#Just in general. He deserved better

[rocketbirdie]

it looks and sounds just like you, but,

[elodieunderglass]

(Killie the jockey OC and his coworkers)

(Killie is absurdly strong! but also - this is important, listen up, Rossa - the instructions are written on the cap)

(As a dual champion flat and jump jockey, Killie is capable of opening jars and also immune to the lure of the single grape)

[bobsyauncle]

Last episode destroyed me. Something something the feeling of intergenerational trauma and trying to stop the cycle of pain but only being able to prevent it as best you can- with more violence and pain- due to the societal and systemic pressures that force you to continue the cycle, ultimately only allowing for the most peaceful option to prevail- the option that caused the most personal sacrifice :(

[wilting-fl0wer]

The only correct form of caltam, as far as i am concerned

[mysticalcats]

once again spreading my alonzostrap propaganda

[lightholdcr]

never considered giving verso a verse where he has a reasonably normal one but he is a sentimental softie romantic and a LOVER and sometimes i think he can have that as a little treat. despite it all (and despite his 400 crimes)

[theswedishpajas]

I don’t think I ever posted this but he’s here now about a week late 🦇✨✨✨

[gloriousburden]

i think they should make a movie where the writers actually like thor and loki

[saturdaymorningcartoonz]

Btw im like full on blocking people who defend the live action Lilo and stitch lol

[eluminium]

an unfriendly reminder that the name "Skranchers" for the Skizz, Tango, and Jimmy trio is actually an awful fucking name! And maybe we should come up with something original instead of gluing Skizz's name onto the Ranchers name like he's just an afterthought! Calling it "Skranchers" doesn't fix the problem of people throwing Skizz out of his own series that he started with Tango! We could call them, idk, Crazy Chefs? Plate Up Pals? Goodfellas as a reference to the mafia "Jimmy Jiggles" jokes and how restaurants can be fronts for mob activity? the classic STJ, or TSJ, or JST, or whatever combo similar to ZITS, TIES, and JITS? JUST. SOMETHING. THAT ISN'T. SKRANCHERS. WHAT THE FUCKING IS A SKRANCHERS.

[phoenixcatch7]

Just finished oracle of ages!!! Good game, good game. I have Thoughts.

I actually really enjoyed the story and characters! I figured going into the oracle games that it'd be a simple, cliché story, not much nuance or depth, and with Seasons that's basically what I got: din gets fridged in a crystal at the start of the game -> go get her -> you need a set of maguffins to do so -> fight big monster.

Admittedly it was the first game, which meant less story, but even if I hadn't linked (heh) the games for extra end game content Ages just did so much more.

Unlike din, naryu has someone else willing to help her. Ralph (the twinkiest twink to ever twink) was a young man who was her devoted friend (there was a weird crush triangle thing going on with him, Link and naryu, I always felt like I was missing subtext) and, spoilers for a 20yo game?? I guess?

He was the dethroned descendant of the ancient queen Ami. His family definitely still have big money though. He was pretty clearly supposed to be a comic relief character with a twist, but I ended up really liking him! He was over enthusiastic and over confident, but not unintelligent, a decent swordsman (I think) who was incredibly loyal to his friends and held some deep rooted responsibility for the people his family used to rule. Kind, determined, good with kids and people in general, he was terrified but willing to sacrifice his very existence to save the people.

The world building was also great! I don't think I've ever played a zelda game without gorons, but hylians were in short supply. To be expected outside of hyrule, I guess? Anyway, there were also lizard people on an island (tokay!) whose entire deal was.. A bit outdated? Rude, brazen and aggressive to outsiders, they lived in crude huts, worshipped things they didn't quite understand and were generally the old Hollywood stereotype of an isolated jungle tribe.

There was also, like, zora racism? There's a zora village underwater, and one of them was like 'us sea zora are nothing like those river zora 😒' which handily solved both my question of if the river/ocean zora divide was canon or fanon and the relationships between the two. Are they even the same species?? It just makes the rito even weirder but hey lmao. In all honesty I was pretty sick of the river zora at that point too, I swear there were two of them popping up in every screen that had even a sliver of water deeper than the knees and they CONSTANTLY shot fireballs istg they were such a pain. They were literally everywhere and so hard to kill.

