Toth

Absolutely, but at the same time looking like kindergarten kids while have incidences of above 1100 in some regions because of vaccination rates below 70% and people forget to get the booster shots.

Well, and we are only marginally better off, but on top of that have no functioning government. Söder accuses Scholz of not doing enough as the next chancellor while Scholz fires back that he is not yet chancellor and it's the CDU/CSU's job to do something (even though the SPD is still coalition partner), meanwhile Merkel carefully asks the presidents of the federal states to come together... maybe next week. It's ship without captain.

Fine, maybe thug is the wrong word, but in my interpretation I chalked most of his problematic decisions up to sheer impatience with political intrigues and bull-headed insistence to get whatever he wants or needs at the moment, everyone else be damned. But thanks, I keep that one in mind! I knooow. That's actually why I asked for recommendations not for topics I intend to write, but in which I already have written. To just see how others may have handled the same issues that I had. I do find it highly problematic myself to let myself influence by anything other than my own research. And yes, the role of women in these histories is also something peculiar. Like with Richard growing up at his mother's court alongside his sisters makes not having them as characters silly, what with his mother being the motherfucking Eleanor of Aquitaine, crashing the party on Sicily with Berengaria, also his sister Joan being dragged along for the crusading ride and there being the whole issue about Isabella of Jerusalem and all the plots about who gets to marry her (with several conspirators being female themselves...). Or simply having to give not just Nefertari (who everyone knows anyway) a role in a Ramesses story, but also Queen Tuya and the endlessly sarcastic Hittite Queen Puduhepa, what with the copious amounts of correspondence of them that underlines their importance here. Heck, that very same correspondence shows Ramesses being surprisingly blunt and self-aware about being a total slave to PR in what should be considered diplomatic correspondence.

Just found this thread and am a little curious given my strange situation where someone should start reading historical fiction who... somehow drastically prefers writing it rather than reading it. At all. As a nit-picky guy with a history Master I'm getting severely irritated when the setting doesn't feel 'right', the speech patterns are too modern and the characters not fitting the era in their belief system. I'm not saying I'm better, not at all, but when I write stories set in the past, I at least have control over how much artistic licence I give to myself... and how much I wander off and try to narrate actual historic events 'on a ground level' with no heed of containing myself within what makes sense thematically (and in terms of scale). The discussion right now about "Women of Troy" I find intriguing, given how one of my stories is indeed a take on Troy from the perspective of Penthesilea. Makes me think that it would be interesting to track down much more competent writers and see how their take on this is. So either I could get inspired, roll my eyes, or shrink in shame.^^ Looking through the pages here, I guess the other most interesting mentions here are Cornwell's Arthurian books given how myself also default in my Arthur picture to a Romano-British warlord. And given how I'm forever typecast as the Ancient Egypt guy and also wrote extensively about Ramesses, I guess Christian Jacq may be worth a look. But his mention threw me right back to where my thought process started: I did leaf through a Christian Jacq book once in the waiting area of my dentist. And... I found it really weird with extremely anachronistic dialogue that instantly threw me out of the setting. So I'm back to being extremely hesitant about that one. Anyone know anything worthwhile featuring Richard Lionheart? I have vague memories of having read "The Talisman" at my library as a kid, which I guess has somewhat influenced me in having my fun about making Richard really like having a chivalrous reputation, but is there anything that also portrays him as a politically inept thug?

Well, it certainly needs to be moved from the roads to prevent injuries. Wet leaves are a nasty hazard. Not sure how much grass you have in public spaces. That you have to remove it from large grass patches is something I also heard, but it is definitely encouraged to leave it below your shrubs for insects and hedgehogs to hibernate with. Heck, here if you are a garden owner this is the season where you can barely walk two steps in the evening without getting run over by a hedgehog huffing and puffing about their business. You really shouldn't take away their leaves.^^

Mmh... first I have heard of that. Have you tried it yourself? Because I seriously didn't do anything other than take the seeds from one bell pepper in a packaged bag from the supermarket, throw them in the bucket and then get overrun by plants.

Wednesday I wanted to dig up the chestnuts to put them into the freezer after watching some Youtube videos explaining that this is what you've gotta do to make them sprout. Well... apparently not me. Two of the four planted chestnuts turned out to already have sprouts. Today I came back to dig one of those up to put it into a separate pot, but it turned into a bit of a hassle because the root was already like 10 cm deep. Little buggers grow fast! ... also, while I was already at it, I randomly buried two walnuts next to it... I mean... why not?

