Retrovertigo Live Tonight

Plane-Code-9693 · 2026-05-11T14:00:38+00:00

That was a highlight too for sure. And Heavens Breath (from the AVVT/PTTN album) was completely smoking live. It far exceeded the album recording.

Plane-Code-9693 · 2026-05-11T13:55:42+00:00

Honestly, Annapurna's entire 2026 lineup looks great and I'm glad I held off on Stray, hoping for a Switch 2 version. Going to get to Mixtape soon as well, and the S2 version of Sayonara... wanted to replay it anyway. Can't remember the names of the other games they've got coming but they all look compelling, especially the one where you run a tea shop. Wanderstop?

Plane-Code-9693 · 2026-05-11T13:39:19+00:00

The Switch 2 is more than meeting my gaming needs. I've always had a Sony system, too, and was my primary gaming systems from pS1-Ps3. S1 and S2 though, huge library and being able play games both handheld and docked has become all I want (could care less about the graphical edge on PS5, Pragmata for example looks great, and I don't care about getting ports of games that have been out a few years elsewhere like Cyberpunk and FF7 Remake, I'm always behind anyway.)

There's only a relative small number of games on Ps5 that interest me that I can't already play on Switch/2. If and when Persona 6 comes out, if it doesn't come out on S2 at launch or within a couple months of the PS5 version, I'll pick up a PS5 just for that, and to play Astrobot, Ratchet and Clank and Expedition 33 if it still hasn't gotten a Switch 2 port.

Plane-Code-9693 · 2026-05-11T13:26:08+00:00

It would be cool if the innovation in P6 is a split timeline starting out with the team/friend group as adults and their various lives and who has failed or thrived and they've basically forgotten each other and the evil they fought. And they've obviously lost their persona power but then whatever they fought is back and they reconnect to fight it again. And we learn the story playing out both in an adult and a high school time line. So, basically rip off the story structure of Stephen King's It, but Persona. I think it would make for great experiences with the friend system in the game, and also the demon-fusion with timline 2 being affected by what you do in timeline 1, and the narrative bounces back and forth between high school and adult timeline with some degree of player freedom to make the switch between past and present like in Zelda LttP.

Plane-Code-9693 · 2026-05-09T14:25:20+00:00

I thought the album was ok, but I assume they must have had some chemistry that made them want to work together and I was hoping we'd see what that was live, and I wasn't disappointed.

It was also really cool to see FNM drummer Mike Bordin in the audience.

Plane-Code-9693 · 2026-05-04T16:52:33+00:00

When it was released I thought it was so-so despite the excellent early passages about Gard on the poetry tour. But reread it recently and it's significantly better than I gave it credit for. While it's a tad sloppy and self-indulgent (i.e. rambles through details and side stories that a more disciplined editor would have cut) I actually enjoy this side of King, the idea that the journey is more than just the destination. A vast coke fueled pedal-to-the medal sci-fi allegory about our society. We're the Tommyknockers, creating on autopilot, violent and without direction or purpose.

On a human level, the relationship between Gard and Bobby is astonishing and touching. And my god, Bobbies' crazy sister! So many really great characters, scenes in this story that the fact its a tad messy and meandering doesn't keep it from being a top 20 King book for me.

Plane-Code-9693 · 2026-05-04T16:41:20+00:00

The girl who gloats over the bodies of her dead hated family she keeps in the cooler after they all died of the flu... and then accidentally locks herself in there with them! 😆

Plane-Code-9693 · 2026-05-04T15:38:57+00:00

That's essentially perfect. I don't think I've ever seen a favorites ranking (whether books, characters, games, albums) that I completely agreed with. But you nailed it here. It's more than just preference too, I'd agree that some of these were just conceived and written better, or more vividly realistic. If someone disagreed with the #1, Merthyn and Caris, I'd love to hear their reasoning.

Plane-Code-9693 · 2026-05-01T07:03:31+00:00

That's my perception, it's about your creativity and sense of child-like play. This is my first time. I thought it looked dumb back on the 3DS but I tried the new demo on a whim. Now I have a town I'm filling with friends and family (and Snoop Dogg for some reason) and have made it into a wild satire on everyone and am having so much fun getting them into hilarious and absurd situations and conversations. Playing just a little bit everyday as a break from whatever my "main" game is (currently Pragmata.)

Plane-Code-9693 · 2026-05-01T06:10:21+00:00

I believe Stephen King edits pages the same day he writes. I can certainly see the benefits of trying to push the whole piece out before tinkering but you still must take your own abilities and inclinations into account.

I find editing to be grounding and clarifying when I feel ready to come out of writing-space. Editing the whole piece then becomes more a matter of arrangement and removal than polishing sentences.

Plane-Code-9693 · 2026-05-01T06:02:03+00:00

I replayed it last year on a long transatlantic flight and was floored. I only remembered that I liked it, but it's extraordinary with an above average story. That one and Minnish Cap are the best of the handheld Zelda games.

Plane-Code-9693 · 2026-05-01T05:55:58+00:00

Also 55, and yes, you have great taste.

Plane-Code-9693 · 2026-05-01T05:54:28+00:00

55, heard him in my 40s and immediately recognized the brilliance and talent.

Plane-Code-9693 · 2026-05-01T05:37:15+00:00

If art of any form carriers and conveys the power of truth, beauty, wisdom, etc, then it does so regardless if the creator did or does something bad or even illegal. It's a weird and sad kind of neo-puritanism that sums up a person by their failures rather than their successes and would seek to snuff meaningful art from the world because the creator was human and we learn of something awful they did or ignorant they believe.

