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?

What are some newer obscure titles that you would personally recommend?

Let's say something from a five years ago and that is really unlikely to be known by somone else unless you told them about it. But it really is not that important.

I am looking for some small studio or personnal project that manages to take whatever it is based around and create an entertaining experience.

Also I am posting this as hopefully a way to surface smaller titles that someone considers good.

Nearly two years ago, I made a post titled "On the superhero question" and three years ago I made a retrospective on the box office since theaters closed in 2020.

So I figured it was time for an update.

Re-reading those posts makes me realize how optimistic the theatrical landscape seemed in the wake of Barbenheimer. I don't think I was alone in that; I think the industry felt optimism from that cultural moment as well. That same year was when superhero films imploded, so there was this idea that audiences wanted "real" films. They wanted films by "real" directors, and now there was some discernment from audiences. Grouping both Barbie and Mario, it spoke to the value that other IP now has.

The landscape became much more depressing in 2024. It seems like the idea of audiences flocking to other types of films did not happen. After consistent growth, the box office fell in 2024 from 2023. I remember the panic that the industry felt after both The Fall Guy and Furiosa: A Mad Max Story flopped at the box office. But Inside Out 2, Deadpool and Wolverine breaking out balanced out those disappointments.

Speaking of Deadpool and Wolverine, I remember my prediction of the film being that it would be the lowest-grossing of the Deadpool franchise. Not only that, but I predicted that Joker 2 would outgross it, and we all know how that played out.

Because Deadpool and Wolverine did so well, it delayed the narrative that had been forming throughout 2023, the "superhero fatigue" narrative. It wasn't until now that the narrative is back, and it seems like Deadpool and Wolverine was more of an exception. The film needed 20 years of nostalgia to power it to those numbers. Something under-discussed about D&W's performance is that it was more domestic-heavy than a lot of billion-dollar MCU films (47% DOM split when many of them were in the 30% range throughout the 2010s). Spider-Man: No Way Home also had a split in the 40s, which perhaps was an omen for what was to come.

There were other overperformers throughout 2024, don't get me wrong. Wicked, making over 400M DOM and 700M WW, was not something people were expecting early on. Mufasa: The Lion King still made over 700M WW despite a mediocre reception and a "why would you make this?" issue. But there was certainly a depth issue. Fewer films hit the 100M DOM mark in 2024 than in 2023, and the rest of the top 100 films made less in 2024 than in 2023. It did feel like many films underperformed or did not reach their full potential, which would have helped out the overall box office. Many horror films like Abigail, Night Swim, MaXXXine, could have done better but didn't. Gladiator II would have likely done better if it had been better received. Twisters and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice did well, but didn't get the late legs that would have driven it to 300M totals. Bad Boys: Ride or Die decreased from the previous film. Red One and Bob Marley: One Love didn't crawl past the 100M DOM mark. Little things like that that add up.

So how's 2025 looking so far?

In short, not great. We're currently lagging behind 2024 during the same calendar year. Inside Out 2 and Deadpool and Wolverine contributed over 600M DOM each, while our highest-grossing film this year so far is still A Minecraft Movie, and that didn't even hit 500M DOM (it probably would have if word of mouth wasn't horrendous). We do have three big films left for the year: Zootopia 2, Wicked: For Good, and Avatar: Ash and Fire. All three are potential 500M DOM grossers, although Avatar will be making a majority of its money in the 2026 calendar year. There are also smaller-scale studio films hoping to break out, such as The Running Man, Tron: Ares, and Predator: Badlands.

The issue, though, is that many of these films can underperform, and that's been a common theme this past year. The well-received Thunderbolts could not get in the black, and the much-anticipated Fantastic Four is going to barely break even theatrically. Even Superman, with its great legs, will end up below what many superhero films did during the peak, even mediocre or lesser-known superheroes. It does seem like the box office will continue to collapse since nothing is filling that Disney-sized void. Outside of superhero films, Lilo and Stitch didn't perform as well as it could have and neither did Minecraft.

So it's kind of grim. I mean, in reality, movie-going reached its peak in 2002. It has been declining in admissions ever since. So it was perhaps naive to think that the growth we experienced from 2021 to 2023 would continue. But it really seems like the domestic box office will continue to decline, and the international box office has collapsed for a lot of Hollywood films, specifically comic book films. So we're entering a very different landscape, a much more muted world for films from now on. And it will likely continue to shrink.

Now markets shift, they can shift back up. The international market can be brought up again (Superhero movies used to always play better with domestic audiences). But I'm certainly not as optimistic as I once was.

A break up
A loss
A blindside
A disappointment
Or anything else that broke your heart

Tell us the story, and how you are doing with it.

Also, for anyone reading people’s comments, remember that these are difficult stories for people to share. Please be empathetic and kind in your responses. Treat these as opportunities to commiserate and support, rather than as problems to solve.

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!

Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

For the past year, I've finally been able to have a strong, lasting, cleaning routine. It took me my whole life, but I was never able to go past my own argument of "who cares"? Who cares if the dishes aren't done? If the laundry isn't folded? Only I can judge me. It doesn't matter, ultimately.

But silently, I wasn't happy with that, and I've known I wasn't happy for years, kinda like an addict saying he'll stop but he never does.

One day earlier this year, during winter, while on a good cleaning day, I took some time to look at my old notebooks from college. I remembered a page I had written during some off-time on an internship. I had written a full page of the same line: "I like it when...". I had wanted to just do some introspection and list every thing I liked that came to mind. Stuff like "I like it when I eat pizza", "I like it when I play boardgames with my friend", etc.

Those notes were five years old, you know what was the very first thing on the page? That's right: "I like it when my apartment is clean"

It hit me like a fucking brick. I almost cried right there.

From then on, it was over. The cleaning me had won over the lazy me and I've since been able to keep a clean apartment :)

So, what's your story? How did you overcome a challenge in your life?

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?

so first, a bit of context, I recently got lossless scaling and have been trying its frame generation in different games, it works fine but it's recommended to limit the framerate to half of your refresh rate but I've tried using RTSS and it doesn't seem to work in Blue Prince at all, neither the OSD nor the framelimiter work. like nothing happens at all even though I added the .exe to Blue Prince and limited the framerate. also, as for the reason I want to use it in this game. the game works fine but if I keep playing and have drafted a lot of rooms, the frame rate gets lower and lower like it goes from 144 (my refresh rate) to 90ish so I thought I'd limit it to 72 fps and just use frame generation. I recall some people here play Blue Prince so I thought maybe someone could help.

Some days ago, I posted in the monthly ~health.mental thread and it turned into such a long aimless ramble that I deleted it after a couple of hours. I was embarrassed how childishly whiny I came off with that ranting/venting or whatever it was that went through my head at that time, in a vulnerable emotional state. When it gets even worse, during breakdowns, it even becomes that I'm fully incapable of speech which I even less know how to work on.

But it's not just limited to these two states. During more "reasonable" moments, if I can call it that, I still have the sense that I don't know how to express myself. Sometimes I catch myself thinking it's a lack of education or because of not reading enough literature, so my vocabulary is poor. Because even when I use tools full-on graphs of words with emotions and variants and synonyms of those words etc. etc., it still seems like it's not enough.

The best I can usually do is saying that I have a feeling of being overwhelmed, that it's all too much, feeling the feelings too much, extreme emotions, that I can't fit into my body. But I feel like it's still more than that.

Anyone else deal with this too?