Doesn't even need to do that. Everywhere I am baffled to see people complaining about how the absurdly risen fuel and heating prices are all the fault of the Greens, somehow, despite the new coalition not even having formed yet and it's mostly derived from the gas and oil shortage due to Asia (China) buying out the market (and the idiocy of the German providers not stocking up in summer and now punishing the consumers for it). Not quite sure where this originates from, but I did notice yesterday when switching to RTL group derived news they were quick to start their segment with blaming the CO² tax before bringing in an interview with a woman who then stated the actual reasons.

I must admit, the Corona lockdown had succeeded in turning me crazy. I don't have a garden. I don't even have a balcony. But still at the beginning of all this I jokingly thought to myself that it would be neat to be self-sustaining like some kind of prepper. So I started randomly planting all kinds of seeds that piled up from whatever fruits were currently on the table. I planted loads and loads of orange, lemon, tangerine, pear, pomegrenate, tomato, pepper, currant, strawberry, cherry, mirabelle and gooseberry seeds. Absolutely convinced that they wouldn't become anything anyway, so I planted them in wild abandon. Well, fuck me. By now all window sills and the whole dining table are covered in plants. Oranges, tangerines, peppers and tomatoes definitely work the best. Mad as hell that my lemons and pears got killed by a spider mite infestation. For the last month I have been able to harvest lots of tomatoes and peppers, the peppers even tasting astonishingly close to the hyperengineered supermarket peppers I took the seeds from. In fact: Those fucking peppers! I took all the seeds from a single yellow pepper that I thought wasn't ripe anyway and threw all of them into one bucket of soil, learning far too late that yellow peppers are just a type of pepper and not a state of ripening. Next I knew I had 45 goddamn pepper plants to tend to. I... honestly can highly recommend it, these little guys are perfect for your little home farming enterprise. The pomegrenates are also terrific. Planted three, two sprouted and even though one at one point looked a bit frail, they have now grown to quite the impressive height. Unfortunately I don't have the patience for any kind of stone fruits. I read somewhere that you can drastically increase the speed of cherries sprouting by carefully cracking the shells, so I did that, but it didn't lead to anything. Berries hate me as well. Now the next step of insanity came upon me: On my way back home I found a couple of marron trees that were already dropping their fruits. Well... I grabbed a handful of them and we'll see whether I can make some of those sprout. Has anyone experience with those?

*squints at Superman & Lois* Well, there is still hope...

Anyone else following Higurashi Sotsu or Magia Record right now? In Higurashi Gou/Sotsu's 34th episode they went and had a bit of a meta escalation extremely reminiscent of Umineko. I seem to be in quite a minority with my take on things, but given how the internet hivemind bolstered by leaks and the like always turns out right, I'm somewhat confused. Meanwhile Magia Record keeps massively improving upon the game's story, setting up in wide strides the events of the game's finale. And I pretty much love it! Damn, the writing is impressive and I'm still awed what the fuck happened in the gap between this second season and the painfully mediocre first season.

Just fyi, in my now deleted post I covered that on a weekday I have to be up at 4:45am. If I have to wake up any earlier, I can scratch sleep altogether.

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What is happening? What should have been good is mediocre and what should have been mediocre is suddenly actually great? Now a couple of weeks ago the second season of the Higurashi sequel, now dubbed Higurashi Sotsu, started. Individual scenes are well crafted and there are a lot of interesting visual callbacks to the original Higurashi in there. Unfortunately that's all there is to it. There are some stunning leaps of logic in there and it is all so stunningly predictable, depicting the most lazy way the 'mysteries' presented in Gou happened. I suppose the idea is indeed that they think it clever that it's the original arcs, just that the most obvious solution is this time correct, but for this kind of non-twist the show has far too many episodes. It drags on and on detailing stuff that has been already blatantly clear since about 20 episodes ago and it's so goddamn boring. Please go back to the meat of the story with the whole post-Matsuriyabashi looper-thunderdome. Then the second season of the Madoka Magica spin-off Magia Record started yesterday. I went in with all my hazy memories of being disappointed in the first season not being daring enough to actually change the meat of the rather thin Mobile Game it is made from. And then comes in this episode that works basically on the premise of how Madoka and Homura not being present during the arc where they had been originally introduced has massive consequences on the dynamics of the cast as they end up having to speed-run through the core revelations of the setting and work out their issues in time to go rescue Mami in Kamihama. This is all Anime original stuff and it was fantastic. Especially as a Sayaka fan, her journey through all kinds of emotions during this episode was a massive treat and made me somewhat teary eyed. My girl is so strong here! XD Hot damn. Am I being more hopeful? Fuck, I think the first episode of the first season was also rather good. No.... please don't give me hope only to then be mediocre again, please... But until then, I can encourage every Madoka Magica fan to watch at least this episode, because it's absolutely worth it: https://imgur.com/a/JO4xXsv

