#|| JUST AS A PITCH FOR LIKE. RESKINS.

[revvnant]

oh, wow, the funtime designs have been stolen. gasp. pearl clutch.

[genericpuff]

say sike right now, she's actually going back to The Doctor Pepper Show-

Like, this is just "What if The Doctor Pepper Show and LO had a baby?" Because at this point it's very clear Rachel only knows how to write from inside her own head, which is full of unresolved salt towards her childhood and medical fetish shit. The imagery in the first panel is very LO, and the imagery in the second is literally The Doctor Foxglove Show-

Evidently she's been reskinning the same shit for years-

Listen, I've been, for the most part, keeping my lips sealed on a lot of Rachel's old projects and what I've dug up on her previous works, for a few reasons:

1.) We were all cringe on the Internet at some point in time and a lot of these older works, such as Freak Scene Surgery and The Doctor Pepper Show, would have been from when she was in her late teens / early 20's. I'm not here to judge Rachel's personal preferences or whatever kind of fetishes she's into. It's totally normal, expected even, for a lot of creators to have older works they're trying to bury or disconnect themselves from because it's simply not them anymore.

2.) Ultimately I've been focused on discussion around Lore Olympus and Rachel as she currently operates as a creator, so I don't want to go digging up her old skeletons as any sort of "gotcha" towards LO today. Ultimately a lot of these works don't have anything to really 'do' with LO as it exists today.

That said, the reason I'm bringing it up now is because these new series... are bridging that gap that I've been avoiding for ages now. The gap that's filled with skeletons of Rachel's past that she's trying to both disconnect herself from but now fall back on with LO come and gone. It almost goes to show that her being a one-note pony goes back since far before LO - these are literally the only ideas she's able to come up with at this point, and it's painfully obvious in how both these new "graphic novel pitches" are pretty much the exact same and could apply to the same character, and that character may as well just be Persephone, i.e. Rachel, all over again.

Like, I'm calling it now, Patients in the Dark is just gonna be more "moms are bad" rhetoric, and Eleanor's Deathbed is gonna be Hades and Persephone, but replace Hades with some death god and Persephone with a training mortician, which is basically also still just Foxglove training to be a doctor, and Icy Shaw bragging about fondling corpses.

If anything, now that Webtoons is no longer carrying her around on their shoulders, this is gonna be Rachel's moment of "put up or shut up". She can either actually put in an active effort to write something that's decent, or she can flounder under the weight of her own tired mediocrity that's been knocking at her door for years now. As much as she's using her labels that were bought for her to sell these books which aren't even in real development yet-

-Webtoons isn't gonna be there to buy her Eisners forever. This is entirely on her and the imprint that Webtoons shoved her into. Her process is still the same, she's learned nothing from the experience of making LO, she's just got the money and awards now and is trying to run with it, but all she has are the same tired pitch lines that she's been using for decades now and just so happened to work with LO because LO had both Webtoons and the appeal of it being a Greek myth "retelling" to carry it into fame.

I'm gonna go into a bit of a tangent here, but it's been weighing on my mind since I found out this news and have been discussing it with pals within the ULO circle. Rachel once said in an interview that she wanted to use her platform to raise awareness of issues regarding sexual assault, mental health, and "the patriarchy":

"Who do you know that hasn’t been sexually assaulted? The number is depressingly low, right? Why is that? There is no short answer or an easy fix. I have a platform. I can tell a story that will hopefully educate and help others feel acknowledged and vindicated." - Rachel Smythe, Interview with Gossamer Rainbow

"...obviously I'm very feminist, and that sort of stuff really matters to me, um, the best way to approach this question is… I began, the pilot was written in sort of mid-2017, and I think what I wanted, what I wanted to achieve, and I don't even know… probably in 5 years time I don't know how I'm going to feel about this but I'm taking the risk, I really wanted to write a story where, uh…this female character goes through these things and I think what I wanted to do, what I wanted to achieve, was like a really common, I can't speak for like, men, but I can definitely speak for like, you know, if you're sitting in a group of your female friends and you're like "Hey! Who's been sexually assaulted?" … The response is going to be really depressing… Most female people that you know have probably experienced sexual assault to, on one level or another, and I'm like, for me I'm like "Why is that? Why?" And is it because there is a lack of information, lack of education, like what is it? And I'm lucky enough to have a platform and I'm like, if I could just provide some information in story format, would that help? Is this what I can contribute? So I feel like, especially, when writing sexual assault in media often it's… it's a way for the main male character to be, like, uplifted to hero-ness by, usually like, violence is the way to fix the problem, and that's not the approach that I want to take… um, I think [sighs], oh god, sorry I've lost my train of thought, [sighs], yeah, I think a lot of the time in movies when they, like, show rapists or something it's generally someone who's jumped out from behind the tree at a lady in a park and it's not really how it is like 90% of the time [laughs], so I just wanted to make something realistic where people could at it and be, like, "hey, nagging someone into sex isn't cool" or like removing all of their opportunities to say no isn't cool, or for someone to look at it, and just like feel validation, this is me trying, trying my best to make a difference with the platform that I have, and yeah, this is my roundabout answer for it" - Rachel Smythe, Interview with The Comic Source

And yet not once has Rachel actually used her platform for good outside of herself. She just asks the question, "Sexual assault?" and then writes off the answer "yes, it's bad!" and it especially shows in LO where the resolution to the one plotline she kept around to draw in readers was "assaulters are sent to the timeout corner!" Sure, it works for the readers who are simply seeking validation that their experiences aren't unique to themselves, but is it actually doing any real work to talk about the systems in place that leads to people like Apollo being created? Is it doing anything to address purity culture as it exists and the double standards that exist for women who are navigating sexual relationships? Is it doing anything to take the discussion outside of the narrative and put it into action through support of women's shelters, charities, mental health support for men, etc.? Not really. Like many of Rachel's ideas throughout LO, she simply goes, "Men, amirite?" and the answer is "yeah men suck!" and nothing more. The answer to the entire SA plotline is "rape is bad, don't do it" when anyone who could even relate to that conclusion in the first place already knows that.

Ultimately the activism she claims she's trying to do doesn't actually service the issue at hand - it just services herself and her own insecurities, her own unresolved trauma, her own need for validation through Eisners and merch sales. She asks the question, "Who hasn't been assaulted?" so that when she responds to the women who come forward and relate to Persephone, it's with the intent of getting them to read LO and buy her merchandise. She winds up making herself the center of other people's experiences, even ones that she cannot relate to. At BEST her attempts to "use her platform" as a means of starting discussion around ongoing societal issues like the patriarchy and sexual assault towards women is about as effective as Bell #LetsTalk, it's purely performative, self-profiting, and offers nothing of real tangibility.

If she just wants to write her own self-empowering personal works, that would be fine. Plenty of creators do it. Art is, at its core, self-expression. But it's extremely telling that she's built a platform off her self-expression, and twisted it into what she believes to be "activism" and "feminism", so that she can continue to profit off it in her future works such as this, which, again, are just reskins of her previous projects which were largely centered around the fetishizing of abuse towards women.

I don't want to claim that this is what it is, but... how much of the "feminism" in LO is done purely through the lens of victimizing women? Why is there more effort put into torturing female characters like Hera, and Demeter, and Minthe, and even Persephone to a certain degree, than there is into actually addressing the larger issue that she's claiming she wants to shed light on and resolving her questions with actionable answers?

That is the only question I will leave you all with. I am absolutely 100% not planning on touching these works with a ten foot pole, even if they should come to fruition. With the recent realization that she was into artists like Trevor Brown, alongside the fact that we've known for a long time she's into Lolita and there are very clear parallels to draw between it and LO, I think it's safe to say at this point that Rachel's work is not something I want to continue to support even when it's "hate reading". Again, I'm not going to outright accuse her of anything, but I feel like the writing is clearly on the wall here and I'm taking that writing as my warning to steer clear.

I didn't want to discuss the elephant in the room - her older works as they exist in the distant past of the early 2000's - but she's now riding the elephant.

