#('AND KINGDOM HE@RTS' -ALSO ME)

[mynnthia]

compiling my headcanons for what video games dungeon meshi characters would like, if they were gamers in modern day

some taken from this post and my reblog additions there. added more characters, with some suggestions by friends/mutuals (marked by *asterisk ).

this can also be a games recommendation list based on your fav/most relatable characters too, if you want

characters that are not are included are bc i dont have ideas for them. if i only list the genre name but not any specific titles, its bc im not familiar enough with the character/genre to pick a specific game.

this list is, of course, biased towards games im more familiar with. feel free to ask me to elaborate on my choices or make suggestions in the comments

Laios' party:

Laios: plays lots of Monster Hunter. loves Spore but he doesnt often play past the tribal stage. likes Pokemon but he's more focused on catching the pokemon than following the story. played WolfQuest and DragonFable back in the day. enjoyed the concept of Bugsnax but wasn't interested in dealing with the NPCs

Marcille: mainly Dwarf Fortress, RTS games, some colony sims. but also sometimes The Sims, and dollmaker dress-up games. i could see her also enjoying Rollercoaster Tycoon and making elaborately-themed parks. might also occasionally indulge in some visual novels if she's in the mood for narrative she has Stardew Valley so she can have something to play co-op with falin, but its not a game she plays a lot of otherwise. when playing with falin, marcille micromanages the farm to maximize productivity, and does the decorations

Chilchuck: puzzle games and hidden object/escape room games as a video game-equivalent to finding/dismantling traps and lockpicking. i think he'd also enjoy Bejeweled.

Senshi: mainly Wii games and Cooking Mama. occasionally plays Snake on his 15-year-old nokia phone. i dont think he would enjoy games like Overcooked or restaurant manager games, because he likes to take his time making food, not stressing about customer service

Falin: some *Legend of Zelda games – she likes the exploration aspect in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, maybe also some of the toon zelda games like Minish Cap or Wind Waker she also plays Pokemon (*Pokemon Go when she's traveling), and i think she would enjoy some indie games, like Penko Park or Chicory: A Colorful Tale. plays Stardew Valley co-op with marcille – falin mainly takes care of the animals, mining, and picking the crops. occasionally makes improvement suggestions that marcille didnt think of

Izutsumi: i could see her enjoying games with parkour mechanics, like *Assassin's Creed, or Mirror's Edge. or maybe something simple but requiring cat-like swipes, like Fruit Ninja. despite her impatience, i think she could also enjoy action games with interesting longer narratives, as evidenced by [this omake] (relevant portion pictured below), so maybe *Final Fantasy 7 – my friend who's familiar with the game said "she’d find Cloud and Vincent relatable"

[ID: a dungeon meshi omake, where laios' party watches a nightmare monster manifest marcille's dream. there are snippets of dramatic soap opera-like dialogue. the rest of the party are initially enthusiastic but get bored over time, meanwhile izutsumi remains enthralled]

Kabru's party

Kabru: definitely Crusader Kings. maybe also some rpgs with relationship/faction mechanics, such as *Fire Emblem (one of the older ones or FE:3H) or Fallout: New Vegas (hes maxing out the speech stat asap) i think he would also enjoy mystery games like Pentiment and Return of the Obra Dinn – he would love the process of getting familiar with the many characters and deducing "who did what" in both games.

Rin: she takes pride in being an indie gamer (translating her disdain for upper class magic academy mages -> disdain for AAA games). given her chain-lightning magic in canon, i think she'd enjoy games with AOE-type magic, so maybe games such as Vampire Survivors. my mutual also suggested she might enjoy indie mystery visual novels like *Paranormasight, and that her AAA guilty-pleasure would be *Final Fantasy 14 – that rin is "a hardcore ff14 raider. would join PUGs and shot-call every week. #holm and diya might also play ff14 casually with rin but holm would be fishing mainly"

Mickbell: mainly Bethesda games like Fallout and Skyrim– enjoys the bootstrapper power fantasy in them. the type to go out of his way to pick up all the loot he can, to later sell

Kuro: enjoys the same games as Mickbell, but for the open-world exploration and investigation factors

Toshiro and Tansu's party:

Namari: her interest in fighting and weapons could translate to brawler/fighting games and action games with a focus on weapon stats – so maybe *Street Fighter, *God of War, and/or *Dark Souls. might play *Monster Hunter with laios but for the weapons. i could also see her occasionally enjoying truck simulators

Toshiro (Shuro): has the perseverance for soulslikes and other high-difficulty action and/or metroidvania games, but would take his time overthinking item/weapon synergies sometimes. given [his fondness for bugs], i could also see him enjoying Hollow Knight

Tade: would enjoy the cute aesthetics and lighthearted gameplay of Animal Crossing and Katamari. would also like idol anime rhythm games

Kiki: i think she would enjoy horror games such as Resident Evil, but would play it while super chill. i dont have much reasoning for this aside from vibes

Canaries:

Mithrun: plays Doom. got into Hollow Knight but still hasn't finished it because he keeps getting lost. senshi introduces him to Cooking Mama later on, which he finds surprisingly therapeutic

Cithis: plays Hitman and enjoys staging elaborate accident kills. i think she'd also enjoy The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood, with her background as a devious fortune-teller

Fleki: surreal indie games like Hylics. also plays Team Fortress 2, and is a scout main. occasionally joins lycion in Animal Jam

Lycion: active WolfQuest and Animal Jam player. occasionally joins fleki in tf2

Pattadol: plays Stardew Valley – shes comparatively a normie, but on the meticulous side. she would enjoy perfecting her in-game farm

Otta: plays Genshin Impact. the serious reasoning is because of her (earth) elemental magic and how genshin has an elemental magic system (from my understanding. ive never played it). the joke reasoning is how some genshin players play to collect "waifus", and how otta goes through a lot of women in her dating life

Other:

Leed: runs her own guild in World of Warcraft

Winged Lion: god-games like WorldBox or Simmiland. and Darkest Dungeon (this ones mostly a joke)

Thistle: plays the original Plants VS. Zombies. also plays Minecraft and is very serious about it, but hasn't updated his game in years (translating the fact hes a 1000-year-old kid frozen in time -> playing "slightly old" games popular in the early 2010s)

[ID: tweet reply by twitter user ranchuppi – "thistle calls it lord delgal's server but he is the only mod. whole royal family is locked in spectator mode. Hell. living hell on earth."]

[deadnymaster]

I didn't thought it could be possible, but I'm getting interested on Digital Circus so I'm just gonna say some theories and speculations I saw on episode 2

First of all, Gummigoo (the crocodile) is dead, hes not going to come back (I considered him as dead because is impossible that Caine let him have his memory intact, so is going to be back an NPC not remembering Pomni)

-Is very common on some 3D shows/videogames to recicle the models on a very inteligent way, changing the texture of the object/character for turn it into a diferent thing. This is a series where the protagonist are self aware of those kind of details, so probably if we are going to "see" Gummigoo again, is going to have another texture for be on another world. Not gonna be him but Pomni for sure is going to notice that the character recicles the model of Gummigoo

-next point: the glitches and fails on the simulation trama of the digital candy kingdom. The NPC are too well coded... they are more complex than the other things, they are almost human. That can be very dangerous having in count that the simulation has very silly glitches like fails on the colissions of the objects that can cause of then getting out of the map. The simulations are not ready for having that very well developed characters. (And also, the history of the quest has no sense, they have to recover the mapple form the villains but the queen gave to them also a truck full of mapple and if you change it for the other you still complete the mission?? [It was that there was a THIRD truck taken from the backup place, thans for tell me on the rt/coments and srry xd] the thing ls, that the way they completed the quest was a completely impossible thing that Caine couldn't predict for sure. The thing whith having humans testing the games is that they can find unexpected glitches)

-also, is very obvious that Caine is an advanced iA. He for sure would not understood somenthing as a funeral

Now let's see if all of this affects the history somehow

[penny-the-pissed-poltergeist]

RWBY volume 2 finale rewatch thoughts, Critical AKA RWDE content ahead.

.Jaune has good taste in very dumb dubstep, I'll give him that

.NPR: RWBY are good at their jobs, what's the worst that coul-"Air raid sirens" OH GOD DAMNIT

.Ren being concerned about his team abandoning a village is foreshadowing for his and Nora's backstories I didn't expect to find here

.Ruby is "useless without her weapon" but she uses kicks rather effectively, also nice Haloid/Matrix reference

.Weiss makes a sword out of Dust before she even gets the knight summon, tell me why they needed to throw those bootleg shin-megami-tensei demons on her moveset at all?

.Jaune wins by the swordplay equivalent to spamming the A button

.Oh god the Junior detectives bit. You are in the middle of a war zone this isn't funny and kills the tone. At least we aren't at the point where Sun is nothing but unfunny jokes but this is the start of that.

.Ruby Saluting the Atlus military and then said Military being just as useful against Grimm feel so antithetical to what a lot of An//ti-Rwdes keep spewing

.Cinder why are in your Villain dress? Also Emerald ass shot no one needed.

