I've been watching "A Livid Lady's Guide to Getting Even" separate from my group. I have a bit more room for trash in my schedule.

That said, I feel kind of odd about the show. It sort of reminds me of my issue with Overlord: We follow the protagonist most of the time as someone to root for, then they do some absolutely heinous things that feel like they came out of nowhere, then we go right back to them being vaguely sympathetic. I'd say it's one of the problems with doing a villain as protagonist TV show because it's hard for time spent with the protag not to make a connection. However, I feel like there have been some good examples of shows where the protag is the bad guy or becomes the bad guy either due to a "road to hell is paved with good intentions" or "corrupted by circumstances" plot devices.

The one that most comes to mind is Breaking Bad. It's a long road from push over high school teach and family man to ruthless drug kingpin and we're there every step of the way to see how it happens.

This show and Overlord don't really feel like that. The protagonists just kinda do evil shit every once in a while and nobody really acknowledges how fucked up that is. The most recent episode really hammered that home for me.

idk, I'm just overthinking a trash show. It's just that sometimes I can't help but watch some of these and think of what they could have been with more competent... everything.

Plus, we have no idea what being stuck in a lich's body does to the human psyche, so he has at least that much excuse for the evil he does do outright and knowingly.

That's the thing that made me start thinking about this. There's almost an interesting angle there with his body seemingly mysteriously changing how he feels, but they never do anything with it. I think some kind of internal struggle and mystery around it could have been a good plotline. I didn't finish watching it, but there was another trash isekai about a guy becoming an evil boss from a video game he played (A Wild Last Boss Appears) and there was a bit of that going on with the personality of the real character he's inhabiting slowly overtaking his own. Although at least for what I saw, they didn't really do much more with that either.

Yeah he got that wrong, but I think this still highlights the dynamic at play. Regan pushed the horrible cultural narrative around welfare, but then he was followed by Clinton saying he was going to “end welfare as we know it.” Softer language than Regan, but pushing in the same policy direction, enabled by Regan’s earlier propaganda, and in the act of making it bipartisan, he normalized it as a position that we’ve been stuck with ever since.

Whenever there is a fantasy action show and one character uses a gun I like to joke “I cast gun!”

Here's the compromise: Take down the cameras and people won't guillotine you.

This week I went to my first anime convention: Anime NYC. It was alright. I don't regret going, but I probably wouldn't go out of my way to go again. It's like 90% people selling stuff. I'm more used to gaming conventions where there's a bunch of stuff to do because companies are showcasing upcoming games.

I did enjoy seeing all the cosplayers though. There were so many. A LOT of them were either from gatcha games or really popular stuff like One Piece/Demon Slayer, but I did also see quite a few from shows I liked.

A few Jojos ones, but save for one Star Platinum, only from part 5/6. I guess it's easier to cosplay the characters that don't have muscles that put bodybuilders to shame.

One Violet Evergarden. I was with my mom who I recently introduced to anime and she loved this show, so she was happy to see that.

There was a Frieren meetup that we went to see. (It was weirdly difficult to find lol.) Funny thing is the character composition. There were only two Frierens in the entire group. Most were Stark or Fern, then one Himmel and I think two Eisens.

There was also a meetup for Apothecary Diaries, but it was at the same time as a panel we went to instead.

On the way over to the Frieren meetup we saw the Blue Lock meetup and I found it kind of funny because I'm reasonably sure literally every cosplayer there was a woman. I didn't really consider it's appeal to female audiences, but now that I think about it I guess it makes sense.

There was one person is a big Garfield mascot costume with a bikini on top of it.

One guy was David from Edgerunners.

One Megumin.

And some others, but you get the idea.

Also holy shit, I haven't been in the Javits Center since I was a kid. I did not appreciate just how fucking MASSIVE that place is. It takes like a minute or so to walk from one end of the building to the other.

I generally don’t take many pictures. I just have this one from the Frieren cosplay meetup.

EDIT: Oh, looking close at the pic, there was one more character in there. I assume the guy with green hair is the drunk priest.

I don’t think it’s just that. I’ve noticed this in a lot of the dramedies as well, and I’m reasonably sure they’re not using CGI for scenes of characters chatting in a room.