[catghoulz]

itz funny to me how radagon iz kinda velkacoded. the reskinned velka miraclez r all associated with radagon & both him & a reused velka statue asset are heavily involved in the church of vows, the elden ring equivalent of confessorz/velka statues, & the misbegotten aka radagon chimeras are pretty corvian adjacent, particularly the winged onez. theyre both int/faith types with a focus on both miracles & sorceries, uhhhh they have a bastard half-reptile child with powerz threatening to the divine hierarchy sealed away in some form of pocket dimension, uses sin-coded impenetrable thornz az well az having Sinful giant-red hair, ostensibly working under the main god of the pantheon but in actuality open to subverting them to achieve their goalz. he iz like Almost definitely an iteration ov the velka archetype. itz an interesting call... like obviously martin wasnt basing radagon off velka so itz like. not the Secret Key To Understand Radagon or whatever. itz just interesting tht miyazaki & co looked at Whatever grrms original radagon pitch waz & decided. Ya ok velka reskin time. the GEQ seemz the more obvious call so itz pretty inspired

[faithinchances]

Hello hello! I’m just here to knock on your door because I saw your tags on the ‘Jamie’s post-s3 career path’ poll and I really enjoyed them! (And didn’t want to clog up the notes of someone else’s poll about it)

If you ever wanted to share more in detail about any of these options, I’d love to know more! I am also delighted by the concept of Jamie moving to Leverkusen and ending up under Xabi Alonso, but Barca and Liverpool also have my interest.

No rush or expectations on answering this whatsoever. Just if you ever do feel like sharing, I would love to hear more.

Hm. So Leverkeusen is the option I know the least about and Xabi Alonso is 100% of the reason I put that as an option; he started at Leverkeusen in 2022, which is also when s3 ends, which means they would arrive at the same time. Xabi himself is a midfield legend for Liverpool with a famously amazing first touch, and Jamie also has an amazing first touch.

I am very much hoping (delusionally) that Xabi will end up at Liverpool next year, I think that would be poetic and fun and he seems like a really good coach, but on the subject of Liverpool and coaches: Jurgen Klopp.

He's probably a bigger inspiration for Ted than Pep is.

Pep is a brilliant tactician, deeply passionate, absolutely nuts, always losing it on the sidelines, whereas Klopp at least once forced his team to celebrate losing a final, ie, forced them to celebrate getting to a final even if the result wasn't what they wanted. I just watched the TAA interview with Gary Neville, and he also apparently doesn't focus on winning or losing, just wants Liverpool to be the hardest team to beat because they work so hard. All very Ted.

Except that crucially, Klopp is ALSO a brilliant tactician (he's no Pep, but he's no slouch either), meaning that he's like Ted except competent, passionate, and outwardly caring (sorry Ted), thereby making him perfect for Jamie.

Liverpool also run a very high press that I think Jamie would enjoy, and being in Liverpool would get him closer to home (he could totally drive home for dinner, it's only about an hour) while still keeping some space, which I think he would appreciate. I can see Georgie being a little overbearing when Jamie's in a less needy mood. And, of course, Liverpool also typically make European competition and are regular title contenders.

Assuming he went there in 2022, he would also get a whole year under Jordan Henderson, who we can go ahead and consider being like Roy, except that he's less talented, a better captain, and actually from Sunderland (I've seen it hypothesized that Roy is a reskinned Hendo). And I want to know what would happen if he and Darwin were on the pitch together (Darwin was Liverpool's big signing that summer, realistically Jamie would replace him, but I don't care) (Darwin is notoriously chaotic, a striker with dubious talent in finishing, but also an extremely hard-worker and he takes more chances than most, so his low conversion rate is expected). Also I think Jamie would have a bit of a crush on VVD and that would be funny and cute.

The Barca route is also very fun, and not even because Messi (he had already left at this point). It's basically only possible if Jamie's Richmond contract was up at the end of s3, Barca could never afford our boy otherwise. I've heard it said that true fans of the sport of football will pick Barcelona to watch over any other team (provided theirs isn't playing), and Jamie is nothing if not a fan of football.

They were also at their height when Jamie was a young teenager, a time period when I think he would have had the most time to watch while having already developed an immense interest in it. He would have watched Messi, of course, but also Xavi, Iniesta, and Busquets, who made up a midfield dynasty that I know no comparison for. They are all technically gifted, and two of those last three were still at Barca for the 22/23 season. Xavi coached the team, and Busi was captain.

And then also at this time, Barca were bringing up a new crop of very exciting youngsters, most notably Gavi and Pedri. Jamie is a few years older than them, but I think it would be fun for him to be a role model for a couple of ludicrously talented barely-adults. He would not know what to do with himself.

I also think Jamie is maybe better suited for football abroad? Like he's very salt of the earth, "I work hard, yeah," but he also has this incredible swagger. How to use my limited knowledge to explain this. Spanish football culture seems to be less humble? More flamboyant? Like English football is full of a bunch of guys who are Just Some Dude. Harry Kane, Gary Neville, and in TL, also Roy. Jordan Henderson is PEAK some dude energy. Spanish football invented the term "Galactico" for its superstars.

I just think Jamie would love doing a little dance with his teammates after scoring.

[game-saved]

DND Campaign: L.A. Numinous

The Pantheons of the World are not as fantastical or mythical as you might think. They are around us, always hiding in plain sight. They hide from the Mortal Realm, having forgone most of their earthly attachments after the Great War, the World War, the Last War that they would put themselves through.

They hid their World, their mythologies, their fantasies from the Mortal Realm, between the cracks of what can and can't be seen. There in the unperceived, the lives of fantastical creatures, of ogres and fairies, of kitsune and deities, they continue to survive.

It's 2028, just 6 months before the Summer Olympic Games starts anew in the City of Angels, Los Angeles. You scroll through your X feed, look at the current trending topics: Articles about Whales and Dolphins taking over the sea; The Olympic Flame being ignited in Greece; And the death of an Instagram Model with no leads. It's almost banal and boring as you flick through tweets.

Perhaps, just at the corner of your eye, you see a little miracle, a trick of the light or a creep of a shadow. But something/someone tumbles over you, a friend, a loved one, a mentor you've known for some months, weeks, or maybe only a few days. They're blood soaked and their eyes are pleading, worrying, and saddened, as they look at you, clutching at wounds that only look seconds old.

"Aphrodite is dead. This was not how I meant for this to happen but I'm sorry but I must pass my Eidolon to you before it's too late."

Light flashes before you could even ask. You find yourself engulfed with it, bathed in it and then... nothing.

Now there's a dead body in your hands and an ominous feeling in your chest. Your phone beeps and rings to life with a spoken message. You're pretty sure it didn't have that feature before.

"[Player Name] , you are summoned before the Divine Council to be condemned for the Assassination of a Deity and Usurping their Status. Cooperation would be most advised."

ART CREDIT: Tony Sart, Javier Charro

Hi, hello, Name's Kiri or Hex or Vai! I hardly ever post on Tumblr anymore or advertise any campaign ideas here due to school but this one has been nagging me just a little bit more after listening to Stray Gods, watching American Gods, and rewatching the Percy Jackson films, so I needed to just write down the blurb and the pitch in case anyone is wanting to play some DND in a Divine Urban Fantasy kind of setting.

INFO

The game is set in contemporary Los Angeles, a few years into the future, a few months before the Summer Olympic Games. You have been accused for the assassination of a Deity and usurping their power and status, their Eidolon. Through the Eidolon, you gain power and are now able to perceive Los Angeles in its truest form, a City of Mythical Creatures living in secrecy.

During Character Creation, you will choose a Deity from any Pantheon (Japanese, Chinese, Greek, Egyptian, Norse etc) whose Eidolon has been passed down to you.

This is going to be a Human-centric campaign so, despite the advertisement of other races in the game world, physically your character will be Human. Through the power of the Eidolon, they can be reskinned with the capabilities of other DND races.

Gameplay will be roleplay heavy, debating on either PBP semi-live text or just Discord VC with a separate channel for Texting RP. But there will also be combat involved of course.

The DM, me, hi, has a flexible schedule but I am in PST so applicants who are close to that would be preferred.

Current Allowed Resources are PHB, Xanathar's, Tasha's, and Mythic Theros

Depending on interest, around 4-8 rotating players can be taken.

If interested, DM me or like this post for more details so I can get back to you.