.Why does Emerald just a have a better version of Ren's weapon?

.UGHHH team CFVY are overrated as fuck, they basically steal the finale from the characters we actually give a shit about, their theme song while not being bad is just a audio embodyment of trying to hard, and they are built up like such a big deal only to job to the villains, have Velvet get her one cool scene later, and then never be relevant again for like 7+ years outside of books I've heard nothing but bad things about.

.The aura expansion/explosion thing Fox does is cool though, at least. Wait Ren also did a move like that once, why doesn't anyone ever use that move again?

.That is giant ass Beowolf holy shit. also you can really tell a 2010's gamer bro wrote that clothing store line.

."You spent all semester building that up" Coco people are in danger, let her fight you fashion fascist...

.Yeah if you didn't already know, Coco is based on the IRL fashion designer Coco Channel who turned out to be a Nazi, like Nazi party Nazi not neo nazi shit, this was that long ago. I want to give them the benefit of the doubt but this was not common info at the time but you could find it and RT was known to be very edgy and outright offensive (just look up some shit they were saying on internet box) and the leader of a team made up mostly of minorities being lead by a Nazi sounds like a joke they might make, and Coco has some WWII influences in her design, and her being confirmed as lesbian later sounds like it could be a play on the "nazis are secretly gay" thing and... Just please tell me this was unintentional, I don't want to think about this anymore.

.Coco also destroys any hope the Grimm being a threat have, why do they become like.. rubble?

.You can really tell the animation was either running out of budget or was rushed or both in this episode

."Yay we all did it, even though team CVFY did 90% of the work"

.How is there still 7 minutes of episode left?

.Blake says multiple people are behind bars so I am going to believe most of those WF members didn't die, Banesaw lives godamnit

.Zwei mimicking Yang is really cute

."We have no idea what happening, let's go take a nap"

.They try to paint the council as unreasonable for putting Ironwood the charge but he just helped the Kingdom defend itself and we all know how much negativity sports can cause, IRL sports riots are a thing.

.Council are not in the wrong at all for questioning Ozpin, bro is letting the leader of another kingdom in on the truth but not his own?

.Those cells look really cramped, that's a little messed up

.Roman's dialog is fucking gold, I don't much else to say about it

.How is today a success Cinder? Your plan went off early and was stopped

.ADAM... yeah that's it

.Ah the Raven scene, the one that retconed into a fucking dream because no one had any idea what Monty was trying to do with Raven and he died before anyone could learn, it's just fucking sad

[itsclydebitches]

I’m screaming Clyde, what WAS that epilogue?! Also since semblances were just a discussion did you notice the moment when the guy tripped and Qrow caught him THEN we see the pin? Which is probably calling back to the mine incident where he tripped and Clover caught him? But now he’s kinda in the unique position of causing both. Looks like Qrow did indeed get a semblance upgrade without explanation. Maybe that’s why he’s so dang happy lol

Oh man you're right! That callback didn't occur to me, but it seems too big a coincidence to not be a callback. Yeah, I'm wondering now if we're meant to take this as further evidence that Qrow's semblance has evolved into a kind of...equalizer? The man near him still trips (bad luck) but now Qrow, in a mirror of Clover and his own good luck semblance, is able to catch him with a smile. I mean yeah, we could simply chalk that up to Huntsmen reflexes, but it seems a little too on-the-nose to not be meaningful, particularly after the miraculous save on the airship. That begs the question though of what this actually means for Qrow moving forward. I mean, if he has good luck and bad luck now, don't they just cancel each other out? That's just normal luck. Congrats, your semblance makes you like everyone else where some good things and some bad things happen in your vicinity.

Ngl, after RWBY semi-canonically introduced the concept of some semblances severely impacting mental heath via Ironwood, my mind immediately jumped to the possibility of Qrow's upgrade coloring his reaction to everything. Not that I think this is actually happening in the story (and not that I'd want RT to attempt such a story-line), but from a fun AU possibility my brain went, "Qrow is acting all content and optimistic after everything in his life has gone to shit. Salem won back in Atlas, she's two steps closer to destroying the world, a whole Kingdom is dead/displaced, his nieces are presumably dead and at some point he's going to have to tell Tai that... and yet he's smiling. Not even in a 'I'm holding it together through extreme denial' way, but acknowledging that yes, he's actually, surprisingly happy. That doesn't make sense! I wonder if this spontaneous upgrade that presumably revolves around generically Good Things is fucking with his head somehow." In more nuanced and respectful hands, it might be interesting to explore what it means for a magic-based power to influence someone's mood. Can it be equated to medication? Is it seen as an "unnatural" version of who they are (something that, again like meds, could be a bias the show works to unpack)? As events unfold, is it revealed that his semblance simply gives him a stronger, more optimistic will for shouldering such tragedy, or does it become clear that he's not reacting appropriately to what everyone recognizes as—formerly for him—crippling emotional blows? There's a difference between, "My semblance keeps me from sinking back into my self-destructive depression. No, I'm not like who I was before and that's a good thing" vs. "Ruby? Yang? Uh... sure. I guess I miss them? I recognize that I'm supposed to miss them... but I'm fine! Why wouldn't I be? They did a good thing, those girls, trying to save the world and all, but now it's time to move on. Chins up, everyone! :)"

In my attempts to work through Qrow's everything from the epilogue, I'm also dying to know how long has passed. This is one of those times when a firmer timeline makes a huge difference because it can make or break our acceptance of these characterizations. How long did it take for them to accept that Team RWBY aren't coming back? How long passed after that when Qrow goes to wipe dust off the grave? If it's, say, a few days or weeks then I'm like hey wtf they should still be DEVASTATED. If, however, we've jumped forward six months, a year... that at least makes a little more sense. I don't like that we've skipped over all the cliffhanger conflicts of Volume 8 as well as a long-term grieving arc for every character that would fundamentally change who they are and their approach to this war... but I find that slightly easier to swallow then Qrow strutting around the new slums with a smile on his face, happily telling the ghosts of his dead family that he's doing surprisingly good during the end of the world.

Also, in the realm of skipped-over character growth, I saw someone point out that Oscar's tiny smile at the group's arrival... might not be Oscar's. Or might not be Ozpin's. God knows the writers have proven that they don't know how to write the merge on screen—they just keep insisting it's happening without either of them changing in any meaningful way—so this would be the perfect opportunity for them to just skip over all the important bits and land on the final product, a la Oscar getting over his crisis in Volume 6. If we hypothesize based on what RWBY has shown us before (ha) we should expect for Ozpin to be gone for good and Oscar is now in control, but with mannerisms and knowledge that he's never displayed before; a fundamental shift in his personality. After all, we never got to hear Ozpin the host. The show acts like Ozma existed on his own after a certain point, a body without a voice in his head anymore, but living as a, you know, merged version of himself and whoever was last with him. Which I hate! And Oscar hated it too, as evidence by him understandably freaking out about it, but the story never bothered to let him work through that. (Or just solve it with the magical aura machine + android bodies that have already been introduced.) As a favorite of mine, I'm not looking forward to being told that they've merged now. It's not Oscar. It's not Ozpin. It's someone who sounds like both at times, but really the characters you enjoyed are gone... without fully being gone. Combined with worry that Ironwood might come back—someone commented that the "Don't come back" was directed at Weiss, though that doesn't make any sense to me?—if we do get Volume 10 I can't help but think that, like Penny, the writers aren't going to leave these characters alone, despite them supposedly having left the story.

[dextixer]

What Vtuber Ruby and Miles cameos say, matter (kinda).

So, a day or so ago we have had people discuss about Rubys Vtubing appearances and the things she has said on video. People have had mixed opinions on what was said, some people think its not a problem, others think its a problem, some others dont care. So, i wanted to chime in on this entire discussion and why in my opinion this, and the cameos that Miles makes matter and are not "irrelevant".

Disclaimer

Before i start, i will note. I dont really think that these things are HUGE problems and "OH NO, THIS RUINS THE SHOW" or any other nonsense. Some people have seen these things way too negatively. But i also think that people who say that it doesnt matter at all are taking 2 way too extreme positions.

Lore Swiss Cheese

One of the main problems of RWBY has, for a long time, been the very vague concepts of what is canon and the in-show lore. From the very start of the show, it had commentary tracks, the creators talking about the show etc. Despite not being in the show itself, we have had many tidbits of information (such as Rubys favourite food) and the like given to us in outside of canon content. And it has not just been some minor things either. Ironwoods semblance basically does not exist in the show, and yet it seems to exist in lore, and it was shared with us from outside the show.

And later on, after V3, RWBY has received a lot of different media that expands on its lore and are considered canonical, despite sometimes never appearing on the show, or even creating very weird situations where something is conspicuous by absence in the show itself. For example, we have a very often discussed topics of V7-8 of the defense of Mantle/Atlas. One of the discussion points have always been how weirdly weak the defenses of the kingdom are. While one could chalk that up to people having an "inflated" view of Atlas military, but we have been canonically told and shown a lot of Atlas tech that is conspicuous by absence in the show.

