I watched the show finale a few minutes ago and after all is said and done i feel that the last episode felt a bit empty.
8 seasons of buildup, all those things happening and in the end youre left with an empty feeling. You dont get to experience the satisfaction that the conflicts are finally done. The destination we arrive to, where we finally leave the characters we spent so much time with is sorely unfulfilling.
Take the scene where they say their goodbyes at the end, that is very similar to the end of “Return of the king”. The emotional impact of the scene in GOT is lacking in comparison.
There are so many moments that lack the punch. Danys death scene, the reaction of the Unsullied leader, the council itself. It all felt empty and without gravitas. The arc resolutions also felt dissapointing. Jon leading the wildlings into the North felt like it was a poor payoff for what he went through. I think they wanted to make his end bitter sweet, but in the end it just felt bitter.
Tyrion became hand in the end which i hoped would have a greater impact on me as a viewer, but it just felt empty, as if everything was just wrapping up and we were being served resolutions:
Heres this, and this is done, this we wrapped up….
We never see the coronation. We never see them rebuilding Westeros. We never see a glimpse of a more hopeful future. I dont really think the show even has a message in the end. What would it be? Slavery is bad? The ends dont justify the means? I feel that there should be a more profound message for us, somewhere in there and not something so simple you can find it in a Saturday cartoon.
I really dont know what to say.
A show that has ruled Television for the last 8 years exits in silence.
Alright. It wasnt that bad. 🙂 The title was for drama effect. haha
But it wasnt great.
I could have lived with any other path they might have taken except the time travel gimmick. Its just dumb. They way they dealt with everything was extremely cheap and leaves so many questions open. The one comic book movie that did time travel well was “X-men: Days of future past”. Here it was just lazy writing.
Not only did the time travel make zero sense, they undersold the fact that they figured out time travel and explained it extremely poorly.
We can now time travel, aint that great.
When they do that they cheapen everything. Thanos (The original timeline one) was killed off ending his arc, but then is brought back as villain with “kill all mentality”. The Infinity war Thanos was magnitudes more interesting.
Then they mix Gamora from the 2014 with the Guardians of the Galaxy from the present meaning the “now” Gamora is dead and gone. Does this Gamora go back? Does she stay? Do we just forget about the original Gamora? Will they do “Search for Spock” type Guardians movie next?
How many timelines did they create if the past Thanos dies in the future and doesnt get to do all the things he did? How did Thanos even stand a chance against the Avengers without the gauntlet when they were on par with him when he had all the stones. Thanos is just some big guy without the stones.
And what the hell is with the Captain Marvel chick? She disappears at the beginning then flies in to save the day. She can fly through ships apparently. Is she the most powerful superhero now? I dont think Thor or Thanos can do what she did.
How the hell can Ironman hold the gauntlet if it took all the Guardians of the galaxy to hold one stone and StarLord is part god?!
It seems to me that they simply wanted to wrap things up. They didnt seem to care if it made sense or not. There were arcs to close and contracts ending.
In the end i find this a decent enough ending but they did drop the ball since Infinity war. The Marvel movies were never “smart movies” but what they did here was make it pretty stupid if im honest. Shame.
Im a huge fan of Game of thrones. Ever since i watched season one on a 10 by 10 cm screen on Virgin airlines LAX 8 years ago.
Still, i have to say that they “fucked it up”…
I knew it would happen. The books storyline is catching up to the series and there was no clear pointer for the writers to make this impeccable. G.R.R Martin would think through a battle like this for months. And the Hollywood writers will basically do anything for a $ because they are under-payed and unappreciated.
G.R.R Martin gave them pointers and they perversed everything.
All the main characters had plot armor and in a stupid way. There was no explanation to it. Even fat Sam was a better warrior then the damn unsullied. In what world does that make sense.
The direction was good, the set pieces were great, everything was too dark (but whatever), the battle was epic….
BUT THE STORY SUCKED REALLY BAD!!
Extremely poorly thought out.
Its hard to even put everything on paper. The battle formations. The invincibility of some characters. The Night King resolution.
