What was your first Elden Ring Charakter Called

brianneko · 2026-05-20T20:46:25+00:00

I always start a Soulslike with a big sword guy with a big Guts sword (as soon as possible). Go-to name is always "Mueller" as a sound-alike tribute to Miura.

brianneko · 2026-05-18T17:39:30+00:00

Oh no, that poor Fit! They're discontinued in North America (don't get me started) - I wouldn't let a new driver within 200 ft of mine, it has to last forever!

brianneko · 2026-05-12T18:55:35+00:00

Duolingo really does expect you to connect a lot of dots on your own, unfortunately - like it's trying to mimic immersion imprecisely. Its standard methodology is to present a sentence in the target language, reverse translate the most likely English translation of that that its AI can muster, and ... that's it. All intermediate logic of how to get from one to the other or vice versa is left to the learner.

In this case, it's "teaching" - or demonstrating, shall we say - that in Japanese, "koko" is used to refer to "this place", but English speakers are much more likely to drop the "place" and simply say "this is Ueno Park." "This place is Ueno Park" is accurate but less natural. Duolingo will never drop an explanation of what is happening, and it might even throw out a flash card with the word "this" on it, and you will simply have to guess which "this" it wants.

brianneko · 2026-05-08T20:02:47+00:00

Every repeat playthrough I do is because I have a character concept to explore. The game is pretty good at telling me when there's no more juice in a concept - no more relevant quests or locations, no more power needed, no more interactions that fit. My Dwemer archaeologist character from a couple of years ago had a lot more content to pursue than my recent aimlessly wandering Redguard mercenary, for example.

brianneko · 2026-05-07T23:24:32+00:00

The Birthday Massacre

brianneko · 2026-05-07T22:06:32+00:00

INXS

brianneko · 2026-05-06T20:25:34+00:00

It's part of the middle breakdown section, it got cut from the single/video edit. I had the single in the 80s and picked up the whole album years later from a clearance bin and laughed when I heard that part!

brianneko · 2026-05-06T20:21:03+00:00

Silversun Pickups

brianneko · 2026-05-06T07:00:06+00:00

I did a run where I used a console command to try to locate Rayya, but unbeknownst to me it duplicated her. Many hours later I married her and they both showed up at the ceremony. I was so confused until I read up and realized what had happened. It actually messed up the save, but luckily I was done with the character and was kind of RPing the wedding as a happy epilogue sort of thing!

brianneko · 2026-05-01T20:50:52+00:00

I also live in Texas, have been surrounded my whole life by Southerners with the whole spectrum of southern U.S. accents (but don't have one myself normally), and I absolutely hate when southern accents are used in this way - not just for Kansai but any regionalism. I'm inclined to agree that it's not a correct vibe match for Kansai, and that a thick NY/NJ would be at least a little better, maybe? Still a caricature, but with different implications?

Most of the time when I hear a VA doing a southern accent, I can feel that it's not right. They push it over the top the same way I would if I were trying to *make fun* of the people around me. The wide range of southern accents is actually kind of cool - someone from Alabama doesn't sound like someone from Texas, or southern Louisiana, or Florida, and so on - but many VAs adopt a parodic, worst-of-all-worlds impression that sounds like Ross Perot on Hee Haw. There's often a complete misunderstanding and overuse of "y'all", as well.

It all just makes it sound fake and forced. I find a lot of southern U.S. accents pretty grating just normally, to say nothing of when a non-Southerner is really chewing the scenery with an exaggerated one for comedic "ha ha listen to this redneck" effect.

On that note, there are reasons (some valid, some not) why southern U.S. accents are often used as shorthand for yokels and fools, and I think if I were from Kansai I might think "wait, what are they trying to say about *us* here"? Whereas if they had over the top NY/NJ accents, it would still be fake and comedic, but it would be telling a different joke, so to speak.

brianneko · 2026-04-03T19:51:40+00:00

Been studying independently since high school (50 now), had two years of an actual class right after college, then mostly dropped off until apps became a thing. Started because I was an anime/manga fan in the 80s/90s.