[oddygaul]

Elemental

Eh, my expectations weren’t exactly high going into this - it landed about where I though it would, pleasant but not mind-blowing.

There’s an old internet joke that Pixar movies are just ‘what if x had feelings’ - toys, bugs, monsters, et cetera. Now, there’s some truth to that, if you just take the elevator pitch for their concepts, but I think what separates the good Pixar movies from the mediocre ones is that they genuinely engage with the setting and imagine what life there would look like. Toy Story, due to its small scope, shows the toys as essentially a small tribal community, with limited knowledge of the outside world that is expanded only through exchange with traveling outsider toys. WALL-E is ‘what if robots had feelings’, sure, but fully leans into its post-apocalyptic, consumerist nightmare of a setting. Finding Nemo has a few puns like the fish going to school together, but other than most of the food chain sharing a common language, it still feels like a sensible undersea culture, with all the conflict, interactions and apocrypha that would entail.

And then Cars happened*.

Now look, Cars is a fine movie. But it takes a fundamentally different tack with its setting - rather than take the premise and imagine how and why the world would be different, they basically reskin our world with superficial retouches for cars instead of humans. And I get it, it’s a kid’s movie - it doesn’t have to be that deep, and it leads to a lot of fun visual gags, like the cars going to sleep in their garages, or how they have to do a three point turn to turn around. But the verisimilitude of the world is abysmal - once you start to question anything the floodgates open. How did things get like this? Did humans build the cars, die out, and now the cars live in the desolate shell of human civilization? Did the cars somehow evolve independently, and just so happened to create a society and infrastructure exactly like ours? How do they perform complex tasks that would be required for their own maintenance and production? Do they got thumbs in there somewhere? And so on, and so on.

It’s not necessarily a worse approach - it’s a kid’s movie, after all, and I get the appeal of treating your premise this way - but it’s definitely not the approach I prefer. The problem is, after Cars, Pixar movies have leaned more and more into this ‘set dressing’ approach to worldbuilding, and it always comes off as lazy. Onward, despite its solid character arcs and charming writing, was the apotheosis of this to me - you’re telling me this culture, consisting of dozens of mythical species and which literally has magic, still developed into a bureaucratic vision of suburban middle America, replete with high schools and minivans? fuck off.

*You could argue Monsters, Inc. kind of started this trend, what with the business suits and corporate mundanity of its titular monsters’ society, but I give it a pass because human society exists in that world and the monsters developed in parallel with it. It wasn’t convergent evolution that inexplicably ended up the same as human civilization, it’s just one corner of the wider world, leaving the monster society as more of a dark reflection of humanity’s ills than anything.

So anyway, I went in expecting Elemental to be one of those, and it is. Despite the world consisting of, y’know, sentient clouds or flames or whatever, they all live in a recognizable, modern, city, where everyone still takes the bus around, which still has skyscrapers, still has a town hall, still has convenience stores. They’re dressed up - the bus is a boat that glides along a city-wide aqueduct, and the skyscrapers have some creative flair to fit in with the aesthetic - but it still leaves a lot to be desired from a worldbuilding standpoint. And the writing is along the same lines - rather than a genuinely thoughtful take on what a world made up of primordial beings might be like, Elemental uses it primarily as a visual metaphor to explore ideas of racism, immigration, and assimilation. Which, to be fair, it does pretty well - it just doesn’t feel especially novel. Particularly when (since it is, after all, a family movie) it’s done with the subtlety of a brick - I laughed out loud when, during one of the establishing scenes on the bus, the flame mother character gets dripped on by a water fellow, only for the father to look over, shake his fist and angrily growl “Waterrrr….”.

From an aesthetic perspective, I also surprisingly wasn’t that into the character animation, particularly the fire and water folks. They feel like they’re kind of in this limbo between being fully free-flowing elemental particles and solid physical beings. Look at Wade, for example. The very top of his head is constantly dripping and flowing, like he’s composed of free-flowing water. His body, though, is just a solid shaped blob with a water effect over it. Sure, when the scene calls for it he’s extremely malleable and can do whatever - but when standing relatively still, he feels somewhat contradictory.

There’s also something to be said for their interaction with the lighting. 3D animation, at this point, can absolutely nail lighting on realistic forms - even if the design is super stylized - which leads to a great toybox/macro lens effect. This happens with the backgrounds here, and with some of the elementals: take Claude, for example. He’s a goofy lil mossy orb with eyes. BUT, he’s composed of solid matter that’s realistically lit by things around him, so he looks pitch perfect. The fire folks, on the other hand, since they’re… made of fire… have to have their own built-in lighting, and as a result, their forms don’t react much based on their surroundings, leaving them feeling somewhat disconnected and not grounded in the space. Meanwhile, due to the expressions needing to remain legible, there’s a hard limit on how much their faces can really distort or be animated, and the end result feels like a stiff video game character rig rather than a flickering flame.

Halfway through the movie, I thought about how absolutely killer these designs would have been in traditional 2D animation and got kinda bummed out. Instantly, the lighting problem would be gone - you color them in flats instead, and then you’re free to go wild with constant movement, highlight the ethereal nature of their figures, exaggerate every movement to emphasize different expressions… ahh, man. If only.

All this aside, it was enjoyable enough, and there were some highlights for me.. I thought it was pretty daring for a family movie like this to, structurally speaking, be a whole-ass romcom. Normally these movies will have some romance bits, but they’re usually a subplot: the characters usually bond over the course of whatever dangerous, heroic quest they’re on, rather than making relationship-building the centerpiece. In Elemental, there’s no bad guy, no villains, no evil plot… just a meet cute and some good old fashioned dates.

Also, as you can probably tell already, despite it feeling fairly surface level, all the background and landscape work is absolutely drop-dead gorgeous. The green / eco-futurist architecture is all beautiful - they feel like the kind of designs you’d normally see relegated to concept art and deemed too abstract for the final product, yet here they are. Seriously hats off to everyone that worked on the environment art, I'm eating that shit up.

[magicstar16]

So uhhhh silver the hedgehog and yume nikki have kinda been spinning around in my brain lately. So have an au pitch that makes no sense lol.

Yume Nikki: Gin. (Aka: Dream diary: Silver)

Silver takes Madotsuki’s role. (Don’t worry it’s not yume nikki reskinned I want to make it interesting lol).

So Silver is in the future and lives in an abandoned building. He’s in a state of depression and there’s not much else to do besides explore what’s left of this god-forsaken world he lives in, travel to the past (which he can’t do right now because reasons) or sleep as a form of some kind of escapism. Out of these options, silver chooses sleep.

My idea for the dream worlds is that it’s a combo of the regular worlds in Yume Nikki but also themed to different locations/things from the Sonic franchise and more importantly, Silver’s life. The worlds do contain dream versions of different characters that silver has met, but they can’t be interacted with.

It’s not just kept to canon though, some worlds are themed to different places and themes that Silver could or would have encountered, and also dream worlds that make you wonder “kid WTF happened to you while we were gone” these worlds could hint to what could have made Silver this way, what could have broken this normally sweet, yet determined kid?

The “effects” are all reflections/representations of different abilities silver’s friends have. Like Sonic being represented by a Speed-based effect.

[leam1983]

"The Super Mario Bros. Movie" - Thoughts

When it first came out, you might remember that the Gamers (TM) had a bit of a moment based around the fact that Anya Taylor-Joy's portrayal of Princess Peach wasn't demure enough for their tastes. They'd grown up to Leslie Swann's high-pitched calls for the defacto beau of the ruler of the Mushroom Kingdom and to game after game more or less relegating her as a support character. 1992 more or less served as her first year in the canon spent as something other than a damsel in distress, as she had her own kart and threw shells around with the rest of the gang. In 1988, she joined Mario, got all Freudian and joined him on a quest to free Subcon from the evil Wart, as part of an extensive reskin of an earlier game known as Doki-Doki Panic. From then on, you'd have subtle context cues in several games suggesting that while Peach was typically overpowered by Bowser or the Villain of the Moment, she wasn't in any way powerless.

