u/xavierhollis

I am trying something a bit wacky.

My original files live on my QNAP which is mounted on my Windows PC

Plex lives on my other PC which has ubuntu server so it is inside docker and has the QNAP mounted

I'm organising my original files into the standard TV/Films libraries.

But I also wanted a custom folder on QNAP which combined TV shows and films.

To this end I created symlinks within file explorer and can obviously watch everything by clicking it on file explorer.

If I scanned this folder as Other Videos would Plex actually see these symlinks considering their paths are made for windows file explorer not docker

I really like the Marvel Epic Collections. They seem like a natural evolution of the old black and white Essential trades and in general obvious idea that Marvel should have adopted decades ago.

I also love that, for Spider-Man, they have been the format that has at last given us a complete (and relatively affordable) collection of several runs, chief among these being David Michelinie whose body of work had only ever been collected in fragments, either arcs within trades, Venom/Carnage centric collections or a focus upon his artistic collaborators like McFarlane.

...However...

I am frustrated by the fact that to this date the ASM Epic collections have been this weird tug of war between ONLY being about ASM issues but then including non-ASM Spider-Man comics if you need them to understand the mainline ASM issues but then throwing in the odd one shot or graphic novel because they felt like it I guess.

I'm not asking for them to ditch the non-ASM material and at most only print like explanatory subplot pages (imagine trying to read Kraven's Last Hunt that way, yuck).

On the contrary, I think they should go all in. For characters like Venom, Carnage, and a few other Marvel characters who (unlike Spider-Man) didn't get off the ground with their own title very early in their existence, the Epic Collections go for a comprehesive approach. You get EVERY appearance of Venom in roughly publication order with subplot pages to bridge the gaps. It works great!

Why can't we just DO that for Peter Parker?

Seriously, for decades we have had the Marvel Chronology Project right there painstakingly telling us sometimes panel by panel whhen different stories happen in relation to one another for virtually every Marvel character. I'm not saying we should have a truly chronological trade collection where every single stiory along the lines of Untold Tales is slotted in where it is supposed to have happened.\*

But organise the stuff in broad publication order, slipping in the odd note or subplot page to account for Spidey appearing briefly in other titles or to make it clear these issues of Spectacular take place during the pages of this issue of ASM you just read so that both stories don't need to be stopped and started.

Marvel would get over all more trades to print and more importantly their mascot character would have as cohesive a reading order as possible.

This would be INFINITELY useful for newer fans who do not need to navigate the maze of what issue to start with, which specific comic book called ASM #1 should they read, what reading order online is the 'correct' one.

If Marvel did the heavy lifting of organising all this material themselves (which they already are doing to a large extent and are pretty good at, their Clone Saga Epic Books 15+ years ago were really well done) you'd have essentially streamlined Spider-Man's history into something not unlike how inthe 2000s new readers could simply pick up USM volume 1, then volume 2 and so on and follow the story no problem. No confusion of when to stop and start or anything like that.

Sure you'd have a HUGE number of volumes but we are going to wind up with that anyway, they're just going to be labelled ASM Epic Collection, ASM Modern Epic Collection, Spectacular Epic Collection and so forth. Not to mention, juggernauts of manga have huge volume sets but if someone bites the bulet they don't have trouble following one piece. start at volume 1 and go forwards.

\*You'd have like 1-2 trades JUST on the stuff that happened before ASM #1 if you did.

I live in the UK and already have a WW subscription.

I recently started using mounjaro.

I saw there was a GLP-1 mode for the WW app.

It says it is £14-28 per month but is that in addition to the existing WW subscription or instead of it?