I should probably note what happened with my Higurashi Gou watch: The show has wrapped up its first season and is on a break with a second cour following in July. Now looking back on the show I am extremely conflict. The core idea and the conflict that they want to create is really great and I love how Gou is built to be a crossroads for the wider When they Cry franchise which up until consisted only of rather vaguely connected individual stories which take place in completely different worlds and only a very meta-textual overlap of characters. And then in comes Gou and massively fleshes out that concept and telling a story that Umineko alluded to that seemingly was Higurashi, but never quite and now rectifying that dissonance. Unfortunately on the other hand of the spectrum I must note that the direction is abysmal. I already noted in my previous reviews that I found myself very irritated about how the show keeps covering already well known Higurashi material for no other reason than an initial joke that got dragged out for FAR too long. Similarly the second half, while starting out as a great bridge between Matsuriyabashi and Gou to explain what the fuck happened that the characters got stuck again in 1983, it ended up surprisingly hasty in explaining how it happened while at the same time treating the necessary character development haphazardly and outright ignoring characters and motivations that would have affected the outcome that they wanted for the villain of the story, something that goes extremely against Higurashi's core principle of being a character-driven clockwork made of confliction motivations that all create the plot. It's a serious shame because I could see it working out extremely well with a tighter script and only half the episodes. In other news, I also recently saw the third Fate/Stay Night Heaven's Feel movie. If you had read some of my reviews here before, you probably noticed I'm a masochist for the Fate franchise. And the weirdest part is... I... I actually liked the movie! Bloody hell, how did they manage that? Okay, I do know how they managed that, but that only makes me more confused: The movie was basically just a barrage of pivotal character moments where they agonized about the decisions they are making and question their motivations. The only problem is that the two movies before that do an abysmal job getting these motivations across (if they even attempted it at all). So... Heaven's Feel III works great, for people like me who spent the last seven years tearing this franchise apart and know these characters and their motivations by heart. People who just watched this and UBW (and you have to watch UBW because Heaven's Feel I skips all the scenes they have in common) will probably feel super confused and not buy it at all. Also the fight scenes in this one are spectacular in a good way. So far I had been very disappointed in the fight scenes in ufotables Stay Night in comparison to Fate/Zero since their fights and their choreography rarely accomplished anything other than paint the characters as super duper powerful. Something Fate/Zero accomplished utterly implicitly if you bothered to look at the carnage around them, but the focus of the Fate/Zero fights still lingered on the strategies of how the characters approach their fights and become more a test of their motivations than anything. Meanwhile in Fate/Stay Night it's just flailing with pretty CGI effects. So imagine my surprise that I found them actually interesting here, given how short most of the fights are and how they usually served a clear purpose for the advancement of the plot, while also allowed moments of characterization to shine through instead of "Gate of Babylon goes brrrrr". Apparently it helps that they poured all their budget into the ultimately relatively meaningless Rider vs. Saber fight that goes on for seven fucking minutes and is just 'splosions as Michael Bay took over for a bit.

I mean... I feel you. I started to watch the entirety of Detective Conan, about 7 years ago and still only got till... *checks bookmark* Episode 855. Detective Conan just hit the 1000 episode mark as well.

Okay, I'm curious whether you can tell us in, like, five years or so whether they found the damn treasure yet.^^

Since I just finished watching The Unsleeping City I feel I need to do a bit more advertising for Dimension 20 here because goddamn it, the creativity of each campaign is off the charts. Let me just introduce to you all campaigns so far: Fantasy High The very first Dimension 20 campaign, entirely watchable for free on Youtube. Fantasy High is essentially if a generic Dungeons and Dragons nation has spontaneously decided to warp into a 1960s American suburb. The PCs are students of a high school dedicated to train future adventuring parties and it's all things considered the most light-hearted and silly Dimension 20 campaign. Escape from the Blood Keep Aka: The one with Matthew Mercer as a guest. It's essentially Lord of the Rings from the perspective of the bad guys. Not-Sauron was just defeated and his loyal servants scramble to revive him. It's a case study in just how much Mercer's rolls are cursed and how much PCs can absolutely hilariously derail poor Brennan's storyboard and forced him to make everything up on the spot. The Unsleeping City This one takes place in our world and our New York, except that there is an unseen world of magic hidden beneath it all, with the PCs being just a bunch of crazy New Yorkers getting roped into saving the world. It's absolutely terrific! Tiny Heist Essentially a Toy Story heist story. Can't exactly go into any details because I haven't watched it yet and unlike the three above campaigns it is on their Dropout website. A Crown of Candy Last but not least: The A Song of Ice and Fire campaign. Yes, seriously. They did a campaign that's essentially ASoIaF, but everyone is edible. It's ludicrously ambitious worldbuilding... and god damn it, it is by far the darkest Dimension 20 campaign they have done so far. The Unsleeping City already ended very bittersweet, but the death toll in this one is mental.

