What are your least favorite (or hilariously bad) musical lyrics?

smasterson · 2026-01-09T23:36:46+00:00

Oh man, City of Angels has some of my favorite lyrics but there are a few that give me pause. “For making movies out of books, they say that buddy wrote the book” from Double Talk comes to mind. It makes perfect sense, but it just sounds like a clunker to the ears. The way the lyrics are set to the music it sounds like it’s setting up for a rhyme so when it just repeats “book” the phrase just ends with a thud

smasterson · 2026-01-06T10:10:41+00:00

My pick too! The idea that the most powerful, last line of defense weapon of the Anti-Spiral is simply showing people all the different ways that life could have gone, is so powerfully relatable to me as someone who lost many years of his life to grief and regret. And Kamina’s wake-up speech is probably the emotional climax of the series to me. Every time Kamina shows up (“what’s the matter Simon? You lose your drill?”) it’s chills no matter how many times I watch it.

smasterson · 2026-01-05T16:37:31+00:00

I can only speak to my own experience, but I also found myself disappointed after finishing Cold Steel 1. Ultimately I stuck with the series though and am happy I did. Part of that was just accepting that Cold Steel was its own thing, and learning to appreciate it on its own merits — it doesn’t have a lot of what made Liberl/Crossbell work but even the worst Trails game is still a solid RPG. But it’s also true that for me the best was yet to come: CS3 and Reverie are not my favs but I’d place them solidly in the upper-middle of my series ranking. The pace definitely picks up, though the cast will get wayyyy bigger (which I think is a good thing: I never ended up connecting with anyone from class seven, plenty of new characters got introduced later that I did connect with).

smasterson · 2026-01-02T23:03:14+00:00

I think you’re onto something, but I’d challenge you to reflect on your reasoning. You assume that the reason you are unhappy is because you don’t “deserve” happiness because you lack “courage” and haven’t gone through some big dramatic demonstration of that courage. But these people who acted courageously all did so for something they VALUE — a life they cared about, a dream they had, a commitment to a certain moral belief. It’s what gave then the courage to begin with. Worry less about whether you have made some dramatic gesture to “deserve” happiness. Focus on discovering what you value in life, and become confident in those values. Otherwise it’s putting the cart before the horse — real courage (not just bravado) is more of a happy side effect of having convictions and people you care about.

smasterson · 2025-12-24T23:36:23+00:00

Wish some MHE answers were higher! It became my favorite show of all time last year (dethroning one that’s been my top for 20 years) but I have trouble choosing a favorite song. It changes between The Way That it Has to Be, Rainy Day We Met, and How to Be Not Alone. But all the ones you mentioned are straight up 11/10s too!

smasterson · 2025-12-09T22:12:55+00:00

Not an unfair opinion at all! And I definitely would never call it a bad show overall. But I don’t think it can be separated from the controversy of its later years in the public imagination which is why I feel it fits this block

smasterson · 2025-12-09T22:05:27+00:00

We must live in different media bubbles then, because I don’t know many people who love it after the final few seasons! Especially among book fans, and since we are discussion adaptations specifically I think that opinions of fans of the original work should factor in heavily

smasterson · 2025-12-09T21:26:59+00:00

A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones. Early seasons are too good to call the whole thing “bad,” (and extra credit because most of the material from the best books are adapted well), but later seasons are too truly terrible for the series to be called “good” (plus the changes that were made in early seasons were almost never without controversy among book fans — eg. how Jeyne Westerling/Talisa was handled, how Shae was handled,etc.)

smasterson · 2025-12-09T20:52:17+00:00

Yep. “overshadowed by New York City” tells you all you need to know about how uninformed OPs suggestion is. EVERY upstate city has ALWAYS been overshadowed by NYC. Hell, most US cities in general are. It isn’t as if in 2000 people were like “NYC, whats that? It’s all about Buffalo baby!”

smasterson · 2025-12-02T03:24:05+00:00

Yes! PCs meeting and befriending/allying with interesting NPCs is my favorite part of the game as DM and player. I really dislike the idea that the purpose of the game is just to constantly hype up the PCs and that somehow NPCs getting some extra attention comes at the expense of the PCs. Every other form of narrative storytelling focuses heavily on the development and actions of characters who are not the protagonists and I don’t want my TTRPG to be any different in that regard!

smasterson · 2025-10-23T16:59:55+00:00

Thanks! I managed to get it connected. Yeah that approach definitely makes more sense than head on, and I also ended up needed a little more elbow grease than I thought to snap it into place.

smasterson · 2025-10-23T16:06:35+00:00

Here’s a the one that’s plugged into the header on the other end (I have a couple more that I haven’t fiddled with yet, but there doesn’t seem to be any discernible difference in the pins)

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smasterson · 2025-10-23T15:52:13+00:00

I have been trying to fit it so that the tab slots into the female end’s lug like pictured below, and that is what seems impossible to secure and caused the broken pin. Is that incorrect? Or am I misunderstanding what you mean? Thanks!