Where the hell does Arya come from?! She jumped on him from behind? Arent there a million wights behind him? And theres a 1 second death moment for someone being set up for 8 years? Take the death of Gollum and the destruction of the ring… You could see all the emotions on Gollums face, the RING defiance to be destroyed when it is swimming in the lava. None of which was present here. The Night King is the new SNOKE!
And all we get to see from the Night King is that he falls apart into a million icicle pieces.
Such a brilliantly looking episode (At least the things i could actually see) but so poorly concluded.
Watched episode 2 a few mins ago. I liked it because im a fan but if im being objective the episode was pretty boring.
A lot of holding hands and dark rooms. Goddammit, everything is super dark. Cant see anything. Had to raise the brightness on my TV and pull up the curtains. I wasnt a fan of how they dealt with the “reunions” if i look at writing alone but seeing the characters together did feel good. Im starting to feel that Game of Thrones is experiencing the “end of series weakness”. Show runners under pressure to wrap up everything lead to holes in story telling.
But lets see what happens. I wouldnt want main characters to just die in battle for the sake of shocking the viewers. And i feel that might be the case. Every single major character up to this point died in a meaningful way plot-wise. If they kill them off next week in episode 3 in a “simple” battle i will be extremely dissapointed.
Whatever happens next week will be “balls to the wall” 24/7 excitement. And ill be up at 2 AM waiting to pick up the show the second it goes live no matter what. Still…. Hope they dont fuck it up.
Game of Thrones is coming to an end. Hoping the new Lord of the Rings series can take its place.
Im someone that is a huge fan of Sci-fi movies and series. Basically, anything that might be happening in space.
Every single Star Trek series (until STD) – Loved it 2001: A space Odyssey – Loved it Moon (2009) – Loved it Serenity (2005) – Loved it Galaxy Quest (1999) – Loved it The Last Jedi (2017) – <sub>Screw that movie</sub>
What im trying to say is that ive watched a large number of movies and series that happen in space, that are predominantly Sci-fi and i simply love the genre. Lately i havent been able to pick up a lot of good Sci-fi movies, let alone long format series, so when i found “The Expanse” a few days ago and started watching it i was extremely excited.
Sure theres the new Star Trek ive written a bit about but im just not in love with it. Id say im more on the dislike side if im honest. Close to the middle but still cant say im positive about it.
So i started watching this and i didnt really expect much looking at the trailer. It kind of looked cheap. But when i got into it a bit its the complete opposite. The show has a gritty realistic look you buy into easily. This isnt a multi-million dollar show like STD but for its budget it does things really well.
Im currently half way into season 1 and when i started up i could already see a few flaws that are very slowly getting fixed as the season moves along. There are some pacing issues, wonky dialog and questionable resolutions. The plot tends to drag on a bit. Still, as i said, i can feel it slowly getting better already by episode 6 im currently on.
The show itself is very character heavy and it jumps from main character to main character the same way Game of Thrones does it. That adds a lot to world (space) building and establishing faction relationships but can strain the episode a bit since some times you want to jump back to one character that has something much more interesting going on and youre stuck listening to some council.
Still, after only a few episodes you really get hooked on the characters. Most of them anyways and you start to enjoy their little quirks. The show has some resemblance in structure to Game of Thrones with the politics and intrigue, though it does not feel like it is as polished in that regard. (Im still on season 1.)
One of the things i just love are the ships. Brilliant renders, extremely believable and cool designs. Seeing them fly through space is just a joy every time. The interiors are what you would expect so not much to say there.
All in all, im enjoying the show immensely and i have 3 more seasons of it to look forward to which fills me with joy. 😀
Definitely a recommend by me.
And the most brilliant thing about it is that it was canceled last year like another beloved show called “Firefly”. But this time the fans won and Amazon picked up the show. Read more about it here if youre interested.
So… @oracle-d decided to create another task for us Homo Steemiens to write about. You can read more about it here so i dont go on needlessly. LINK: https://steemit.com/social/@dapplovers/review-a-social-dapp-and-earn-rewards-ft-state-of-the-dapps
Theres going to be enough needless text below.
