Castle Magus

"To continue, turn off your VPN/Proxy. This will allow YouTube to locate the best content."

How about you fuck off forever, Google? How about that?

Wonder if the money asshole(s) in charge of ZA/UM will find a way to steal the IP for this one from the original creators, too, the way they did with Disco Elysium.

Or is this a more "traditional" modern video game[1] industry situation where the IP is already directly owned by the company (i.e. the money asshole[s]) from the outset, and the people who actually do the work of creating it can just get fucked if they don't like that (especially if the "company" decides to make any shitty, stupid changes to the thing along the way)?

[1] - See also: general software, entertainment, or really just any other business/industry where anything and everything that is invented/created on "company time" and/or using "company assets/equipment" just automatically belongs wholly to the "company" rather than the person/people who actually made the thing or came up with the idea.

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(EDIT)

"ZA/UM's New RPG Is Similar To Disco Elysium Because 'We're Still the Same People'"

Uh, no, you literally, demonstrably are not the same people. The original creators of Disco Elysium (and by that I mean the ones who actually came up with the idea of it all, from the original Püha ja õudne lõhn novel and other such things, not whatever rando grunts who happened to be working in the trenches while the game itself was being made) were dubiously fired in the process of ZA/UM stealing their IP. (Even the very term "ZA/UM" itself, for which the company was named, was part of that IP that was stolen. And given what "ZA/UM" is, in the original Sacred and Terrible Air book, it's actually ironically appropriate that the company was named that.) The current Ship of Theseus version of ZA/UM is just trying to ride the coattails of the success of their predecessors, with something that looks superficially identical, but which actually has nothing whatsoever to do with it.

I will give current, counterfeit ZA/UM at least this much credit, though: even they knew they wouldn't be able to pull off another game explicitly set in the Elysium world (given the people who actually created and knew that world are no longer at ZA/UM, even if ZA/UM still technically owns the IP), which is why this new shit is "Cold War" whatever the fuck I don't actually care. It's why all the actual direct follow-ups to Disco Elysium that were (ostensibly) in the works were unceremoniously canceled between then and now.

This shit is going to be so ass.

(/EDIT)

...how did this webcomic go from being one of my favorites to becoming a massive festering shitpile over the past half-year or so? Like, almost everything from the moment Joyce and Dorothy chose to actively and very publicly cheat on their then-current boyfriends (at a genocide protest[1] that neither of them personally cared about, in the midst of a police crackdown, during which pink tear gas clouds were framed by the cartoonist as if they were romantic sakura petals, no less [yes, really]) up to now has just been complete dogwater.

Well, pretty much everything directly involving Joyce and/or Dorothy since then has been rancid poo, anyway. Any scenes not featuring Joyce and/or Dorothy (and which also didn't involve other characters asking "Where's Poochie?"talking about Joyce and/or Dorothy) have been (mostly) fine.

I say "(mostly)" because aside from that, everything to do with the genocide protest itself and pretty much any of the scenes involving follow-ups to the events of the genocide protest (whether Joyce and/or Dorothy were in those scenes or not) haven't been especially super-great, either. Such as the police raid on the dorm most of the female main characters live in, ostensibly to look for Amazi-Girl, who was last seen kneeing cops in the face during the crackdown on the protest and helping people (including Joyce and Dorothy) escape from said crackdown and which is presumably what led to the body Amazi-Girl shares with Amber (it's complicated) getting beaten to shit later that same (in-comic) day. (The raid on the girl's dorm ended on a "comedic" wet fart with basically nothing of any real consequence resulting from it, for what it's worth [aside from the Amazi-Girl suit being "safely" sequestered elsewhere, I guess].) Or like how two of the teachers at the genocide protest who ended up in jail for at least a couple days[2] had to be/could only be bailed out by former students (one of whom was, yes, Dorothy), apparently.

It really sucks, because I've been following David Willis comics since the Roomies!/It's Walky![3] and Shortpacked! days. And, really, at least prior to last June/July or so, Dumbing of Age itself was good, too. Hell, I remember chatting about the crossover between It's Walky! and Fans! back in the old OtakuWars! chatroom on IRC... that's how long I've been following this stuff. Now, though, I'm close to just deleting my Dumbing of Age bookmark and washing my hands of the shit altogether.

[1] - A very thinly veiled "ripped from the headlines" version of an actual genocide protest at Indiana University, by the way.

[2] - In comic time, that is. Real life time was, again, more like half a year or so.