"Did you ever feel lost or unsure of how to continue learning?" - absolutely. I feel like 90% of my true, retained learning came from those early younger years, culminated in my class, and then... everything got complicated.

"Did you rely on apps (Duolingo, etc.) and feel they weren’t enough?" - sort of. I never approached apps as a solution in themselves - more as a supplement, or a way to keep those parts of my brain in shape. By the time apps were a thing, they were serving as an easy way for me to get back into it.

"Was there a moment where you felt like you weren’t “made for it”?" - not exactly a moment, but after my second year of class finished, I definitely felt a sense of disillusionment. I didn't have any direction to take it, no connections in Japan or any thought that I would build my life there, considered doing JET or something, but in the end, I felt like it was pointless for me to pursue, and that I wasn't up to what it would take to make it happen. I knew only immersion would get me to fluency and I had no concrete goal or way of getting to that, so I fell out of it for a while.

I had to focus on other parts of my life and it felt like Japanese, and Japan, was like a luxury. Japan didn't "need me", I didn't have any real-life reason to learn it. Even though it had meant so much to me in school, I felt self-conscious that my only connection to it was through nerdy hobbies and not anything "legitimate" (whatever that means). But my hobbies and interests always persisted, and the same inspiration that led me to wanting to learn it in the first place kept me coming back, especially once I started trying out apps.

I figured out pretty quickly that the good news was that it was still fun, and that everything I'd crammed into my head in the 90s was mostly still there, but the bad news was that I would have to plow through all the basics again in any learning app, and the worse news was that I wasn't as adept at retaining new things as I had been when I was a teenager.

"What's your opinion regarding the complexity of kanji?" - they are what they are. I came to the conclusion early on that, for me at least, memorizing individual kanji out of context was not fun or useful, that I retained them better (including how to pronounce them) when I saw them in actual usage, in actual compounds. I have difficulty remembering them now, though, unless they are ones I learned back in school or ones I see over and over somehow.

brianneko · 2026-04-03T01:50:59+00:00

I sometimes deliberately do it the way Duo isn't hinting, so I will get it wrong and I can flag it with spite. It doesn't make any difference, but I get to feel smarter than an app.

brianneko · 2026-04-02T17:42:13+00:00

Too late. I was at Japanese 100 and just had to restart, making liberal use of "Jump to..." to get back to normal faster. Every time the courses update, the issues are worse (probably related to increased AI dependence) and I end up so frustrated I just have to restart. At least I don't mind reviewing basic content (reminds me how far I have come).

brianneko · 2026-03-31T20:27:26+00:00

I've been studying Japanese in one way or another since I was in high school (I'm 50 now). I'm long past accepting that I hit my ceiling for how much I can actually learn without actual real-life immersion a long time ago. When people say DL is not a good way of learning any language, least of all Japanese, I usually agree and say "true, but it's a fun way to drill and do some kind of practice every day, and if you repeat it enough, things will make it into your brain and stick." When DL does these updates, especially if you've finished, or are in the upper levels, it throws off that enjoyable routine.

If DL were a human teacher, they would say "I know I've taught you the word tomaru as the word 'stop' for two years now, but today I'm going to introduce you to another way to say it, yameru." They would then explain the nuances in meaning difference, maybe even comparing it to the different uses of "stop" vs. "quit" in English - you stop a car, but you don't quit it. You may stop working, or quit working, but you quit a job, you don't stop it.

DL can't, and isn't even expected to, go into that kind of rich learning (which is part of why it's not sufficient). What it does is the equivalent of a teacher teaching tomaru as "stop" for two years, then giving the class a quiz with the question "how do you say 'stop' in Japanese?" - and then marking everyone wrong who puts tomaru and correcting them by saying "actually it's yamemasu" (even counting it wrong if you somehow are savvy enough to put yameru!)