Because the people who own everything want to keep owning everything and because they own everything they have the resources to propagandize the idea that them owning all the things is actually good.

I think a good question worth asking yourself when it comes to evaluating claims made by someone is “Would they still have a reason to say this if it weren’t true?” Would rich people, the politicians whose campaigns were backed by rich people, and media outlets owned by rich people have a reason to support the system which makes them rich even if their claims about it being good for everyone else were not true? Yes.

No armor. Armor for little weaklings. Only real way to play is full nude. Nothing but you, the enemy, and the biggest stick you can find.

Well obviously you get rid of the skull. That skull could be male or female. 50/50 removing it decreases femininity of the room.

My dad brings this up when China comes up in conversation and I’m always just like “yeah, and..?” Like if we’re so smart why are they the ones with bullet trains and solar panels and not us?

It's crazy how successful they've been off just making and selling a good indie game. They're still doing free updates AND they can afford a $200k donation?

Imagine all the cool stuff we could be doing if we weren’t wasting the time of hundreds of engineers figuring out how to shove ads in people’s faces.

Ah yes, because what I want when I tell my computer to stop playing audio and video is for YouTube to play some audio and video of some random thing I didn’t ask for at like 3x the volume of the video I just paused. Thanks google. Such an innovative company!

When I went to France after taking French in high school I tried speaking French to various people and they usually responded to me in English. That's certainly one way to say "your French is shit."

There is no punishment horrible enough that we could inflict on oil execs, especially the ones that have known about this since the 70s and chose to fight for the status quo, that would make up for what they’ve done to us.

I hope this is just a joke and she didn’t dox her mom for internet points.

To the people who are saying "Yeah but you're the one who buys the oil!!!!!" Please stop. Please think about any of the context surrounding those supposedly individualist decisions. Please think about what the most practical solutions are for fixing the problem. You can do that and be helpful or you can be smug and look down on others.

Sure, you buy and drive the car, but you didn't:

• Design towns and cities that can only be easily traversed by car.
• Decide where jobs and housing were located.
• Spend millions of dollars to lobby against public transit.
• Spend millions of dollars to lobby against regulations.
• Spend millions of dollars to lobby against green energy investments.
• Spend millions of dollars to lobby for imperialist wars to access oil.
• Spend millions of dollars to spread misinformation about climate change.
• Decide what cars were available to buy and at what price. (Demand driving supply only makes sense if consumers have a way to signal that they want something that isn't being offered. The main market way of doing that would be to not buy anything until the right good is offered... but as stated above, people can't just opt out of needing a car if the places where they can live and work are built around cars.)
• Decide to be too poor to buy luxury goods masquerading as green alternatives.

Framing the issue in terms of individual decisions lets the people who have most actively stood in the way of progress off the hook and ironically shirks any real responsibility to fix the issue. You think by saying that it's us doing it that you take responsibility for your actions and therefore because YOU got a hybrid car or some shit, you did your part and everyone else needs to do the same and it's not your responsibility anymore. Needing to put in the political struggle to take on the corporate interests destroying the planet takes effort that deviates from your normal life. You have to actually talk to people, work with them, and take part in collective action. And your responsibility isn't over until the problem is solved.

Also, sort of related: I always take issue with how dealing with issues like climate change is framed in terms of making sacrifices. Like sure, are we going to be able to do as much excessive consumption as we do now? No. But there are so many climate policies that would also just make life better for people in the short/medium term. We would be happier, healthier, and safer in a world where we got rid of our dependence on cars and replaced it with walkable cities and good mass transit. But instead of talking about how good it could be, instead the message ends up being "You're a bad person for diving a car. You need to give up using your car and go either walk to your job which is too far away and across a bunch of busy streets or cram yourself onto the underfunded public transportation that is crowded, slow, unreliable, and falling apart." No wonder people get so defensive. We don't want them to have to use the bad infrastructure. We want it to be so good that it's the best option by far. Pitch that future instead of lecturing people.

TL;DR: I WANT TRAINS! GIVE TRAINS!

I am tired of living in a world with all of these problems. Whether or not I have the luxury to ignore them is besides the point.