#and chronos is HELLA manipulative

[bluebellplayinggames]

hades 2 is extremely funny if you think about it from chronos' perspective. like imagine. for YEARS you've been getting things done your way. you and your army have been holding strong against the olympians, and your son who caused so much trouble before, along with his family, are in your hold and have been since the beginning. you have control of the underworld, and of the house of hades, and you're reaching for olympus, sure that too, will be under your control soon enough

then. SUDDENLY. your captive son's missing daughter turns up out of nowhere. initially, she's no threat. can't even get past her own mentor, most likely. then, she quickly gets stronger. she learns, and the olympians support her unconditionally. she starts tearing through the underworld, escaping every trap you've laid, invading your house which was supposed to be impossible for everyone else except for the daughter of hades who still lives and who escaped your clutches as a mere infant.

suddenly you're left scrambling because this is not according to plan. she's not supposed to be here, nevermind the one person who poses a threat to your progress. she's like half your height and barely a full witch, but still.

[steve0discusses]

Yugioh S4 Ep 26: What the Hell is Glued to Valon’s Ass?

Well guys.

I should preface--since it’s effecting the voice I have in these recaps quit a bit--I’m still in quarantine and losing my entire mind. So, I took a break from making a whole lot of content because I actually can’t judge if anything I make is good or funny right now. I think it’s a weird consequence of making just so many decisions navigating things I won’t go into. tl;dr, It’s been ridiculous.

And so I’ve only really been on twitter, and it just so happens, that there’s been a bunch of really insane and juicy art fights going on that have kind of ramped up in insanity the farther LA goes into the red, (since most of art twitter lives in LA since art twitter is elitist as hell, which was it’s own very spicy art fight), but one of the most recent ones was...I kid you not...about if it was possible to make cannibalism ethical...and I threw my Wacom tablet out of the freakin window was like...y’all. I’m done.

I’m done!

I DON’T KNOW HOW ART TWITTER WORKS. At all. I don’t know what the people want!

And I was like, I need to look at something that came out before this epidemic. I just need this and so we’re back to Yugioh. I have no idea if this post is any good, because again I can’t judge my own abilities anymore, and I probably sound very very salty, and whatever, but at least I’m not talking about freakin cannibalism in the middle of art twitter. At least I got out of that mess, amiright?

I can’t get worse than cannibalism. I can’t get worse than certain people at the top rungs of art twitter that are absolutely going to eat somebody at some point in their life and I don’t really want to be a part of that club nooooo thank you.

Like Yugioh is pretty effed up, and I will eat these words (just the words) but I’m pretty sure we’re not going to venture into cannibalism.

So anyways, I had to read my own recaps to catch up with what is even happening, and so for those that forgot, like me--Everyone is sort of standing in the middle of the road in San Fransisco and there’s a bunch of orcs everywhere.

Seto is still in denial. Maybe he just assumed Roland threw out a bunch of hologram projectors all over San Fransisco and so there’s just...monsters everywhere? I mean how prevalent is his hologram trash?

We barely even have parking, why would we have hologram projectors everywhere, Seto? San Fransisco barely has HOUSING. Even when Google Glass was a thing, we only whipped those bastards out at parties for the gram. They weren’t actually USED.

Somewhere in like...the grossest park in SF, (like there’s a light pole that’s tipped over? There’s weeds everywhere? No playground equipment? What is this?) Valon and Joey are...throwing cards at eachother. Not much to say about this interaction other than Valon is going to be in a robot suit the entire time, and no you did not miss anything, I just don’t go over the cards here, and...that’s his card schtick--he gets in a robot suit and punches you in the balls. That’s it.

(read more under the cut)

Speaking of getting punched directly in the balls, Mai is still on the hunt to murder Joey Wheeler, because that’s how she’s decided to work through her trauma. Just kill a completely unrelated person to the one who actually gave her the trauma in the first place. Sounds like American politics in 2020.

I will say, it is nice that we have a consequence to the Marik season and a little more depth into Mai, I just wish we had more of an explanation of how she jumped this far other than “I dunno, man, Orichalcos.”

Anyway, she sees the Bat signal and was like “Valon, you had one job”

Bro brings up that Mai seems hella jacked now and like...yeah...It has to be a real workout to do a bunch of wheelies all day on a heavy motorcycle. Go for it, girl.

Valon’s robot suit has robot vision, by the way, and it’s extremely 00′s UI.

mmmm just like Samus Aran.

Can’t have a Yugioh show without beating up your protagonists for a good while. At this point in the series, just comparing trauma of one character to another, you’d think Joey would be the one with trauma that makes him murderous as hell. Instead, he’s remarkably one of the most stable people here. Especially compared to Valon, who is this strange hypocritical broken record of “you gotta let Mai make up her own mind” while doing his very best to manipulate Mai.