[3] - Never read any of the Joyce and Walky! stuff, though, because most of it was locked behind a paywall at the time, years ago, and I haven't given enough of a shit to look back into it again since then. Apparently it's not behind a paywall anymore? Hell if I know.

Woolie: "...there's a national Olympic committee for e-sports stuff..."

*weary sigh + facepalm + smdh*

Playing a fucking video game != playing a sport. (Fak)e-sports are not a thing that the fucking Olympics (or SEA Games or whatever) should be touching with a 10-foot pole. I have no problem with people playing in video game tournaments and other people watching those people playing in video game tournaments, but the ones participating in the tournaments are not doing sports, and the ones watching the tournaments are not watching sports. Outside of literal "sports" video games like Madden or FIFA or whatever (which still aren't actual sports), the word "sports" should not be associated with video games. I will die on that semantic hill.

I don't give the slightest shit about the actual specific topic here (though I agree with Woolie and Pat that it's a scam, not a "hustle"), because I honestly consider the entire concept of (fak)e-sports as a whole to be utter bullshit, but especially when the (fak)e-sport in question in this particular case was just some shittier mobile knockoff of already shitty League of Legends. Also, in what actual sport would you ever see a woman building an entire career on being an athlete when it was really her boyfriend out there actually playing the sport in her place and this shit went on for months before anyone ever caught on?

Pat, after Woolie's attempted explanation: "You completely lost me. Like 100%. You 100% completely lost me."

I agree, Pat. I agree. (For reference.)

No, Woolie, the Qui-Gon Jinn/Quan Chi thing was not funny due to being an intentional "bit," or whatever the fuck, because it wasn't an intentional "bit." It was funny because it was a completely unintended brainfart on Pat's part that caught both Pat and Matt by surprise. Most of the best humor of SBFP, at least for me, was when they were spontaneously reacting to things happening unexpectedly, not the intentional "bits" that they always ended up beating into powder, not unlike a horse skeleton, long after whatever infinitesimal amount of "comedy" already had been extracted fully from it. Like Pat said, the "Obi-wan and Quan Chi" thing was completely out of nowhere, not intended, and completely lacking any kind of "set up." Because, again, it wasn't an intentional "joke" or "bit," even though Woolie is going all "that's it!" as if he gets it. "I don't know if you even..." Because, Pat, no, Woolie doesn't even. He doesn't even, at all. Woolie is completely misunderstanding the whole thing and why it was funny. "It's the same thing over and over," says Woolie, as if he's making a point, when his bad example here of "Hey, it's Qui-gon! Hey, it's Quan Chi! Hello, Qui-gon from Star Wars and Quan Chi from Mortal Kombat!" only ever happened that one time, and never again, and it wasn't an intentional "Ha ha I'm making a joke here on purpose! Isn't it so funny?!" thing at all, the way Woolie seems to think it was. No, it was Pat and Matt trying to make yet another forced Star Wars reference (which wasn't all that funny to begin with) and then Pat accidentally saying "Quan Chi" instead of "Qui-gon" and then him and Matt both completely losing the entirety of their shit over it. Pat mistakenly saying "Quan Chi" wasn't even the funny part for me. It was their complete inability to retain their shit afterward that I found hilarious. YMMV.

On the other end of the spectrum, the actually intentional "bits," like, indeed, the whole "Wakka is a Ku Klux Klan member" "bit" that Woolie and Matt did for most of the SBFP Final Fantasy X Let's Play, got incredibly tiresome after the first five minutes, once they started doing the Wakka voices, but they just kept drilling that shit into the ground for the entire rest of the fucking playthrough. It was neither "solid" nor "gold." Not even a little. It was "liquid" and "shit." Seriously, if you watch that compilation video there, you'll fully get the "point" within the first 2 minutes, because it's just that same goddamn thing, "over and over," for the remaining 49 minutes. Woolie trying to explain it in the above embedded CSB clip just makes it seem all the more asinine, honestly, in my not so humble opinion. I never really cared much for the overextended "bits" that they kept trying to force through their LPs. Fortunately, it wasn't even remotely as prevalent as Woolie is trying to make it seem here. But in the cases where what he's talking about was there, though, it invariably became trite, tedious dogshit.

Have I mentioned just how much I hate this time of year? Well, I loathe this time of year.