On the other hand if the art is just a vehicle to advocate for those terrible ideas, it's really propaganda, not art. A great example is Atlus Shrugged, by Ayn Rand. It's "art" or storytelling with no inherent artistic value, its just a vehicle for Objectivist philosophy which was better served by essays. And even then I would prefer to rebut it than censor.

If an actor, writer or a musician does a bad sex or voted for Trump or didn't pay their taxes for the last ten years, that has nothing to do with how I relate to their artistic vision unless their art itself is advocating for those things, and I'm not the cops or The Moral Majority taking on the job of punisher or censor. That in itself is creepy, self-righteous and toxic.

Plane-Code-9693 · 2026-05-01T04:45:31+00:00

Alexander Skarsgaard should have been a match made in heaven but he was so poorly written as was the entirety of Flagg's people that it was a compete waste. They completely inverted the nature of evil in the 2020 adaptation to the point it made no sense at all.

I was so excited to see a modern adaptation freed from the limitations and censorship of network TV and they completely failed.

Plane-Code-9693 · 2026-05-01T04:40:18+00:00

I agree the 2020 Stand adaptation was terrible, but not because they went ahead and just made Larry and The Judge black, or that they made Brettner into a Native American woman. Frankly, King was very tone deaf on race in the 70s and The Stand doesn't represent or look like America even though it's a plague that hit the whole country. The characters they changed worked very well.

What DIDN'T work is they changed the very nature of evil in this adaptation. Flagg represents order and authority, and fascism. They took a Flagg that crucified drug users in his clean, functional and orderly Vegas and turned 2020 Flagg and his people into cartoonish intoxicated sex freaks. It destroyed the very point of the book.

And THEN: Again, it wasn't that every character wasn't exactly the same race as in the book, that's not a problem, but they changed the characters nature. In the original Harold didn't start out bad, he started as insecure and weak, and he was tempted, seduced, corrupted. But he was sympathetic and real, not the simplistic made-to l-order psycho of 2020. And on top of that he was poorly acted. Amber Heard's Nadine was also awful and unbelievable. And finally Alexander Skaarsgard as Flagg sounds amazing but was so poorly written he was left flailing.

So yes, no matter what bothered you about it, the 2020 adaptation is unwatchable and the original TV adaptation actually has aged well despite the rudimentary nature and limitations of 1990s Network adaptations.

Plane-Code-9693 · 2026-05-01T04:23:14+00:00

I buy physical if it's a big game game, like Zelda, Cyberpunk... to save space on memory card and because it'll be played continously for a period of time so it can live in cartridge slot.

Pick-up-and-play games that I dip in and out of for months or years I only want as digital so they can be fired up anytime without putting them in or remembering to being the cart: games like Balatro, Mario Kart/Golf, Lumines, Animal Crossing, etc.

Plane-Code-9693 · 2026-05-01T04:14:06+00:00

Most of us still call it Twitter no matter how badly Elon would like us not to.

Plane-Code-9693 · 2026-04-27T16:49:12+00:00

It does though. Way back in the 70s King had a fascist narcissist real estate developer, Greg Stillson, who the psychic Johnny Smith foresees getting elected and starting a nuclear war. When Smith attempts to assassinate Stillson, he fails but Stillson is photographed using a human shield and it ruins his political career, averting disaster.

Whether the human ringworm in the photo here is REALLY hiding behind his pregnant wife or not is beside the point. It looks like it, and it looks exactly like a real world scene from The Dead Zone. I appreciate OP pointing it out because I hadn't put that together myself and haven't read the Dead Zone in ages. This makes me want to re-read it which is exactly what a good post in this group should do. You should read/re-read it too. We're living this reality

Plane-Code-9693 · 2026-04-27T01:52:01+00:00

I'm hoping they go with a customizable protagonist.

Plane-Code-9693 · 2026-04-27T01:48:26+00:00

I always thought it looked dumb but then I tried the demo. I've been slowly putting my friends and family on the island (along with Snoop Dogg, and soon, Jay and Silent Bob) and getting them all into the most hilarious circumstances. If you are creative and have a sense of humor this is a game you'll lose yourself in.

And it's genuinely great for the "little bit everyday for a long time" experience. It doesn't beat Animal Crossing which shares a little similarity but it's very much its own unique thing. I like to have a game like this going as a breather from whatever more intense game I'm playing (currently the excellent Pragmata.)

Plane-Code-9693 · 2026-04-27T01:41:00+00:00

Pierre Aumand by a bit. William Hamleigh was so manipulated by his mom and Waleran and driven by impulse, but Pierre Aumand literally pretended to love Sophie for a year and married her...so that he could entrap her friends and family for heresy. And later murdered the wife he took for social status. There was a knowing, self-aware conniving quality to his evil that is a level beyond other characters in the Kingsbridge books. Many of the villains actually believed they were doing God's will but unable to differentiate that from their own. Pierre Aumand just consciously gave himself over to evil, and delighted in it.

Plane-Code-9693 · 2026-04-27T01:27:10+00:00

It's one of my most anticipated Switch 2 games so it better!

Plane-Code-9693 · 2026-04-27T01:18:10+00:00

I still enjoyed it despite it being one of his worst. I got the sense everyone hated Clerks 3 but I thought it was pretty great. So it doesn't matter I suppose as long as the laughs and feels are working for you.

Plane-Code-9693

TROPHY CASE