Automated turrets, different versions of Atlesian Knights etc, which were said to be canonical in Amity:Arena. Or for example stealth tech. Yea, Atlas has stealth tech, like, genuine stealth. Its in one of the books. And yet nowhere in the show.

We have two canonical games, Grimm Eclipse and Arrowfell, with characters and concepts in them that have never been seen in the show. Has anyone ever seen team BRIR in the show? Heard of them? Maybe the tech from Arrowfell would kinda be useful, even if outdated against the Grimm invasion? What about the outlying Atlesian villages? Are they just dead at this point? Where the heck is Thornmane? He gets captured and hes nowhere in jail even as a cameo? And why does noone talk about Grimm Eclipse? Tech enchanced Grimm seem like a bit of a topic that kinda should be discussed sometime, no!?

We also have the comic books with various questionable canonical decisions including Raven turning into a bird to fuck with child Ruby. Blakes involvement with Adam which is somewhat weird because the comic books try to humanize Adam while the show demonizes him.

And let us not forget the whole "Canon Adjacent" nonsense where RT cant even come out and say that its obviously non-canon stories like Ice Queendom and even crossovers with DC are not canon. They cant even come out and say that!

Oh, and of course, i just remembered, the Grimm DnD campaign which is also apparently canon!

The reason i am listing all of these summarized versions of the multiple lore issues that the show has is that the lore of RWBY, is swiss cheese. It has lore that is given partially in so many different places, including in out of universe that its almost impposible to follow it properly, and if you do try, you are only going to get more confused because the main show feels like completely separate from it all, despite being in the same lore.

Vtubing and Cameos matter

And this brings me to of course the very simple claim, that due to the fact that the lore is already swiss cheese, these statements made in Vtubing and Cameos actually matter. Because even if they are not stated to be directly canonical, the lore is already so incredibly fucked and unclear (To the point that some people cant even decide if DC RWBY comics are even canon or not!) that adding these examples to the mix? Its just bad practice. Because at the end of the day, Vtubing Ruby, IS Ruby. She is played as in-universe Ruby, by the same Voice Actress, hosted by the SAME company.

And it matters especially because these things DO affect the FNDM. People who say that these things should be easily ignored are missing one key aspect. A lot of the FNDM are affected by these. BB being a key example. No, im not going to argue that the FNDM forced RT to make it canon. What i WILL argue is that the toxicity of BB community and its rabidness was intentionally cultivated AND enabled by RT. Does it matter that the BB song is not canon? No, it did not. Its not canon in the show and yet it made pro-BB and anti-BB crowds hysterical. Same for the song that was made for Blacksun. These songs directly contributed to the shipping wars. The various moments of people like Barbara also indulging the shippers just further fueled that entire movement.

Hell, the same can be said for Qrow x Winter shippers. While it was never a big thing one of the main "fuels" it had for a long time was because Vic and the VA for Winter interacted in a single panel. Or lets remember the whole "Vibrator function" which is OBVIOUSLY not canon, yet has become a part of often referenced and established fanon.

RWBY does not have a stable FNDM, i know, im a part of it. It does not matter if something is or is not canonical when not only are the lines of canon/noncanon blurred to barely existing, but the FNDM can often take things very far to fuel their expectations, wishes, and behaviour.

Especially when it can fuel what i will refer to as simply exploitative behaviour.

Cameos. Cameos, in my opinion are a fine way for VA's to make money. Such as many other things like, for example, music producers reviewing songs, voice coaches evaluating singing etc. Such content has cropped up maybe 4-5 years ago now and imo, is a fine thing.

But like any thing, imo, there are good and bad ways to do this kind of content. When for 40 bucks, one can ask one of the main WRITERS of the show questions about the shows world and opinions about things like ships. That is, imo, a bit far. Not only does that give an incentive for people to pay money for extra snippets of lore, but also, a way for people to validate their beliefs of ships and other such things. Because that is what his Cameo is all about. Its not VA work, its his words, in relation to his work as a writer for the show. And considering the earliest cameos and Ironwood discussions, that in my opnion is NOT a good thing.

The BB Onlyfans thing is ALSO an example of that, that i think was bad. Once again, disclaimer. I think that OF is fine, you want to do it? Go ahead, i paid for Markipliers photos, i aint ashamed, hes hot. I think it becomes at least slightly concerning however, when the VA's of a controversial ship decide to do an underwear photoshoot together with the same theme as their character in-show relationship.

Because...

Parasociality

A parasocial relationship is feeling a connection with a persona/thing that does not know of your existance or only humours you. Celebrities, sports teams etc.

RT has, for a long time cultivated a STRONG parasocial relationship with the FNDM. There is a reason why they pretend to be down to earth, why they pretend that they are not a corporation and why even to this day, some RT fans STILL believe that RT is some kind of "indie company". There is nothing inherently wrong with having it. Its kind of even unavoidable.

But what RT does is Cynically abuse that relationship. Just like any other corporation. Overworking animators for example? Part of that has been parasociality, people willing to work for their "loved" company etc.

Things like Miles Cameo, the BB photoshoot? The Vtuber Ruby? They are meant to encourage parasociality. To make it seem like the people, the watchers are "closer" to people performing or related to the show. Its all a cynical ploy to get people to pay money, to watch RWBY etc.

There is a reason why even after the RT expose not too long ago, people just went ahead and forgot about it. There is a reason why RWBYTubers that have previously condemned RT for their BS are now shouting at people to support RWBY, supressing those who criticized V9 and are encouraging people to buy merch.

Its all parasocial BS. BS that leads to extreme behaviours.

Such as, but not limited to - Biphobia, Homophobia, calling people facists for liking characters, calling people abuse apologist, groomers, Stalking. Just to name a few.

Also... On an ending note

Its just shit Vtubing

Consider this an unrelated tangent. I watch Vtubers relatively often, usually clips but sometimes i catch streams. Vtuber lore is usually irrelevant even in corporate settings. What people come to watch are the streamers themselves who usually partially play a character but mostly just act like themselves. Not really being lore accurate is not really of importance.

The thing is, those Vtubers usually dont have really established settings and they stream Multiple hours a day, so it all makes sense.

Why in the fuck is the Vtuber Ruby Rose, not acting like Remnant Ruby Rose!? Im not expecting deep lore drops here. But for crying out loud, why make statements that Rabbits or magic dont exist? Ruby Rose being visiting Earth is an AMAZING roleplaying set-up!

There is no dust, no aura, no Grimm! So many differences between the worlds that Ruby Rose can notice and act out! "Oh anime? We have our own version of that! One of the most watched shows is Sailor Sun! (Because the moon is broken)".

Its just a concept that can pay-off so much! Its an isekai in Vtubing form! As far as im aware Vtuber Ruby Rose doesnt even stream daily so its even easier to stay in character! So why in the bloody hell are we getting Dora of Explorer levels of childishness?

Anyway... Here are my thoughts. Peace out.

[just-illegal]

Sorry it's been so long, but. Results!!

Congrats to magical fluffy, the next bracket design + mascot outfit will be themed after him :)

One, uh, problem i ran into, is,,, uh,,,,, i think some of the losers may be kinda sorta dead ?? dyna seems to be moving a bit but it may be time for a second Perfect Solution like my free hug stand

Found a wikihow article on necromancy in this book and the first couple steps are about summoning demons,,, , fuck

c!jam existence arc gets more chaotic! non-rtumblr followers, you can block the tag "rtumblr rp" if you don't wanna see this kinda stuff

for those not in the rtumblr server: we started joking ab the characters killing eachother and dying and copper and fluffy got divorced a couple times about it (they get divorved all the time it's Fine). also, specific references: the cape is from kingdom au!jam and the scythe is from the origins server, very long story short it is a method of reincarnation

btw, if your character is here and you don't wanna do this arc, i fully understand! possible easy outs are a hitchless reincarnation, them just waking up, or them having sent in either a fake (a stunt double, a bootleg, or just a mannequin). tell me if you want one of these solutions and which one specifically :)

tagging all contestants + here's a bonus drawing i didn't use in the post

@ask-the-rt-cler

@ask-kevins-cupcler

@ask-greedler-kev

@rtsans

@ask-magical-john

@aamitmorthos

@my-name-is-daniel-yes

@fluffydancer618

@morkify

@onlykiesha

@the-snake-demon

@askrtexe (you do not have to respond at all [no one does, honestly], as he is not an rtumblr rp blog like the others, brian can just be ushered back into his universe)

@copperquiescence

@fuckery-labs

@iwantdie2018

@mareep-gaming

[ecargmura]

It Took Me Four Months To Finish Unicorn Overlord (Review)

Long JRPGs usually take about 3 months for me to complete. However, Unicorn Overlord is a rare case where it took me more than three months to complete. Though, to be fair, there were some weeks where I didn’t play the game due to the lack of motivation or just because I was too busy with other things. However, my experience playing this game wasn’t a bad one at all. It was a rather lovely one!

