#He Listens Series

[the-vegetarian-artist]

the PJO fandom working their butts off to find two italian babies in the background only to realize the Easter egg is Nico calling for Bianca around the 12:3 mark.

[poppyberry]

Everybody NEEDS to listen to the new Wild Life retrospective on Imp and Skizz's podcast. They got Grian called in and they give so many cool insights into the series (and honestly say so many things I think people need to hear)

Highlights for me:

Grian designed each wild card to be weaponized and wanted everyone to take advantage of them. He goes over each individually and all the thought he put into them and all the work the backend team put into their execution. He's rightfully really proud of them. Him gushing about Trivia Bot and how excited he was to show his friends the "coolest snail ever" is particularly sweet.

Skizz says discovering each wild card was a LOT of fun. He says something like "I can't believe as an adult I get to have so much fun." Impulse is really impressed with the execution of each, citing stuff like making it rain when the time one activated and the passive mobs spawning in before being replaced, and how the little details like that built excitement and tension.

Grian says how he understands that some viewers maybe just want more seasons of the essentially the same series, ie six seasons of just Third Life, but it's more important to him that the Lifers get to experience something new and fresh. He also doesn't like comparing each series, preferring to consider each one as its own thing.

Impulse can't wait to do another Life series, Skizz is equally excited but tries to hold discussion about it back since he doesn't want anyone pressuring Grian, who is palpably burned out. Like, you can hear how tired this man is. Grian says there will probably be more series since everyone is still enjoying it, but he's not trying to outdo himself and not to expect him to keep escalating.

Skizz always tries to do something new each season yet feels like he always falls back into the same habits and dynamics, but not this time: he feels like he got to explore a new dynamic with the Spanners and had a blast doing it. He and Grian gush about how much fun they had with their "big brother trying to keep his little brothers alive" routine.

They have a grand time making fun of Impulse and his "Sweats". Impulse is unabashedly still hungry to win a series.

Impulse didn't want to kill zombie Skizz, because of the five minute cooldown, but Skizz makes clear that he was really happy with being a zombie, even if there was a lot of doing nothing in between summons. He says it means a lot to him that he got to help with the burden of facilitating the series, even just a little bit.

Grian gives good insight into his personal life strategy: he does some things to deliberately test his relationship with other players. Standing in the Danger Zone was a trust exercise, testing Jimmy and Scar. Jimmy and Scar failed.

Despite Scar failing the trust exercise, Grian heard the disappointment in Scar's voice about the Snail Bot thing and immediately caved, but he's really happy that it led them to in-canon reconciling and becoming strong allies again.

Grian's favorite moment was making Jimmy pay for the failed trust exercise by blowing up the bunker, particularly pleased with his one liner of "it was always gonna be like this". He says Wild Life as a whole has been the most enjoyable series for him, even though he didn't get to have as much fun as the other players due to knowing all the wild cards.

All three of them gush over the scene of everybody failing to kill Joel as he teleports around, laughing about how it was straight out of a movie or an anime. Impulse feels like Joel took his superpower to a new level, but Grian reminds him the he didn't have an army chasing him around trying to kill him. They're all super impressed with how the finale turned out.

Some of the powers were assigned (Cleo, BigB, BDubs, Scar, Lizzie), some were random (Impulse, Martyn). Some were based on players' names, others on their personal narratives, but coming up with ~16 different powers without including any that would just be exploited for cheap instakills was really difficult, which is why there were so many espionage ones. Hilariously, Grian was hoping Scar would accidentally kill Jimmy by punching him off a cliff because of their ritual of trying punching in the earlier episodes. He also gave Scar that power because he knew Scar wouldn't feel bad about killing people with it.

Grian chose to give himself the mimic so he could show people how their powers worked if he needed to, and so that it wasn't given to somebody else who'd have to spend the whole session figuring out the mechanics of 15 separate superpowers and potentially dying because of it. And because he thinks its the coolest one and he wanted it (lol)

All around there's tons of fun details and stuff in this episode of the podcast and absolutely everybody should listen to it all the way through.

