gaypyro

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looking back at the Tf2 Comics, something I find very interesting is how Engie is the only one wearing blue.

I get its how Red is the Default Team Color and that Red Team and Blu Team are treated as explicitly interchangeable in supplementary material (Outside of Meet the Spy at least); but I think Dell has been the most consistently portrayed as Team BLU.

I just think it's neat.

[gaypyro]

One of those goofy maid animes, except the viewpoint character isn't the hapless master or mistress of the house, but a regular-ass janitor who ended up on this crew due to a paperwork mixup at the temp agency and can't figure out what the fuck is wrong with her co-workers.

[gaypyro]

TF2 #7 COMIC SPOILERS

So the final TF2 comic came out, and it really did feel more like an Epilogue then this big, amazing finale (I imagine whatever OG plans they had; they decided to drop in favor of this.) But, the most important question still remains after reading this... MAJOR SPOILERS * * * * * *

Where on the Hater scale does the Administrator fall? Her entire life,her sole reason to live, was dedicated to tormenting one man. She got a job as his kids Nanny with the goal of killing them in their sleep, only to decide the crueler fate she could give was make them raised completely incompetently. She tricked him into granting her his estate. She cheated death not just for herself, but raised Zachariah Mann from the dead, and gave his kids immortality solely so they could tarnish his legacy, forever.

She is so old she forgot why she did it. When she was told this was the last of the supple she just gave herself a massive, final injection so she could look her best as she taunted him one final time. She killed herself before she learnt how to cheat death, entire because without this hatred she had nothing to live for.

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I don't have any strong opinions about Wicked (2024) as a film, but I have to admit it's very funny seeing reviewers who clearly have no prior exposure to the material outside the 1939 MGM adaptation getting their knickers in a twist about politicising the legacy of L Frank Baum.

[gaypyro]

Let's Read Peanuts (Sponsored by “Snicker-Snacks”) – December 1957

There are lots of great strips I just don't have room to comment on. I strongly encourage everybody to read the full month at the official GoComics page. Today's month starts HERE.

December 3, 1957

Their relationship continues to fascinate me. What did you ~DO~ to her, Charlie Brown!?

December 4, 1957

God dammit, he’s spiraling again. I’ll get the hose.

December 5, 1957

It’s interesting to watch the way Schulz draws birds start to shift. At first they were fairly photo-realistic but now they’re beoming much more cartoonish, rounded and simplified. You can kind of see how this will eventually lead to Woodstock.

December 6, 1957

They LIKE you, you idiot.

December 8, 1957

I appreciate both Charlie Brown’s honesty and the fact that it’s Linus who wants to see Lucy get her ass beat the most.

December 10, 1957

This might actually be the funniest way to start a letter to Santa.

December 21, 1957

The impression I get from this story-line is that Schroeder ugly cried over missing Beethoven's birthday multiple times.

December 23, 1957

I mean...

Thoughts:

I'm not dead! I was just out of town and buried in work for a while (still kind of am, actually).

Let's pick up where we left off with our year-end wrap-up. This time we're focusing on...

Violet!

(Feb) 1951

(Dec) 1951

1952

1953

1954

1955

1956

1957

Violet is interesting to me because of all the main cast members her personality changes the most over the course of these early years. She's introduced as this sort of kindhearted counterpoint to Patty and functioned for a while as both as a friend for Charlie Brown (which as we're seeing is very important to keep things from getting too bleak) and as a way for Schulz to talk about relationships through a kid's perspective. Over time though the role of "friend" started getting taken over by Lucy (and later Linus) and as a result her relationship with Charlie Brown morphed from "Charlie Brown's girlfriend" to "Charlie Brown's bitter ex", and I kind of love the dynamic. She also became Patty's BFF at some point in this process which is probably a large part of why Patty sticks around for so much longer than Shermy, who feels vestigial and unconnected to most of the cast.

Her design also changed to reflect this shift with her going from long pigtails to a short, more conservative ponytail. Though that seems to have stabilized a lot since around 1955 with the only real changes being her overall look squashing and stretching in-line with the overall style changes.

Speaking of the overall style, the changes have slowed down a lot this year with only slight shifts in the direction of simplicity, minimalism, and a greater reliance on recurring "out-of-the-box" poses to save time. On the positive side though, we're also seeing looser and more emotive expressions and a continued shift to jokes about specific character traits rather than broad observations about kids/dogs/etc. It's something you really notice with Linus's continued growth from a generic little kid with a few quirks into a proper character. We're also seeing Snoopy continue to elongate and he's now walking upright regularly. Which I'm still not a huge fan of but I do think it's starting to look better as time goes on.

Overall I'd say I like this year more than the last one, but still not as much as that sweet spot we got between 1952 and 1954. Not bad by any means, but we've lost a lot of what I loved about those first few years and the strengths the strip will eventually develop in their place aren't fully baked just yet.

