Fred the Barber

... people thought bubble tea was carbonated tea? It's delicious, if you like desserty drinks and tea, and if you can deal with the texture of the large tapioca balls. It's fine for me, but it seems many people find it off-putting. I actually haven't even had any flavors I disliked, but I'm not too adventurous with it... simple milk tea might be pretty good as a starter, and at least then the only surprise will be the "bubbles".

Amusingly, and contrary to the specifics of this argument, Japanese uses rising intonation at the end of a sentence for questions as well. However, I agree with your general claim that the way the languages express emotion is somewhat different (one thing I've personally noticed: English tendency to use clipped sounds when exasperated, vs. Japanese tendency to use elongated sounds when exasperated), and I'll offer what I believe to be an additional, stronger argument, since it applies even when the techniques are the same: Assuming the audience doesn't know much Japanese at all (which I think is a fair assumption for the argument), even if you assume the audience can understand the emotions being applied using various tones and emphases, they won't understand the specific words to which those tones and emphases are applied. So in all likelihood, they'll often misunderstand which word it's applied to, and therefore not actually grasp the meaning.

False. I actually like the Warcraft mythology and think they have good stories to tell, but I doubt this is going to be a well-done movie. Next person is proud to be a hipster.

Well, that was my most surreal experience of the day, seeing a thread titled "Are there any similar games to NekoPara" with the response "Tokyo Babel or Steins;Gate". At any rate, although it bears almost no resemblance to NekoPara, of course you should play Steins;Gate. Everyone should play Steins;Gate. It's a 10/10. There aren't a lot of those around.

I'm one of those people who sits there and reads the translated lyrics of an anime OP. I love that they do it, even though I wholeheartedly agree that they're almost always terrible (I can't remember any non-terrible ones at the moment, though there are probably some). The only anime I'm currently watching with translated lyrics is Zero no Tsukaima. The translated OP lyrics are nothing short of atrocious.

The Malazan Book of the Fallen wasn't my thing (I dropped it part of the way through the second book, if I recall correctly), but it might be yours, Funya. It was pretty awesome at times, but overall a bit dark for my taste. Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn universe is pretty big, and still has a lot of growing to do, but it's very manageable because he isolates out the trilogies rather than making one sprawling epic sharing characters. On the other hand, his Stormlight Archive is going to be at that scale, and is going to be literally the best fantasy epic series ever made, but he's only finished two (amazing) books so far.

Like Rooke said, the first one is pretty good, so the risk there is that you get pulled into the long, aimless slog that comprises the remainder of the series. I didn't think the second was that good, but the third was highly enjoyable. And then the rest of them just... kept... coming...

The art is gorgeous, but I'm probably not going to pick this up unless it gets really good reviews. On the other hand, if Kogado brought over anything from Kuroneko-san's team, I'd pick up that 12+-year-old game in a heartbeat. But of course I can see why that would sound crazy to them, and frankly would probably be a bad business decision anyway; they probably have no idea the reputation Symphonic Rain has over here, and naturally decided to bring over their latest and greatest.

The sad thing is, it wasn't even intentional.

Same. Incidentally, when you lose, I'll be nominating the blushing dice you sometimes use as an emoticon as your new avatar.

Welp, guess I can scratch this one off my list of planned editing-related blog posts... I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have done as good a job anyway. Nice work!

I got 12/22 - not terrible. Though at least one of them is basically unrecognizable even if you've played the VN. Next person parties hard.

Having spent way too much of my life reading those, I recommend against it. The journey is often boring, and the payoff isn't worth it.

Can't say anything about that one, but I've been using a Kindle PaperWhite for years now, and I was using an older Kindle before that. I have only good things to say about them, and I expect the newer ones are even better than the now relatively old one I have. It's convenient when traveling, and having a single-purpose device for reading is worth it to go a little easier on your eyes, IMO.

True on both counts. Next person, on the other hand, isn't a Key fanatic.

I'm really feeling the love here.

No, it actually wasn't that. I even still have them (well, the subset I kept from the ridiculously large shipment), and they're safely ensconced in the freezer where they should stay usable for a lot longer. ... I really don't know what it was. It's probably that aura of mystery that keeps me coming back to play the game.

When it first started, I was certain it was the ridiculous number of tea-bag-like-containers of dashi stock that came in one shipment from Amazon. A warning to everybody: when it says "pack of 10", it means 10 boxes with some 6 bags in each box, not 10 servings. Also, they expire in, like, a month.

I keep playing this one-player game, "What Smells Bad In The Fridge." I usually lose, but it's even worse not to play. The last two weeks were pretty rough. I still don't know what it was, though I did win sometime in the last couple days... my fridge is so barren now.

I'm pretty sure I only have fun playing single-player, story-oriented games, but I do find myself on the addiction train with games quite frequently. I have friends with whom I regularly play competitive FPS games (currently, we're playing Destiny every weekend); we play it seriously and get mad, almost exclusively at ourselves rather than each other, but we're all mature enough to not get too worked up about it. We definitely have more fun when we're doing the less-competitive stuff, even if it is still grindy; the PvE gameplay in Destiny is a genuine pleasure, in a team environment, so I'm actually happy when we do that. Less so with competitive. The adrenaline rush is great and all, but the disappointment of losing really does suck. I miss the days when I played more JRPGs, but on the other hand, I don't see those friends very often, and one of them especially is a very good friend, and this is by far the easiest way to keep in contact with him. And, even when gameplay may look grindy or repetitive to some people, it can still be dazzlingly fun to the player. I never got tired of pushing buttons on a plastic toy guitar in Rock Band, and I was absolutely euphoric when I got really, really good at the surprisingly deep, responsive, and skill-rewarding combat system in Lightning Returns: FFXIII. Even Destiny has a lot of that same joy, and in a much better way than similarly-styled MMOs with RPG mechanics at their core rather than shooter mechanics, mostly because by making the interface much more difficult (shoot the dude rather than click the button), they also had to make the game so much more forgiving to mistakes. That left a lot of room for creativity to do your own thing, which keeps the game fresh and fun even though I've been playing it for hundreds of hours. But yeah, I've definitely been through the addiction, almost exclusively with MMOs where the social aspect serves to keep you in the game, though also with Disgaea games where it's the grindy nature of the game itself that somehow pulls you in. It's not pleasant, and you don't realize just how bad it is until you're finally truly clear and realize just how much time you have to do things that are actually fun.

False, I'm currently UTC-7, and will be UTC-8 in October or so, thanks to this cursed daylight savings time. Next person is underrated.

To tell the truth, I was mentally giving you the benefit of the doubt. But if you actually just accepted a random one, I'm definitely going to say "That's so Flutterz."

Did you accept a random ginvite, or did you actually talk to a person before accepting?

Yeah, Fuwa really does have a thing for chuunige, doesn't it? I'm definitely a nakige fan, but I probably end up playing more chuunige anyway just because it gets so much hype around here. Not that it matters in this case - even with a text hooker I'm still not ready for untranslated... and if I were, I'd be going for White Album 2 first anyway.

I'd like to start saying "that's so Flutterz" about things other people say around here, but literally nobody else ever says anything that deserves it.