For the first time in months I’m drunk blogging – or tipsy blogging, which is about as close as I get anyway since I can hold my liquor better than someone of my size might be expected to.

Send me asks, anon or not. The results are bound to be entertaining.

Updated commentary on HP: Hogwarts Mystery. I’m about halfway through Year 3, not quite to the point where the game ends currently but a few chapters before it.

It’s funny in hindsight how much everyone, myself included, was so critical at the infamous Devil’s Snare scene near the start of the game, that it represented the worst of the microtransaction/pay-to-win format and doomed HM from the start with the reputation of a mediocre product making shameless cash grabs. On the contrary, after having playing the game for nearly a month I can say with confidence that I’d have enjoyed it significantly less had I spent money to speed through the events of the plot and the energy-spending sequences. Breaking HM’s content up in accordance with energy limitations both extends the life of the game in a way that doesn’t feel that artificial (these are entire school years you’re playing through, after all) and disguises how simplistic 95% of the gameplay actually is. I may just be taking my phone out my pocket every half hour or so to press the screen a few times in a class or story event or read a few lines of the story, but that extremely casual approach is what mobile gaming excels at anyway. Truly this is a payment model gone hilariously wrong, where the game is most enjoyable when it’s completely free. 

It’s hard to even call most of what goes on in HM “gameplay,” but the story and some of the characters are interesting enough that I can let that slide. The dueling sequences would actually be somewhat engaging if there weren’t such a large element of RNG involved, and two or three of the multiple choice questions the game throws at you during classes made me think for a bit (mostly because I’m rusty on general HP trivia). I’d also imagine that repeat playthroughs might have merit since you could choose a different house and get a slightly different version of events in some cases, like the chapter in Year 2 where my Slytherin character had to infiltrate the Gryffindor common room. 

It’s still too early to comment on the characters other than to hope that the writers don’t make any of them into total expies of the book characters they’re imitating, ex. Ben with Neville or Merula with Draco. I’m both anticipating and dreading Year 4 after the reveal that dating will become available then; while same-sex pairing options in an HP setting would be great (and the existence of the flamboyant Andre and the gender-variable-but-crush-invariable *cough*Bill Weasley*cough* Rowan already suggests that the developers are more comfortable leaning in that direction than JKR ever was in her writing), if this leads to a revival of the hellish shipping wars of this fandom I’m extremely skeptical if such a feature will be worth it. Fingers crossed?

paragonred said

Those pizza purists are idiots; while shrimp might be unusual it’s still a protein after all, and a delicious one at that

jakathine said

i like pineapple on pizza w/ham cause of the complementing sweetness. so i think that’s how most feel on it. but i’ve never had shrimp on pizza but now i wanna try that cause that sounds like it’d be amazing

I get the impression that certain US cities, NYC and Chicago especially, pride themselves on being “pizza cities” with fairly specific concepts of what pizza “should” be. That’s probably where the internet’s mild obsession with the pineapple debate came from, as that seems like a popular topping in places that lack a distinctive pizza identity. New Orleans is one such city despite the extensive food culture, and shrimp is merely the tamest of the locally popular topping options. I’ve also had on pizza scallops (bland, season to compensate), crawfish (naturally tangy but with a weird consistency for pizza), and even alligator (less exotic than it sounds, it’s like chewier chicken most of the time). Alternatively, I’ve had it suggested after one Sicilian man expressed surprise at my fondness for shrimp pizza that certain Italian culinary traditions do not directly mix seafood and cheese which would also explain the aversion.

deetvar said

OMG, okay but another debate. Does beans belong on pizza? 

Also yes shrimp on pizza sounds delicious honestly.

I am absolutely not qualified to answer that as I have very little experience with red, black, or white beans. I’ve never cared for them, honestly, not even the celebrated red beans and rice dish beloved among New Orleans’s working classes and extremely popular to serve on Mondays.

markoftheasphodel said

Clam pizza CAN be good. At times.

That’s another one I’ve never had. Despite their physical similarities to oysters clams have a surprisingly different flavor, one I didn’t much care for the one time I tried it.

Unlike some of my mutuals, I haven’t gotten anyone asking me to weigh in on the apparently hotly-debated question of pineapple on pizza. *pouts*

I am of the opinion that the best use for pineapple is as a cocktail mixer, and that its value otherwise is questionable. The topping debate that really ought to matter though is whether shrimp belong on pizza. The answer is clearly yes – there are very few culinary contexts in which you can’t stick shrimp and make them work somehow – but it seems some pizza purists balk at the thought of shellfish on their food.