5. Crystal Season II: Potentially a hot take placement, but then I'm sure that could be said of any of the arcs. Part of why I place this so low, even when taking the blu-ray versions with improved animation into account (and IIRC fixing the most glaring mistake from the original versions) is that imo the arc is undercooked in the manga and thereby in the anime. This is a bi-product of the behind the scenes history with Sailor Moon. Takeuchi originally intended the Dark Kingdom arc to in fact be the entire story, but the series (manga and anime) was such a surprise hit she was persuaded to continue. I'd argue this is why Crystal Season II/the Black Moon arc is such an 'obvious' sequel to the prior arc. The latter was about Usagi and Mamoru's pasts, the former is about their future. This is neatly symbolised by Usagi's daughter supplanting her mother, Queen Serenity, in the new version of the OP. That concept is fine, its strong even, but I'd argue it only happened because Takeuchi had to scramble unexpectedly to cook up a story she hadn't planned on telling. This is also why, imo, the emotional subplot of Usagi being jealous of Chibi-Usa, the main point of criticism of the arc in my experiece, comes off as so weird. It isn't that it doesn't make sense, but I feel you as an audience member need to think too hard to understand it. On a personal, possibly petty note, I also just really dislike the Japanese VA for Wiseman. Yes, maybe this is my being biased by the 1992 anime, but Wiseman is in my top 3 (sometimes my number 1) favourite Sailor Moon villains and even from his design and appearance in the manga alone, the Japanese VA for him takes an interpretation I do not think fits, making him seem more mad and maniacal as opposed to a cold, machevellian manipulative force of death. Because VIZ (understandably) insisted upon keeping the cast from their re-dub of the 1992 anime the same with Crystal I'd argue my boy Wiseman is better in the dub than in the original Japanese, because the English VA for him was cast predominantly to try and emulate his bad ass 1992 anime Japanese VA.

6. Crystal Season I: Most folks who bash Crystal don't make it through this season in the first place. Imo, the Dark Kingdom arc in manga and anime form has a strong story structure. Imo, critcisms of pacing kind of arise from comparison to the 1990s anime and, whilst I think it would have improved things, I don't think that is the same as the pacing itself is bad. At worst, maybe the beats of the romance subplot play out too quickly (first kiss episode 4), but I'd argue this is justified when you consider the big reveal of these two being in love in their past lives. They in essence don't need to go through all the motions of a conventional romance story where we build up a lot to big events because we aren't depicting them falling in love per se, but rather remembering that they already are. I actually think Crystal somewhat helps with this with its opening scene which is NOT in the manga. I'd love to know what a newbie viewer thought about that sequence and how it impacts the reveal of the reincarnation angle. In the manga that's a big twist, but the anime sets it up more so perhaps those romantic beats coming relatively quickly make more sense. I will say I feel people forget how BIG the early episodes of Crystal were. the HYPE was very real and the opening sequence, maybe all of episode 1, works just as well for oldhead fans reacquainting themselves with Sailor Moon as those complely new to things. Of course, there is the controversy of changing plot details. I will admit I haven't settled my views on this one way or the other. I'd be lying if I said I didn't WANT a fully manga accurate rendition without the changes, but I can't decide if the changes themselves necesarilly hurt or help the story being told. Oh also, Cristina Vee shines in Crystal season 1 imo. I liked her performance as Rei in the 1992 re-dub but I actually think she fits Crystal/Manga Rei even better.

7. Cosmos Parts I-II: A weird case where it could have been improved as a full season but at the same time that also might have hurt it without filler. The Stars arc is structured in a unique way wherein its one long chain of loss until the climax. To this end Part 2 I think works very well as a movie but part 1 kind of would have worked better as episodes. That being said, the 'filler' we got from Takeuchi was juicy and insightful, stuff we've been waiting over 25 years for more information on, and where they chose to partition the arc was perfect. Perhaps the action could have been improved though. On the dubbing side, I LOVE that they opted to not replicate Japan and kept Stephenie Sheh as the voice of Sailor Cosmos. I like her Japanese VA unto herself, don't get me wrong, but for me the coolest thing about Sailor Cosmos is that she is Usagi, therefore having Usagi's VA voice her brings things closer to home.

2)Eternal Parts I-II: In the conversation for one of the best arcs of the manga, this had strong material to work with going in an the budget to realise it. What holds this back imo is that it should have been a full season not 2 films. That being said, considering it was 2 films it was remarkable how much of the manga they adapted, albeit they cut some good bits and left in other bits that could have dropped, like exposition dialogue that would have worked in a monthly manga or weekly anime but was pointless for a film. In terms of dubbing, Helios for re-cast but lets not get into that drama, his new VA is fine and dandy but the standout for me is Laura Prost as Nehelenia. Imo, best villain performance in English Sailor Moon.

