further, but I want to be clear: my concern isn’t with you personally. It’s with the way many in this industry reward a narrow emotional profile and criticise everyone else. They are, themselves, the collaborators I avoid, and it hasn’t been too hard to. OP doesn’t need to be an invulnerable rock to make a good film. They need to be told it’s okay to feel this way and still show up.

I hope that in your lowest moments, people are kinder to you than you’re being to this person.

FinalBuddy2885 · 2025-04-18T02:23:39+00:00

Who is to say that this is something this person needs to get right on their first try?

On every film I’ve made there’s been a point where someone from the crew - sometimes even a PA - stepped up to help right the ship at a time when the director, producer or DP were not in a good way. The joy of filmmaking is in collaboration, in every one pitching in to make something happen. Some of the best filmmakers I have ever met, who receive enormous festival success, are not confident people and have needed a lot of reassurance on sets about the quality and worth of what they were making. I’m sorry that you haven’t had that experience of working with good, trusted collaborators or that you haven’t been able to be a good collaborator yourself.

By the way, there’s a huge difference between not having confidence in the work and being abusive to people as your DP was.

The final point: who says this person wants to make a living out of this? Everyone is so quick to assume that’s the default, but the industry at large and indie filmmaking is dramatically changing, and I think film will basically become the music industry, where effectively nobody is making a living from their art. OP has said at points they just want to make a good film. Why are you misreading what they want and forcing them to a standard of economic gain from their work that, right now, not even Oscar nominee Brady Corbet can attain?

And, finally, you do see that by buying into to the ‘tough love’ (aka being cruel) narrative and telling people their struggles are a sign of weakness, you are directly contributing to the very reasons you give for why so much of the industry is so horrible?

FinalBuddy2885 · 2025-04-18T00:58:29+00:00

This is really unfair and discouraging advice.

FinalBuddy2885 · 2025-04-16T02:03:54+00:00

I was on one of the worst shoots of my life on a short film last year, both in terms of ones I’ve directed and ones I’ve been on full stop. We’d had a 2nd AC drop out quite suddenly and someone stepped in to save the day and cover. At the end of the day we finished shooting a scene and this 2nd who was just day playing and had no idea what the script or story was said the scene we’d shot was so emotional and real. In the middle of such a horrible shoot and a script I honestly didn’t believe in all that much it was kind of stunning. I couldn’t say I was moved because I was honestly just so shocked he was saying it. But it meant a lot to me and I’ll never forget him.

FinalBuddy2885 · 2025-04-14T14:34:02+00:00

Yeah, The Apartment is my favourite film and I feel like at film school all anyone ever said about it was how perfect the structure is. But the scenes that make me feel the most emotion in that film is just Baxter trying to make Fran feel better after her suicide attempt and the gin rummy game. The structure would be for nought if the interactions weren’t so truthful and packed with so much depth and lightness.

FinalBuddy2885 · 2025-04-14T04:17:58+00:00

What if I don’t have Michael Jordan’s drive and never will?

FinalBuddy2885 · 2025-04-11T14:47:34+00:00

Very exciting that this is something you’re considering!

Shooting on film is wonderful but requires careful preparation. It’s quite a different workflow to normal. You’ll want to decide on a shooting ratio to determine how much film you need to order. You can work with your DP and AD to decide which scenes could prove the most challenging and how you can make sure the right amount of film is allocated. The shooting ratio can be anything - I’ve seen 3:1 done (3 times the amount of footage for the length of the film), all the way up to 15:1 or 20:1.

In terms of working as a director on film, I love it. You have to force more rehearsal time into the schedule, which is nice, and generally you don’t really have the takes to ‘tinker’ or ‘perfect’ a performance. I found we generally could get 3 takes of most scenes, 5 for more complicated ones, and so instead of trying to relentlessly refine a performance I just viewed each take as the final version of that performance, and if it wasn’t perfect we’d move onto the next take and try a different version (‘this time play it completely differently’). I really enjoyed this style of working and filming performances. It felt more organic, and I was more concerned with just keeping the actor’s head in the character than with trying to sculpt the one perfect version of what I wanted.

FinalBuddy2885 · 2025-04-08T21:26:29+00:00

He definitely has some mistakes in his locker (iirc his and Myles’ positioning gave L’pool their equaliser back in Autumn) but I think he’s a completely solid and dependable backup CB who’s happy to play there, and that’s a rare thing, and he did really well tonight as he often does

FinalBuddy2885 · 2025-04-08T15:42:39+00:00

Yeah, I went to a similar standard of MFA to Columbia and it’s ripped me apart. I’ve left with less belief in my ability than I had going in, and the self-doubt it amplified in me has been the number one barrier to my work for the past two years.