I've started down the path of madness and made the first three steps into my monstrous Umineko Tribute MMV: Holy shit, still 33 minutes more to edit... XD Also: I'm sorry it is only very bare bones. I have zero experience with editing software whatsoever, so no flashy effects from me and some rather poor transitions.

Have you watched Dimension 20? If Mercer is too subdued for you, Brennan Lee Mulligan might be more up to your speed.

I must admit, I am among the people who have also eyeing RPGs for quite some time. I only ever had sporadic contact with players before though. A classmate at my school was in a The Dark Eye group with her boyfriend and at university I also got some stories from a dude who was a D&D DM, but must admit I only ever got interested after first listening to Acquisitions Incorporated and later watching the stunningly creative Dimension 20 campaigns of the College Humor staff. Go check it out! Brennan is a scarily amazing DM! I did try to give Critical Roll a try, but it never clicked with me the same way as these guys do. Some time ago, just to get a grip on how such a game system looks like from the other side of the screen, I bought a DM set for Warhammer 40k: Dark Heresy when it appeared in a humble bundle. I would really like to play, but obviously don't know anyone who would be interested (or would have the time) and then again I myself don't have any time either.

Still watching Higurashi Gou. And still not entirely sure how they will go about resolving this show. So far the idea seems to be entirely "It's the same exact story arcs as in the original Higurashi, but with a twist". This... I am not quite sure I like as much as I should. With every arc so far being four episodes, this means there are three episodes that are 90% boredom because it is just repeating stuff you already know with only some small hints that something has changed and then it all comes crashing down in an ending that usually has the murderers and victims switched up. The ending of the "Watadamashi" arc was a fantastic mystery though, giving you just enough clues to figure out 80% of what happened on your own, but still leaving something you need more information for to get a clear picture. And yet, YET, I am annoyed just how much of the arc was just the Watanagashi arc despite Keiichi giving the doll to Mion. Vast swathes of the plot shouldn't have happened like that. At least in this one Rika has the excuse for how fast she was dispatched to explain why she wasn't able to influence more things.

Ryukishi played his audience like a goddamn fiddle! I mean... sure that the author specializing in ridiculously unreliable narrators and meta-twists will play a prank like this on the viewers he made to believe that the new Higurashi show is a remake. Damn... So the whole thing started to come down on Wednesday. Amazon put up the show and an episode list and people started wondering why it was named "Higurashi no naku koro ni Gou" and why its first arc is called "Onidamashi" (Deceived by Demons) instead of "Onikakushi" (Abducted by Demons) despite the first episode having depicted Onikakushi events. I watched the Reddit melting down in real time as people started discussing that this could indeed be a different story. And then Episode 2 aired. Immediately starting out with: IT IS A SEQUEL! NOT A REMAKE! GODDAMN IT, RYUKISHI! Ironically I am now a lot more curious how this will play out. I have honestly no clue whatsoever. None of this was ever shown in any of the VNs or mangas. So far the second episode as well depicts mostly Onikakushi events, including some scenes the first Anime skipped, but skipping a lot of very crucial scenes and still alluding to them as if acknowledging that they should be here. Which in turn makes me wonder: Anyway, my first hunch that the scenes they skipped were far too crucial for this to be a remake and suspecting a Rebuild of Evangelion situation was so absolutely on the mark that I'm still stunned about my prediction. Yay, I guess? In other news I am very slightly starting to get used to the art style. That doesn't mean I like it, mind you. I still find it lifeless and rigid with everyone looking like plastic dolls. The thick lighting effects somewhat manage to cover it up during twilight and night scenes though. Other than that I have nothing else to say, except having you enjoy the fantastic opening: There are two very tiny Umineko references in it though that leave me utterly at a loss just how meta this show will get. I hope this will not throw off people who only know Higurashi. Adding on these concerns there is a small bit at the beginning of the episode where: That was odd, to say the least. And now I'm worrying that this might mean...