[sabertoothwalrus]

appreciation post for the second half of dungeon meshi where senshi clearly starts treating chilchuck more like an adult. and also how the two of them start looking incredibly married

[liloinkoink]

one thing i think people get wrong about Martyn in the life series is he really isn’t loyal

like yeah, we all know him as the Hand, following the Red King as far as their shared grave, but that is… truly the outlier and not the norm with him

i mean, let’s take a brief look at other seasons. i can’t speak to Secret Life, as it came out when i was incredibly busy and i haven’t yet had time to watch it, but what about the others?

he won Limited Life because he’s a chronic traitor! he betrayed Scott, his ally for the whole season, so that he could win, and said he’d been planning it / wanting to do it the whole session. spent a whole season protecting and helping Scott, and laughed in his face to betray as soon as he saw a shot to do so

Double Life was a whole mess of Martyn and weird loyalties. just one example: he spent all of the first session hanging out with Pearl in favor of even looking for either of their soulmates, with no regard for how he’d been putting his soulmate in danger. when their soulmates dumped them due to being ignored all session and stormed off, he dumped Pearl just because. one session in and he’s betrayed both his soulmate and his day one alliance!

Last Life he teamed with the Southlanders and then made the Shadow Alliance in secret, so he was on two teams and never truly committed to either. he tried to kill Grian basically immediately when he got boogeyman, for example, and in the final fight he tried to lure Ren to himself by offering to team and then tried to blow Ren up

of course, i’m simplifying and ignoring a lot. he doesn’t earn the loyal reputation for nothing. he does a lot of things to help his teammates, like giving a life to Ren in Last Life, trying all season to win Cleo over for all of Double Life, or working to protect Scott for all of Limited Life. it’s not like Martyn doesn’t play the part of a loyal friend well, but, well.

the thing about Martyn is that he’s selfish. he’s basically always going to prioritize his own survival over anything else. he’s never going to roll over and die, especially not for another person. he’s good at looking loyal, because having allies will help you survive, and he knows making outright enemies is a bad idea. he knows he can’t make it obvious he’s a traitor, because then he’ll certainly be killed. but, when it comes down to the wire, he will generally bail at the last minute to save his own skin rather than protecting the people around him. when his loyalty is tested, nine times out of ten, he will not only fail, but do so completely without remorse

it doesnt take a lot to become Martyn’s ally, and once you’ve got a foot in the door, he will take his allegiances seriously (at least, to a point). but it takes effort to really earn Martyn’s trust. and, even when it looks like you have, there’s no guarantee he won’t yank the rug out from under you if he decides having you alive is more detrimental to his survival than seeing you dead

and yes, you can especially see all of this in Third Life. Martyn was absolutely not instantly ride or die for Ren—for a lot of the earlier episodes, he won’t say he’s on Ren’s team or that he lives at Ren’s base, and often tells other players he’s simply Ren’s employee rather than teammate and that he’s wandering or homeless. he trusts Ren so little due to Ren’s inability to keep a secret or stand up for himself that even Ren acknowledges in the third session that Martyn is probably going to leave him and find someone else. Martyn’s loyalty had to be earned, and it very nearly wasn’t. if Ren had taken a session more to grow a spine, Martyn probably would have left

but Ren became an ally that Martyn could rely on, who could stand up for himself and keep secrets. it became more beneficial to Martyn’s survival to have Ren around, so he stayed with Ren for the rest of the season, and committed hard to their kingdom. Ren earns Martyn’s trust by becoming a more dependable ally, and because of that, Ren earns Martyn’s loyalty…. probably

(half related, bc i want it in the post and i don’t know where to put it: after the execution, two sessions after Ren officially earns Martyn’s loyalty, Ren admits to being genuinely convinced Martyn was going to take him out of the series as soon as Ren gave him the chance!)

because yes, even here, even after Ren earns his trust and Ren trusts Martyn to execute him and they become King and Hand, Martyn was okay with killing Ren to save himself. Martyn has said he was going to betray Ren in the final session of Third Life. his entire plan was that when he and Ren hit the final 5, he was going to kill Ren. end Red Winter, usher in Red Spring. even the most loyal version of Martyn was a traitor!

now, you can decide for yourself if you believe he could have actually gone through with this—he and Ren were 6th and 7th out of the game, after all. maybe he wouldn’t have been able to steel himself. maybe his loyalty would have, for once, been too strong to kill Ren.

but it’s very possible that even the most loyal version of Martyn—the version of Martyn who has created this “loyal” image of Martyn in fanon—was only loyal because he died too soon to show his true colors

[ironinkpen]

The dynamic in Rise between the rest of the team and Leo is. so fucking funny. Because like you've got these three extremely talented individuals who all seem like perfectly reasonable people at first glance, right, but then if you squint hard enough you realize they're actually all batshit insane (affectionate) and the clown boy standing behind them is secretly their common sense.

