u/Danielnrg

The first two films had a warm color that fit the fantasy setting quite well.

Starting from Prisoner though, it became quite dark and grey and never really let up on that.

From a thematic standpoint, did it make sense to make that leap so early in the series? POA isn't substantially darker thematically than CoS.

As an alternative to illustrate what I mean, imagine if the first four movies looked like the first two, and only in OOTP did we get that darker/neutral color aesthetic. Would that be a more potent thematic choice than what we got?

Veritaserum is about as magical as anything in HP: a true truth serum? Imagine the applications of forcing any individual to tell the full, unvarnished truth!

But the applicability of this device falls apart in much the same ways as lie detectors did in our world.

For one, veritaserum can be "gamed", with faked memories substituting themselves for what really happened. A person under the effects of veritaserum can only tell the truth as they know it. If someone implanted a false memory that JFK was elected to two terms, the person believes it to be the truth and will wholeheartedly attest to it under the effects of the serum.

Secondly, a schizophrenic or otherwise mentally disturbed individual will, under the effects of veritaserum, emphatically state that Voldemort used an animagus form to act as Dumbledore this whole time, completely undetected by all wizarding authorities! Due to their disability, they genuinely believe that this is the truth.

Veritaserum cannot compel people to tell the objective truth, only the truth as they know it.

It is impossible to administer veritaserum to Lucius Malfoy, for instance, while preventing any decent defense attorney from countering that the "truth" had been planted, or that the defendant was insane.

Veritaserum is one of those things that I (and I suspect many others) took for granted in the Harry Potter universe. It's a truth serum, of course they have a truth serum. But it is no more a truth serum than lie detectors were, at least from a legal point of view.

It's entirely possible that I'm the only one who feels this way, but my genuine reaction to the credits rolling on that episode was confusion and surprise. It was like a mini jump scare.

I guess the reason it feels like that is because none of the arcs get a traditional conclusion. Lois gets arrested for abducting a child, and Hal is still cripplingly paranoid about living in that house.

The closest we get to an actual resolution is Reese and Dewey with the old man, but even that doesn't feel like a real resolution.

Most episodes end with a sort of "reset", where arcs resolve enough to provide the characters with a return to normal. With Lois presumably in jail for a pretty serious crime and Hal incapable of functioning, I don't see that happening.

I'm not a writer, but I have at least one suggestion for a resolution to the Dewey/Reese arc: cut back to them covered head to toe in eggs, presumably a significant amount of time has passed and the old man has moved on. The egg dripping down to the mattress gives them enough leverage to get unstuck. They walk through the neighborhood, reflecting on how their shenanigans predictably end in misery and unforeseen consequences. Then they knock on another house, no answer, and they reach for the eggs in their pillowcases.

So when I was going to do a replay, I decided that having the fog of war would be useful because I'd know where I still need to explore. That was enough for me to eschew the benefits of a new game plus.

But when I got to Eos on this new game, the map is filled in. I compared it to my previous new game plus playthrough and they look the same.

So now the only reason I didn't do a new game plus just doesn't exist for some reason, and I'm way too far into it to justify redoing 10 hours of content I've already played. It is more than a little frustrating. This entire playthrough will essentially be a wash, progression-wise.

Has this happened to anyone else? I haven't gotten to other planets yet, so I'm hoping maybe the issue is confined to Eos.

I have an autistic sister, I went to middle school at an autism school. I worked with autistic kids fresh out of high school, and 12 years later it's still the most I've ever made of my life (not that there's much competition, but that's neither here nor there).

But I really, really don't like to be around other autistic people. It depresses me, it makes me irrationally angry.

I should be sympathetic towards autistic people, they are after all in the same struggle as myself. On a macro level, I suppose I am.

But on a day to day, I hold an irrational animus towards other autists. Even my own sister. It makes me sad that I can't engage with her the way she deserves to be engaged, when I should be her biggest champion. I'm her older brother. But every stilted interaction is painful.

I really don't like that I feel this way, but I can't change it. It's just how I feel.

As anyone can see, I am a long-time Redditor with a long post history (for good or ill). I am not a bot.

A trip to reddit.com/appeals reveals that my account is not banned, a post in r/whatismycqs says my CQS is High.

And yet, my posts in many different subreddits are being shadowbanned without so much as telling me that the post wasn't posted.

r/tooafraidtoask, r/allthequestions. the latter of which I just posted in several times last month.

I can still comment on posts in these subs. They have not banned me.

And finding this out answers so many questions. There have always been subs I've tried to post in, but couldn't. I never got a notification, modmail, anything indicating I couldn't post there, yet my posts never showed up in the feed for the sub. I was invisible to them.

On one occasion I messaged the mods of a sub, and they said they had no idea why I couldn't post.

I only found all this out because I copied the link to a post I'd made to my phone, then clicked on it when logged out, and it said: sorry, this post was removed by Reddit's filters.

I don't know what that means. I've been using Reddit for 10 years, my post history is voluptuous and my post karma is not insignificant. I was literally posting in r/allthequestions a month ago. And now, any post I make in that sub and many others returns an unspoken Reddit filters removal.