On the plus side mermaid suit ^u^!! A dungeon item (the mermaids cave), the item had a desc like 'the skin of the mythical beast' which raised SO many more questions than it answered. The zora were delighted to see a young mermaid! The use of 'maid' implied either a) the zora all thought link was a girl and he didn't correct them (eyo genderqueer androgeny) b) the zora don't subscribe to gender the way humans do (eyo genderqueer androgeny) or c) all fish people look like mermaids regardless of their specific gender (eyo genderqueer androgeny). It literally could have been all three who knows. Maybe one day we'll actually meet a mermaid in zelda.

Also, there's a mini game in Seasons, which I played first, the subrosian dance. It's a pretty popular part of their culture, it's got music, it's got professional dancers. In Ages, you find the gorons doing the exact same dance! Rosa, a subrosian performer you meet in Seasons, is also there, saying her people's dance is better (tbf it is), but if you go to the past you'll find the gorons actually invented the dance first, as part of their love of games and entertainment, and you can talk to two subrosians who are talking about bringing the dance home! It's so interesting to see little details like this, where the travelling subrosians visited their fellow cave dweller lava eating people centuries ago, brought it back home where it exploded in popularity and centuries later became refined as a whole folk dance with spinning and everything, with the people forgetting where it came from, where the gorons keep their dance exactly the same (having to do a rhythm game without rhythm is hard).

Actually, there was so much political fantasy drama going on in the past?? Like, you've got the childless queen taking care of her people, a budding village and a few more settlements across the kingdom. Early in her reign she tried to build a tower to act as a beacon to her fiancé lost at sea, which is a romance story all on its own, but it was cut short (maybe because of funding?). Centuries in the future, it's just ruins. You've got people living on an ACTIVE VOLCANO starting a symmetry cult around a artifact called 'tuni nut' which, presumably, stabilises the volcano? And it's entirely cut off from the outside world. The goron elder is crushed under rocks and their economy is failing. The zora king got poisoned and he's about to die without an heir because a witch turned the fairy queen into an octorock, but the man in charge of the only cure refuses to hand it over until someone passes his tests.

Most of it is solved relatively easily by link and a copious amount of time travel, but the thing with the ruling queen only gets worse. When the evil witch invades the kingdom, she possesses the oracle of ages, naryu (who's a little implied to be the Actual Creation Goddess Naryu reincarnated) and travels back to the past to bring about an age of despair in the present. She does this by slipping into the royal court and befriending the queen as a serving girl, rising up the ranks to become her closest advisor and corrupting her (pretty sure mind control magic is used a li'l). She convinces her to restart the black tower project, pouring all of her and the towns resources into it - forcibly conscripting every able bodied worker and working them to the bone, all while monsters start to circle the tower. With all the fear and resentment, it quickly becomes a beacon of dark energy, a perfect focal point to perform black magics.

Link (and Ralph) end up in the past and get hauled in front of the queen, with possessed naryu at her side, who basically jeers at them and ensures the queen won't listen to their untrustworthy lies. The townsfolk are getting increasingly stressed as their village fills with rubble and their men are worked to the point of collapse. Armed guards start to appear to keep the workers under control. Eventually, Ralph uncovers a hole in the guard rotation, and he and link sneak into the palace through a secret entrance Ralph oh so casually knows about. Link and naryu fight, but with stupendous timing the queen walks in to see naryu collapsed on the floor, Link standing over her with a sword. She calls for the guards, but before anyone can react, the witch, banished form her first vessel, leaps into the queen herself instead. Ralph shoves past the arriving guards and into naryus arms, while link moves in from of them. The queen orders the guards to attack, but naryu, reawakened, pulls them back to the present in the nick of time. In the present, the black tower is magically growing, reaching higher and higher into the sky, terrifying the people of the city.

Then! Ralph, who at this point is suspiciously invested now his actual goal is completed and naryu is safe, vows to go back into time again, away from naryu, to live under the now evil queen and bring protection and comfort to the villagers as a direct act of resistance, because the witch is feeding on their sorrow to power an unknown ritual (link knows. Link, canonically, has told nobody). So this teen in fancy robes and cape goes back to the oppressed, poverty stricken town under the thumb if someone who wants him dead and lives there for weeks if not months dedicating himself to supporting the village and bringing people's hopes and spirits back up, presumably while living out of someone else's wooden hut. In the middle of a literal depression inducing miasma that's sapping everyone's joy and will to live.