1. Crystal Season III: Imo this struck a near perfect balance of most elements. In Japanese and English the cast were on point. It had strong material to work with, it took a lot of critcisms from seasons 1-2 into account and tried to learn from them, it included nostalgia for the 1992 season but not at the expense of the story it was telling and in being a full season it could pace the story out properly. I also loved hearing Stephanie Sheh and Robbie Daymond do the more romantic bits of this arc as the 1992 anime leaned away from romance a lot of the time.

I grew up with X-Men the Animated Series, then proceeded to be a fan through the early Fox movies, X-Men Evolution and started reading the late 90s/early 2000s comics before Morrison and X-treme X-Men. I also loved Wolverine & the X-Men but by then I was definitely a fan.

I admit I'm not as well versed in the comics. I read a solid chunk of 2000s X-Men, like I said starting with late 90s/early 2000s stuff (like the Neo) and kept reading into the early Whedon/XSE era. But I have also dipped back into 70s-90s stories but in a very scattershot way.

In the adaptations and in the comics I have read Professor X is a flawed man, but not a bad man per se. Like the worst thing I recall him doing in the comics I read was:

A) momentarily using his powers on Ameilia, which is something he was disgusted with himself about and reprimanded himself for. I don't think this is enough to condemn him as in fact a wholesale bad person, especially when various X-Men have also done immoral things in the heat of the moment.

B) killing his twin Cassandra Nova in the womb which is, I dunno how much moral accountability we should scribe to a foetus

C) the whole Onslaught thing, which to my understanding wasnt him consciously or deliberately doing immoral things, Onslaught was like a new entity that was created from a part of him

D) The contingencies he dreamed up to stop the Xmen as seen in Onslaught. Not a nice thing to do, but in a world where beings who can mind control you or otherwise manipulate you, having a contingency for how to defeat your very powerful students is a morally defencive imo. Like those contingencies would have been useful in Wolverine Enemy of the State

Nevertheless here and there I have picked up by osmosis this idea from fans that Xavier is in fact a bad person.

This took me aback because, even considering the above, the comics I have read and the adaptations I saw Xavier was again, not a villain, nor even an asshole really. He was a character who like all the X-Men (and in the tradition of Marvel heroes dating back to the 1960s) was flawed. He made mistakes at times and moral miscalculations, even instances of moral ambiguity. If course I appreciate different iterations are not going to be identical but they all played within a broad tent of Xavier being on balance a flawed person, but ultimately a hero and one who sincerely cared for his X-Men in the vein of a father figure.

Now, I'm not at all up to speed on all X-Men lore. And, let's be honest, the comics have not exactly been consistent. Let's be more honest, a lot of Marvel comics in the 2000s and onwards adopted a certain approach to superheroes that framed them as more morally ambiguous, darker some could argue cynically. Civil War (2006) is a good example.

With that in mind, let's say we are judging:

X-Men the Animated Series

X-Men Evolution

Wolverine & the X-Men

X-Men (2000)

X2: X-Men United

X-Men: The Last Stand

Against the 616 X-Men comics up to say the year 1999 (so all 20th century X-Men comics).

Was the broad idea of Xavier in those adaptations a misrepresentation of who he was in the comics up until that point?

Was the Xavier of the comics and asshole, a bad person, someone who the adaptations (and I suppose some comics) incorrectly framed in a noble or admirable light?

This concerns discourse for ALL versions of Sailor Moon.

Having different iterations of the franchise is a feature, not a bug, in this franchise.

And those different iterations had different 'mission objetives' and priorities.

In the case of Crystal I think a lot of people come down hard on because they compare it to Sailor Moon 1992. By extension a lot of people are harsh on Sailor Moon 1992 because they compare it to the manga.*

The thing is there are production realities that I feel people do not bear in mind when discussing this series.

The manga and Crystal was simply put NOT aimed at the same audience as the 1992 anime and the people making the 1992 anime didn't view the series the same way as Takeuchi did.

A lot of this ties back to Sailor Moon's original key inspiration, which is tokusatsu tv shows and most particularly Bishojo Kamen Poitrine and Super Sentai, which in the West was adapted into Power Rangers.