I am not notified about this. There is no automated comment below my posts. My inbox is not flooded with messages about my posts not actually posting. There's nothing. Crickets.

What the hell is going on?

Any time I post any title longer than 8 words on here it won't post.

When we first get the reveal of the coin, the other half is blackened almost to the point of not even recognizing what it is.

During the climax, when Two-Face is deciding on the fates of Batman, himself, and Gordon's son, there is very little visual distinction between the two sides.

Is this intentional? When I first saw this scene I was thinking "wait, he just shot Batman on heads but didn't shoot himself on the same heads".

I can understand the philosophical point of having the heads be indistinguishable, but it defeats the purpose of having them be very much distinguishable earlier in the movie. Are we supposed to believe that Harvey was somehow more justified earlier in the film? When he was killing random coconspirators left and right?

And what about on a practical level? Did he take the coin to a cleaner's shop or maybe Rick's Pawn Stars to get the other side shined out, get the char off it?

If you're going to make the point that it's two-sided and he decides more or less who lives or dies, why focus on one side being functionally distinct from the other if you're just going to erase that distinction at the end of the movie?

Every "proper technique" I've seen results in one of these two outcomes.

Some people say to tilt your head downward, but this just results in the spray dripping out of my nose in whole droplets.

Looking straight ahead results in spray coalescing around the outside of my nostril, not dripping but clearly not getting where it's supposed to be.

Tilting up is the only way to prevent dripping, but results in the spray going directly down my throat.

I feel like I'm going crazy with all of these suggestions on technique that invariably result in the spray not going where it's supposed to go, which is in my nostril.

Is some dripping/going down throat normal, and if so to what degree? It's possible I could be stressing about nothing, but it's hard to imagine whole droplets falling out of my nose or coating the back of my throat means the spray is working.

David S. Goyer. That's the man responsible for arguably the two best Call of Duty campaigns in the golden age of COD. (He also came back for thirds, and wrote Cold War, which IS inarguably the best campaign of the new generation. Fight me.)

Having the man who rode Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy to cinematic glory penning your FPS campaign is a lot more prestigious than having some A-List actors spend a few hours in the recording booth, IMO.

After working on ME1, Jack Wall insisted on a more hands-on role with the implementation side of music for the sequel. He cited frequent uses of music in places and scenes they weren't written for, and the times when music suddenly cuts out at the end of a scene before it's finished as reasons for wanting a more direct role.

Marty O'Donnell (Halo composer) also cited these types of things as being avoided due to his role as audio director as well as composer. When you hand your music off to the audio team, you have little control over how it's implemented.

But for ME2, Jack Wall (and his assistant Brian DiDomenico) were the audio team, implementing the music they and the composing team wrote.

I thought it was just one of those artisty nitpicks until I played the trilogy in LE.

There are so many instances in ME1 and ME3 (especially the latter) of music cutting out unceremoniously because the scene ended faster than the music track, and while the music of ME3 is great it lacks the cohesion of ME2 or even ME1 at times.

Like, when I completed my most recent playthrough, the music track for Shepard breathing at the end (Destroy) cut out before the string sting that accentuates this. To me, the scene played out with subtle strings hinting at a reveal, and before the music aspect of the "reveal", the credits hit and the Das Malefitz song started playing.

Now, I don't remember this happening (ever) in the original 360 release. But I don't think this diminishes my point, because no such audio mishaps occurred in ME2.

The audio may have been well-handled enough in ME3 to preclude such egregious musical timing errors, but it clearly couldn't survive being ported and remastered. But ME2, where the composers themselves were also implementing the music they wrote, doesn't have any such issues.

Something got lost in translation for ME3 and ME1 but not ME2, and I have serious doubts that is a coincidence.

Speaking of ME1, this isn't an implementation issue AFAIK, but the audio track for cutscenes is noticeably degraded compared to the original release. This is most abundantly clear during the climactic scene when Shepard emerges from the wreckage on the Presidium. The track "From The Wreckage" by Sam Hulick is so badly degraded that it sounds like someone took it into Audacity and bass boosted it, nerfing all the treble in the process.

But all the music in ME2 works and sounds exactly like it did in the original release, which is exactly how it should. And it puts a shadow over both of the other games.

It might have taken the LE ports to make that difference palpable, but damn if it isn't exactly that.

I've been reading up on this, specifically the information listed here https://www.dhcs.ca.gov/individuals/the-facts-on-balance-billing/

It says that dual eligible like me can't be billed for Medicare cost sharing.

My doctor referred me to an ENT, and that ENT doesn't take Medi-Cal. So every time I've gone there, I get billed for what the Medicare Advantage didn't pay.

But according to the above listed website, "Even if a Medicare provider is not enrolled in Medi-Cal, the provider may not bill the dual eligible beneficiary."

Every time I've gotten a bill I called their billing department and provided my Medi-Cal info for them to bill. The first time it only took one call, the most recent time I had to call 3 times before the bill showed as current/paid. Giving them the same info each time...