I first stumbled upon Unicorn Overlord after watching a trailer and fell in love with the visual and gameplay. It released near my birthday, so I asked my brother if I could get it as a birthday present. I started the game March 10, 2024 and finished it July 27, 2024. This is the first Vanillaware game I’ve played, by the way.

The story is a bit simplistic as it’s just about reclaiming the throne from a fallen kingdom, but there’s nothing wrong with a simple story, especially for a dense game like this one. I liked the journey from the start to the end because it does feel like it was worth it with the happy ending and what not. I do like that the game wants you to travel to all five nations and collect all of the playable characters. I personally liked Elheim the best.

The gameplay was really good. Perhaps because I’ve played a few tactical RPGs before, so my prior knowledge to them did help me get used to a RTS-style RPG. It’s super smooth. There is a time limit, so it was nice trying to use units and fight against the time. Thank god for the pause system. I guess my only gripe is that sometimes, my strategies don’t work and I have to restart the stage just to rearrange my units. This was very apparent in the boss battle against Alcina where I had to restart the stage three times because of that unexpected twist of her being able to teleport. The final battle against Galerius had me relying on the Internet for good unit combinations—they’re that important for this game.

Speaking of units, there are loads and loads of characters—over 60 to be precise. You can’t use all of them unfortunately as there are only 10 units that can only fit 5 people. The whole reason that there are so many characters is because some units might need certain classes to enhance them. Don’t worry, you can recruit extra units via forts/enlistment. There are both good and bad aspects about this. First, it’s nice to experiments who fits with who but there are so many characters that you sort of lose track and bench some of them. Though, props to each character for having their own unique story.

The other characters can interact with each other, which shows up in Rapports. However, not all characters have rapports with each other, but only with a specific few and some have two or one scenes opposed to those with three scenes. Rapports can be increased during battles or in taverns where making some characters eat together improves their friendship. Once Alain’s relationship with a character reaches three hearts, he can give them the Ring of the Maiden. The game allows you to give it to not only the ladies, but also the men! Yes, Alain can propose to women, men, elves, furries and angels! He’s that versatile. I chose Travis because he’s my favorite character. I do wish that the Ring had a bit more significance outside of the final battle, but it makes sense given the it can take place at any time before the final mission.

I really liked the equipment system because you can customize your characters to adhere to any command you give them too. There are two slots so that a character can control when or how to attack the enemies. 

The voice acting is really great. I didn’t even know the US had that many voice actors now. Back in my day, I usually heard the same people in older JPRGs. I’m glad it’s a growing field because everyone should be able to have a voice they like. I certainly liked a lot of voice actors for this game. The cast has a mix of rising stars, new faces, popular and veteran voice actors in the cast, even for Japanese too. There were some people harking about the medieval way of speaking, but I didn’t mind it. In fact, a game that has a western fantasy style setting shouldn’t be having modern everyday slang because that would be anachronism.

The game is beautiful visually and very dense so you never have anything to run out of when playing. However, it’s not the perfect game. Oh yes, it’s now time for me to tear down the issues that I personally had with the game. Sit back, relax and read on ahead.

First, some features are not opened up right away and you have to go to certain nations to unlock them. The coliseum is only accessible once you meet Amalia and also beat the Drakenhold story arc (correct me if I’m wrong—my memory of the Amalia part is super hazy). Once you reach the top and beat Amalia, she goes super saiyan and becomes even more challenging than freaking Galerius. I didn’t like how the blacksmith wasn’t accessible until you get to Albion. There are some overworld quests that can only be achieved when finding faded journals, but do I know where to find them? No. These sort of things have to be solved with the Internet. I also didn’t like that you have to be careful with what choices you make for some quests as choosing the wrong answer will make you lose your chance to recruit some characters. I couldn’t recruit all of them as I missed Govil.

If you played the game, who did you pick to give the Ring of the Maiden to? What are your thoughts about some aspects of the game? Let me know!

[pansexualkiba]

i love how utterly fucking abysmal The Wild (2006) is. it's a horrible movie, and not even in a fun way. it's agony to watch. literally don't watch this movie. it's like. okay hold on.

so we all know how Disney's business plans worked in the late nineties to mid oughts, right? here's the big three:

appeal to the teens. because, ysee, word on the cool cat street was that disney just wasnt jivin with those rad hip youngsters, the teens. this was because then-CEO michael eisner learned his teenage son thought disney was like, soooo whatever. so in order to appeal to a wider demographic that potentially had money to spend on disney, Eisner would purposefully have things appeal to teens. or, at least, a 40-year-old's idea of what teens were like in the 1970s.

one-up Dreamworks Pictures. any disney fan will tell you that Michael Eisner and Jeffery Katzenberg were BEEFING, and this was reflected in the Disney-Dreamworks feud, not LEAST of which was that Dreamworks was created because Katzenberg was passed up for CEO in favor of Eisner.

jealousy. the most famous examples of this are Disneyland's California Adventure (a famously California-themed area in the California Disney park in the middle of the California-themed California) and Animal Kingdom (an entire third zoological park built just thirty minutes away from the famously safari-themed Busch Gardens (complete with live giraffes!) in Tampa, FL). if someone else did an idea, Eisner would try to have Disney do it better.

we caught up on that? good. most of you will be pointing something out by now: Eisner left disney in late 2005! The Wild was released in 2006! there's literally no way he could have been involved! which, ignoring how long movies take to make, COULD make this whole thing not an issue... except for one little event that happened in 2005. a little Dreamworks movie that was taking america by storm. the little-known snuff film... Madagascar (2005), released by Dreamworks to insane success. kids LOVED Madagascar, they loved King Julien, they loved the funny talking animals, they loved the use of old songs for fun interstitial plot beats, and they ESPECIALLY loved those silly little spy penguins. critics thought it was juvenile, however, so Madagascar now sits at a middling, but still positive, 55% critical reception on RT.

for a fun game, imagine for yourself what The Wild, released by Disney in 2006, could have a rating of. Go ahead, without looking it up, guess. we'll come back to that.

now, what i'm saying here isn't substantiated and the timeline doesn't exactly work, but hear me out. The Wild was often criticized for ripping off not only similar to Madagascar, but also The Lion King. Disney and Dreamworks's little pissing contest wasn't exactly subtle, and Eisner's jealousy when he saw how that stupid little animal movie was going over like gangbusters would've been enough for him to greenlight a similar idea, but with that little disney twist. and then he left, like a rat on a ship.

let's discuss the plot of The Wild.

we hear Samson the Lion start with telling someone a story about a previous fight he had had in The Wild, which is apparently just Africa. the logo is happening, yknow with the little firework line making an arc over the castle? except the much-younger teenage son then keeps interrupting by saying he's heard this story, and the firework keeps getting pulled back to the start in Comedic Fashion. the story is about how Samson, who apparently has sonic fucking roars, sent a bunch of wildebeests flying into the horizon, but then they had a big beefy furry wildebeest in the background who was like 46 feet tall. the son, Ryan the Lion, says he can feel the roar coming up, and Samson tells him to let loose, and Ryan does an alley cat soundbite because they didn't want to go to the Central Park Zoo and record actual lion cub noises.

By the way, this movie IS, in fact, opening in the Central Park Zoo. because we couldn't be more obvious. Samson the Lion is appropriately very famous, but not more famous than Nigel the Koala (voiced by Eddie Izzard), who is the basis of "the most popular doll in america", a pullstring plush koala that has two phrases: "I'm so cuddly; I like you!" and "I'm having a really nice day!". anyways, similar to madagascar, when the Central Park Zoo closes for the night, all the animals just get out and mingle. every single animal has a very distinct accent for some reason, as well??

anyways we're at this point introduced to the other main characters and their running jokes: Benny the Squirrel, whose joke is that he can't take a fucking hint; Bridgette the Giraffe, who is every sitcom woman in one and the unwilling target of Benny's affections; Nigel, who is extremely surly and the worst character in the movie; and Larry, a burmese python whose running gag is that he's stupid but sometimes he says something smart.

i'd like to just take an aside here to tell you all that Larry, despite being the idiot comic relief, ended up being my favorite character in the entire movie because the movie keeps forgetting he's supposed to be stupid?? like he'll just keep being very observant, but because every so often he'll drift into a nonsequitor all of his friends will angrily tell him to shut the fuck up, but it's like - bro he's the only one who's making sense. like at the end of the movie he puts forward an idea and before anyone can respond he goes "yeah, yeah, i know, shut up Larry :(" and it's like. bro get better friends.

anyways through a wacky series of events, Ryan's attempts to stop his friends from causing a Gazelle stampede cause the gazelles to stampede, and despite all of Ryans efforts to stop the stampede he caused, they run through the Turtle Curling competition the Samson is trying to win, costing Samson the Big Game, which means we gotta have Samson and Ryan having a big fight. i should mention that Ryan is insecure that he can't roar despite literally being prepubescent, and Samson is just like "are you acting up all because you can't roar?!" like DUDE THAT IS YOUR SON AND HE IS EIGHT. HIS VOICE HASN'T EVEN CRACKED YET.