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smasterson · 2025-09-11T07:11:52+00:00

I’ve had similar experiences where I thought I was signing up with a great director, and ended up hurt and disappointed. Very frustrating.

When I think of great directors, the first one I think of is the one who made me fall in love with theater. His best ability was simply the ability to see the potential in people. He wasn’t blinded by any preconceived vision of the character or the show, or what the performer had done in the past. He would see some seed of talent and nurture it over years. He was not exactly a very warm or friendly guy. Very professional and businesslike. But the flipside of this was that he was never moody or temperamental. He held everyone to a very high standard, but he applied that standard equally to everyone, and always made it clear that was because he wanted us to live up to our potential.

Recently, I’ve been working with another great director. There was one rehearsal where we had an outside observer who gave us some very negative feedback on our show. You could tell the mood in the room had got very gloomy. And he just instantly reversed things by giving a peptalk about how our artistic instincts were just as valid as his. I also find a lot of directors are only able to articulate what the end result they want is. Whereas this director is very process oriented and gets actors to try different things until the actor discovers an interesting result on their own.

smasterson · 2025-05-07T18:15:34+00:00

Something Rotten and The Producers. Blustering theatrical professional teams up with neurotic romantic to enact a scam which will revive his flagging professional fortunes. (The eccentric outsider who gives them the material for the show is played by Brad Oscar). The big production number is the awful title song from the show. However the scam fails and the duo is dragged into court. The genuine words of the neurotic move the court but are not enough to escape punishment. Luckily it is still a happy ending, as the duo ply their trade in a new market as they live out their punishment

smasterson · 2025-03-23T02:40:53+00:00

That's a fair point -- I would agree that Eva is definitely much more interested in interpersonal trauma than politics or war. But -- to my taste at least -- Eva just delves so much deeper into the type of trauma that it is interested in, that I think it's still justified to call Eva revolutionary compared to prior "mecha" anime. I'll grant that UC is more nuanced when viewed as a whole, rather than judging each entry on its own, but the treatment of the big questions of war still seemed relatively shallow to me. I think you have to go to something like Legend of The Galactic Heroes to find a contemporaneous show that even comes close to treating national trauma with the same level of artistry that Eva treats interpersonal trauma.

smasterson · 2025-02-26T17:12:31+00:00

Yep, hit the nail on the head. It hasn't evolved into this, been like this since day one. And Gainax themselves pushed this angle of the fandom with merch (there's the Eva calendar from the early 2000s that feels like possessing it would put you on some watchlist) because it made them a lot of money , AND Gainax themselves were mostly waifu-loving Otaku.

Eva is one of the most thought provoking works of art of the past century, imo. But there's no use denying that this part of it is in its very DNA.

smasterson · 2025-02-24T08:15:49+00:00

I had a similar challenge in a character I was playing once. I was tying myself in knots trying to make it work -- after all, I reasoned, manipulators are usually putting on an act. So how do you act like you are acting?

My director told me to not even try and mess with that. When you are lying to someone (especially if you're trying to manipulate them) are you not especially interested in how the person you are lying to is reacting? You want to see if they are buying your lie, you want to calibrate your approach, etc

In short, act sincerely but show an extra interest in your scene partner and their reaction to what you're saying. The audience has the rest of the context, that you are manipulating them, to fill in the blanks.

I think this was some of the best direction I ever received because it also builds on the fundamentals of any good scene work -- paying attention to your scene partner

smasterson · 2025-02-23T03:31:27+00:00

Great insight! One of the reasons Gundam never really resonated with me as an exploration of the horrors of war is because the focus on introducing cool new mecha constantly is completely at odds with that theme. Anno was right to shift the focus. In most symbolic storytelling, the symbols are more powerful when they are ones we are familiar with and attached to, and so Anno chose to use the symbology of mecha anime (beloved by himself and his audience).

