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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: August 15th, 2023

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  • You might be right, but basically everyone is expecting there to be significant features of MKW which are as yet unannounced but will be featured in the upcoming Nintendo direct which is focused on that game specifically.

    There is certainly an argument to be made about DLC cost being included upfront (and Zelda was already $90 on Switch 1 including the DLC) to avoid splitting up the player base for a game with an online focus. That might not be what they’re doing, but my point is there are things they could do to justify the price increase for many players.

    They also might just do nothing more than what’s already been announced, but I doubt it because why then would they do another reveal later?


  • Have a Kodi add-on setup integrated with trakt and custom widgets. So whenever I load up Kodi I get a feed of

    • New episodes for shows I already watch as soon as they air
    • New trending shows (in descending order of current viewers)
    • Newest shows on steeamers like Netflix, Amazon, Apple, BBC (which depend on the fine folk whom add them to trakt lists)
    • Recommended shows from trakt

    And then a separate similar set of widgets for movies. I find the trakt recommendations include a lot of old movies too. So if I can’t find anything I want from the feeds of new stuff, I just pull up the trailer for one of the old movies I’m recommended and take a punt on it if I’m interested.

    For YouTube I just use the recommendation algorithms (delivered via SmartTube)










  • I think the trope developed over the course of the TV renaissance period post-early 2000s. At the time The Sopranos S1 was released, it didn’t exist. The most interesting season of The Sopranos is S6, because it subverts expectation of a series runtime to experiment as a kind of celebration of the established universe and characters and their interactions. It is more than a pastiche of itself though, as it goes in genuinely new directions. 21 was the number of episodes which naturally suited the creative direction of the season and series, within reason of course. Not an even number or multiple of 5, not a number designed to perfectly fill a network timeslot.

    GoT (earlier seasons) & Better Call Saul are great examples of shows that effectively harness the 10-episode constraint and deliver great story arcs in spite of them, as I recall. The Wire is another. I think Mr Robot S3 is harmed by the same constraint, where focus was diverted away from storytelling and toward marketability, both to studios and audiences. A different runtime could have improved the show, but by that point in the industry & culture that isn’t something that would reasonably be on the table. The more modern version of what Sopranos S6 was is Ozark S4 - forced. Format is now restricted to a ‘full length’ 10-episode season or fewer, or it is purposefully different as a contrivance of industry. And I highly doubt that was a boon for those highly rated & popular full length series, good as they are.



  • I think most series are constrained to their respective runtimes and while those constraints do shape the nature of the themes they have the capacity to explore, it isn’t always a problem even for series with fewer than 10 episodes. I haven’t watched either of those recently enough to speak on them, but I think 10-episode series have become a de facto standard that is problematic for many shows and seasons. Severance S2 and The Bear S3 come to mind as recent examples. Both tend to experiment with the form of episodic storytelling in a way which, while interesting and worthwhile in my opinion, ultimately serves to make their respective season arcs less cohesive as a direct result of that constraint.