UPDATING OCCASIONALLY (FOR NOW)

5 thoughts on “558 – Cotton Clad Calamity”

  1. Raznaak

    Yup, he’s a bastard XD

  2. Dr. Norman (not a real doctor)

    Are those pajamas available in XXXL in the gift shop?

  3. Otaku

    It’s been a while, so let me ask: Did we get a reason for him to WANT Susie dead? Not to backseat, but if we didn’t, I’m worried were about to move into “Stupid Evil” territory. Now, stupid happens, don’t get me wrong. It’s not bad storytelling for that to be the case here.

    You’ve just done a good job NOT having that be a driving factor, so the “Kill off the stars of my successful reality TV show.” seems shortsighted, otherwise. Oh, I guess I could be mistaken about the in-story reality TV show’s success. Like, if the company behind them is losing money, or they think a change in management at the ranch would make the whole thing more popular/profitable, then I can see the above scenario happening as well.

    I REALLY think I’m just forgetting something important, but that I don’t have time to deep dive to remind me of, hence the comment. >_<

    1. Deoxy

      It certainly has been stretched out over quite a while, but there have definitely been hints from quite near the beginning that whoever is running the reality TV show definitely wants her dead.

      But I certainly don’t recall any reason why.

      1. Clint

        Yeah it’s fair to not remember since it’s been a hot minute (many, many minutes) but if you feel like a refresher the most relevant bits would be the beginning of Episode 8 and the end of Episode 15. We haven’t explicitly spelled out exactly what The Exec means by his “side hustle” or who was on the other end of that phone call, though.

        I’m hoping that when the whole thing is eventually available it will make sense, or at least enough sense to have hung this narrative on.

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558 – Cotton Clad Calamity
Posted on August 26, 2026 by Dawn

What would you call this? Armchair assassination? Merk-from-home?

Well, Suzie ain't dead (or undead) quite yet, so we'll just have to see if his gloating is justifiable.

League of extraordinary animation…

Posted on November 20, 2024 by Clint

Is the term “killer app” still in parlance in the tech community? If not, quick rundown: hardware by itself doesn’t sell, or at least doesn’t sell for long. This is particularly true with game consoles and is why they tend to jealously guard their library of IPs. I remember the original release of the Xbox, and my local group and I had next to no interest in shelling out for that thing until we played HALO at a friend’s house, and within a few months all of us had an Xbox. Because HALO. That one game was arguable what made the Xbox a contender in the console marketplace. It was the “killer app.” A couple of decades earlier, the consensus was that as far as emerging videocassette technology was concerned, Betamax was the clearly superior format to VHS. And yet VHS won out, because the porn industry chose to make their tapes compatible with it. In the world of entertainment, the tail wags the dog.

Why do I bring this up? Well, mostly because I love to be oblique and bury the lede. The lede is that during the writer’s strike we canceled our Netflix subscription. The days where Netflix was the only real game in town for streaming were long gone and the prices kept going up while the management was making some very questionable decisions with their “software,” i.e. their library both of existing titles and newly minted exclusives. Some of it wasn’t their fault or under their control as major players were getting their own channels into circulation and circling the wagons, calling their IPs home so that you weren’t going to see Disney and such available anymore. Other decisions like canceling the Dark Crystal prequel series made me feel like one of those anime protagonists who has to clench their fists with tears streaming from their eyes and declare “I cannot forgive you!”

But if I’m totally honest it was probably the costs. Some people can afford to buy all the consoles and some can’t, right? And there was nothing particularly compelling keeping me there. After cancelling of course I found out no one else did even though we’d all talked about it, and Netflix apparently got its act back together and was putting out some good apps again, but… I held out. Even with Dawn poking at me hopefully every so often and pointing to things our friends were raving over like Blue Eyed Samurai, I held out.

So Netflix called in the nuclear option and hit me with their ads for Season 2 of Arcane: League of Legends.

There was no defense. They knew of my love for Season 1 and my figuring they would just cancel it like they canceled all other good and right things in the world, and no, they renewed it and waved it before me and my dumb bull ass ran right into the anvil of resubscription.

But here’s the kicker. It’s good. It may even be better than the first Season, and that’s particularly surprising in a world where sequels and prequels so often don’t measure up to what we loved in the first go ’round.

No, good doesn’t quite capture it. Six episodes in and everything shows the hallmarks of not only a generous budget but the work of a creative team firing on all cylinders with the storytelling, voice acting, and especially the animation. It’s gorgeous. It’s moving. It was worth the wait, and worth my pride in crawling on back to the entertainment ex.

I still have a lot of worry for Season 2 of Andor, although for better or worse my Disney+ subscription just renewed for the year. Now that we can pick and choose there’s a lot more need to keep an eye on what we’re picking and choosing. But for now, I have found a new killer app, and I am content.