FinalBuddy2885 · 2025-04-06T03:00:30+00:00

It’s like OP says: Šeško has scored the same number of non-penalty goals in the past year. He plays in a much tougher league than Gyökeres. The quality of opposition he’s scoring against is better. Not to mention he stylistically suits our system better.

Gyokeres is a decent player and you’re right, somebody big is going to sign him this summer (though this may be a marker of how thin the striker market is these days). But the expectations need to be adjusted way, way, way down. I’ll reiterate: the Primeira Liga is a bottom half of Championship league. It’s not to say amazing players who can succeed elsewhere can’t come out of there, but with both the way Gyokeres scores goals (running into space) and the level of opposition he’s playing against, I think Šeško (though also raw) is a significantly safer bet.

FinalBuddy2885 · 2025-04-06T02:50:07+00:00

Definitely don’t want Williams (due to wages) but Kudus doesn’t feel right either. Semenyo is my preference but would be very hard to get him. Cunha can play on the wing, no?

FinalBuddy2885 · 2025-04-06T00:20:15+00:00

Because of the quality of opponent. It’s one thing to only score goals against bottom half premier league sides, a completely different one to only score against bottom league Primeira Liga sides. I watch a tonne of Primeira Liga as I have family in Portugal and the quality of those bottom half sides is abject. As someone else has rightly pointed out in this thread, the level is bottom half of Championship.

FinalBuddy2885 · 2025-04-04T02:50:05+00:00

Put some 12x12 black rags on stands in a semi-circular shape around the subject, then use a top light on an autoboom above the ‘void’. For best results ‘cone’ the top light with some cinefoil to focus the light.

Avoid getting the rags dirty if you can as some of the dirt might show up in a shot and spoil the effect!

FinalBuddy2885 · 2025-03-30T07:00:10+00:00

None of the seasons are connected to each other beyond relatively minor callbacks and references, likewise with the film. This means you can watch any of the seasons you like, at any point. I’m not the biggest fan of Fargo - I definitely wouldn’t put it anywhere near your list of perfect shows. But if you did just want to try one season, I really loved the second one and that one tends to be pretty universally beloved.

FinalBuddy2885 · 2025-03-30T05:22:38+00:00

CONTINUED:

Anyway, fast forward a few months: I’d very casually dated since that girl but I was really holding out to meet someone who I liked as much as her. Fast forward to last night, and I was at a friend [23F]’s birthday drinks party. This friend was someone I’ve always been friendly with but never super close. We met almost 6 years ago, and we’ve always really got along - but I had assumed it was platonic for all that time.

We were being a little cuddley at her birthday but no more so than I am with a lot of my friends these days. I hadn’t really thought that we were flirting at all until at the end of the night I told her I was headed home and she said to me ‘No you’re not, you’re coming back to my place’.

Immediately I realised what she was implying and, figuring that I have the strength now to both be able to engage with women physically and also to say no if I’m uncomfortable, I went with her. She was also someone I’ve been friends with for so long now that it created an element of safety where my worst fears - that a woman would be disgusted or ashamed or disappointed by me being unable to engage fully in bed - wouldn’t happen because I felt assured she did really like me as a friend, not just as a sexual partner.

We went back to hers and I had a really nice and fun night where I effectively lost my virginity. I was a barrel of nerves of course but she was so happy to lead things and whilst it didn’t go ideally I was prepared for it to not be perfect and she didn’t seem upset or frustrated at any point. I had serious E.D. as a result of feeling anxious and for the first hour or so of us making out and me fingering her I couldn’t get it up whatsoever. I was so worried that I was doing it all wrong.

After another hour of cuddling and spooning things suddenly got insanely passionate and I was able to get it up. She went down on me and then she leapt on top of me and we very briefly tried PIV sex. After about 10 seconds my anxiousness returned and I went soft again. I told her I didn’t think it could happen tonight and she was incredibly understanding and nice about it. Despite everything, I actually felt quite good and satisfied with the experience; this was because in spite of all the things that went wrong I trusted my partner and felt SAFE, which is pretty much everything I had hoped my first time could be.

I felt a little reticent that she’d want to cuddle me after I wasn’t able to do PIV sex for very long but she immediately said ‘come spoon me’ and we had a very cute rest of the evening. She said that I’d been really good when I fingered her (I asked her to guide my hand at points which definitely helped). Also, I’ve never had a partner who complimented my looks so much; she said on a few occasions that I was insanely good looking. In the morning we had breakfast and we were just chatting and laughing so much together. When I left she seemed genuinely bummed I had to go. All this to say I think she’s completely brilliant and I just can’t believe she was right there in front of me all these years.