A lot of the griping probably is rooted in nostagia. Gamers around my age are used to swooping in and saving the day, and, well, Peach and the later stable's lot of princesses aren't exactly the type to need to be saved. If anything, Peach is depicted as quite proactive in her own right in the later games - the catch being that as she's attuned to her own feelings, she's not adverse to the occasional good cry. There's a balancing act in effect here, between the first-hour fans who either got started with Donkey Kong abducting Pauline or with Peach being stuck in yet another goddamn castle, and the fans who might know her better from Super Mario RPG or the New Super Mario Bros. series - where she served as a player-controlled character showing as much drive and agency as the two Brooklyn plumbers.

Of particular note is the criticism that Illumination removed Peach's dress for the final third of the movie, replacing it with what the pundits called a "battle uniform" to put forward the image that she's strong and independent and whatnot. That... got a bit of an eyeroll out of me.

Watch the movie, and you realize that her supposedly heretical wardrobe change references her Mario Kart 8 outfit. There's an extended sequence that sees Cranky Kong loan his army of Kongs to Peach in order to defeat Bowser, and it's used to reference the later game's kart design - and character models. And, well, that's Peach's entirely canonical outfit.

Of course, there's also the question of what Peach does in the movie; which is initiate Mario to the specifics of the Mushroom Kingdom and serve as an ally - as opposed to a love interest. She's not showing concern for Mario because he's her beau and he's putting himself in danger, she's showing concern for him out of base decency.

Again, the first-hour fans expect Peach to just - sit there, squandering her animation budget, maybe fidgeting in abject terror or spending a few frames to cutely gasp in horror or concern. I get that it's a sudden change if you haven't paid attention to other princesses in the canon, like Daisy or Rosalina - but I'll also remind them that in the epilogue for Super Mario Bros. Odyssey, Peach chooses neither Mario or Bowser as her consort. She, at the end of it all, chooses to go at it alone, perhaps rightfully ticked off by the men's posturing.

It's not a relationship that's meant to be consumed. Mario isn't Aragorn, he isn't King Arthur. He's just a helping hand Peach comes to implicitly trust and care for as a friend.

And Bowser? The movie does a lot to humanize him, and it only makes his ploy worse. That leaves you with an ordinary Brooklyn schmuck and his brother, a capable leader forced to request their assistance, and a toxic acquaintance that hasn't caught on to the fact that he doesn't even know who Peach actually is. He has this image of her in mind - see Jack Black's to-be-expected Rock Ballad moments - but it never coalesces; and he's enabled by a version of Kamek voiced by Kevin Michael Richardson pulling something of a Peter Lorre impression. For all of his arcane know-how, Kamek (or Magikoopa, for the oldies like myself) feels like a spineless wimp with his own barrage of fetishes. See the gag that has him serve as a Peach stand-in while Bowser rehearses his confession.

The short of it is Bowser's a big, domineering, dangerous and controlling wet fart. And, well, that's usually how it goes with abusers.

My only real gripe with Peach in the movie has to do with her design, in that I get the sense that only her resting face really aligns with Nintendo's renders. The moment she moves, she starts to look like a recast from a cancelled Despicable Me sequel, with a ton of squash-and-stretch involved. I would've expected a movement range going on the more subtle end of things, personally - like Mario's, ironically enough.

As for the supposedly godawful Chris Pratt take? He ain't actually that bad. Making Mario feel like a Brooklyn native would've obviously meant stripping the Charles Martinet-ness for his first ever full-on speaking role, while referencing it as Mario deliberately channelling the hokey "First-Generation Sicilian American" accent that unfortunately still sells, today - for video ads for his plumbing business. That means very little "It's-a me"'s are on offer, which is honestly kind of refreshing.

I liked it. It was a little short and a little shallow, but it packed plenty of moments worthy of pulling out the "I understood that reference" meme.

[mylordshesacactus]

The puzzle: Literally just reskinned the Fox/Goose/Cabbage puzzle to be fae-themed and use enchanted golden acorns with seasonal runes instead (Summer and Winter cannot coexist without a buffer--the fox will eat the goose--but as the purpose of Autumn is to become Winter, if Winter and Autumn are left without Summer to balance the pull, Winter subsumes Autumn and both are destroyed).

You have to move the runes to their associated plinth--a lion to represent Summer, a wolf to represent Winter, and a stag to represent Autumn. The puzzle resets if any of the runes are destroyed.

The Peanut Gallery: A trio of heavily damaged talking statues who are completely unrelated to the actual puzzle chamber.

Decapitated Horse: A thoroughly average grey stone statue that was once of a rider on top of a rearing horse. One of the horse's legs is gone and the rider's body is basically melted, leaving only a carved pair of legs and part of an arm. The horse's decapitated head lies on the ground nearby and does all the talking. Immediately upon entering the chamber the party hears a cheerful voice exclaim "WHAT HO, TRAVELLERS! APPROACH WITHOUT FEAR TO TEST YOUR WIT AND COURAGE, FOR WE MEAN YOU NO HARM!" and that is VERY representative of how all of his dialogue goes. Bull Or Possibly Steer Minus Hindquarters: A bronze statue of a bull--Detect Magic or close investigation reveals he once had some form of nasty deadly trap attachment but it was damaged beyond repair by whatever sheared his entire body in half; all that remains is his front legs, shoulders, and head. Talks like if Eeyore was happy. EXTRAORDINARILY slow speech, but perfectly contented with the world and his place in it. Unruffled and unrufflable. The only one who ever provides anything resembling useful information. Francis: A deranged raven carved directly into a pillar of gold and onyx. She's covered in dents and scratches, missing a gem eye, and her head has been knocked slightly off from center. Her first line is to screech "BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUULLshit!" after the horse gallantly assures the Noble Heroes Who Approacheth that no harm is meant. The bull gently tells her, "Francis, we've talked about this," to which she adds, "RUN WHILE YOU STILL HAVE A CHANCE! THEY'RE GONNA KILL YOU ALL!!!" (Bull Minus Hindquarters will eventually, fondly, explain that Francis is The Guard Who Always Lies. He placidly informs the party that it used to be a whole thing in a different part of the maze, but that chamber got set on fire by some adventurers. And then it got filled with acid. Then it froze! Then it got banished to the Astral Plane for a thousand years. Then it came back. Then it exploded. Then somebody dropped a boulder on it. And now it's not there anymore. So Francis got transferred. And she's here now. [long, unconcerned pause] She's adjusting. <3)

Anyway, I cannot recommend highly enough if you have a setting that's a Deliberate And Pitched Established Dungeon With A Reason For Existing (this one is in a hedge maze surrounding the Summer Court, an intentional and permanent installation that is actively maintained to test and repel intruders), consider including a chamber that is the union-mandated low-impact-trial-environment worker's comp accommodation for permanently damaged guardian statues.

My players were DYING and I had the time of my fucking life.

DM Skills:

When in doubt, reskin literally the oldest and most common logic puzzle in existence, your players will never notice

If you're worried that your puzzle chamber is basic, just throw in a peanut gallery of random NPC talking statues that serve literally no mechanical purpose, they're just there to be whacky

[kiwikipedia]

I think star wars needs a bit more of that high fantasy-deep sci-fi sort of horror. There’s too much ‘normalcy’ in it. The Force and Aliens are kinda boring especially since Star Wars seems to lean away from them now because the SW Team Execs are cowards so here’s to the high fantasy and sci-fi horror that could’ve been in star wars. Especially the clone wars Here’s to the lost potential in that weird Force Arc when Anakin could’ve made contact with a more horror-like being instead of Discount Merlin and his Cottagecore Daughter and Emo Son who are all just magic humans.

Here’s to the lack of giant space worms in TCW like the OT had, just appearing in astroid belts.

Here’s to the lack actually using certain aliens’ biology and instead turning them into reskinned humans in most cases.

Here’s to the lack of actual mystery and horror that could’ve been shed, the lack of interesting missions where there’s investigation because of some weird energy and it turns out there’s a primordial creature wakening. 

Here’s to the lack of whispers heard in the dark, the lack of layered voices in various pitches that could’ve been used instead of discount qui gon to drag Yoda to Dagobah.

Here’s to the lack of more creatures like the nebrey mantises just in space, big enough and dangerous enough to count as horrors on their own and the lack of actual creatures that could’ve shown up.

Here’s to the lack of folktales of dangerous creatures, of spirits and fae that could whisk one away if they weren’t careful enough. To the superstitious, to the ones who swear they’ve seen hidden creatures.