If you have seen enough 1980s and 1990s tokusatsu (even if its just Power Rangers), you will notice that there is A LOT more in common between those and Sailor Moon (1992) than between them and Sailor Moon Crystal or the manga.

The best way of explaining this is that the manga and Crystal were inspired by Sentai and toku shows but the 1992 anime was ostensibly trying to be an animated all female Sentai season, only with less robots and more romance.

In fact, in an interview circa the release of Sailor Moon SuperS, one of the staff members ssaid words to the effect of that they viewed Sailor Moon as an all female Sentai series. Moonlight Knight from Saior Moon R was directly based upon arguably the first ever Tokusatsu hero, Moonlight Mask.

This is why Sailor Moon Crystal is a lot more serious and darker than the more comedic and child focussed Sailor Moon (1992). It is why Crystal leans into the central romance of Usagi and Mamoru whilst Sailor Moon (1992), whilst featuring that and emphasising it at times (in season 1 most of all) ultimately leans more into the idea of friendship and team work. Team work is the core thesis of Super Sentai, hence most episodes end with the team assembling their individual robots into a singular powerful robot to win the day.

It isn't that one i better than the other, even necesarilly in the same area. They are going for different things in the first place.

It's like the respective iterations are cooking with the same ingredients but using them to make different dishes. It's not that Sailor Moon (1992) is bad for lacking spice in the form of de-emphasising the UsaMamo romance and playing it more for laughs. Nor is Crystal bad for not putting more focus upon the Inner or Outer Senshi. Sure, in both cases it might be appreciated, but fundamentally one is trying to be scrambled eggs and the other is an omlette. We shouldn't bash the omlette for failing to be scrambled eggs because it wasn't trying to be, we should compare it to other omlettes.

*Curiously, PGSM and the Musical fans seem to just chill in their corner.

They do phenomenal pieces, including redraws of Season III+ art pieces / characters who appeared in Season III and beyond but in the Season I-II art style

Crystal Season IV and V are called Eternal and Cosmos, after Usagi's Sailor Moon Eternal and Sailor Cosmos forms.

In that mindset I like to think Seasons I-III are like this

Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon: Princess

Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon: Queen

Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon: Super

I'm not blind to the production issues in Crystal.

But I nevertheless think a huge amount of discourse stems from nostalgia skewed towards the 1992 series.

I love the 1992 series, even moreso than Crystal. But I can still see the bias. I'm not denying there are aspects of SM92 that are better than Crystal. But the inverse is true too. There are aspects of the musicals and PGSM that excel above other iterations too.

Moreover I think this negativity is accentuated by a few factors

a) A lack of familiarity with the manga. Not that there are not managa lovers who dislike Crystal. I myself feel certain moments were not adapted as elegantly as possible. But my point is its this culture shock of getting something SO different to rhe 1992 anime

b) In the English fandom we aren't just dealing with nostalgia for the original anjme but specifically for the dub, which is even farther from the original manga. As flawed as the original English translations of the manga were they werr closer to the manga than the dub was to SM92, so its another degree of separation

Something else to bear in mind.

As much as Seasons 1-2 got bashed for their animation it is crucial to bear in mind that ALL anime were and sort of still are dealing with animation issues at the time.

The most infamous eample is Dragon Ball Super episode 5, which haunted the show so much they will be essentially making a recut version of that arc this year, along with changing character designs towards the end of Super.

But One Piece was notorious for its animation up until 2018 when they switched things up and Pokemon also did a ground up new approach to character designs too.

Now all 3 franchises are simply bigger cash cows than Sailor Moon and had more resources behind them, but even they had problems.

I highly recommend you check out these videos that touch upon the issues in the animation industry:

Is Dragon Ball's Animation Cheaply Made by anime ajay

Who Broke One Punch Man by totallynotmark

I will add that the animation starting season 3 imo is fine. I feel people continuing to bash it thereafter are more upset with the character designs not being like SM92 than the actual animation itself.

For me, crystal was a flawed execution of what I nevertheless wanted, which was a more accurate adaptation of the manga.