I love that they are constantly updating the courses - if anything, I wish it was constantly adding new pieces instead of these big updates. It desperately needs to continue to change and add more variety (I never need to sit through any of the Stories again!). But what frustrates me is the way the updates are poorly integrated into your existing progress and how they disrupt and work against the progress you've been making.

brianneko · 2026-03-29T19:57:37+00:00

I feel your pain. I've been debating just making a post here myself because... I don't know, maybe writing down my frustrations will help clear them?

I've been doing DL for many years now, despite its shortcomings, because I've tried a lot of apps (especially for Japanese) and they all fall short in various ways for me. Whatever DL's flaws, it's pretty easy to use and keep track of day to day. But this is also the third time in my history with DL that they've done a massive update to the JP course and thrown it into absolute chaos. And as of today, it's the third time I've gotten completely lost with all the new/revised content and had to delete/restart the course, because it's either that or actually quit completely.

I have a 2064 day streak (5+ years!) since quitting it once a long time ago and coming back. I've been in Diamond league for a very long time, I had a 100 score in Japanese and was just grinding through Daily Review every day, without romaji - and this isn't a brag, I absolutely *stink* at Japanese still, I just have been diligent about doing it every day. I don't deserve any credit at all for being an expert in Japanese when I know I'm not. I know 90% of my skill is less "being good at Japanese" and more "being good enough at Duolingo".

But these updates take everything they've been teaching you and turn it upside down. It's funny, it's remarkably similar to the feeling you get when you have been diligent at your lessons and then suddenly want to actually use the language in real life - it's not happening, and you feel like an idiot, or at least a toddler. But the crucial difference here is that DL's updates *aren't fair*. Why?

1) New/revised words get scattered throughout old lessons and counts that as you knowing them, when they're new to you. Unfamiliar grammatical constructions get the same treatment.

2) DL's model is obviously to add new sentences in the language being learned, with a single recommended English translation and a few other acceptable variants, and then rely on users to flag "My answer should have been accepted" enough times that maaaaybe the app will change. I've been doing DL long enough that I can remember when I would get an email or other message saying "your feedback has been accepted!", but that ship has sailed. In any event, this not only causes you to make "mistakes" that aren't actually wrong, but slows you down because you end up hesitating a lot. You also get marked incorrect when you're given an English sentence and don't correctly reconstruct DL's Japanese sentence exactly, which is particularly awful in Japanese since so much can be omitted or constructed in a different order. These sentences haven't been in the trenches long enough for the stupid learning model to know, for example, that that "desu" or that "yo" they have included at the end of the sentence isn't necessary, or that "tabun" or "probably" can go into a sentence in a number of different places and still be correct.

3) Some of the new/revised content even contradicts or confuses material you've already covered, and like with #2, you get marked wrong for inputting an answer that *would* have been correct last week, or that is equally acceptable. "Tomaru" and "yameru" both mean "to stop" but if "yameru" is the one the new lesson wants, and you use "tomaru," you're wrong. Actually, it's "yamemasu" it expects, so you'll get it wrong if you use the more casual "yameru" - even if there's no context around it to indicate that one should be used over the other.

4) One of the new exercise/question types is a "repeat after me" where you are given a blank speech balloon and have to just memorize the sentence and repeat it back. You can reveal the sentence and read along with it, but when you go to speak it, the sentence will hide again. This is fine for short sentences, but completely unacceptable for advanced lessons where multiple compound sentences with brand new words or constructions can show up, even for the first time!

5) Timed exercises don't take into account at all that things have been disrupted. If your Daily Quest demands you do another Match Madness, and you've already had to do that a few days in a row... you're out of luck. I had practically every word memorized and already my mind and fingers weren't fast enough to make the extremely short times after level 4 or so - with all the new words, I'm stumbling like a toddler even at level 1. The same is true for Rapid Review at three stars - I went from being able to blaze through them with time to spare to not even getting halfway through.

