#30 beats

[haveyouseenthisromcom]

[a-scary-lack-of-common-sense]

Fiddauthor divorce arc speedrun <3

After 30 years of searching for his lost brother through demonic rituals and summonings, Ford has become a bit of a notorious demon collector over the years. He's made a LOT of deals with MANY different demons over the years; from minor and harmless little entities to big and powerful overlords. Most of the time, these deals aren't really a one-way situation, so a lot of demons have a strong grip on him just as much as he does on them. It often ends up being a mutual sort of destruction, as in: "I know I'm but a mere mortal trifling with things I couldn't begin to fathom, and I know you will destroy me eventually; but I don't care as long as I get to destroy you too." He just needs to live long enough to find his brother.

The red hands are essentially pieces of himself (his soul, you could say??) that he wields as his method of restraint to the demons he has "tamed" so far. They act as a leash to contain each demons' powers, and he can loosen or tighten his hold on them as much as he wants. The number of hands required to contain a demon really depends on their individual strengths, but 3-4 hands are already very energy consuming.

YES, I gave all of his demons stupid names. SUE ME.

[hattersarts]

drew some book!husbands. they feel like they've taken more traits from each other than the show.

[paintedcrows]

they make me feel unwell

(continued: Stan & Young Ford)

[lavendel081]

Me and who

[hyuckonia]

very first 10 seconds of the tsum event and Kalim getting beaned by his tsum and lilia was like "oh guess i wasnt fast enough to stop it myb bro" SHUT UPPPDNAHAAJHA KALIMS SCREAM HAD ME LAUGHING SO HARD I WAS GUNNA CRY whatever i love them so badLMAOOOOO

[o3o-lapd-o3o]

odysseus has two modes, bawling and brawling

he initially tried bawling to poseidon during get in the water, but that didn't work, so in six hundred strike he switched to brawling.

[taylachan]

This will be all I will say about The Unwanted Guest: Slutty French Maid Ianthe.

[killjoy-prince]

House M.D. but it's when House says Wilson's name

[gangsteri-aine]

One of my favourite thing showing Charles and Edwin's codependency is that everytime Edwin needs something - was it a book, a letter opener or a silver bell to summon the dead - he always just holds his hand up towards Charles and waits for him to give it to him. And when Edwin doesn't need something anymore he just gives it back to Charles to put away.

It's probably partly because Charles' bag of tricks but sometimes it's not about that. In the last episode when they are opening the night nurse package, Edwin waits for Charles to give him a letter opener that was right behind them on the table. And them immediately after opening gives it back and Charles puts it back to the table that is still right next to them. They don't even say anything during that, they just know what to do

[pippeinnit]

please tell me there’s gonna be a happy ending-

[bixels]

Splatoon 3: Side Order is good, but not great. I still highly recommend it, but if you care about the story, you're going to be disappointed. Quick review: spoilers ahead.

Side Order was the devs experimenting with Splatoon's gameplay loop. The campaign is a rogue-like, and it works amazingly well. Super fun, super challenging, building my deck and fighting through challenges with the stakes of resetting really scratched an itch in my brain. They did a great job with it.

Unfortunately, I feel like priority went to game design rather than story. Much of the mysterious artwork we saw in the first teaser trailer was completely unused; turns out, all of that was just concept art that never made it into the final product. Side Order failed to make me care about what was happening. I don't know why the protagonist had to be Agent 8; it could've been anyone else and the story would've worked the same.

Octo Expansion was the absolute peak of meshing story and gameplay. The campaign's hook is insanely strong; we immediately empathize with Agent 8 because we know from previous lore that octolings like her have been trapped underground for all their lives. We care about her fight to the surface because it's a fundamentally ideological fight for freedom. The plot stuff about Tartar and the Thangs is just nice set dressing; 8's fight for freedom is the real story.

There's none of that in Side Order. I don't particularly care about Marina's metaverse, even if it's tied to Octo Expansion's story. I don't know why Acht is there other than backstory stuff. It really feels like 8 is just told to do something and she does it because she's the protagonist; she has zero personal stakes or motivations in the conflict. This is a story blunder the devs did in Splatoon 3's default campaign––forgetting to give the protagonist a personal reason to fight––that I hoped would be fixed here, but alas.

What makes it worse is that the gameplay and story progression are completely out of sync. I beat the entire game on my third run in 4 hours. With each run, you get up to two keys to potentially unlock bits of story. That means you'll get about one piece of the story every two runs. There are twelve pieces of the story; I got the first and then beat the whole damn game. Now I have to go back and grind to see the remaining story when I've already beaten the final boss and resolved the conflict. I missed the entire story because I never had to reset because I blazed through the gameplay! It's just a real shame that I experienced everything without knowing... why it's happening. The final boss had me asking myself what the hell is going on because I don't know the backstory at all.

Again, I still really recommend. The devs did a great job, but Side Order remains in the shadow of Octo Expansion's incredible success. Like the default singleplayer campaign, there's just a lot of lost story potential here that, while not necessary, would have really elevated this DLC into something amazing.

[rainbowstargazerlilies]

Let's Try This Again!

One note on this post over this post over the next day or so (until Tuesday night, Eastern Time), is equal to 1 minute I'll need to write over the next few weeks. I'll set a goal on TrackBear (a site I've been using to track my word counts recently) and post how things have been going that way. Have fun!

[tamberrio]

The only shounen protagonist that matters to ME

[let-them-fight]

the second biggest lost song was found today. how so?

[hanpotpot23]

behind your kids' favorite cartoon music!!