I was deliberating with myself for a while as to which Dapp i should choose for review. Yesterday i reviewed Trybe (EOS) and i found the current state of it, in reviewer terms (or 6th grader terms), to be “blagh”. Few days before that i reviewed the new Whaleshares look. This time i was going to be smart about my pick. Maximize what i could earn from the review by picking a dapp with a ton of Nedelegation that will reward me for being a jolly good sweet talker.. That is why i picked:
Dlive!
oh wait. whoops
No, no. Its Dtube, im picking Dtube.
The youtube of STEEM with a capital “D”. “D”, because you know they’re packing, good ideas.
Anyways… The review, um.
There are a few reasons why i picked Dtube. For one, its one of the most resource intensive projects on the STEEM blockchain that has an extremely ambitious goal of becoming competitive in the global market of video sharing platforms. This is something that i actually think Dtube could achieve.
We have seen time and time again that any video sharing platform that would even try to challenge Youtube would fail tremendously. They would fail for the simple reason of not being to take off because of the magic circle of: Creator-consumer-advertiser.
All 3 need to exist on the platform, for a platform to take off, be sustainable, but unfortunately no other platform could achieve the trifecta no matter how much they would reduce their cut of their revenue.
Dtube is different, not to go into a lot of detail, because it uses the power of the STEEM blockchain. There is no complete dependence on advertiser money and the wealth distribution is such, that while in “legacy markets” the earning potential existed only for the platform+Creator, with STEEM consumer is added to the mix. Monetizing their attention and engagement. But you already know this so lets get into something else. The user experience.
Oh boy.
Content placement.
Ok. If im being completely honest, i have never in my one year using STEEM clicked on Dtubes “Hot/Trending” page. Not one time. And im someone that (from another account) uploaded dozens of videos to Dtube and was using dtube almost daily for 6 months. Still, never once did i look at the trending page. Ill try to explain why that is as simply as i can.
When the content placement depends on vote cast by “1 person + DTube”, then what users of your site are seeing isnt “the wisdom of the crowd” on the trending page but rather the_autovoter_ preferences of a whale and the continuity rewarding tendency of the DTUBE curation team. In a way, there is more centralization in what im being told to watch on Dtube then there is on Youtube.
And this is not something that is hard to change. Dtube has control over how it wants to show its content.
Design.
There is really not much to say here. The design is basic. As i said in the intro, i made a Trybe review yesterday and i pointed out a few things that bothered me. The site itself had some terrible design ideas, was extremely convoluted and it ran poorly. Dtube does not run poorly and is not convoluted, on the contrary, but it does look extremely basic and does a poor job explaining what anything is about.. Take this for example. Dtalk-Push my Dtalk key on Steem.
A person clicking on the Dtalk tab will see this and think:
What is Steem? What is Dtalk? What conversation?
Its very unintuitive and even though you could say that Dtube is early in development, the fact remains that you can always add a few sentences of explanation. That excuse does not hold.
That is something i dont only see with Dtube but rather where ever i look in the crypto space.
Not considering what a new user sees/understands when they are introduced to new information.
I could point out a few other things but its just the same criticism that stems from us forgetting what a new user experiences once they arrive to STEEM.
Mowing lawn!
Folks would probably assume i would talk about the videos that are “gone with the wind” in a few weeks, but theres really nothing to say. @johalfiles (a whale that upvotes Dtube content) a few weeks ago pointed out in the Dtube discord that exact thing and the reply was basically: “It is as it is.”
The problem is that folks dont understand that video hosting is about the most expensive thing there is online. While there are ways for you to keep your videos online indefinitely by running your own IPFS node (my knowledge is limited there) most creators wont know how to do such a thing so providing that service on platform would be a great way for Dtube to gather some funds if they explained whats going on with your videos (when uploading) and provided an easy way for you to keep your videos indefinitely (for a fee) without having to educate yourself on IPFS hosting and every other single thing that has to do with Dtube. The name of the game is not Football, ole ole, we are the champs. The name of the game is: “How to explain complex topics in the simplest of ways”.
There is really not much else to say here. Uploading works pretty well and is about as fast as uploading to Youtube. The video quality is inferior to youtube but you dont really notice it most of the times. When was the last time you used 4k on youtube? Im assuming theres a dtube node somewhere close to Croatia since i have no problems viewing any videos.