Here’s to the loss of the Clones feeling like something is there, just always on the edge of their senses, crawling and climbing up their skin, only to learn that this is what the Force is to those who are not in tune with is naturally, yet are constantly around those using it. The unsettling feeling that washes over them, because it’s not natural.

here’s to the high fantasy and sci-fi horror that could’ve been in star wars

[prettyboymichaels-ao3]

hey! I just realized that when I write things, I can reskin them to fit different fandoms whenever I want! so take this smut fic I wrote (from a year or two ago? on my queen/borhap blog here) that I tweaked juuuuuust a little, so that it is now a bretshawn fic ;) not part of the bigger one I’m still writing, but, y’know. a good way to whet the appetite before that one’s finished I feel. break the system. change the names in your smut fics so that the followers on your new blog in your new fandom can read it. be a hero

fic summary & full fic below the cut! send me an ask if you want to be tagged for any fics I post in the future!

the original request (original fic here) from my queen/borhap blog was (roughly, with the names changed): “ Bret and Shawn on some long ass road trip, chilling, when Shawn just flat out, "I'm wearing the black lacy panties, btw" and Bret is like, gripping the steering wheel, thanking whoever's out there no one else is on the road and pulls the car over so he CAN SEE THEM”. so. that’s this ;) enjoy

“Also, just so you know, I’m wearing those lacy black panties you got me for my birthday.”

Bret, to his own surprise, didn’t slam on the brake or swerve off the road.

His voice did come out dangerously shaky, though, when he said, “You – what?” He couldn’t stop himself from glancing at Shawn out of the corner of his eye.

Shawn, who was staring right back with a tiny smirk on his face that Bret recognized as trouble immediately. “You heard me.”

Fuck. Bret took in a deep breath, and let it out purposefully slowly. Less than thirty seconds, and they’d gone from playfully joking around, to a comfortable silence, to such charged tension that Bret could probably pop it like a balloon. He’d also personally gone from flaccid to pressing against his zipper at lightning speed, and he didn’t know if that was the reason he was suddenly lightheaded, or because the image of Shawn wearing those panties under his jeans was just that dizzying.

“Okay,” he said tightly. “Okay. Alright.” FUCK. “Alright.”

Shawn hummed and shifted a little, and Bret glanced back over to find his legs spread pointedly, as much as he could get them in a car seat, anyway. His bulge was… very pronounced, now, and he had the hysterical thought come passing through of he’s wearing silk under those jeans right fucking now.

He may have, possibly, whimpered out loud at that thought when he turned his eyes back to the road.

“If I could make a suggestion,” Shawn said, sounding far less bothered than Bret felt. “It’s gonna get dark soon, and the road is pretty deserted, I’d say.” His voice gained an amused twang at the end that had Bret huffing at his dumb pun. Deserted. Sigh. Yeah, they were in the middle of nowhere, New Mexico right about now, but… “There is absolutely no reason you can’t pull over to make sure I’m not lying.”

“Oh, I believe you,” Bret said, too high-pitched to come off as calm, and scowled a little when Shawn had to stifle a laugh at his expense.

“But don’t you wanna be sure?” Shawn said, drawing it out just-so, and Bret clenched his jaw and his hands on the steering wheel hard enough to ache. He let out a harsh breath through his nose.

Fuck it.

He pulled over to the side of the road jerkily enough to give them both a good lurch when he pulled it into park, leaving Shawn snickering as he wrestled his seat belt off. “Don’t laugh.” He could feel himself pouting, even as he was struggling to open the door.

“I’m not!” Shawn lied easily, seemingly having no problem releasing himself from his own seat belt and slipping out of the car to follow Bret into the back. He was tempted to keep arguing just for the sake of arguing, but before he could do more than open his mouth, they were together in the back seat with the doors closed and Shawn was reclining to lay down with his legs spread. Instead of the remark he wanted to make, what happened was a sharp intake of breath and a very soft sigh that had Shawn grinning cheekily. What a little shit. Bret had no doubt he’d planned this.

In response, he rearranged himself between Shawn’s legs, leaving one palm pressed to his bulge and the other on his inner thigh so Shawn could buck into it and hiss at the pressure. He was tempted to only give Shawn that tiny relief, let him hump his hand to completion and utterly ruin his panties while Bret watched, but he wanted – he needed to see.

His hands went to Shawn’s zipper, undoing it with ease despite how Shawn’s hips rose and fell as another layer was removed between his cock and freedom. As soon as his eyes caught sight of it under the black satin, lace straining to accommodate and having a difficult time of it, his cock swollen under the fabric, he couldn’t stop himself – he was bending down to lick over the silk and leaving a wet trail behind him that left Shawn hissing and jerking under his hands where they were planted on his hips to keep him still.

“Fuck,” he muttered with feeling, lifting his own hands to card through Bret’s hair and grab two fistfuls and pull. Bret could admit that he whimpered at the sensation, a jolt of arousal shooting down his spine and leaving him painfully aware of his own cock and how it was still trapped under two layers of tight clothing. He mouthed at Shawn’s under the silk, panting on it and darkening the satin with his saliva. Shawn was practically trembling under him, his thighs quaking on either side of his body, and, frankly, Bret wasn’t fairing much better, humping into thin air for some kind of relief. Maybe if he shifted to lay on his stomach… but the seat wasn’t long enough for that…

He whimpered again when Shawn tugged his hair, more purposefully this time, pulling him off of his cock and pressing his face into his stomach, where it was visible now that his shirt had been rucked up. “What d’you wanna do, baby?” Oh, he already sounded so… “You gotta tell me, I gotta find the condoms if–”

“Wanna–” Bret swallowed, rubbing his forehead into Shawn’s navel to keep from looking him in the eye. Shawn just used the fingers in his hair to start combing through it, pushing through the waves calmly and soothingly until Bret could talk without choking on his own bashfulness. He was sure Shawn could feel the heat of his blush on his bare skin. “Wanna – wanna suck you off, I-–”

“We can do that,” Shawn interrupted sharply, his fingers tightening and making a mewl get caught in Bret’s throat. He knew his tone wasn’t from impatience, or anger, because he felt the way his cock jumped to hit his chin at his words. “That is so fine, babe, I have no problem–”

“Then let me–”

Shawn’s grip loosened just enough for Bret to shift down so he could get his mouth on his cock again, only to whine at the way the new position made the denim of his fly twist uncomfortably against his own hard-on, and he sunk back down. Shawn moved instead, letting go of Bret’s hair so he could push himself up and bring Bret with him. It was just enough for Shawn to stay under him and reach down and cup him at the same time, which had Bret shivering, but when he squeezed, he was gasping breathlessly into his chest and bucking into the pressure before Shawn decided to put him out of his misery and undo his zipper. He even went so far as to stick his hand into his underwear and give him a few dry tugs that were as relieving as they were a little too much.

All to soon, the hand retreated, leaving Bret’s cock out in the open out of his jeans and underwear, no matter how much he tried to chase the touch with his hips, and Shawn was squirming again, shifting so he was back on his back and Bret’s head was resting just over his bulge. He just let himself stare for a few seconds, trying to find his breath. How had he been so thoroughly wrecked so quickly? “Now, I know I’m a delectable specimen, sweetheart, but staring isn’t gonna get you anywhere,” Shawn teased, making Bret curl his lip and send him a pointed look that Shawn met with a delighted grin before he planted his hands on either side of his hips and bent back down to run his tongue over the line of Shawn’s cock where it was stretching the already-wet black silk.

That earned him a choked-off groan that left him moderately smug, before he really got to work.

By the time Shawn’s hips had a mind of their own, and he was letting out little shouts at every pass of his tongue, the satin was positively soaked, from saliva and pre-come both, near see-through and giving Bret a wonderful view of just how hard he was under those panties. The tip had just started to pop out from the waistband, glaringly red against Shawn’s stomach and happy trail, when Bret decided he’d had enough of only half-tasting him, and latched his teeth onto the waistband to drag it down and free his cock. The rest of it was just as red, shiny and wet, and Shawn let out a frankly indecent moan as it was finally bared, the hot flesh barely cooling in the air.