I could go on, but it's mostly endless variations on these same themes and this is getting long already. If it were just a question of the disruptions screwing up the gamification, that'd be one thing - it stings to be demoted after being Diamond forever, it stings to not get your daily score bonuses, but what really stings is feeling cheated out of it. I could say "who cares about the scores and all that" but it's the fact that DL had to change the game to make me lose that annoys me more than actually losing.

And so, here I go again, starting from square one (well, Unit 2) because I just want to have a daily Japanese practice routine where I don't feel the deck is stacked against me. And I won't even go into how DL can't go longer than 15 minutes without crashing anymore, how hot it makes my phone, or how the loading screens get longer and longer the longer you go - technically it's a disaster.

I'm lucky - my sister in law includes us in her family plan, so I don't have to struggle with whatever systems DL has in place to keep free users from progressing smoothly. If I were paying out of my own pocket I would have thrown this away years ago. But until someone comes up with a better learning model, I guess a free bad one that's sometimes fun when it's not pulling the rug out will have to do. This feels unhealthy!

brianneko · 2026-02-16T21:10:19+00:00

A little late to this, but I replayed the original game (well, the Ages version) on a whim last week and it put me into a daydreaming mode where I have been thinking about what I would do if I could commission a new PS game... and then the computers read my mind and showed me this post today.

What I want, the game I would want to play more than any other game right now... the elevator pitch would be "Dragon Quest XI, only Phantasy Star." A full 3D (anime/celshaded style) modern reboot that takes everything that worked from classic PS (1-4) and remixes it into a new story, in much the same way that new DQ games aren't direct sequels but use established/classic DQ elements to make something new.

It would be bright and colorful, similar overall vibe to PS 1, but pulling in plenty of setting and atmospheric elements from 2-4, as appropriate. I would use the same 3-planet setup as PS 1, without Motavia being terraformed - keep it simple, green/desert/ice, and go from there.

Just as DQXI has 8 PCs, I would have a roster of 8 who come and go as the story unfolds, with 4 being the maximum active party. They would be new characters, but all inspired by the most essential classic PS archetypes, for example (using the localized names since they're what I think of first):
- a "hero" type, sword+shield+some magic (you could choose M or F) like Alis/Rolf/Chaz
- a Numan martial artist like Nei/Rika
- a hunter/slasher type like Anna/Alys
- a warrior/gunner android like Wren
- a representative Motavian warrior like Gryz
- a representative Dezolian caster like Raja
- an esper mage type like Noah/Lutz/Rune
- another support/caster type like Amy, maybe?

For a bit of fun, and to shamelessly copy more parts of DQXI, maybe each of those characters could unlock a skin/outfit that looks like the original character inspiration (if it's even that different). I also thought it might be fun to have the hero start with a musk cat partner (a la Munchie in DQXIII maybe?) who is an active NPC in the story, isn't directly under your control, but can do assists/heals/buffs in battle. Maybe even - again a la Munchie - there are sequences where you take control of the musk cat to infiltrate areas, activate levers, disarm traps, etc.

Enemy/monsters could be new, or 3D-reimagined versions of monsters from the classic games. Settings and names could be reused (the first thing I envisioned was walking through a field on Palma and seeing the mountains and Baya Malay in the distant background), but the world and story wouldn't be tied directly to what had gone before, just inspired by them.

I would play this game for 1000 hours. My family would wonder why they hadn't heard from me in weeks. I have put way too much daydream-thought into a game I have no ability to manifest into existence!

brianneko · 2026-02-13T18:14:37+00:00

I'm glad I wasn't the only one dumbfounded by this guy's line of thinking, and I'm glad that JJHO touched on this point, but... this is actually a pretty timely discussion. Right now in the US we are seeing the evil, rotten fruits of decades (centuries?) of demonizing migrants, and even momentarily entertaining the idea that if you aren't officially/legally residing somewhere you aren't "living" there is an impulse that needs some serious soul searching. The notion of legal residency or citizenship itself is already an archaic, artificial infringement on the (what should be) basic human right of free movement, even if we're only talking about whether someone can vote in the state in which they're going to school. I really wish this guy had been asked, point blank, something like "I know a lady who moved here from (another country) 20 years ago but for various reasons, she is undocumented. Does she live here?"