[gaypyro]

Me: *opens Tumblr dashboard*

Tumblr dash: It's misogynistic not to acknowledge that women are more susceptible to propaganda because our brains have more goo.

Me: *closes Tumblr dashboard*

[gaypyro]

I really hope they updated the stories art in the reprint, since If I saw the Gorilla on the top in the cover and then the Gorilla on the bottom in the story I'd feel cheated.

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"Surely a tabletop RPG whose conflict resolution mechanics instruct its players to spend all night playing cards doesn't mean it seriously" like, I've bumped into tabletop RPGs whose player-facing instructions have in all apparent sincerity included directives to variously start a fight club, violate the Migratory Birds Act, set your own character sheet on fire, and menace the other players with a knife. You tell me!

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Imagine thinking Tolkien was a freak for coming up with a clever framing device to his work instead of creating 15 fucking languages all with their own grammar structures and linguistical histories!

I think a lot of people are getting the wrong idea when they call Tolkien a freak because he invented this elaborate framing device whereby the Red Book of Westmarch was actually written by Bilbo and Frodo (with some addenda by Sam) and he, Tolkien, was merely an editor and translator. Throughout history it's actually been a very common literary device for an author to represent their work as having been written by a character who appears in the story, with the author themselves variously positioned as a translator, editor, and/or literary executor. At the time that Tolkien was writing, such a device would have been seen as somewhat old-fashioned, but certainly not eccentric. Like, Tolkien was definitely a freak, but not for that reason.

[gaypyro]

As the game goes on the Princess grows more and more annoyed with not just the insane shit the hero did to reach her, but the fact he apparently wasted several weeks doing random pointless side missions for the 100% play through.

At first it was sweet hearing how he saved the girl from the Demon King's son who wanted to marry her; but eventually she starts hearing about him backtracking all the way to the start of the game to deliver a letter and wasting hours searching the most dense and enemy filled biome for that cape he was wearing when he died saving her. At least once he accidentally soft locked himself out of something and did a very hard no-clip to get it back.

Concept: metroidvania with one of those "you begin with endgame gear and do a tutorial fight with it before losing all your stuff due to Plot" segments, except the player Hero and the Demon King "final boss" suffer mutually inflicted cutscene death at the end of the fight.

Now you're playing as the Princess you were meant to rescue, armed with whatever gear you could loot from the corpses, escaping the Demon King's Cursèd Citadel backwards – starting from the endgame biome – while the place falls apart around you thanks to the demise of its load-bearing boss.

The central gag is you notionally have endgame gear, but most of it has no obvious application to what you're up against, either because of the Citadel's ongoing collapse, or because the Hero's puzzle solutions on the way in were stupid, and you have to deal with the aftermath on the way out.

Though there'd be some gear progression, much of the map would be knowledge-gated by the need to figure out unintended applications of your existing gear. Any required interactions would be tutorialised, but you could freely break sequence if you know about them before you're "supposed" to.

[gaypyro]

Generational spin-off media is like “okay, what would be the most in-character way for the previous show’s protagonist to comprehensively fail as a parent?”

[gaypyro]

I'll be honest, this is less an Invincible Fight Girl problem and more of an "Industry Wide" problem. The 10 Episode Season is not what a lot of shows are trying to be; and it's impacted plenty of action shows in particular.

Like, anyone remember Unicorn: Warriors Eternal? Or how Fionna and Cake really felt like it wanted 3 more episodes? Or, even if you dislike Vivzie, Hazbin Hotel's really weird pacing issue? It's everywhere right now and will be an issue until the showrunners learn how to write for shorter seasons, or the corporations start commisioning more episodes.

i think my problem with invincible fight girl is that it's paced like a 23 episode shonen anime, which isn't inherently a bad thing, i'd say the heroaca/dragon ball inspirations is one of its main hooks. no the problem is that it's 10 episodes and it really feels like more should've happened by now

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[gaypyro]

i think a lot of leftists who abstained from voting did so with the belief that harris would win so they could hold a moral high ground when she got into office but. well.

[gaypyro]

To all the trans people who see this tonight, no matter what happens, we will survive. Trans people will still be here 4 years from now and 10 years from now and 100 years from now and tomorrow. We have always existed and we always will. The world cannot unlearn about us; we are too public, too loud, too beloved, too present. Ill be here tomorrow. Please stay here with me.

[gaypyro]

I want everyone who decided it was their moral imperative to either not vote, or vote for Jill Stein.

Anything that happens this term is your fault.

[gaypyro]

Is there a game about a Big Stupid Table of Big Stupid Tables?

When you're designing a TTRPG, what do you start writing down first?

In all honesty, at least 50% of the time I start by composing a Big Stupid Table I think would be fun to use in a game, then construct the rest of the game to justify the existence of the table.