Ryan then runs off to the green shipping crates that are being sent to New York's Harbor, and Samson and Benny go off to save Ryan after the workers somehow fucking miss the lion cub sleeping in broad fucking daylight. the dynamic duo is then joined by Bridgette (who knocks Benny off the truck), Nigel, and Larry. we then get a montage set to, and i am not fucking kidding, Clocks by Coldplay, where the animals experience the mysteriously-empty Times Square for the first time. more uhhhhh Wacky Hijinks ensue, and the rescue party are too late to get onto the cargo ship heading to africa, so they COMANDEER A PONTOON and tail the ship - after Benny rejoins them.

and here's where it gets to the point where i realized this movie was trying TOO hard to be dreamworks. if you'll recall, dreamworks likes to sneak in adult jokes, like famously Shrek looking at Duloc and going "do you think he's compensating for something". yknow, little innuendos like that.

Benny, having ridden in on a flock of Canadian Geese that mysteriously vanish after this scene after being hired as navigators, turns to Bridgette and, in an attempt to flirt with her, says that he's an expert goose rider, and that he rides bareback, and then slaps his flank.

it was becoming clear to me that every character was slowly becoming unmanageable to feel sympathy for.

after what would be, realistically, a few months - much too long for a pontoon to remain fueled, and WELL too long for a ship with passengers and sans supplies to remain populated, they reach the shores of Africa, which is... well it's not the shores of Madagascar, despite it literally being exactly like that scene in Madagascar where the animals are beholden to the rich jungles of madagascar. but for some reason this area of Africa not only has rich jungles, but ALSO an ACTIVE VOLCANO centrally located in the jungle. this is the purpose of the green transport crates: the wild animals are being rescued from an impending eruption. this is never brought up, but Ryan confuses the situation despite spending LITERAL MONTHS on that ship and potentially- actually

now that i'm writing this out, HOW DID NO ONE ON THE FUCKING SHIP. NOTICE THEY HAD AN ADOLESCENT LION CUB ON THE- THEY WERE SUPPOSED TO BE EMPTY CRATES. THEY WOULDN'T HAVE. NOTICED THE. LION CUB???? PROBABLY MEWLING FOR HELP???? IN A CONTAINER WITH OPEN-AIR WINDOWS????? BRO????

anyways Ryan runs into The Wild, and Samson and friends run after Ryan but lose him somehow. Samson, whose main character trait is that everyone else is saying that he always talks about being a real child of the Wilderness (notice that Samson himself never backs this up), eventually comes clean about his past after a scene with a hyrax that goes WAY too long in anyone's opinion - Samson was sold to the zoo after being raised in the circus. Samson was Ryan's age, as in like eight years old, when he was forced to attempt to roar in front of an audience, and when he couldn't because he was eight, he was SOLD TO THE ZOO. and his father's parting words were "if you had been born in the wild, you would have been able to roar" LIKE SIR YOUR SON IS STILL A CHILD DOMESTICATION DOESN'T MEAN YOU CAN'T FUCKING- HELLO???

anyways everyone treats this as some Big Betrayal, and Samson goes off on his own to find Ryan. meanwhile Nigel gets kidnapped by wildebeests.

yes, there are wildebeests living in this fucking jungle.

Nigel is then brought to the ACTIVE VOLCANO, where the WILDEBEESTS HAVE STARTED A DEATH CULT. they are led by William Shatner Wildebeest whose name i have forgotten because despite being the main antagonist he was revealed fifty minutes into a seventy-minute movie. turns out, one of those Nigel dolls fell off of a cropduster plane over this nondescript african jungle, interrupting a lion hunt against this wildebeest despite the fact that neither of these animals live in the jungle. the pullstring then scared the lions into fleeing, and Shatbeest took this as an OMEN FROM GOD to START A DEATH CULT where ALL WILDEBEESTS WILL BECOME CARNIVORES AND ALL LIONS WILL BECOME HERBIVORES. also he made a whole song out of the "I'm having a really nice day!" voiceline complete with choreography. this is somehow not only plot important but also instrumental in his downfall.

anyways Nigel immediately gets drunk with power because he has no morals and is the worst character in the movie.

the wildebeests kidnap Bridgette and Larry and knock Benny out. have you noticed Benny just keeps getting put offscreen so he can solve the plot later? anyways Samson hallucinates dr seuss colors because he's activating his "predator instincts" to find his cub, which - red flag - but it also works. and then the wildebeests kidnap ryan after throwing Samson off a cliff, and you would not believe how much i wanted him dead so the movie would be over.

it was around this time that i realized i would much rather watch cars 2 again. my girlfriend had long since admitted that.

Benny wakes up in the middle of a bunch of German scarabs (who are all like. yodelling milkmaid types?????) who thought he was shit, and tbh yeah good call, but anyways Benny wakes up Samson who is somehow completely unharmed from being dropped off a cliff with an entire tree on top of him. Samson then has a tangible hallucination pointing them to the volcano, which he and Benny both see.

Nigel meanwhile actually has to weigh the pros and cons of siding with the wildebeests and watching them cook and eat his friends, or saving his friends. Shatbeest meanwhile REALLY wants to eat a LITERAL COWERING CHILD.

outside the volcano, we find out that Samson's hallucinations are a LITERAL LEGION OF SECRET AGENT CHAMELEONS who are trying to get people to defeat the wildebeests - which, like, WHY DID YOU NEED THESE TWO YOKELS???? YOU'RE LIKE. THERE'S A WHOLE JUNGLE OF POORLY-PLACED ANIMALS. THERE ARE OTHER LIONS IN THE JUNGLE SURELY. WHAT HAPPENED TO THE LIONS IN THE FLASHBACK??

anyways the chameleons can make benny and samson invisible by covering them and going transparent. obviously.

the finale is incredibly like. it's such a nothing finale. the chameleons barely factor into it?? like Benny and Samson are just suddenly there, and Shatbeest keeps physically overpowering Samson and later Ryan, but Shatbeest angers the other wildebeests because one of them couldn't get the choreography right and so he's kicked towards the sacrifices as one of them. and then Ryan is like "aw dad... i wish you had the father i had. :(" which like. WHEN was it explained to you what happened with your dad. you were JUST told that your dad was born in captivity you don't know WHAT HAPPENED you just IMMEDIATELY went to being mean to him. and that inspires the wildebeests to turn on Shatbeest because this is the lion king so we gotta have that hyenas eat scar scene. but then the volcano, the LITERAL ACTUAL VOLCANO EVERYONE'S BEEN INSIDE OF THIS WHOLE TIME, starts to erupt, and Shatbeest is crushed under rocks.

everyone gets to the pontoon, and Samson, Ryan, the group, the wildebeests, and for some reason the chameleons all escape just as the island erupts, and it's like, fuck all the other bitches right? anyways then we have a heartfelt moment immediately undercut by the animated movie dance party ending where Nigel the koala just starts twerking. Benny stops being sexist out of complete nowhere despite never learning his lesson and this is completely undercut by Bridgette kissing him and revealing she was into being objectified this whole time, she just wanted Benny to be Woke about it. every single character in this movie was awful (except Larry i just feel bad for him) and in my mind the movie ends with that fucking pontoon sinking in the middle of the atlantic for exceeding its weight limit.

it's such a nothing movie. every scene feels like it's from something else. my girlfriend maintains that everyone who defends this movie is a corporate shill. my experience with this movie was i watched it multiple times as a kid, and i had somehow convinced myself this WASN'T a disney movie and was instead made by one of those low-budget studios that makes a single animated film before vanishing forever. it feels like a parody of itself, like someone had made a prior movie that doesn't exist that they then warped with ten consecutive funhouse mirrors.

it feels like michael eisner's teen son tried to make madagascar but Edgy.

and now we come back to the fun game from before the cut. what was the number you came up with on rotten tomatoes? what would rotten tomatoes rate this movie that has effectively been scrubbed from disney's records? Madagascar has 55%, what could its ugly step-reflection be?

...well that's not good.

[alexissara]

Unicorn Overlord Demo - Quick Review

Unicorn Overlord is a game I was not interested in but given the demo was taking over my feed I decided fuck it I'll give it a shot like I did for the Project Triangle Strategy Demo. The presence of a dude main lord already is a massive turn off for me so I did go in with a negative feeling about the game and the game managed to not turn me around at all.

The story of this game is just bad, it's not good, it's not great, it's not good. We got no sense of conflict really, we get a fridge cool battle mom and then the good boy prince who is good and pure and perfect goes out to go fighting the bad evil emperor who took over the world. Turns out people betrayed his mom not because there was complicated politics or anything but because they were simply mind controlled. The game right away damsels another woman and then constantly fills it's plots with serious big boys. On my playthrough it took a long time for me to get any women at all to join my army outside of my starting character Chloe.