I adore SM92, its my favourite, but I wanted the manga brought to life in animation too. He'll I STILL want the side stories and above all Codename: Sailor V animated

>Initially she [Venom] was a woman…The whole idea is that whenever I write a character I try to utilize the unique aspects of that character. And one thing Peter Parker had that no one else had was his spider sense…Someone flings at him from behind its a reaction he doesn’t even think about it, he ducks. And this has saved his life so many times I started thinking ‘Well, what if there was a villain who didn’t trigger that spider sense? How would he react? How would he cope with that?’

>And they had already established in Secret Wars that the black costume didn’t affect Peter’s spider sense. So I started working out a character who would join with the symbiote costume and actually be a villain…

>…My original origin story had been a woman who was pregnant and…her husband was trying to flag a cab as she was going into labour, and a cabbie was driving along looking into the sky at the Living Monolith, tying it into that graphic novel [Revenge of the Living Monolith], where Spider-Man was fighting the Living Monolith…and he hits the husband and kills the husband…the shock of this sends to woman into premature labour and she loses her child, all because the cab driver was watching Spider-Man. So she became unhinged and when she got out she had this fanatical hatred of Spider-Man, blaming him for the loss of her husband and their unborn child. And that drew the symbiote to her and she became one with the symbiote and was going after Spider-Man…

Things changed when Jim Salicrup, editor of Spider-Man, felt that the character should be a man instead, thus Michlinie changed things and we got the Eddie Brock as presented in ASM #300.

I think this would at the bear minimum make for a very interesting issue of 'What If...', especially if Michelinie himself got to write it.

However, the more I think about it, it wouldn't necesarilly be a bad idea to somehow weave this into regular canon with a few tweaks.

In my view, one way or another, Brock and Venom have both moved on from being strictly Spider-Man villains, regardless of how anyone feels about that.*

This leaves a rather big slot in Spider-Man's rogue's gallery.

Venom is undeniably one of Spider-Man's top 3 biggest villains (alongside Green Goblin and Doctor Octopus). The raw power of a symbiote villain presents a potent physical (and potentially mental, if it tries bonding with him) challenge to Spider-Man, accentuated by Venom possessing near identical (but better) powers to Spider-Man himself whilst looking like a twisted reflection of Spidey. More than that, something that made Venom truly unique early on, even compared to the likes of Norman and Harry Osborn, was that he truly LIVED to kill Spider-Man. Sure, he'd put that goal on hold if an innocent life (from his POV) was in immediate danger, but his drive was the violent murder of Peter Parker. Norman and Harry by contrast sought to actively torture Peter mind and soul, his immediate death wasn't their top priorty (since realistically they could have just killed him in his sleep). Both of them had ambitions that went beyond their personal blood feud with Peter, whereas Venom legitimately retired after he (mistakenly) believed he'd killed Spider-Man.

Whilst Carnage certainly works as a physical challenge to Spider-Man (and his unrelentingly murderous personality a moral challenge) he is, if we are honest, first and foremost either Venom's arch nemesis or a wider Marvel universe problem (like in Gerry Conway's Carnage solo book or Absolute Carnage). Moreover, no matter how much he bears Spider-man a grudge, its kind of more akin to how Doc Ock or any of Spider-Man's foes bear him a grudge. Killing Spider-Man is on Kasady's 'to-do'list' but by no means at the top of the list, let alone the entire list as it was for early days Venom.

But his hypothetical female characetr Michelinie cooked up? She could in essence be what Venom was early on and has long since evolved away from. You could in essence have your cake and eat it. Brock and the Venom symbiote retain their character development (including how their relationship with Peter has changed over the years) but you still get a villain with symbiote powers who lives to hate Spider-Man and see him dead. Plus, Spidey hasn't got that many female villains all things considered.

As for where this character might get her symbiote, there are no end of possibilities. A new symbiote? A new symbiote who for some story reason has reason to hate Spider-Man. The simplest would be that it is yet another clone of the Venom symbiote, but one cloned at a point in time when the symbiote's hatred for Spider-Man was at it's peak, like maybe before Peter ever met Venom.

But, if all else, like I said, I think it'd make for an interesting issue of What If.

*I respect the character development, although I personally prefer Venom to always be Eddie and for him to be a villain not an anti-hero.

