What have you been watching and reading this week? You don't need to give us a whole essay if you don't want to, but please write something! Feel free to talk about something you saw that was cool, something that was bad, ask for recommendations, or anything else you can think of.

If you want to, feel free to find the thing you're talking about and link to its pages on Anilist, MAL, or any other database you use!

Going off of my recent Outer Wilds thread (spoiler warning on that topic), what are some games that you wish you could play again for the first time? What about the game makes you feel that way?

Feel free to talk about spoilers, but please flag them! The easiest way is to drop them in a details block. Markup below in case anyone needs to copy/paste:

<details>
<summary>Spoilers</summary>

Spoilers go here!
</details>

This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.

This is an inherently political thread; please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.

Every time someone brings up a topic about recommendations to get normies into anime, they tend to bring up the same old familiar ones like Cowboy Bebop or FLCL or maybe even a Gundam or two. There's always a recommendation of one of the current anime du jour, and the only thing that comes close to being a 'modern classic' recommendation is FMA: Brotherhood.

While I don't have a problem with recommending old anime categorically (Cowboy Bebop won't stop being Cowboy Bebop even if we keep trying to reinvent that wheel), a lot of it is not super accessible, much of it looks very different from modern anime, and the last few years have seen some really amazing productions in both film and TV anime, to the point where a lot of the older stuff just feels really outdated and simple.

With that being said, what are your new recommendations for people who want an introduction to anime?

From Wikipedia

A modern melodrama is a dramatic work in which the plot, typically sensationalized and for a strong emotional appeal, takes precedence over detailed characterization. Melodramas typically concentrate on dialogue that is often bombastic or excessively sentimental, rather than action. Characters are often flat, and written to fulfill stereotypes.

Contemporarily, we use the word melodrama for narrative works that go to great lengths to induce certain kinds of emotion at all costs, to detriment of the internal cohesion of both plot and characterization, often in a manner that some consider cheesy, corny, or excessive. All soap operas are melodramas, as are many movies and TV shows. Some melodramas are cheap and fail to achieve their effects, while others can be more rich and even sophisticated. In a way, many mainstream stories are, to some extent, melodramas, even when there are other, more salient genres. There's melodrama in action, crime, and science fiction.

Here are some examples of what I consider more or less contemporary melodramas:

• The Young and the Restless
• Grey's Anatomy
• The Color Purple
• Downton Abbey
• Dawson's Creek
• Avatar
• Gone with the Wind

And here are some stories that are not melodrama, but contain a whole lot of it:

• True Blood
• The Walking Dead
• A.I. Artificial Intelligence
• Pretty much every super-hero CW show
• Pretty much anything in the MCU

Note: Outer Wilds, not The Outer Worlds.

If you do not want the game spoiled for you, please do not read any further into this topic.

I have given the game two honest tries, and I've stopped each time. I like what the game is offering, but I don't like playing it.

What I'm wanting isn't just a traditional "spoiler" -- I can look up the plot and lore and details and such -- I'm more wanting to know about the full experience of playing the game. People talk about this game with the same awe and cultishness with which people talk about The Witness (which I loved). I saw a few glimpses of something that in my time in the game (e.g. the Quantum Tower puzzle). I've read so many comments warning me to not learn about the game and people wishing that they could play it again for the first time, that I know there's definitely something more here.

Unfortunately, I'm not the player to discover that more.

Thus, I'm hoping someone here can take me on their journey through the Outer Wilds instead. Tell me about what the game was like for you, how it unfolds, and, most importantly, what is it that makes people talk about the game the way that they do.

No age requirement on the question so anyone can answer, and it can be about anything -- opinions, beliefs, preferences, your own body, etc.

If you're comfortable sharing specific ages/ranges, feel free, but if not that's fine too.

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?