At this point the success of Dtube is pretty much dependent on the success of STEEM. The time of the Dapps has not arrived yet and the majority of investment is still going into “infrastructure”.
Example: Projects like LISK are 38th in market cap (10 above STEEM) and i dont think there is a single person using any of their dapps. _I looked into it._ Once the market matures im certain that many projects that arent driven by hype but rather user numbers will start getting a lot of attention from investors, Dtube among them. The focus will eventually shift towards “what has real world application and what do users want” instead of
“i got this cool idea!”
Substratum had a cool idea.
And thats about it for this review. Thought i should mix it up a bit.
I think we need to be realistic at all times. We hype up everything and partake in tribal behavior without ever taking an objective look at the limitations and the potential of a project. Realizing the limitations and potential is extremely important in cases like this. @ned dropped a million STEEM delegation on Dtube.
Was that foolish?
No. Because i dont think Ned saw Dtube “changing the world”. He saw that small advantage i talked about in the beginning existing that could make Dtube a “contender”.
Dtube cant re-invent the wheel but it sure can rock the boat.
Conclusion
I give Dtube a rating of π/fleml. Read what i actually think. lol.
And there you have it folks. Let me know what you think. Was i too harsh, was i not harsh enough. Ill take it on the chin.
Few days ago @anotherjoe pointed me towards Trybe as another site where i could post my stuff and do all the fine things you do on sites similar to this. I say “sites similar to this” because today i read a comment made by @officialfuzzy on Whaleshares that said this:
p.s. you will not find blogs from me on this site (Whaleshares) as it is not a blogging platform in the end vision. once we are out of beta people will understand.
After that comment i went on to read the Whaleshares whitepaper and i still didnt see Whaleshares being something more then a social media blogging platform. But! Since Fuzzy wrote that, i will henceforth use the adjective “similar” to describe what im talking about as to stop myself from being wrong and lacking in understanding. lol.
Anyways…
I tried out Trybe and right off the bat i ran into a number of things that annoyed me. There were art assets overlapping, the screen load was choppy and parts of the window would move up and down for no reason. The page never loads all at once but rather in parts.
Two screenshots of the same page 2 seconds in-between. Art asset placement seems very different.
Looking at the initial screen and menus, everything seemed extremely convoluted and instead of me being able to find my blog right away, they placed “job board” on the front page and your blog link is placed somewhere inside the side menu. The right side menu, not the left one.
Even when you get to your blog page theres more clickable links and windows that you can watch slowly load by clicking them. Everything is just too large and hard to navigate and theres at least 40% clickable links that shouldnt even be there that are simply cluttering the UI.
Did i say how annoyingly slowly the pages load? They even change color when they load lol.
Want to see some more dumb design decision?
Here you go
Which designer (and mind you the site hardly looks like its in a alpha state) thought it would be a good idea to have so much spacing between comments that only two 10 word comments fit on my whole screen? You can literally park a bus in the space between those two comments…
Actual bus caught parked in the Trybe comment section.
Even making a post feels strange. Theres a review process so you always feel like someone is watching. The always present support window doesnt help with that feeling. I dunno, i just dont feel comfortable writing there.
When you do post, your post can be found in 3 states. Published, in review, draft. Click and wait through more page loads to find where you post is at. I counted.. Takes me about 3 seconds to load and i have super fast internet.
There are some rules to follow and im assuming they check the content before allowing you to post something. Hello censorship!(im tempted to try and see the limit of what youre allowed to write about.) You have to meet the 300 word minimum requirement and you have to put a featured image or they reject the post. Why they couldnt simply automate that the text cant be posted if those two requirements werent met so i dont have to wait for the review, is beyond me. I guess they dont want unwanted content on their site.
Browsing content itself is unintuitive as and of course its tied into the slow page loading time so i didnt even bother trying.
And there you have it. Pretty disappointing experience i probably wont repeat.
PS: Im not someone that will speak negatively about a platform because i might hold STEEM or WLS instead of EOS. I would have very much wanted Trybe to be another place to post on and learn new stuff but unfortunately the user experience is simply bad.