Bret didn’t give him much time to savor it, because he was licking up the underside of his cock as soon as he could, from the base to the head, leaving it even shinier in the dying sunlight outside their car, before running the flat of his tongue over his slit and gathering up as much pre-come as he could to swallow and breathe out over it.

It left Shawn’s cock twitching and Shawn himself whispering, almost to himself, reverently, “Jesus fucking Christ.” When Bret, the tip of his tongue sticking out of his mouth to lick his lips, still dangerously close to the head, glanced up at him, he saw his pupils blown to hell, his lips red and swollen from how hard he’d been biting them, and his face wildly pink, from his cheeks all the way down his neck to under the collar of his shirt. Bret didn’t quite smirk at the sight, since he’d stopped breathing for a moment from the way it’d made his cock throb, but it was a close thing. Instead, he took in a deep breath, kept eye contact, and opened his mouth to sink down as far as he could on Shawn’s cock without gagging in one go.

The good news was, Bret managed to clasp his hands onto Shawn’s hips before they could buck and make the head hit the back of his throat, and Shawn was groaning loudly at the combination of the feeling of his cock in his mouth and what Bret was sure made quite a sight, his lips stretched around him, pink and shiny, looking up at him with eyes that were just starting to tear up.

He pulled off again to catch his breath, feeling shaky all over, not quite sure how he was still able to keep himself up, and watched Shawn roll his head back and curse under his breath before blowing cool air on his cock. It made him jerk and curse much louder, this time, and then Bret was leaning back in, taking just the head into his mouth, his eyes fluttering closed, tasting him as he leaked a little more onto his tongue when he swirled it around his slit and up and under. He took him a little deeper, then, just deep enough to drag his teeth along the hyper-sensitive skin and leave Shawn trembling under him, raising one leg from where it had been bent at Bret’s side to kick the sole of his foot into the window. It left Bret humming with amusement around him, earning him another buck of his hips for his trouble.

He pulled back again, blowing cool air again, descended again, and repeated once, twice, three times, before going deeper, as deep as he had before, deep enough to not quite set off his gag reflex but to get his eyes to water, and he took in a breath through his nose before swallowing around him–

“Fucking–” Shawn’s hand was back in his hair, forcibly pulling him off his cock, to Bret’s immense disappointment, as evidenced by the pitiful whine that escaped him and the way his eyes blinked back open curiously, his vision a little blurry from the tears that hadn’t fallen. His throat wasn’t quite sore, but his voice would definitely be a little hoarse tomorrow, and the thought made him whimper, leaving all his weight on one arm so he could shove his other one down to grab the base of his cock to keep himself from reaching that edge just yet, just yet.

And then Shawn’s other hand, the one that wasn’t tight in his hair, was jerking himself off inches from his face, using the leftover saliva and the pre-come still leaking from the tip to ease the way. Getting where this was going, Bret’s lips parted, tongue just peeking out past his teeth in anticipation, and that seemed to do it for Shawn, because it took less than four more passes for him to come all over his face with a hiss and a guttural grunt. Bret managed to catch most of it in his mouth, to be fair, but what he didn’t catch landed on his lips, his cheeks, his chin – one precocious stripe had painted his adam’s apple, actually, Bret could feel it when he swallowed it all down, already drying.

The edge he’d been trying to hold himself off from was suddenly right fucking there, and he didn’t think he’d be able to keep himself from coming even if he tried – which he was. He whined, squirming, his fingers tight around the base of his cock, god, how hard was he? If he jerked himself off once it’d probably be enough to do him in. Shawn, who wasn’t quite into the ‘absolutely useless post-coital bliss’ part of his orgasm yet, shifted just-so, dropping his leg from the window to push himself back and up, somehow without the lethargy and heavy limbs Bret associated with him after an orgasm. He kept his hold on Bret’s hair the whole time, keeping him relatively still while he maneuvered them both into kneeling positions, and then was reaching between them to uncurl Bret’s fingers from around the base of his cock and replace them with his own.

Bret’s mouth opened around a soundless gasp, pawing at Shawn’s chest, neck arching, eyes fluttering back shut, and the combination of the feeling of Shawn’s hand thick in his hair, keeping his head pulled back to bare his throat, the feeling of drying come on the lower half of his face and the dried tear tracks already there, the feeling of his thighs shaking with the exertion of holding himself up, the feeling of Shawn’s fingers dancing back and forth on his cock, with just enough pressure to not leave him unsatisfied, the feeling of Shawn’s tongue sliding up his throat to lick up the stripe of come he’d put there–

Bret, with his mouth still open, found himself bucking once, twice, before coming into Shawn’s hand with a high-pitched keen that petered off into a deeper moan, then soft sighs and mewls as Shawn worked him through the aftershocks.

It felt like hours before they got their breath back, and Bret was left with a pleasant ache echoing down his spine after Shawn released his hair and pushed him back onto his haunches, cracking his eyes back open. It was pretty dark by now, the sun had definitely set already, but he had no problem seeing the self-satisfied grin on Shawn’s face that made him fondly roll his eyes and lightly slap his shoulder. “Oh, shut up.”

“So that’s a yes on the panties?”

“Shut up.”

“I’m just saying, after my birthday, and this, I wouldn't mind if you borrow ‘em next time–”

The second slap was much harder, and left Shawn snickering into the dark.

[play-now-my-lord]

the year is 2036. president-for-life biden has been at war with 小小美国 for the last 5 years. freed of the constraint of our giant bodies and horrible history, the liliputian citizens of XXUS have created a perfect society and seek to impose it on the benighted inhabitants of planet earth. Your friends from the west coast say that after the bombing stopped and the XXUS invaded life got better. The government needs more and more blood and everyone's driving like shit, living like shit, talking like shit, working like shit. Your boss passes out one day from anemia and everyone just goes home. In your tiny, dimly-lit apartment you give a tenth of a gill of blood to your x-box to play a game where the army fights giant terrorists. The game is a reskin of an XXUS game and it shows - all the assets are scaled to suggest the protagonist is five and a half inches tall, the voice lines all boom over rodent-pitched squeaking, and in the finale you blow up the Statue of Liberty. You're playing multiplayer. Someone wanders up to you and tries to shoot you in the head but they fall asleep at the console before pulling the trigger and you easily kill them with a knife, increasing your KDR by 1

the year is 2027. biden's america has staked the whole house on selling sperm and plasma to overseas clients. everyone you know is surviving on the 400 clams a week the government slings you to suck you dry. There are rumors that the blood and plasma are being used to clone the entire American population in miniature - a 1:12 scale America is being built in the South China Sea for the purpose of experiments, and photos have leaked to the Internet of tiny, crude clones. One of them looks exactly like you, and a candid shot of it being terrorized by a songbird three times its size has become a meme. People have started pointing at you in public, whispering things, imitating the sounds of birds and laughing. You tell the attendant at the machine that sucks you off about the whole experience and she just writes something down on a clipboard and leaves you alone with the rhythmic mechanical hum of the wall-mounted fleshlight

[davidmann95]

How about those JL storyboards?

In case you haven’t heard, Zack Snyder is putting on display the ‘storyboards’ - i.e. a rough plot summary accompanied by some Jim Lee sketches - for what would have been Justice League 2 and 3, or as this puts it 2 and ‘2A’. You can see them here (I imagine better-quality versions will soon be released), and read a transcript here. This is evidently a very early version: this was apparently pitched prior to the release of BvS and Justice League being rewritten in the wake of it, with numerous plot details that now don’t line up with what we know about the Snyder Cut, plus it outright mentions it builds on the originally planned versions of the Batman and Flash movies. But it’s a broad outline of what was gonna go down, and while I initially thought it was Snyder throwing in the towel, the timing - paired with the ambiguity left by the necessity for changes, including that this doesn’t factor whatever that “massive cliffhanger” at the end of the Cut is - says to me he’s hoping this’ll be a force multiplier behind efforts to will sequel/s into existence. He’s probably right.

I’ll be discussing spoilers below, but in short: with this Zack Snyder has finally lived up to Alan Moore, in that like Twilight of the Superheroes I wouldn’t believe this was real as opposed to a shockingly on-point parody if not for direct, irrefutable evidence.