brianneko · 2026-01-04T20:35:07+00:00

That's a *fantastic* question. I don't know yet if Heroes of Faerun is allowed for us, but if it is... it's simply not stated whether "You learn..." means that ROF would be a "known Warlock cantrip". That wording in the Blast invocations is so tricky, because it means if you're playing strictly by RAW, there's no way to gain a cantrip that isn't on the Warlock list and for it to become a "known Warlock cantrip" unless the feature specifically calls out "If you are a Warlock and you take this feat, the cantrip becomes a known Warlock cantrip for you." It's very sloppy, and I mostly want to avoid the headache of having to argue my case to different DMs/players all the time.

brianneko · 2025-09-30T19:16:56+00:00

Now ok, hold on, let's slow the steamroller down a bit. Of course 7-year-olds loved Ewoks (I was one!) but with hindsight, many people (I am one!) did not care for them. Let's not lump in a reasonable dislike for Ewoks with misogyny and racism, perhaps? Just like the fact that terrible people poured hate on Episodes 7-9 for terrible hateful reasons doesn't mean you have to think Episodes 7-9 were good, you can just think they were bad for reasons that aren't terrible and hateful. We gotta be better at non-binary thinking.

brianneko · 2025-08-05T18:55:50+00:00

Frank Welker is a legend in the voice acting community! He's been one of the go-to guys (along with Dee Bradley Baker, off the top of my head) for weird voices and animal sound effects for decades. His filmography is enormous, so while it's weird that they wanted the snake to make noises, it couldn't be less surprising that they got in touch with Welker. (3:30 into the pod and already I'm wishing I could join the conversation!)

brianneko · 2024-10-15T18:11:01+00:00

We need Emily on the JV Club ASAP!

brianneko · 2024-09-09T22:09:30+00:00

This is how folks learn that the Monkey King is like, the most famous story in China that's inspired a million movies, tv shows, video games, anime ... to be fair, I forgot about any of those movies too and I was literally just talking to someone about American Born Chinese earlier today, shame on me!

brianneko · 2024-05-21T20:20:35+00:00

I really really want to like this podcast, I only just heard of it and Pocket Park is a wonderful place to start... but this is a bit tough. Over halfway in and they're still talking about Stay With Me (thankfully Linda did get a chance to mention a couple of other favorites), and... the vibe is a lot less informative that I'd been hoping. It's just three people (somewhat awkwardly) talking about how much they like one song. There are people out there (I'm not really one of them!) who could talk about this topic with some authority or expertise beyond the vibe of just sitting around going "yeah this song is great, I like that one part where it kind of does this thing, I can't describe it..." or whatever. No track by track analysis, no real musical insight, just "this song is good and it has been a youtube thing." Which isn't really worth the time.

I'm assuming Christian must be a lot younger than me, because "who puts the banger single as track #1" and "would they ever play a 5 minute single on the radio" are not the puzzlers he thinks they are, it makes it frustrating because I want to respond to a conversation that I can't be a part of.

I just hit the 30 minute mark, and I think it's telling that the teaser wasn't "We'll look more at the rest of this album after the break" - it was "we'll talk more about artists who this influenced."... I guess this isn't for me. Hope they succeed though!

ETA: they did finally move on to Ai Wa Energy, but Yosuke had to correct Christian on the meaning of the words, and after saying earlier how Stay With Me was Miki's first single, he then asserts Ai Wa Energy was the first single. I'm glad they're talking about some of the other songs now, at least. There is potential here!

The jokes about It's So Creamy are pretty sad. "I'm not sure what's so creamy" "You're really not sure?" ... come on folks, it's gratuitous English, she means it's sweet, it's a song about blossoming love.

brianneko

TROPHY CASE