I'm interested in finding out about this because thus far I've only done office visits, my bill was for $20. I want to know exactly where I stand so that, in the event I need more significant services, I'm not on the hook for a lot more than $20.

I listened to all three at some point, and didn't save a single track from the first film.

To me it feels like everything in the first film is done better or otherwise expanded in the following two.

Batman Begins might warrant another listen from me as it's been several years, but I'm wondering: what draws you to this score over the other two?

My friend recently told me he thought I was asexual. It was unbidden and to me the context in which he said this was marginally relevant at best.

But I made a post about it in another sub and I've been thinking about it a lot. I've also been looking into what asexual even is, including stuff on this sub, but I'm not sure if I fully understand.

I think the main stumbling block for me is what attraction actually is.

I have a foot fetish. It's not a partialism, it's a fetish. I'm only attracted by feet. I have no interest in sex, and I've always thought a traditional relationship would be impossible because of this.

But I'm also straight. I am only attracted to women's feet.

The part that's jamming me up is that I think I do experience sexual attraction, in relative terms. See, I know when a girl looks "pretty" to me, and when they don't. And I know that when I see a pretty girl, I really want to know what her feet look like.

That feels like sexual attraction to me. Theoretically I can be aroused by any good looking pair of tootsies, but there is a connection between people I know and like as a person and are physically attractive and the sexual aspect.

Pretending or visualizing a porn video as someone I know ultimately has better results sexually than viewing it surface-level as a random pair of feet.

So I'm confused as to whether, in my unique circumstances, this qualifies as sexual attraction by asexual definitions.

I've always considered myself to be in a unique position, but still firmly straight. I don't want to deny myself a more accurate descriptor because of social stigma or whatever, but I also don't want to coopt anything.

The hosts of this YouTube channel I watch (Internet Today) occasionally use this line. I think it's supposed to be from the perspective of a rural type of person, like "New York City?! Those big city folks" type of thing.

Just from the way they say it, it sounds like they're referencing something but I have no idea what.

And then another podcast I watched started playing a soundboard snippet with the same line in the same tone, which is probably the original. But still all I have are the words and the tone of voice.

I wish I could provide a reference but it's an infrequent occurrence for both shows, and I didn't have the foresight to clip it the last time it happened.

I'm just hoping the thing they're referencing is well known enough to get an answer here. Sorry I can't provide anything more concrete.

Started at 30mg, went up to 45 god only knows when.

I've been feeling pretty depressed lately. Honestly it's been the past few years, but it feels like it just gets worse and worse.

The only reason I haven't brought this up to my doctor is, when I look at my life, I don't see why I shouldn't be depressed.

I don't want to switch up medications just because my lifestyle is unrewarding. The fix to that is supposed to be changing the lifestyle.

Additionally, I can't sleep without Remeron (forgotten to take it a few times, didn't realize until 5am). So I feel like I'm stuck with it, even if it wasn't working as good as it's supposed to.

TL:DR I'm more depressed lately, is this a problem with Remeron or with my lifestyle? Would upping dose/switching meds help, and should I even consider that option?

It seems like previous generations had a single music figure whose name was ubiquitously known throughout the world and set the sonic tone for a while. The 50s had Elvis, the 60s & 70s had The Beatles, the 80s had Michael Jackson...

Is there a similar figure for music in the 2000s to now? Has the music industry expanded so much that we don't have an Elvis or Beatles? The pie has been cut into so many slices that we don't have an equivalent figure anymore?

I'd played through the trilogy on NG+ at least four times when Legendary Edition came by. It was like having to learn how to walk again.

I knew that there was a stat boost tied to Kelly in ME3, so I was friendly with--ok what the fuck!?

She didn't show up in my ME3 playthrough. Like at all.

So I had to make a new master ME2 playthrough (to import to ME3) which also meant playing ME3 with an imported ME2 instead of ME3 NG+...

I flirted with Kelly. Hard. Basically treated her as my romance, despite holding out for Ashley from a narrative perspective.

Best part is I don't even know if I did it right. You only get the ME3 bonus on NG+ playthroughs of that game.

But every time I talk to her, the paragon option results in Shepard hitting on her! I just visited Ash in the hospital and my bro says "I liked it when you kept a close eye on me". What the fuck?!

I just wanted the 10% weapon damage from Prejek Paddlefish intel upgrade. I had this in ALL of my ME3 playthroughs on the 360, but my Shepard friendzoned her there. Now I have to live with a sleazy flirty Shepard just to get the boost??

Honestly, sometimes it feels like Legendary Edition is more trouble than it's worth.

But then I load my 360 ME2 save (to read the DLC emails, which don't exist in LE) and ask myself how the hell I ever played the game in that low definition. It's like going from 4K Ultra-HD to DVD. Or less.

I really hope after this playthrough I'll be set for future ones. Playing through the games on Insanity with none of my NG+ gear has been a royal pain (though admittedly a fun challenge).