Doing some rapid-fire bullet points for this baby to kick us off:

* Folks who know the subject say a lot of this is a yet further continuation of Snyder doing Arthuriana fanfic with the League reskinned over those major players, and I’ll take their word for it.

* I don’t know whether I love or hate that in Justice League 2 the Justice League are only an extant thing for the first scene, and then it’s Snyder giving everybody their own mini-movies. It’s compressing the entire MCU “loosely interconnected solo stories leading to a single big movie later” strategy into a single movie!

*  Funniest line in the whole thing: "Even Lantern has heard of the Kryptonian, worried that he's under the control of Darkseid. He heard his spirit was unbreakable." Hal what fuckin' Superman movie did YOU watch? Second funniest being “IT WILL GIVE HIM POWER OVER ALL LIVING LIFE”

* 90% of the plot I have nothing to say about, it’s generic stage-setting crap. That to be clear is the ‘shocked it’s Snyder’ element, it feels so crassly commercial in a way I can’t believe is coming from the BvS guy.

* Most of what I have to say is unsurprisingly gonna be about a handful of characters but Cyborg’s happy ending being “he isn’t visibly disabled anymore!” is not great!

* The Goddess of War battle with Superman...never pays off? No clue why it’s there.

* What I’d originally heard was that the Codex in Superman’s blood was the last key to the Anti-Life Equation and that’s why Darkseid was coming to Earth. It’s not like all of this wouldn’t have already been averted by Kal-El’s pod smacking into an asteroid on the way to Earth so it’s not as if this makes it any more Superman’s fault, and it would have at least tied all this back to the beginning of the movies, but I suppose that was either fake or from a later draft.

* I have NO idea how this was reimagined without the ‘love triangle’, it’s the central character thing and the entire climax flows directly out of it!

* Darkseid’s kinda a chump in this, huh

Anonymous said: So: Does Zack Snyder hate Superman?

Look: the hilarity of this when Cuck Kent has been a go-to Snyder cult insult towards ‘inferior’ takes on Superman for years cannot be understated, yet at the same time I can almost wrap my brain around where Snyder’s coming from with that as the end for his take on the character. He talked in that Variety piece on how his interest in Superman is informed by having adopted children himself, and Deborah Snyder is the stepmother to his kids by previous relationships, so I can see where he’d be coming from, and I can even imagine how he’d see this as ‘rhyming’ in the sense of “the series begins with Kal-El being adopted by Earth, it ends with him adopting a child of Earth!” In the same way as MARTHA, I can envision how he would put these pieces together in his head thematically without registering or caring what the end result would actually look like. In this case, Superman raising the kid of the man who beat the shit out of him who Batman had with Clark’s wife, who earlier told Bruce she was staying with Clark because he ‘needed her’, suggesting if inadvertently that this really honest to god was a “she’s only staying with Superman out of pity, she really loved Batman more” thing.

But Clark is nothing in this. He’s sad and existential because of coming back from the dead I guess, then he’s corrupted, then time’s undone and he woo-rah rallies the collective armies of the world (interesting angle for the ‘anti-military/anti-establishment’ Superman he’s talked up as) as his big heroic moment in the finale, and then he stops being sad because he’s adopting a kid. So his big much-ballyhooed, extremely necessary five-movie character arc towards truly becoming Superman was:

Sad weird kid -> sad weird kid learns he’s an alien, is still weird and sad, maybe he shouldn’t save people because things could go really wrong? -> his dad is so convinced it could go wrong he lets himself die -> ????? -> Clark is saving people anyway -> learns his origin, gets an inspiring speech about being a bridge between worlds and a costume -> becomes superman (not Superman, that’s later) to save the world, albeit a very property-damagey version, rejects his heritage he just learned about and space dad’s bridge idea -> folks hate him being superman and that sucks though at least he’s got a girlfriend now -> things go so wrong he considers not being superman but his ghost dad reminds him shit always goes wrong so he should be good anyway, which sorta feels like it contradicts his previous advice -> immediate renewed goodness is out the window as he’s blackmailed into having to try and kill a dude but the dude happens to coincidentally have some things in common so they don’t kill each other after all -> big monster now but superman keeps supermaning at it because he loves his girlfriend and he dies -> he’s brought back, wears black which apparently means now he likes Krypton again? -> he has work friends now but he’s still sad because he was dead -> evil now! -> wait nevermind time travel -> rallies the troops -> his wife’s having a kid so he’s not sad anymore -> Superman! Who gives way to more Batman.

Do I think Zack Snyder is lying when he says he likes Superman? No. I think he sincerely finds much of the basic conceits and imagery engaging. But I don’t think he meaningfully gives shit about Clark as a character, just a vessel for Big Iconic Beats he wants to hit. Whereas while for instance he’s critical of Batman as an idea (at least up to a point), he’s much more passionately, directly enamored with him as a presence and personality. So while Superman may be the character whose ostensible myth cycle or arc or however it’s spun might be propelling a lot of events here, it’s a distant appreciation - of course the other guy takes over and subsumes him into his own narrative. Of course Batman is the savior, the past and the future (though if he’s supposed to be Batman’s kid raised by Superman there’s no excuse for him not to be Nightwing), the tragic martyr to our potential. Admittedly the implication here is also that Batman can apparently only REALLY with his whole heart be willing to sacrifice his life to save an innocent, for that matter apparently his great love, once said innocent is a receptacle for his Bat-brood, but he and Clark are both already irredeemable pieces of shit by the end of BvS so it’s not like this even registers by comparison.

Anonymous said: That “plan” Snyder had was utter dogshit. Picture proof that DC & WB hate Superman. Also I love how you’re like Jor-El: Every single idealistic take you had about Snyder, his fandom, and BvS was wrong. Snyder’s an edgy hack, his fanbase just wants to jerk off to their edgy self-insert Batgod as he screams FUCK while mowing people down with machine guns, and the idea that BvS said Superman was better than Bats was completely wrong. You know what comes next SuperMann: Either you die or I do.

In the final analysis, beyond that mother of god is there sure no conceivable excuse for the treatment of Lois in this? The temptation is to join that anon and say as I originally tweeted that these were “built entirely to disabuse every single redemptive reading of the previous work and any notion of these movies as nuanced, artistic, self-reflective, or meaningful”.

...

...

...yeah, okay, that’s mostly right. Zack Snyder’s vision really was the vision of an edgelord idiot with bad ideas who was never going to build up to anything that would reframe it all as a sensible whole. He’s a sincere edgelord genuinely trying really hard with his bad ideas who put some of them together quite cleverly! But they’re fucking bad and the endgame was never anything more than ramping up into smashing the action figures together as big as he could, the political overtones and moral sketchiness of BvS while trying to say something in that movie reverberated through the grand scheme of his pentalogy in no way beyond giving his boys a big sad pit to rise out of so when they kicked ass later it’d rule harder, and all the gods among men questions and horror and trappings were only that: trappings. Apparently he’s really pleasant and well-meaning in person, but at his core his art as embodied in a couple weeks in his 4-hour R-rated Justice League movie meant to be seen in black-and-white all comes down to that time he yelled at someone on Twitter that he couldn’t appreciate Snyder’s work because it’s for grown-ups. He made half-clever, occasionally exciting shit cape movies for a bunch of corny pseudo-intellectual douchebags, folks latching onto and justifying blockbusters that at least acknowledge how horrifying the world is right now even if the superheroes are basically useless in the face of it if not outright part of the problem until a convenient alien invasion shows up to justify them, and a handful of non-asshole smart people who vibe with it but...well. ‘Suckered’ is a harsh word, and definitely doesn’t apply to all of them re: what they’ve gotten out of it up to this point and would (somehow) get out of this. But it doesn’t apply to none of them, either.

[blazehedgehog]

Did you ever think about doing a Sonic Infinity reboot?

Haha, no.

The issue I ran in to is what I call “the Jazz Jackrabbit problem.”

I know there are a lot of Jazz Jackrabbit fans out there, and before I start writing this, I want to communicate that even though I believe everything I am about to say, I still bought and paid for the complete Jazz Jackrabbit collection on GOG a couple years ago. I know what I feel about this franchise and I still gave GOG and Epic my money for it regardless. That doesn’t make my opinion more right, it just means that on some level I still hold a lot of love for Jazz and this isn’t a black and white judgement call.

