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Comments
@Narita's works: I much preferred Durarara!!, but the gimmick to both of them is that they're really good about covering multiple storylines that occasionally converge.
^ Durarara!! actually had interesting plot developments as well as good characters, though. I mostly liked Baccano! for the characters, honestly; the rest of it was acceptable to subpar.
Well, I'll amend this: out of the three storylines of Baccano!, only one of them was actually worthwhile, in my opinion. Good characters can only carry a show so far. Durarara!! won in terms of execution. Sadly, they're both pretty slow to start.
Hmm.
You know, I've been really feeling like watching some anime recently, and I was thinking of watching NGE finally but at the moment I'd prefer something somewhat less dark.
So what the hell? I will watch Baccano!.
Interesting plot developments mostly translates to people working with Izaya despite them being nominally intelligent enough to know nothing good ever comes from associating with him. Or playing the game of pass Celty's head.
I'll grant that it's been too long since I watched either show for me to comment on specific details by applying critical analysis to them, but I remember having a much better time with Durarara!! than Baccano!
I watch Durarara!! for Shizuo and his tangentially related characters.
I cared about Baccano!'s cast more equally, although Jacuzzi and the Rail Tracer stood out to me,
I've only watched the first episode of Baccano! (my parents cancelled Netflix before I got around to continuing), and I've heard it gets better, but that episode was...pretty bad. It didn't tell me anything about the show, and didn't really make me want to know anything about the show.
I kinda got disinterested when it moved away from Roaring Twenties to medieval Highlander nonsense.
This could come down to personal preference, but I value plot over cast, which might be why I enjoyed Durarara!! more. I liked Baccano!'s cast better, overall (for one example, the only character in DRRR!! who was close to being as amusing as Isaac and Miria was Shizuo), but only about a third of the show was actually interesting, so it fell flat. Durarara!! was just plainly a better story, in my opinion, so I actually enjoyed it. I didn't feel that either show worked particularly hard to make me care about the characters, so I can't use Baccano!'s relative strength of cast in its favor, and even in spite of that, I was more attached to DRRR!! if only for the simple reason that it was longer, and I was with the cast for a longer amount of time.
^^ If you hated the first episode that much (and just about anyone who's seen the show will admit that it starts slow, from what I've seen, and I agree), it might not be for you. Just find clips of Isaac and Miria on YouTube or something, since that was basically the best thing about it anyway.
^ Can you remind me which bit was Highlander nonsense? Was it just the part with a bunch of people on that ship? I can't see that assessment, by itself, being fair; it's a show about immortals, so I'd be a little disappointed if it didn't explore multiple time periods.
The Renaissance-era stuff is only a minority of the show, anyway -- the vast majority of it happens during the 30s.
I half-ruined Baccano! for me by not paying much attention to segments' dates.
^^^The problem is it doesn't do it particularly well. In Highlander we get these flashbacks to different periods to give a stronger insight into our characters and how they've grown and changed. In Baccano it's largely expository, which left me cold.
:<
The novels of baccano! grow into lots of periods, with the great depression becoming just the fan favorite era instead of the main one.
My messaging skills are seriously off today.
This afternoon, I sent off an e-mail I shouldn't have sent.
IJBM: Comixology's checkout page is throwing up a server error for me today.
I'm trying to give you guys money. Why won't you let me? T_T
so, after three nights and just getting 5 hours of sleep, i conclude that i have broken up with my sleeping cycle without noticing.
i was all like "Sleep, i need you" and she was all like "Dude, that's why i'm leaving you. you're all needy and shit" "BUT YOU'RE A BIOLOGICAL FUNCTION" "Pfeh, stop being so over dramatic"
What's wrong with fives hours of sleep, that's what I get, or less, every weekday.
I think I may have gone a little bit crazy in my attempts to come up with original fantasy races.
It's good if you get 5 hours of sleep within 24 hours. It's not good when you get five hours of sleep within 72
@INUH: Have you crafted out what cockroach, mouse, and dolphin society would be like?
No, just raven, megalania and mimic octopus.
The plant race is more up in the air; I'm deciding between venus flytraps, pitcher plants and Pando.
Son, I must say to you something that will blow thine mind: You are possesed by the most vile demon known to man: insomnia.
If you did Pando you could make it some sort of hivemind creature.
Yeah, that was the idea.
There's already one hivemind species in my setting, though, albeit an extinct one.
vandro: how do i kill this guy
do i stab him, shoot him, stab him while i shoot him or what
I think you need to sleep and battle it in a dream.
...you see the problem with that, don't you
Well fuck you too, Body!
I think the overall issue with fantasy races is that, in general terms, they're actually pretty useless. Usually they're representatives of possible factions of human society; elves tend to be a sort of leftist ideal, for instance. The thing is, though, that often there's no reasons for these races to exist because they seldom contribute anything at all.
Even Mass Effect tried to get in on the action and ended up with the same damned archetypes. The Asari were blue space elves (with a method of reproduction seeming to encourage rule 34, of all things), the Krogan were space dwarves, the Quarians were the halfling archetype and the Turians were probably the most interesting because they were the most human, being more or less a highly militarised citizen soldier society like the Ancient Greeks.
What I'm getting at here is that most fantasy races are sort of shits 'n' giggles affairs. If you look at folklore, you'll find that almost everything is to do with humans -- when elves or dwarves show up in Norse folklore, for instance, it's shorthand for "shit has just hit the fan" or "shit is just about to hit the fan". It's a similar case in Celtic folklore.
When I move from basic C# applications into making proper games, I'm no doubt going to be putting considerable effort into some fantasy shenanigans, and one of the things I'm definitely not doing is having fantasy races. What's the point if I can make things much more interesting and focused without them?
What about fantasy creatures?
I like those.