Clown boy will occasionally put himself and the others in danger to Prove Himself or Prove Someone Wrong (see Minotaur Maze and the movie) but like otherwise... i think people forget Leo's overwhelmingly the voice of reason in most situations?

Raph, Mikey, and Donnie are all incredibly powerful boys with very specific skill sets. They are also, as a direct result of this, the WORST decision-makers on god's green earth lmao. When presented with a problem, Raph will smash, Donnie will blow shit up, and Mikey will razzmatazz. They will all run straight toward death with the same oblivious enthusiasm of a dog about to run straight into a screen door. None of them realize this and all of them think they are Extremely Good At Problem-Solving.

And the guy cursed with the common sense to realize this is literally the LAST person anyone would expect.

When you look closely, the entirety of Rise is actually a chronicle of Leo trying to find new and creative ways to keep this team of superpowered fools alive while simultaneously white-knuckling his Cool Fun Guy persona so the others don't realize he's secretly the Boring Responsible One. Haha, you know what would be Cool and Fun, guys? Not going after the Spine Breaking Bandit lol. Getting home before the sun goes up lol. Evacuating that civilian lol. Not telling the guy dangling me off a roof "you won't, no balls" lol.

The sacred struggle of every iteration of Leonardo is thanklessly wrangling the most trigger-happy siblings in the world, and Rise Leo has not escaped it. He just does an occasional shenanigan to avoid detection and his brothers fall for it every time.

[solargeist]

scar's first 3rd life death being the fault of grian and martyn goofing around

[fadelsburger]

Sorry. You're not mad at me, are you? Why would I? I already knew that. What? Of course I knew. You only pretended to like it to get close to me, but you're not into it. You're more into pop rock music.

THE HEART KILLERS (2024-2025) เขาจ้างให้ผมจีบนักฆ่า dir. Jojo Tichakorn Phukhaotong

[fr-likes-chocolate]

Attempt of the lifers as QSMP eggs! (Mumbo was so fucking hard)

[hottubsandwiches]

should probably come up with an actual design for this guy

[yooboobies]

his laugh is everything (4/?)

{cr. 0613data, dwellingsouls}

[yashley]

exu calamity rewatch: nydas v. loquatius (lou v. sam) (bonus travis:)

[kelin-is-writing]

Sorry guys, can’t hear anyone over the huge heart-eyes I have for this man right here 😍🤍

[shirozora-draws]

mustard on the beat, ho- MUSTAAAAAAAAAAAAARD Someone make it stop, make it fucking stop. I spent all week hyping myself up to gather up all my work sketches like a scrapbook and clean it all up to post here, and then Kendrick had to surprise drop on a Friday morning and ruin my work day and my headspace all weekend long.

Anyway, here's a dangerous dreams sketch dump.

It's been a long quiet, but RL had taken such a fucking toll that I had a real hard time finding the fucks to get creative. Who knows how much this past US presidential election will fuck up the entire rest of my life, but I'll take solace in finding community and in the little things and in Andor Season 2 and in the telling of The Stars.

Now that I got this out of the way, guess it's time to go fucking write some fucking words.

[shima-draws]

I'm rewatching GF since the whole world seems to be into it right now (thank you Alex and the Book of Bill) and AGHHH I FORGOR about the body swap episode when the twins find the secret room and Stan picks up Ford's glasses and later we see him sitting on the couch looking at them wistfully...

Shut up shut UP that's NOT okay

[thebrainrotsreal]

When I tell you I am still so speechless over this episode.

When I tell you I am thinking about Mark who we know really ingrained Nolan's speech back in s1, only see that Nolan looks like he meant every word. That Mark was replaceable, his mother was just a pet. When I tell you I'm constantly thinking about Mark, who only saw his father cry over a planet he's only known for months, and not the family he's had for years. When I tell you I'm thinking about Mark finally calling Nolan 'dad' again only to be immediately choked and yelled at. When I think about the parallels of s1's fight and this one.

[divineandmajesticinone]

CENTURY OF LOVE (2024) I 1.04 "Vee is the fox that conceils himself in Ms. Wad's fate. Like the nine-tailed fox that possessed the consort Daji."