Been reading the Eternal Editions of Codename Sailor V.

So, according to the Sailor Moon wiki, the following villains (each featured in chapters 11-14) are part of the Dark Agency, which is a subsidiary of the Dark Kingdom:

Nyan-Nyan

Wan-Wan

Chuu-Chuu

Karaoke Warrior: Mike Makii

Thing is, whilst all of them seem to be gathering energy like the typical Sailor V (and early Sailor Moon Manga) villains, there is no dialogue indicating that they are or are not part of the Dark Agency.

I was wondering whether folks believed they were indeed Dark Agency members or if they were in essence like the genius loci characters featured in say the Exam Battle Side stories?

Hello,

I'm someone who is both new to cooking but also dealing with OCD issues. I am trying to learn how to grill chicken thigh fillets with the grill setting on my oven.

I plan on using a pair of metal tongs to transfer the raw meat onto the metal tray i put in the oven under the grill.

I want to use these tongs to flip the meat over so i can grill the other side and/or alternate the sides that are facing the grill as i go along.

however I am uncertain how to safely clean them in between using them throughout the cooking process.

I asked Google Gemini for advice and it suggested I literally heat the tongs underneath the grill heat, which i do not feel comfortable doing. It also suggested having a container of hot soapy water to hand which is also not exactly an option in my family's kitchen at the moment.

I asked 2 relatives and they suggested:

a) applying a disinfectant like Zoflora to the tongs and running them under hot tap water

b) just running them under hot tap water on their own

In all cases everyone said to not use the same sponge I typically use to hand wash the dishes or cutlery with.

I'm not really sure what the correct method to do is to maintain safety, but I'm hoping it is something simple.

Every movie in the MonsterVerse has a unique name (even GvK is not identical to the original King Kong vs Godzilla (1962) ) EXCEPT Godzilla (2014), which obviously shares its name with Godzilla (1954) and Godzilla (1998).

What could be a fitting subtitle for the movie to give it a unique name?

Anyone feel David Michelinie run on Spider-Man is overly hated

I recall 10 years ago folks who were teens or in their 20s in the 90s ripping his run (which began in 1987 and ended in 1994) to shreds.

Looking at various stories in it, I don't get the hate for the most part.

Like people disliked Mary Jane smoking. Okay, that isn't something in the majority of his run nor every story in it.

The Robot Parents stuff was lame but that was not Michelinie's fault it was an editorial mandate.

Venom appeared too frequently. That is fair but I must admit that I noticed the same Michelinie haters be neutral or indifferent to Doc Ock appearing even more frequently in Slott's run. Even discounting Superior Otto appeared at least once per year like Venom did in Michelinie's run.

And surr, Peter and MJ's dialogue could be overly lovey lovey occasionally.

These are not invalid problems but the level of disdain have seen this run get is disproportionate. People often seem to read it in bad faith and nitpicking anything and everything that might be wrong with a given story.

To be clear it usntveven in my personal top 10 runs, but I just think the discourse surrounding it is often unfair.

I know Sailor V came first and that Toei came knocking which then led to the decision to rethink things to about a team instead of 1 protagonist.

But im unclear how many Sailor V chapters there had been when Toei contacted Takeuchi.

Who exactly suggested doing a team instead of just Minako?

I know the anine was working off of early ideas Takeuchi had and she was changing things as she went along. But how then did the episodes that adapted the early chapters (Eps 1, 8 and 10 and 22 adapt chapters 1-4) wind up being so close to the manga chapters. Unlije a manga like Ine Piece which started 2 years before its anime adaptation, the SM smime wouldn't have had the manga chapters to work with ahead of time.

Sailor moon chapter 1 was released less than 3 months before episode 1 aired

I often test out different posters or background images for my PleX titles and collections, many I have simply found from miscelleneous artwork online as opposed to something from one of PleX's official metadata agent sites.

The only way I can think to clean these up is to manually navigate to my plex metadata folder on my PC, find the unwanted image files and delete them.

I've tried PleX Dash and it is great for from your phone changing or even uploading new artwork, but getting rid of old and unwanted is something it doesn't seem to offer.

Surely there must be some more efficient method of doing this from your desktop, laptop and phone?