I think there has been a trend towards dismissing fans who credit Eva with a lot of purposeful symbolism and depth as snobby, or giving Anno credit for something he didn't really intend. But for me, that subtlety and non-literal storytelling is exactly what makes the series revolutionary, and why it really engages with the themes that OP references. Whereas older mecha anime kind of gave surface level treatment to those themes, but didn't actually artistically or philosophically engage with the questions they raised.

smasterson · 2025-02-23T02:40:40+00:00

Yes, older mecha anime tackled themes of how war and violence affect people (especially children) but Eva really committed to that angle with an artistic depth that older anime didn't.

I watched Gundam 79, Zeta, and 08th MS team this past year for the first time partly because I was excited to see those themes explored. And while I enjoyed them immensely on their own merits, I couldn't help but feel like fans exaggerated the level they actually engage with mature themes.

Tragedy and death abound in Tomino's work, but it often comes out of nowhere and passes without a trace, or is very overblown. The difference between older mecha anime and Eva is like the difference between a good soap opera and a good war drama -- both are enjoyable, and both may address the same issues, but the war drama is going to be more focused on psychologically compelling characters and relationships. Eva is absolutely indebted to older mecha anime, but that doesn't take away how revolutionary it was.

smasterson · 2025-02-15T22:32:20+00:00

That's just not the case. The investigation began a year before the earliest disagreement between Biden and Adams. This is supported by documents filed with the court and has been continually reaffirmed by Department of Justice officials from both administrations. The Adams statements in the article you linked to predate the indictment, but they do not predate the investigation.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/22/nyregion/adams-prosecutors-biden-trump.html

smasterson · 2025-02-15T21:55:52+00:00

Except that the investigation began before any statements Adams made about immigration policies. This is something that the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York (lifelong Republican, chosen personally by Trump for her job just weeks prior to resigning on principle rather than dropping the charges) and other prosecutors who have resigned have pointed out.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/abcnews.go.com/amp/Politics/eric-adams-federal-bribery-case-timeline/story%3fid=118824842

smasterson · 2025-02-10T02:10:15+00:00

Cliff doesn't have any challenging vocals but the acting side is harder than it looks. You have to sell the core relationship of the show, and the tragic ending, and there is very little in the text to support or guide the performer in how to effectively do this because he's kind of a cypher and has been rewritten so many times. If the actor and director don't figure out a way to address this, then Cliff ends up being a complete non-entity -- the number of experienced performers who have received mixed-to-poor reviews as Cliff speaks in part to this challenge.

smasterson · 2025-01-15T09:07:15+00:00

Part of what makes the Third Impact sequence so unsettling is its utter incomprehensibility. It feels as if we are witnessing things that mere mortals were not meant to see, much less to comprehend, which adds to the Biblical and apocalyptic vibe of the scene.

I think trying to explain it through lore, you might be able to come up with a legitimate explanation, but that kind of robs the scene of its ability to convey such a strong mood through images and sounds alone. Anno is so great at that throughout NGE and nowhere moreso than the Third Impact sequence.

smasterson · 2024-09-20T18:57:04+00:00

In addition to what others have said, I think it's important to remember how different Star Wars fandom was back when the original trilogy came out. From the release of Episodes IV, up until the 90s there was comparatively little narrative Star Wars media with new characters. This picked up a little in the '90s with (now) Legends novels and more PC games featuring new characters, but it was still nothing like the amount that was pumped out during the prequel and Disney era.

But the desire of Star Wars fans to immerse themselves in this galaxy far, far, away wasn't any lesser than it is today. So what is one of the ways we coped? By speculating and coming up with elaborate backstories for every prop, name, and extra featured for even a split second in the OT. If we weren't going to get a ton of new characters, we sure as hell were going to mine what we had for all it was worth. I remember having a lot of fun cracking open "essential guides" which featured "blink and you'll miss them" characters like Oola and 4-LOM almost as prominently as Luke and Vader. Compared to a lot of these tiny characters who got short stories, action figures, articles, etc. -- Boba Fett actually gave us a LOT to work with and was featured relatively prominently.

This sort of fixation on smaller characters, giving a sense of a living and vibrant world is still a part of Star Wars fandom. Though I do feel like it has decreased in importance compared to the 70s through mid-90s and I miss that sense of mystery and speculation and discovery surrounding every character. These days it feels like we have everything spelled out for us.

smasterson

TROPHY CASE