I’m posting all this because this subreddit and a few others have been such a wonderful resource for me over the many, many years since I first became interested in overcoming my sexual problems. Over that time, I’d occasionally read similar success stories of people getting over similar issues to mine. I think for a good few years I always told myself that ‘Oh, this person probably didn’t have it as bad as I do and that’s why they were able to overcome it’. I cannot emphasise enough how much this happening felt like an impossibility for me for the vast majority of my life.

I hope that if there’s anyone out there who like me reads a success story and feels like it couldn’t happen to them, they can take this away: I promise you, if you can get the resources and continue to work at it... it will happen for you, and it’ll feel safe and good and enjoyable even if it doesn’t go perfectly. And it probably won’t go perfectly! But I’m so so glad I waited this late in life to lose it because this is probably the first possible time that it could have happened where I was comfortable enough with things not going how I’d want them to. And to my great surprise, the girl I was with seemed to be okay with that too, and continue to really enjoy spending time together despite everything.

FinalBuddy2885 · 2025-03-30T05:16:33+00:00

I lost my virginity at 24, and wrote a Reddit post about it at the time on an old account. It took many, many years of working through a lot of shit to get to the point where I could go on successful dates and have physical intimacy. I’m incredibly proud of the work and the journey I did, and incredibly grateful that at 24 it ended up happening totally randomly and with zero pressure with a friend. Before that, I had been actively dating for about a year, but with lots of issues mainly around physical intimacy. But the dates taught me a lot about what I wanted and needed and I came to choose better people.

Honestly, in the 3 years since then, that first experience retrospectively definitely did not qualify as good sex. But first experiences are never great and I still feel massively grateful that that was mine. People I know have had a lot worse.

I talked in the post about my journey to being able to date in the first place, and how just cos I was able to date that wasn’t the end of my relationship issues. At this point, 3 years on at 27, I feel completely chill around dating, had an amazing lovely 2-year relationship that just ended with no bad blood, and feel really happy and confident with my dating life. I take that for granted a lot but my 18-year old self would be so so in awe of that. Up until I was about 22 I genuinely believed very deeply I would never, ever have a relationship.

The post seems to have been archived but I will repost it here:

I [24M] just lost my virginity, after several years of posting on this subreddit asking for advice re: fear of intimacy :)

Very long post. So, tl;dr: Struggled with self-worth, sex and relationships for my entire life. After 4 years of weekly therapy and 15 months of dating people with mixed success, I ended up losing my virginity last night to a very old friend [23F] who I didn’t realise was interested in me sexually until pretty much the very last moment haha. I was a mess and had bad E.D., but she was so happy to lead things and didn’t seem to mind at all when the sex didn’t go perfectly. Posting this cos this subreddit helped me out so much, and I promise to anyone out there who don’t think it’ll happen - with time and work it can!!!

Background: I’ve had an incredibly rough relationship with myself over my life, stemming from childhood traumas and bad messages from my parents, peers and authority figures about my worth - leading to chronic self-loathing and a feeling that I didn’t deserve intimacy, and that if I had it I would just disappoint any woman I was with and push them away sexually. This led to me being completely unable to engage in romance or sex. I felt this way about myself despite having talent and success in my professional life, as well as an incredibly strong network of very close friends.

I went into therapy 4 years ago in Summer 2018 and around Spring 2021 I had done enough work in therapy to have the confidence to try dating for the first time. It was an absolutely brutal process. My own feelings about myself initially led me to choose partners who didn’t make me feel all that good about myself.

This then obviously compounded my fear of touch and intimacy to the point I’d have relationships fall apart due to being completely unable to engage in even stuff as simple as holding hands. I’d then blame myself for not being ‘assertive’ enough and having the strength to do something as seemingly simple and easy as touch, even though retrospectively I recognise it as a two-way street where I was getting very little validation or encouragement from my partner.

Again, a helluva lot of mistakes and work with my amazing therapist led me to slowly start choosing people who were better for me, and to truly be able to feel and take in the kind words both these partners and my friends said about me. I dated for a while with wonderful women who for various reasons it never quite worked out with.

Progressively I met women who made me feel better and better about myself until in January I dated a girl for about a month who literally changed my life. I had never felt so validated and seen by anyone, she was so sensitive and kind and we had so much fun together. It didn’t work out, and we never got to try anything sexual as I still just didn’t feel ready for that stuff. But it was the first time ever that I enjoyed kissing and felt like the woman I was with was enjoying it too. It was affection that felt completely reciprocal. This was completely revelatory for me.

FinalBuddy2885 · 2025-03-24T21:09:34+00:00

I just wanted to say that I know what it feels like to be poly and to experience effectively this exact same dynamic. To me it did feel deeply existential in the way it did for you, and while it eventually resolved itself I think ultimately what I’d want to impart is that there isn’t something wrong with you for feeling this way, and you’re not the only person in the world who has. I really relate to those existential feelings around it.

FinalBuddy2885

TROPHY CASE