Just had to go out, in the rain, to replace the empty propane tank with one of the other ones (of the three we have) that I'd just taken down to Dan River Oil to get refilled, this past Monday. The empty tank that I replaced today had only just, a week ago, been hooked up, full, to the gas line that connects to the "gas log" heater that my sister has been apparently running way more than she ever has in previous years. Because this is the third time I've had to fucking replace the tank hooked up to the gas line and twice now that I've had to lug two empty tanks to town and get them refilled. All in just this past month or two. And it hasn't even been all that cold yet, aside from this past Sunday, when it got down into the 10s (°F) that night. Like, right fucking now it is 48°F outside. We don't fucking need the gas log running right now. And yet... it's running (now, after I replaced the tank). *weary sigh*

Oh and we've already had the first power outage of this time of the year. (Though it apparently wasn't weather related?)

It's not even literal goddamned winter yet.

Hot steaming shits all over everything about this dumbfuckery, except for the initial catalyst of this dumbshit moron getting the terrible grade she wholly deserved, because she wrongly thought it was a good idea to barf irrelevant religion all over a school paper.

Would rant more, maybe, but it's almost 6am and I'm pecking this out on my phone, so nope.

After mentioning it in a previous post, I have finally completed my dire slog through Wuthering Heights.

All I will say about it right now (because I'm pecking this out into my phone rather using a proper keyboard, and it's already becoming vastly tedious) is that it may as well have been titled Darkness Induced Audience Apathy/Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: The Book. Or, at least, the first 95% of it was that. The last 5% of it was, at least for me, a bit of "Yeah, fuck you, Heathcliff! Eat shit and die!" catharsis, via Gothic horror.

I started this book because I wanted to, and I finished it out of "trainwreck, can't look away" morbid fascination. I feel the utmost sympathy and pity for any high school or college students who may have been in the past or may be in the future forced to endure having to read this book by some sadistic English teacher.

(I might edit/add to this later, when I'm back at my computer proper.)

(EDIT, back on my comp now)

There were no likeable characters in this story, as far as I'm concerned. Even the supposedly more sympathetic characters (e.g. Lockwood, Nelly Dean, Isabella Linton, Catherine Linton [the daughter, I mean, not the original Catherine Earnshaw]) too often acted like complete morons and gullible dupes, and, in some ways, could be just as hateful and duplicitous as the more outright villainous or, at least, incredibly assholish characters (e.g. Heathcliff, Joseph, Hindley, the original Catherine).

I'll just mention one other thing. At some point as I was reading, I just started envisioning Heathcliff as looking like BOB from Twin Peaks. I'm not sure when it happened. Probably after he came back from having run away for several years and started being a true dickhole to everyone within a hundred mile radius.

(/EDIT)

"Hi. In today's episode, Katy, Cody, and Jonathan talk about the targeted attack in Boulder, Colorado, Elon Musk's uneasiness talking about ways he disagrees with the Trump administration, and the embarrassing MAHA report that had made-up citations."

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Speaking of Elon Musk...

Well, they talk about other stuff besides just Elron Mustard.

The worst thing, actually, is probably that asinine bitch being all like (to paraphrase) "well, healthcare isn't that important because we're all going to die anyway, so just accept Jesus Christ and live forever in the next world" or whatever the fetid fuck. If she's so blasé about dying, she might as well just go ahead and fucking do it, then. The sooner, the better.

Oh, and just to note: Jesus Christ, as a deity, is just as "real" as the tooth fairy, you cretinous cow.

...if you ever run a news website or a video game blog or something like that, and I ever even once see you hold your content hostage behind a paywall, then just know that I'm going to go out of my way to make sure that I never see your website or blog show up for me again, whether that's in Google searches or in my news app or whatever. It's actually worse when you have it set up to let people read two or three articles/entries for free, before throwing up the paywall. ("FiRsT oNe'S fReE" says the skeevy drug dealer or the scummy casino barker.) Your content is not something I can't do without, so don't even try to act like it is. Your content is not that valuable to me.

(Then again, for the most recent site in question [which I won't even name here, so as to not give them even that much more traffic], I suppose I should have heeded the earlier red flag that was them trying to get me to sign up for a monthly or yearly subscription just because I happened to hit reply on one of the comments under one of their articles to see if I could make a comment without having to make an account [since some rare few websites still let you do that]. Merely having to sign up for something for free is bad enough, and I usually don't bother with even that much. Being faced with an option select for a $7-$99 monthly/$70-$999 yearly subscription is on a whole other level entirely[1] and is a "fuck right off" moment.)

Find less obnoxious, insufferable ways to make money.

[1] - And even for that link there, I had to replace the original one with an archive.is variant, because the original one was, yes, partially behind a paywall.