Michael*

Mainstream media believes in "balance" which means if there are two people, one who says it's raining outside and one who says it's sunny, those two viewpoints are treated as having equal value, without being scrutinised. Given the human tendency to cherry-pick evidence and dismiss inconvenient data it's hardly surprising that, without proper scrutiny, so many facile and often completely counter-factual myths keep getting regurgitated. We seem to have arrived at a point where people get to claim that the facts don't tell the whole story, which is just completely insane.

Given how much the landscape of the MCU changed with the events of Endgame and Marvel's apparent road map for their phase four, it feels like the moment has gone somewhat on commissioning this. I would say the right time to do it would have been immediately after Civil War, the "T'Challa told Ross what you did" subplot was a perfectly viable premise for a solo Widow story.

There are a great many reasons why people maintain that you should use the so-called "proper channels" to try and facilitate change, but by far and away the biggest one is that those same people have a monopoly over the proper channels and therefore can choose whether or not they want to listen.

Given that it was often riddled with slight and shallow storytelling, a nomination for outstanding drama really feels like a stretch. Not to say that the show's bizarrely short run didn't yield a few decent episodes, but far more time was spent trying to ape classic Western tropes than developing the plot.

That was a surprise, but a really brilliant surprise. Although I was a bit non-plussed to see it bag a series nomination alongside three nods for writing, and not a single actor nod. I know it's somewhat hard to choose because the entire cast really do excel in their roles, but just carve out a spot for one of them and pick a name at random.

Sounds like Newcastle are going to be treated to another year of Mike Ashley at the helm and Steve Bruce's unique brand of 4D chess after all, then. On the bright side, the extent to which current crowd restrictions could be lifted for the new season may have just become an irrelevance for them.

I must confess, I still consider it pretty impressive that in this day and age, Kojima is able to attach his name to something, similar to how a movie director might, and have it carry some weight. I would have thought that would be a pretty unique thing in the realm of video games. Mostly though, after the Konami debacle, I'm just glad he's still blazing a path in the industry.

I don't pursue horror at all really, although I have been aware of Kojima's various attempts to make a horror game over the years. I believe Ito was previously thought to be involved with Silent Hills at one point, but that particular project seemed to stall completely after Kojima's rather abrupt falling out with Konami, and of course, very little has been done with the series since. It'd be interesting to see though, if Kojima and Ito do decide to collaborate on something new, if Del Toro might get involved too. After Silent Hills was pulled, he supposedly swore off games forever.

I finally finished off the series. It felt like they were going for a satire of the Trump administration for some of it, although given that Trump himself would probably think this was a documentary and be slightly confused that the general he put in charge looked like the guy from that old reality show about a paper company, I'm not too sure about the effectiveness of that. The give-and-take between Carell and Malkovich was never less than fun to watch, though.

As nerve-shredding as it can be to only pull away from danger at something approaching the eleventh hour, the first year back in the Premier League was always going to be about survival and Villa managed it with relative ease on the back of the last four games, digging in far more than Watford or Bournemouth after the restart. Which isn't half bad given that the possibility of sounding the Big Sam alarm seemingly came into the equation around March time.

Forest's increasingly innovative ways of not getting promoted truly are a thing of wonder but of course, there's always next year (in about six weeks). I will admit to breathing an almighty sigh of relief after Boro's latest date with destiny resulted in an escape from relegation, if only to avoid the indignity of our next pseudo-derby happening in the lower reaches of League One.

I must confess, I fear that's how the majority of open world games are going these days. Somewhat restrictive RPG elements and worlds filled with side quests that quite quickly turn into chores. It's increasingly rare to find something in the genre that gets the balance just right. The recent installments of Assassin's Creed have gotten better at it, but I would say the only ones to have done it really brilliantly are Horizon Zero Dawn and the Witcher.

The monochrome "Kurosawa Mode" is a pretty mouthwatering prospect, I must say. I do love a game with a striking visual style and an open world aesthetic, when it's so highly detailed and visually stunning I'm often just distracted from soaking it in. We may have to balance that against some slightly lacklustre elements too of course, some of which sound like they perhaps hold it back from being a real masterpiece. I personally would settle for an excellent world and decent gameplay.

In fairness, if it were to just begin and end in one go instead of establishing tons of narrative threads that go on across multiple sequels, I think I'd be fine with that. I could perhaps picture Kojima liking the idea of furthering the "strand" game genre with another title set in the same world, but the climax to the story, somewhat surprisingly, didn't leave that many loose ends and seemed to stand pretty well on its own. Generally speaking though, I’m down to play whatever Kojima comes up with next, be it a sequel, a prequel or some other weird title.

Claudio Ranieri perhaps already en route for Watford's title charge next season.

I think post-Aguero was probably when the catchphrase started to feel really contrived. Tyler's commentary has gotten increasingly bizarre as of late though, the solid minute spent explaining a joke he'd made about Dani Ceballos and hairdressers culminating in an attempt to mimic Alan Smith's accent the other night was a particular low point. In fairness, I was never the biggest Tyldesley devotee either. The cringe comedy factor of his partnership with Andy Townsend was entertaining at times, but his overly romanticised view of the mighty England, even when the team was playing drab football and struggling to win qualifiers against Macedonia (which of course, was most of the time), had long been a source of irritation for me. With all that said, while wanting to appeal to a younger audience isn't inherently a bad thing, it would be downright naive to think the next generation wouldn't get or listen to an experienced voice. A middle-aged person's idea of what younger people want is almost always how we end up with things like "Fletch and Macca" on BT.

When it was first announced, I was picturing some sort of cool wandering samurai game with intense blood feuds that escalate into amazing duels. However the more I see of it, the more it looks like an Assassin's Creed game set in Japan. I don't particularly have a problem with that, but it's probably not going to be the groundbreaking new experience it perhaps could have been.

It sounds like ITV owe Tyldesley and us at least some sort of explanation. Perhaps needless to say though, if it doesn't involve a potential free transfer to Sky and the possibility of a bellowed reveal by Martin Tyler of "and it's Clive!" then I'm not listening.

Looking at the current Championship table, it would appear that any such deduction would be a virtual guarantee of outright demise for two thirds of the clubs in it. It would be particularly galling though for Hull to stay up at Wigan's expense after a stuffing like that one.

This was one of only a very small handful of games that I've ever felt motivated enough to platinum. Some of the gameplay, from the aesthetics, the mechanics and online elements, boasted the kind of subtleties that you simply can't find anywhere else. I suppose you'd have to say the story was always going to be the sort of thing that people either went all in on and really loved, or looked at from a distance and thought "that's weird and dumb" but I was affected by some of it in a way that I find is quite rare these days. Surprisingly forthright though in its structure and pacing, particularly by Kojima's usual standards. Respect to Kojima as well, obviously, for apparently engineering a global pandemic to tie in with it.

While the European ban for Man City has been overturned of course, they do remain under investigation by the Premier League. £500 fine incoming. Who am I kidding, the Premier League would probably settle for a packet of crisps and a can of Fanta.

Champions League draw and what have you.

Congratulations, my good man!

Yeah, I mean, I guess there's a fine line between trusting our membership to follow the forum's guidelines and removing the sense of immediacy that makes posting so satisfying, but I see no reason why we couldn't have a chat about the best way to strike a balance. In the meantime, please do feel free to hit ye olde report button if you see a post that breaks the rules.

It would probably be a rarity for us to consider doing an outright deletion of a topic lacking a bio. In general though, yes, members who create content are expected and should certainly be willing to provide some information in the body of the post, even if it's just the basics.