The game provides a choice system but the choices do not tell you what you get from either choice and the choices are simply "Do I murder this guy or do I let them live". It would really benefit from letting you know what it is your gaining on the gameplay side instead of having you go in without knowing as a means of trying to push or pull you in different directions.

These are paired with how boring Alian is as a protag. He is a proper good noble boy with proper good noble boy morals. You get to make choices for him but their either being a good boy who believes in people or being like a lawful guy who is still seen as good maybe more good who punishes enemies more often. He talks and has his own personality kinda outside of that but honestly he is so low impact he could have been a blank slate Persona protag who never speaks and it make no real difference. There was really no reason this character couldn't have been a selectable gender or customizable player avatar and kept basically all the work on the character already done, hell he is just ando enough you coulda just picked pronouns on him.

The other characters writing is not particularly exciting either the lesbian angel and her girlfriend are cute but they are no Aylain and Isobel even if they are functionally the same classes and similar dynamic they lack the passion and talent behind them. No one else really stood out to me, there were characters I thought were fine but no one felt stunning or particularly exciting.

Gameplay wise it's not super great it reminds me of so many better games. The RTS elements brought into an RPG make me think of Yugioh Falsebound Kingdom only idk for me it's less exciting. The maps so far are pretty boring lanes that don't get me to imagine a set piece very much with these wider war scaled battle it's painfully real of a setting for a plot that gives me no investment in the horrors of war, it's just fields and shit. There isn't a lot going on but also there is a skill system to dive into and honestly that seems like it's too in depth for me to give a shit about either since it wasn't really given the kind of slower introduction it should have been given to get used to adding skills and getting an idea of how that might improve a unit.

Overall, I guess it's fine but I really do not see what the hype is about. I'd play this game and probably do a full review if I was given a copy but mostly because I simply don't have other video games I'm looking forward to in the near future and I enjoy having something to passively do on my switch when I am feeling icky but I could also idk play my backlog or random gachas so idk. This could be a lot better.

[doomalade]

Hey doom I need to ask: what is your review on recent episode for vol 9?

To me personally it just seems wrong to make ruby give in to despair especially when she made speeches to never give up.

And then team WBY giving a weird reaction to the “ascension” is what made this episode even uncomfortable.

I don’t what to think…

Hey there!

I’m gonna put a trigger warning at the start of this cause I will be talking about topics such as sui-.

My TLDR of V9C9 is: What the hell was that?!

Ruby’s character arc of depression and isolation is one that I deeply relate to but I understand the critique that it felt rushed. Honestly, I think that V9 could have been groundbreaking and easily a masterpiece of media if it wasn’t so short and rushed. At first I kinda liked the faster pace but now I’m reminded of the Tortoise and the Hare. The Hare ran fast, completing most of the race before the Tortoise could even get started, but then the Hare took a nap before the finish line allowing the Tortoise to win. V9 is the Hare. It’s running fast through the story and while it looks like it’s gonna be a winner, it drops the ball at the end making you realize that slowing down could have been the better choice. Now of course RT was crunched for the JL crossover and had Arrowfell and IQ come out but like, other than JL, I feel like IQ and Arrowfell kinda were on RT’s management issues.

WBY’s reaction to Ruby’s ascension is where this episode lost me and honestly made me mad. Yang just watched her sister that was just beaten near death, end her own life, and her reaction is to smile and hug Blake?

Weiss lost her home kingdom and also her partner now and she’s smiling and hugging Jaune?

Blake watched as her girlfriend’s sister and her team leader give up on life and she’s, say it with me, smiling and hugging Jaune?

Jaune sees the ascended paper pleasers and now he learns the lesson that you need to die to better your life?

What in the flying FUCK were they thinking in the writing room?!

V9C8, arguably the best episode of the Volume and maybe RWBY as a whole just got knocked down a peg in emotional impact because the next episode basically says “suicide is bad ass”.

I literally couldn’t rewatch episode 8 because of how deep it hit me but after watching episode 9, I could rewatch it back without worry because apparently none of it mattered anymore!?

Neo beat Ruby to near death, the Cat almost possessed her, and then she killed herself in front of her friends and especially her sister, and episode 9 is acting like that was a good thing???

Like Ruby drank the tea to improve as a person and not because she was tortured, beaten, and no longer wanted to be alive?

I’m tired of hiding or pretending it isn’t true, this is bad writing! It sucks! It’s horrible! What were they thinking?

More upsetting is how did we go from probably the best episode ever to an episode that is so sloppy and exists only to tease the finale?

And I thought Episode 4 was insulting.

[signalwatch]

Norse Watch: The Northman (2022)

Watched:  04/30/2023

Format:  Amazon Prime

Viewing:  First

Director:  Robert Eggers

Well.

So, I just finished listening to the audiobook of the translated Völsunga Saga, and then some pals asked if I'd yet seen The Northman (2022), and while those events were unrelated, they did dovetail.  I hadn't quite gotten to the movie despite liking the prior Eggers film I had seen and a general interest in the content.  I was aware of middling opinions of folks on the street (it's got a 64% audience reaction on RT) - with some folks also camping out in the deep like and dislike camps.  But it was a bit of a critical darling.  So, it seemed it was probably doing *something* of interest, even if it wasn't for me.

The movie does it's best to recreate a world that seems almost impossible in its brutality and viciousness, that believes in fates, and the best fate is to die (valiantly) in battle and be swept off to Valhalla by a Valkyrie.  It's a culture that sees sacking and pillaging as a vocation, and vengeance as a noble right.  And everyone is kind of aware that being a king also means being a target.  Kind of hard to believe these same people a few hundred years later would be living in countries now deemed to be some of the chillest places you can go.

But every scene in the film is cold, wet, or both.  This is the Northern European sea-faring people eking out a living in inhospitable climates kept at bay with stone houses and fires.

I will say - I am glad I had some actual Old Norse poetry under my belt.  The narrative is not pulled from anything in the Saga, I don't believe.  But given what the characters in the poems value and how they see the world deeply informed my understanding of what unspooled on screen - so, good timing, me.  

Eggers and writer Sjón were working to tell an ur-Hamlet (which really only hit me across the face when Nicole Kidman, playing the lead's mother calls him "Amleth" and the particular way she hit the name).  But, yes, it's a story about a prince whose father is killed by his uncle who then marries his mother and claims the kingdom and that prince being told by a phantom to finally deal with his need for vengeance, though it will doom everyone.  And this is not the Volsungs, but this is a different saga and based on an actual person in some way.

In this case, a 13-ish Amleth heads out to sea and allies himself with berserkers, becoming a fierce warrior (in the imposing form of a jacked Alexander Skarsgård).  He has not followed up on his plans for vengeance, but learning his mother and uncle have taken to Iceland after losing their kingdom to an invader (this stuff is like every five pages in the saga) he boards a slave ship headed to Iceland, posing as a slave. 

Oh, and did I mention he's given a vision by a witch in the form of a very spooky ghost-Norn-witch Björk?  Because that shit absolutely happens and I think all movies could use Björk showing up and doling out fates.  Heck, I wish Björk would show up and tell me what to do with myself.

Along the way he meets a fellow slave, this one a Slav in the form of Anya Taylor-Joy, who is clearly a wee bit witchy herself, and unnerving to her captors who can't quite their finger on why this woman sets them off.  

As mentioned, Kidman plays Amleth's mother, Queen Gudrún, and at first I thought "this is some odd casting.  Always happy to see Kidman, but...  why would she take this?."  And then she got her big scene, an equivalent of the Hamlet/ Gertrude scene, but fit for killer-take-all world of kings and chieftans living in stone houses in the shadow of a living volcano.  

Willem Defoe pops up as a Yorick-like character from Amleth's youth, but as much shaman as anything.  Ethan Hawke appears as the father who falls beneath his brother's sword, and Danish actor Claes Bang plays the uncle (very well, indeed, and I would hope this gets him more high profile roles in English-language film, although you may have seen him as Dracula in the Netflix limited series).  

I imagine the film is not for everyone.  This isn't a clear story of heroes and villains.  It's not clear Amleth is just or right, and an eye-for-an-eye truly leaves the whole world blind by the film's end.  He's a "hero" in the pre-20th Century version of the word - a challenged man capable of great and terrible deeds as he deals with fates doled out by gods larger than himself.  He's a near mindless, brutal killer when we catch up with him as an adult, murdering and destroying for want of any better way to work through the rage that defines him.  Life and death are fairly cheap commodities, and the virtues of this world barely align with our own.  The world of the film is cruel and literally barbaric.  

There's certainly CGI, color-grading, etc... employed here, but it's not a movie about the FX.  It relies on performance and story to move it along, and hats off to the DP who managed to light the thing in abysmal conditions and make it work.  So, it's  beautifully shot, well-performed and - if you give it room - moving.  But not in a "the real Northman was the friends we made along the way" sort of way.  It's much more of the hollowed out feeling you may have had at the end of Branagh's Hamlet.  

