Things I have watched and stuff!

[alias_sqbr]

Games:
Borderlands: Fun, cool first person shooter set in a post apocalyptic/wild west-ish planet. I've played like half an hour but it was fun and I wasn't totally bad at it! You choose one of four pre-generated characters: a white woman, a black dude, and two white dudes.

Remnants of Isolation: A cute rpg by someone I know, about people escaping a prison for magic users. Again, haven't played for long but it was cute and interesting with a diverse cast.

And for both I need to find out if you can grind to make the game arbitrarily easy, cos then I'll be safe from getting stuck and not seeing the end. Once I know that I'll feel more motivated to trek all the way to the windows machine to play them :)

Manga:
Genshiken (first two omnibuses): A slice of life comedy about a university club of anime/manga nerds who are all into porny doujinshi. Starts off very male dominated, ends up with more and more female yaoi fans. Fairly funny and charming and not as skeezy as it sounds, reminds me of both unisfa and fanfic fandom. Can be a bit...well, the author obviously respects his female characters, but it's written by, for, and about moderately conventional Japanese male nerds, talking a lot about sex. Also one of the characters cosplays as Hitler in a character title image WHY WHAT.

Anime:
Snow White of the Red Hair (first 4 episodes): well made, fluffy, fairytale-ish wish fulfillment about a Miyazaki-esque feisty, hard working, sweet natured girl with unique red hair who overcomes adversity to strike her own path. Adversity seems to often take the form of dudes who are struck by her beauty but don't respect her agency, and she's usually rescued by her male friend who is clearly secretly in love with her but not saying anything because he respects her desire for freedom. In the first two episodes there's threats of being forced to be a concubine, but it's free of explicit sexualised violence or creepiness.

Books:

A Season for Scandal by Theresa Romain: This is an arranged marriage regency romance which was mostly quite enjoyable but occasionally so annoying I had to give up. Spoilers for why below the cut:

Heroine: feistily gets her into trouble
Hero: condescendingly gets her out of it by marrying her

Me: eh

Other dude: Is friendly to heroine in somewhat creepy way
Heroine: He seems so nice!
Hero: well clearly he is the devil

Me: ehh

Other dude: Bwahaha I am actually your EVIL WORKING CLASS IRISH ARCHNEMISIS! I am going to make your wife HATE YOU and there is NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT!!!!

Me: Ehhhhhhhhhh

Hero: So you should stay away from that dude.
Heroine: Why?
Hero: ....he just seems weird?

Me: And I am done.

Comments

[sami]

So, if this is Borderlands 1 you're playing... I lost my original savegame, and I started replaying it but I haven't got very far because I like Borderlands 2 so very, very much better.

My memories of Borderlands 1 are surprisingly vague, tbh, I played it through once aaaages ago and then I went to Borderlands 2, because I already had that and was basically just playing through 1 for backstory.

SO I DUNNO QUITE buuuut when you get to Borderlands 2, I can definitely assure you that there is a quite simple way to make it arbitrarily easy if you're stuck at a point: say, "Hey, Sami, I'm stuck, I'm level X" and then either:

a) we meet up in multiplayer briefly, I give you some awesome legendary guns

or

b) I e-mail you a save file of a character holding some awesome legendary guns to use

or

c) we meet up online for a little bit longer, I give you awesome legendary guns and also join you for the bit you're stuck on and we CRUSH IT

[alias_sqbr]

Hee. Thank you :)

[sami]

No problem at all! I can never bring myself to throw away/sell super-awesome guns even if I've completely outlevelled them, because BUT THEY'RE SO AWESOME.

(Borderlands 2 has a thing called the Stash, once you get a fairly short way in, that lets you trade items between your characters, so if I send you a save file, you can easily transfer gear from that character to yours, you understand.)

[alias_sqbr]

Cool! Though a new DLC just came out for Dragon age, so it may not be for a while :)

[hebethen]

Does Pretty Dude Who Bumps Into Her After She Runs Away count under one of the ones that don't respect her agency, or is he the male friend secretly in love with her? I watched the first episode (first two episodes...?) and remember that his behavior toward her irked me greatly, so I never kept on with it.

[alias_sqbr]

He is indeed the friend. He gets less annoying, but if you can't stand him this is definitely not the show for you.