That just. Takes insane strength of character. That's a feat of pure, distilled, compassion as anarchy.

Link's off bouncing between past and present doing dungeons and solving easier issues through either sword or magic item, but Ralph is out here doing the long hard slog for little reward.

Link finally returns to the black tower completed, affecting even the people of the present, and, preparations complete, rushes to the past. Ralph is nowhere be seen. Talking to the villagers reveals several have a crush on him, but an old man saw him running for the tower, sword drawn. There's a man pacing by the entrance, who saw the kid run in, tried to stop him. He said Ralph said that he no longer cared what happened to him. That the man realised that Ralph had quietly succumbed to the same curse of despair they all were under. Link fights his way up to the top of the tower, where Ralph confronts the evil queen, sword at her heart, but every step she takes into it, he steps back. The witch laughs. She asks him if he's really willing to write himself out of existence - being the queens descendant, and all. Ralph leaps back, into links chest. He's shaking and stuttering, but he lunges, and is knocked out in one blow. The queen now asks link the same question: is he willing to erase Ralph? If he strikes her, kills her, the queen will die, childless, and he will never live. She leaves, and link rushes to Ralph. He's awake but unresponsive, defeated. With a heavy heart, Link leaves him to chase the queen. It's naryu who finds him, brings him out of the tower.

When the witch is defeated, the curse is lifted, and Ralph is once more energetic and kind. He's a little quieter now, though, sticking close to naryu. For all he was a loud and headstrong kid, I gotta say I was very impressed.

He would have made a good king.

[lord-squiggletits]

Honestly it annoys me that pride, ambition, and generally having a big ego are always villainous/evil-coded personality traits because personally I think if you genuinely are a prodigy at what you do you are 100% within your rights, perhaps even deserving, of flaunting your skills and being proud of the fact you can do something that only a small fraction of other people can do. Is it even ego at that point if you genuinely are as good at your field/skill as you say you are? Are people not aware that becoming a prodigy at something is something that takes lifelong sacrifice and practice sometimes to the point of giving up on having a normal life, relationships, etc even potentially destroying your own health???? God I fucking hate how pride in your own skills and ambition are so villain coded all the time. As if it's evil to want to be good at something and be recognized for what you rightfully earned

[peck2neck]

YES i miss him NO i am not normal about it

[marchofthewitchhunters]

if boqtok has a million haters, then i am one of them. if boqtok has ten haters, then i am one of them. if boqtok has only one hater then that is me. if boqtok has no haters, then that means i am no longer on earth. if the world loves boqtok, then i am against the world.

[pyrosomatic-metamorphosis]

HUGE probs to cc!forever btw i thought he added the furniture thing as a joke option to like- legitimately get under q!bad's skin to give cc!bad an excuse to give his cubito more problems. but no apparently his chat were just instigators and made that suggestion to him 😭

i'm so impressed by how he got blindsided by a Full Lore Mode angry q!bad and kept his cool, and worked to communicate, and admitted when qbad had a good idea about the voting (qbad could NEVER), and went and got Cellbit when he realized the language barrier was too much. absolute king shit over there. like here he is trying to legit make the server better on a meta level and gets blindsided by q!bad's lore problems and he rolled with it so so well. he's doing legit such a good job for the server

and this is like- me being a bad fan, and i know it was an accident, but im very grateful to him for how that shook out. every time bad starts to get a little lore moment or something dramatic for his storyline, it fizzles out or gets overtaken by something else. cc!bad has been doing a great job with his storytelling/roleplaying and building up a narrative of feeling unappreciated/like a helping object instead of a person (and i could GUSH about the parallels between qbad and qforever and how they recognized those feelings in each other) but!! the point is that cc!forever did it. even accidentally. he created a catalyst event that could finally get my favourite little cubito off of his rocker (FINALLY), and bad is a good person to get off of his rocker. this is going to be a gorgeous little storyline that i am going to enjoy so so much. forever wanted to do good for the server and the story and by god he has done it

[jrueships]

???? this is so ?? eugh ?? ..what ????