Anyway - I am not sure I recommend the film broadly, but I'm in the camp of "this is an  interesting movie, I liked it, and I'm glad it exists".  And I would be surprised if I didn't watch it again.

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from The Signal Watch https://ift.tt/Qztc4wU

[thxnews]

UK PM Rishi Sunak Final Downing Street Speech

Good morning, I will shortly be seeing His Majesty the King to offer my resignation as Prime Minister. To the country, I would like to say, first and foremost, I am sorry. I have given this job my all. But you have sent a clear signal that the government of the United Kingdom must change… …and yours is the only judgement that matters. I have heard your anger, your disappointment; and I take responsibility for this loss. To all the Conservative candidates and campaigners who worked tirelessly but without success… …I am sorry that we could not deliver what your efforts deserved. It pains me to think how many good colleagues… …who contributed so much to their communities and our country… …will now no longer sit in the House of Commons. I thank them for their hard work, and their service. Following this result, I will step down as party leader… …not immediately, but once the formal arrangements for selecting my successor are in place. It is important that after 14 years in government the Conservative Party rebuilds… …but also that it takes up its crucial role in Opposition professionally and effectively. When I first stood here as your Prime Minister, I told you the most important task I had was to return stability to our economy. Inflation is back to target, mortgage rates are falling, and growth has returned. We have enhanced our standing in the world, rebuilding relations with allies… …leading global efforts to support Ukraine… …and becoming the home of the new generation of transformative technologies. And our United Kingdom is stronger too: with the Windsor Framework, devolution restored in Northern Ireland, and our Union strengthened. I’m proud of those achievements. I believe this country is safer, stronger, and more secure than it was 20 months ago. And it is more prosperous, fairer, and resilient than it was in 2010. Whilst he has been my political opponent, Sir Keir Starmer will shortly become our Prime Minister. In this job, his successes will be all our successes, and I wish him and his family well. Whatever our disagreements in this campaign, he is a decent, public-spirited man, who I respect. He and his family deserve the very best of our understanding, as they make the huge transition to their new lives behind this door… …and as he grapples with this most demanding of jobs in an increasingly unstable world. I would like to thank my colleagues, my Cabinet, the Civil Service - especially here in Downing Street… …the team at Chequers, my staff, CCHQ… …but most of all I would like to express my gratitude to my wife Akshata and our beautiful daughters. I can never thank them enough for the sacrifices they have made so that I might serve our country. One of the most remarkable things about Britain is just how unremarkable it is… …that two generations after my grandparents came here with little, I could become Prime Minister… …and that I could watch my two young daughters light Diwali candles on the steps in Downing Street. We must hold true to that idea of who we are… …that vision of kindness, decency, and tolerance that has always been the British way. This is a difficult day, at the end of a number of difficult days. But I leave this job honoured to have been your Prime Minister. This is the best country in the world and that is thanks entirely to you, the British people… …the true source of all our achievements, our strengths, and our greatness. Thank you.   Sources: THX News, Prime Minister's Office, 10 Downing Street & The Rt Hon Rishi Sunak. Read the full article

[splashcat413]

Some highlights from me and my friends talking about this universe on Discord:

Grant Morrison's Puella Magi Madoka Magica and All-Star Astro Boy

And then Naoki Urosawa's Joker, based off a particularly memorable Batman storyline about a murderer with a permanent smile across his face. It goes off the rails and ends with Red Hood (voiced by Sungwon Cho in the Netflix adaptation), a twisted reimagining of sidekick Robin, setting aside his pledge to kill all criminals to save Joe Chill from the Court of Owls.

Hideo Kojima's Fate/Stay Night. This one has extensive lore actually: "So you have Stay/Night as the first game, where Shirou cuts Kotomine's arm off. Unlimited Blade Works, where it turns out you're playing a rehash of the previous game as Sakura and Rider, to find out that Kotomine has been taken over by Gilgamesh after grafting their severed arm to himself Zero, which is a confusing story about Shirou's father and how it's about how they set up the Grail War initially. And finally Heaven's Feel, where Sakura has been turned into the Dark Shadow and Shirou has aged into Archer after Projection Overuse. It ends with an incredibly gay fight with Shirou/Archer versus Kotomine/Gilgamesh, afterwards Shirou retires to live a life of peace with the remaining time he has. And then an unrelated spinoff about Sakura eating people and facing off against the Mage's association and coming to terms with the fact she likes to eat the rich. A game cut short about Kiritsugu Emiya and his quest to end human trafficking where it turns out he's actually a homunculus made to think he's Kiritsugu. And a game that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever about an alternate universe where the ley lines broke or whatever."

And to cap off the above, Yoko Taro's Metal Gear

Richard Garfield's genre-founding brainchild Pokemon TCG

Whose major competitors are the Deckmaster series (focused on Gary Gygax's brainchild, the World of Darkness TTRPG universe) and Akira Toriyama's Yu-Gi-Oh

Tetsuya Nomura's Dangers and Dreams, the world's most popular TTRPG series. Most people these days play DaD 3e, the proper title of which is Dangers and Dreams 3hird Edition — Seventh Heart Prerelease | Stars Aligned Exclusive.

Martin Scorcese's The Dark Knight

Platinum Games's Devil May Cry

Frank Herbert's Warhammer 40,000 (the IP basis for Blizzard's iconic RTS Warhammer III)

Sadly the Warhammer series was left in the dust when Blizzard secured the rights to Star Wars and made the biggest MMO until Call of Duty XIV

(World of Warcraft was made by BioWare and never did too well. The TCG spinoff Artifact did particularly badly.)

"Nomura needs to be David Lynch." We never elaborated on this but this does mean that Disco Elysium has a stat called Kingdom Hearts now.

George R.R. Martin's Mistborn. Its TV adaptation was initially well-receieved, but due to progressing faster then the books, it’s ‘adaptation’ of the nonexistent era 3 left many fans angry.

Team Cherry's Elden Ring, an impressive 2d homage to Bethesda's Dark Souls RPG series made in collaboration with well-known author Brandon Sanderson

Bethesda also made Assassin's Creed just for the AC/AC pun

FromSoft's Hollow Knight's Xbox exclusivity sadly prevents many from playing this materpiece of a game, which is a big disappointment for fans of their popular Castlevania series and the genre of "vanias" it spawned.

Peter Jackson's Avatar

C.S. Lewis's The Lord of the Rings didn't receive a successful film adaptation until the 2020s, but the cancelled 1975 attempt by Alejandro Jodorowsky was lamented by its diehard fans.

We didn't decide who wrote Dune but we do know Zack Snyder directed the adaptation

A movie adaptation of Iron Lung directed by streamer Northernlion

We also got a pitch for Puella Magi Madoka Magica to be made by Hideaki Anno

(And then Neon Genesis Evangelion was made by Junji Ito)

This isn't the actual prompt but JoJo's Bizarre Adventure was written by Rohan Kishibe and the quasi-self-insert is named Araki

The story is basically the same, but all the music reference Stands have different names. For example, Pucci's stand's first form is Deep Purple, its second is Here Comes the Sun (still made by the Beatles but Pete Best stayed on as drummer), and its final form is of course named after Queen's final album Stairway to Heaven.

Terrible Visions

A scrambled timeline is a timeline that has proceeded much like ours, except that some particular facet has been mixed up all over the place. For example, in the scrambled timeline we will consider today, our world's fictional stories have been told by different people, and in different ways.

Bryan Lee O'Malley, in this alternate timeline, is best known as the cartoonist responsible for Homestuck, a popular comic series about a group of children who become embroiled in a cosmic-scale video game known as Sburb. Although Homestuck is probably most often associated with the cult classic Edgar Wright-directed film adaptation released in 2016, the comics themselves are highly-regarded, and the film brought a new audience to them. Netflix has commissioned an animated continuation, The Homestuck Epilogues, which is due to be released soon.

Andrew Hussie, on the other hand, is a figure you're likelier to know if you're overly online. His "MS Paint Adventures" series - most notably including Scott Pilgrim Vs The World, which is kind of like Homestuck but weirder and hornier - have firmly remained a fixture of obsessive Twitter fandom culture. It doesn't help that the best-known iteration, Scott Pilgrim Vs The World, is infamous for stretching thousands of pages of meandering digressions out of a simple and focused narrative starting point. Scott Pilgrim fans have developed something of a toxic reputation, which is not entirely deserved - although of course Knives discourse is interminable, and back in the fandom's heyday there were reportedly incidents of fans assaulting each other "for being evil exes".

Scott Pilgrim fandom was very big back in the day, though, and consequently it was a nexus for other creative figures who would go on to surpass Hussie. Perhaps foremost among these is indie developer Toby Fox. He was literally living in Hussie's basement when he produced ROSEQUARTZ, a universally-beloved retro Goonies-like RPG about a human hybrid boy born to a race of gem-based aliens. He's now developing an episodic spiritual successor, RAZORQUEST, with more overtly dark themes. It revolves around an inheritance dispute among a demon-summoning family.