But hey: Jazz Jackrabbit isn’t very fun to play. Not when I try to look at it beyond my surface level "remember when?" nostalgia.

Jazz Jackrabbit is basically Sonic the Hedgehog + Contra, or some other scrolling shooter like that. And those two elements don’t really mix, in my opinion.

If you look at a game like Contra, you actually move pretty slowly. Obviously, you need to be able to see what’s coming so you know what (and where) to shoot, and what to avoid.

You could just hold down the fire button, which is something Contra lets you do, but there’s still a rhythm to these things. You don’t run very fast. Not Sonic fast, not even Mario fast.

With Jazz Jackrabbit, you move so quickly it feels like you should start out running your own bullets (there's code to prevent that, but it looks silly when your shots accelerate along with Jazz). In truth, you're going so fast that you often can’t see what’s coming ahead of you, and outside of your starter gun, everything takes ammo, so you can’t just blast indiscriminately. To play Jazz Jackrabbit, you have to inch forward ten steps, then stop, make sure its safe, and inch forward another ten steps. Otherwise, you risk slamming face first in to an enemy.

I used to think, “Well surely Jazz Jackrabbit 2 solves that” -- after all, Jazz 2 lets you set arbitrary resolutions, so you can make the screen huge and see everything around you.

But it just doesn’t matter. Jazz 2 smartly includes a run button, but if you keep it held down, you still just race into every turtle and lizard and wall of spikes in the game. Sonic has the spin attack, which makes you (mostly) invincible, and you're supposed to use it when going fast, but Jazz has no such protections. He's vulnerable to everything his bullets cannot touch before he does. Which can be a lot of stuff.

And, well, it sucks. It makes for bad gameplay flow. The game doesn’t feel like it’s built for you to be going fast, but I’m also not sure it knows what it was built for. It was pitched as Chocolate And Peanut Butter, but feels more oil and water.

The artwork was very charming for its era, the soundtrack is legendary, it was a very formative game for Epic Games and CliffyB, the scrolling technology at least in the first game was considered pretty high tech, it's emblematic of what I'd call the "DOS game spirit", so on and so forth...

But I just don't think “A Sonic the Hedgehog shooter” like that is a fun gameplay loop. It's fun to reminisce about old games, but they don't make games like Jazz Jackrabbit anymore for a reason, y'know?

Which translates over to Sonic Infinity, a game that 16 year old me conceptualized as “Sonic, but like Mega Man.”

Make it too fast, and it becomes Jazz Jackrabbit. Make it too slow, and it just feels like a normal Mega Man game. And Mega Man X in particular already kind of hits a sweet spot of “this is as fast as you should be able to go” thanks to the dash boots upgrade. So at that point, Sonic Infinity just becomes a weird Mega Man X reskin verbatim and doesn’t really mix gameplay elements very well at all.

I ended up giving a friend permission to do whatever she wanted with Sonic Infinity, and work was started on at least one or two different games that stylistically took after Mega Man Zero, but not a lot came of that, either. She seemed very excited to take her shot at the game, and some of it not going anywhere was just the fact she got busy with life, but it also is what it is, I think. It's a hard idea to reconcile well while honoring the disparate themes of "Sonic + Mega Man."

I do not mourn the loss of my version of Sonic Infinity. Definitely not in the same way I still have thoughts about how I’d make TFH work.

[mansplainmanipulatemalewife]

Okay doing this for realises now I'm gonna try to be pretty specific bc it's more fun that way so this might get long

Also I should probably include some content warnings I guess so like... internalised ablism and homophobia, blood, injury and infection, flies and maggots - its all fictional and largely either brief mentions or my own fairly stylised artwork, but just in case you have been warned

Anyway:

1. Music my beloved <3 it makes me feel a lot of things but I think the album that makes me feel most happy would have to be the murderdoll's women and children last idk how to embed an mp3 on tunglr help

HATE that it makes me do it via spotify that does NOT make me happy I have a perfectly good mp3 right here but either way enjoy the song <3

2. Hang out with the besties <3 one of my best friends irl is coming over on Sunday and we're having a special interests day where I rewatch the main hatchetfield trilogy with her × × × (I still haven't seen npmd oops) and I get to force her to watch Ghosts and its going to be so fun :3

3. D&D - I can talk so much about blorbo from my games I've had so many characters over the years but these three are my current ones:

The world's first redneck dwarf. Kudn is a stubborn old man who has just enough internalised homophobia not to notice that he has in fact been gay married for about 150 years. He's technically a Bard but built in a way that apparently confuses my group because his playstyle is so counterintuitive to how bards traditionally work even without all the flavour-text being reskinned.

Red's costume has gone through a couple of redesigns since I drew this but it's still my favourite drawing of her. She's an eldritch knight fighter but behaves more like a traditional ranger. She has a falcon familiar named kevin who fucking hates her and is the funniest character ever. She's just started multiclassing (illegally) into warlock after reading the necronomicon in-game.

I only have sketches of Loralai but she's a cutesy goth swarmkeeper and has a symbiotic relationship with a swarm of flies, after their maggots were used to treat her necrosis. She's extremely bubbly and friendly, but also feels very self-conscious about her scarring, so she tends to keep the mask on around people she doesn't trust.

Red and Loralai are both from in-person games so they both have minis too :3 featuring Red's updated armour design

4. My volunteering :3 I do shifts at a drop in we make everyone tea and coffee and hot food and I get to sit and chat with people about what's going on with their lives. It's really interesting and also helps with my weird guilt complex.

5. The blorbos gotta include the blorbos this is my fandom blog after all - I never actually get round to writing anything god I still need to edit that ghosts fic oops but like if you talk to me on any given day I typically have at least one new fic idea to pitch.

I kind of forgot about it but for a while there was a game where y'all can give me any pairing or interaction, the more random and unlikely and ridiculous the better (provided its media I actually, like, know about and am familiar with) and I have to create the outline for a cohesive, well-characterised, entirely serious fic. I believe it was called "bad fic ideas with void" I should bring that one back it was fun.

Anyway yeah I have so many blorbos from so many random bits of media and while I might complain near-constantly about fannon (mostly in dms sorry @gooopy ily) I am so hype to talk about all of them all the time even if I forget they exist for a couple of months in between

List 5 things that make you happy, then put this in the askbox for the last 10 people who liked or reblogged something from you! Get to know your mutuals and followers ⭐️

Wow this is just like therapy <3

[leam1983]

On Aging (and also Game Mechanics)

Previous generations might've had other obvious means of tracking their age, but I just noticed how the godawful mobile game ad templates come with one specific use that never fails to miss the mark on anyone's use of the Internet.

Just like Evony keeps changing its subdivided title in order to escape plummetting app store figures and re-emerge on the top of the Downloads charts, the "If you're over X, then you must try Game Y!" template is similarly unkillable.

It's always around here on Tumblr, either here or on Facebook, always just sort of aiming for my actual age without ever stating it openly, and I assume the ad campaign manager that's associated just copy-pasted the same header and incrementally changed the number listed in relation to the viewing user's stated birth date.

Right now, I'm looking at an ad for some sort of Match-3 Gardenscapes clone reskinned in order to look like a farm upkeep sim. The ad's pitch line reads "If you're over 37, you MUST try this new Hit Computer Game!"

It's sufficiently nonspecific as to be used for a ton and a half's worth of campaigns, and probably tied to a cheeky bit of code that looks at my birth date, adds a year to avoid being too obvious and then lets it loose.

It's honestly amusing. I'm on my yearly three weeks off from work, so the only adulting I've done since last Thursday involves paying my bills, doing my groceries, cooking and cleaning. Everything else is dedicated to nerdery with friends, and to video games decidedly more crunchy and with a deeper meta than someone's cloned and monetized Bejeweled ripoff.

Fuck, the last time I touched Gardenscapes was to troll my mother by using a hacked APK that made my metered uses of the actual garden-design mechanic theoretically infinite. I didn't touch the Match-3 core at all and sent her a screenshot of my twee little mansion in all its isometric, flat-assets-under-low-poly-sprites grandeur fifteen minutes after sideloading it on my phone.

She was seething, and I was cackling like the cruel bastard I sometimes am.