Matt D

Play Suikoden I and II instead.

I feel like at least part of the rest of the world caught up to me there, not as it pertains to hate, necessarily, but at least about the narrative emptiness and repetitiveness.

I just want to throw it out there that my wrestling purgatory would be a series of Ziggler/Volador, Jr. matches.

We finished it the night before last. The first half of the season had the kids acting like a bunch of dumb teenagers, which is both great and painful, of course. The back half was much more disjointed and unfocused but it came together more or less. You get the sense with two episodes to go that they need about five more to tie things off and then it ends in a way that they just bump a bunch of it to the next season. I'm glad the show exists though.

I'm happy with a lot of those actually, especially the Sif one.

Again?

Let's see how Eternals go? Honestly, I think this is the last wave of that. The next one can retrench with the X-characters/Deadpool and Fantastic Four/Silver Surfer. This one almost feels like bonus. If any of these pan out, they have another merchandising bonanza on their hands. Nova or Ms. Marvel, for instance, seem super marketable. They have almost nothing to lose in this wave. If it goes poorly, well, the next one has Wolverine so who cares? If it goes well, though....?

Today's rumor is Young Avengers, which feels tricky given Cassie's age and that Vision/Wanda didn't quite get that far along (but of course it could be any young characters). Has anyone summed up the rumors lately? Movies Eternals Nova Black Widow Young Avengers Disney+ Loki Vision/Scarlet Witch Groot/Rocket Raccoon Winter Soldier/Falcon What am I missing?

To me, the biggest issues with VII are the fact you can only use three party members at a time and the fact that characters are too customizable without that balance that you get in other games. They're just a bunch of ciphers so far as the game play goes. @JLSigman, as for the story, I mean VI is right there and it has a better story and it was just as progressive in how it told it in so many ways.

Pro: New Pat O'Connor match. Con: This is basically the coolest thing he does in the whole match.

I thought it was a really good match too. It's hard in 2019 to execute a counter-war while having it feel both non-cooperative and still have some sort of flow and narrative and I really thought they hit those marks (destroyer notwithstanding but then I'm more forgiving than Brian in this very specific case). As a general thing, I'm more annoyed that Almas never hits a straight moonsault. That really misses the point of the move. That said, it was the double moonsault which took the crowd over the top and drew the "This is Awesome" chant even though the fans had to know it was coming, so you can only fault it so far.

As for the survivability, we've been conditioned for a decade that a DDT is just a transition move or a set up move in WWE (Almas is an exception ironically). The sort of impact you get on Rey's destroyer feels like sort of like the same. As for the believability, I'd rather he not be doing it, sure. I sort of buy it as Rey's a master of manipulation of leverage or what not, but yeah, it's better if he wasn't doing it. I had more of an issue with Graves going on and on about it when it's a 13+ year old move that a huge majority of the crowd is familiar with (it's apparently in the WWE2K video games for instance). That came off as pretty disingenuous.

I replayed FFVII at some point. I'm not 100% sure when, to be honest, but sometime in the last ten years I guess. This time along I read a plot guide and it was a lot better storywise. There are crazy things like the fact you don't encounter the real Sephiroth until the very end of the game that you'd never fully figure out from actually playing the thing. I think it's wildly overrated, especially compared to IV-VI but it's cultural in the way the Attitude Era is cultural, so what are you going to do?

Which, if nothing else, shows you how much more they value Braun over Balor.

I've made the argument at length that old Flair teaches us a lot about the relative limitations and narrowness of young Flair that might not be as apparent otherwise, so I'm consistent at least.