Other foundational figures in this timeline's internet culture include Alison Bechdel, who helped get the webcomic scene started. Although she's now more seriously acclaimed for her personal memoirs, her gaming webcomic Press Start To Dyke, which premiered in 1998, was once everywhere. It had a broad appeal, and at its height, it was common to see even straight guys sharing pages from it. Time has not been especially kind to it, though, and at this point its main legacy is test.png, a meme spawned by one of the comic's most ill-advised pages.

Then there's John C. McCrae, more often known by his pseudonym Wildbow. A prolific and reclusive author of doorstopping "web serials" - long-form fiction published online - McCrae's best-known serial is still his first, Wind, a noir superhero story set in an alternate history where capes are mostly just a subculture of unpowered vigilantes. Wind landed in a culture already rife with comic book deconstructions, like Alan Moore's 2002 graphic novel Worm Turns, but it nonetheless managed to stand out from the pack with its extensive cast of characters and its themes of coordination problems and the end of the world. Later McCrae web serials include Part (the first "Otherverse" serial; an urban fantasy story about a couple who die in a car accident and find that they have become ghosts), Tear (a "biopunk" story set in a collapsing underwater city), Warn (the controversial Wind sequel), and Play (the second "Otherverse" serial, set in a small Indiana town that helps hide a psychic girl from the CIA).

Last and perhaps least, we should discuss J. K. Rowling. Far and away the most famous of any of these authors, Rowling's name is inseparable from the YA series that she debuted with, the Luz Noceda books, which remain her one successful work. Although it was heavily derivative of older fantasy novels - like Jill Murphy's Academy For Little Witches, or Philip Pullman's Methods Of Rationality trilogy - Luz Noceda was still a monumental and unprecedented success in the publishing industry, and the film adaptations were consistent blockbusters. The final book, Luz Noceda and the Watcher of Rain, contained some allusions to a romantic relationship between Luz and her recently-redeemed associate Amity. Rowling confirmed that this was her intent in subsequent interviews and indicated that she had fought her publishers for it; the film would then go on to escalate matters slightly further.

There have been many lengthy and heated online arguments as to whether the references in the book itself constitute text or mere subtext. Whatever your stance on this discourse, a new complication has been introduced recently: although she has put out no official statement on the matter as of yet, it has become quite apparent from Rowling's shrinking network of contacts and her conspicuous silences that she is certainly TERF-sympathetic, and likely an outright TERF herself. For many, this is leading to a critical reevaluation of the social values inherent in the Luz Noceda series; others, to say the least, are holding off on that kind of reappraisal.

Anyway, Scott Pilgrim just beat Luz Noceda in a Twitter poll for Most Gay Media, and people are piiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiissed

[itsclydebitches]

IM SCREAMING, THEY SAW RUBY COMMIT MAGICAL SUICIDE AND JUST WENT ON THEIR MERRY WAY. WHAT IS WITH THIS SHOW AND REFUSING TO SHOW CHARACTERS EXPERIENCING EMOTIONAL REACTIONS TO THINGS HELP. The only emotions we get are Ruby's little fit and Jaune's paper thin depiction of PTSD. I'm gonna scream!

I think I'm in shock about it? I cannot stress enough that while I was prepared for the mess of Ruby's suicide attempt getting framed by the narrative in a positive light (this leads them to the way out, she gets some new ability, etc.) I still thought the GROUP would react appropriately. They just watched Ruby have a complete meltdown, she's already fainted once this Volume due to grief over Penny, they now understand the "hints" of depression Ruby has been displaying the last 24 hours (like her avoiding Crescent Rose), she runs away from them, is caught by Neo, gets the shit kicked out of her, and then looks them in the eye while drinking the Permanently Changes You And Erases Your Memories Tea while a fake Roman waxes on about how the world would be better off without her.

...and they're all just okay with that?

I was fully expecting Yang to go on a Super Saiyan rampage. I was prepared to write about how it's too little, too late now that Yang has revealed her supposedly-always-there love for Ruby after ignoring herfor most of the Volume. Regardless of how badly she's treated her little sister this season, it was oh-so-obvious to me that Yang was going to break, be inconsolable, go feral in an attempt to hunt down the Cat/Neo for revenge. I was expecting to see a frantic Blake and a near catatonic Weiss, horrified that she just lost someone else after her entire Kingdom was destroyed. I was waiting for Jaune's furious and annoyingly justified "I told you so!" after the Cat revealed their true colors and the tree - which he's said was evil this whole time - dragged Ruby away after she rolls over, 'dead' from its leaves that Neo gave her in an attempt to kill her.

Side note: for anyone who is seriously trying to argue that this wasn't a suicide attempt, if you consider nothing else, consider Neo. She does not want Ruby to be cured of her depression, or get a power-up, or take the supposedly magical medicine that will help her work through her problems. Why in the world would Neo give Ruby something harmless, let alone beneficial? Neo wants her dead. She gave her the tea to destroy Ruby once and for all and, when Ruby drank it, Neo believed she'd succeeded, becoming hollow as a result. She would not have been capable of being possessed if she believed that Ruby would survive and her revenge was incomplete. The whole reason the Cat was able to get to her was because Neo thought Ruby was gone for good and even the Cat themselves is surprised to find Ruby in the cocoon. Ruby, meanwhile, is drinking to escape the horrors of her own life that she can no longer face. That was a murder attempt turned suicide attempt.

So we've got [gestures] all of this and instead of reacting with anything like human emotions Blake is smiling as she tells Yang that this is a great thing for Ruby and Weiss is pulling a Volume 8 Yang by announcing that their mistakes don't matter because they were brave about it and Jaune is staring at these gem strangers that don't know him anymore right after watching the Cat horrifically possess Neo and announces that they were right about the tree? Seriously why is the surprise villain of the Volume positioned as the morally trustworthy source? Even Ironwood wasn't granted that.

Forget Ever After, I feel like I've fallen into a parallel universe. Not to be ~dramatic~ about it, but am I being pranked? Did someone sneak a RWBY parody onto Crunchyroll? Is RT pulling a Rebecca Welton and trying to tank their own show due to some personal grudge? I am legitimately trying to understand how we went from this

to this?

(Also, friendly reminder that the screenshot of Ruby is right after Little was murdered. I mean, I don't care about them and clearly Ruby herself should be the concern, but I just want to point out that no one acknowledges Little either. An ally has just been killed, brutally crushed during Ruby's torture session, so how do the characters react to this? They don't. They leave Little's body there and don't even mention them. Look at Yang's massive grin, Blake's satisfied smile, Weiss' (possibly romantic?) hug. Their leader just attempted suicide and a coded-as-a-child friend was just murdered... and this is how they're acting in the immediate aftermath.)

(Second friendly reminder that the group was already not reacting to the entirety of the Atlas fiasco and in the wake of the last three episodes I find myself frequently forgetting that. Yang thinking she'd died, Blake thinking she'd died, Weiss losing her entire Kingdom, not knowing which of her family members made it out, Salem getting two Relics, Jaune and Weiss still not revealing that he killed Penny... none of it is being dealt with and that was before we threw 'The group ignores Ruby trying to die' into the mix.')

[astro-b-o-y-d]

I had a dream about a new Color Show trailer for the next volume dropping, and I woke up mad at myself for it.

[just-illegal]

either one of your OCS or Mr rumble tumble game in any au/c!version of him that you wish, dealers choice!

This took me a while, apologies anon!

ask game is "10 headcanons for character sent in"

Im gonna go with rt and also some aus i like

Bird coded to me. Good at rocket spleef + skin looks like a puffleg hummingbird + crashes into windows. Ignore the fact these are 3 different flying styles and the fact he's good at rocket spleef for tf2 reasons

Obviously a malevolent god tho. Recently rewatched his city skylines series and,,, he is not beating the malevolent god allegations. Especially not with his new black hole rebrand

This one more ties into my headcanons for the concept of The Hub in mcyt, but i headcanon that there is a group of people like just chilling and running kingdoms in a section of the map. Rt was dragged into it by spiff, and after that news his kingdom was built by fans before he even got there. and it goes Really Well for him all the time :)

Because of who spiff is as a person, the hub is filled with tabloids of the most trivial elements of rt's life. PRINCE KING RT FOUND EATING A BAGEL

I was just talking about wardrobe headcanons this morning, so here's one for mc!him: he has a bunch of different fancy suits that he wears under the same big coat and you can barely see the cool suit

Rt.exe specific: he plays the games on kevin's computer. Usually he's wreaking havoc in the sims. Kevin approves :)

Eldritch dan specific: loves music boxes. Has a bunch of them sitting around his library, and just sits there enthralled whenever he sees them in someone's house in human form. the other lads hate this

the magistrex name is from a story he made about farming time or something, right? i don't have much in mind rn but someone should do more with this

Godort specific: kinda guy to drink boiling water. like outside of the coffee thing i think he drinks boiling water

he's god-like in the rtopia universe but like. some tma shit and not like the guardian angel or the god bosses or the evil thing