If they had both left eachother alone, then Mai would have been way more likely to come back to her senses, just throwing that out there. Valon was a guy who latched on too much, and Joey was the guy who didn’t latch on at all--she needed a good in-between guy. A good in-between guy over the age of 21. It’s a shame that this type of guy does not exist on this show for her to hang out with. 

So Valon flashes back to the moments directly after he introduced Mai to his dad (Dartz) and Mai got possessed with Oricalchos powers.

After Mai refuses to join the team, she joins the team and directly kills Pegasus. To which, she was like “Oh yeah, I don’t actually have any personal agenda against this bastard. He’s just some guy who kills other people, this is just normal vigilante work.”

And so Joey decides he should share flashbacks, since that’s what we’re doing now, and we get a slight retelling of this scene in S1.

In this retelling it’s different because the hanky was actually holding the money card. This was not how it originally went, the card was given separately--but they had to do SOMETHING to make that hanky make some sort of sense, so it...has a card now.

That’s kind of the Yugioh solution to every problem, actually--just put a card on it.

(EDITORS NOTE: OK so apparently, actually-turns out the hanky DID contain a card originally in S1 but I just hella forgot--and normally I’d change this to reflect that but like my mind is full of quarantine spaghetti, so I’ll just leave it as is for posterity because I don’t feel like rewriting anything.)

What IS it though?

Don’t think about it too much, but what IS that?

On the other end of town, Seto remembered that if he spends too much time with these people, they might accidentally mistake it for friendship.

So...Seto Kaiba joined them so he could take back Kaiba Corp with the team, and then just...forgot I, guess. Maybe he got the munchies. A shame to be Kaiba, San Fransisco has NOTHING open past 11 PM except for bars. It’s not really like New York, SF sleeps really freakin good.

So now that Kaiba’s gone, Rebecca has to guess his password.

She’s supposed to be some top tier hacker but she doesn’t have a program to test these permutations for her? Whatever, girl.

And then, out of no, where Tristan had a panic attack.

Mom friends have to do that some times, they have to carry the guilt of their stupid children. But TBH, I kind of forgot that Tristan exists so it caught me off-guard.

Hey I kid you not, I went back to art twitter for a hot second, and there’s this person I follow who is very popular because they’ve drawn this one ship for I want to say 20 years--and they generally make very pretty art. And they recently drew their shipping pair on a set of matching toilets--facing eachother without any bathroom stalls--and they’re just...poopin while looking at eachother. I just...

What Is Going On With Art Twitter!?!?

I need to retire!!!

I don’t understand anything at all going on outside my bedroom, y’all.

I mean I guess I fell for it, I did click the image to see it in full--just in case it WASN’T a picture of them pooping but...no....that’s just what it is.

I need to delete my twitter account.

Anyway, stay safe out there, it’s a mess.

here’s the link to read these in chrono order if you’re bored and you just don’t want to go outside today, I get, I’ve been there, been doing that.

[starridge]

I absolutely adore your oc's???? Could you give us more information on them please??

sdfs wow tHANK YOU alright i’m gonna sound like a NERD here but

Celeste, Chronos, Dimitri, and Des are all,,, for lack of a better word, witches. Celeste is an Innate Witch, which is why she’s got three eyes (Innate Witches have extra eyes, usually one or two), but she can hide her third eye with a moon pendant she wears!. She’s got space magic ooo. She’s a potionmaker’s apprentice, and it’s pretty much a childish bitch. Her humor boils down to like, cards against humanity humor. Crude, immature, kinda random, lots of dick jokes.

Chronos is a Gem Witch, the other kind of witch meaning he gets his power from a gemstone. He’s got time magic (wow never coulda guessed with a name like Chronos huh?). He’s a member of p much a high council and is kind of a lower-level aristocrat. He was also a professor at a university for a while. He, too, is an asshole, but in the sense that he’s very mature and doesn’t like to waste time on bullshit. Very to-the-point but also 100% done with everything all the time. And so he really hates Celeste. Like, a lot.

Dimitri is a Gem Witch, too, and has dimensional/reality magic (I really don’t have a good word to describe it yet). He’s a prince, and, surprise, hE’S AN ASSHOLE, TOO. He’s really short-tempered and in-the-moment, doesn’t like to think things through and is very easily controlled by his emotions. He’s A N G E R Y.

Des is a Gem Witch and one of Dimitri’s knights. They’ve got reeeally weak earth magic, though, so they prefer regular ol’ hand-to-hand combat over magic. They’re sweet but also sly. Kinda manipulative but out of good intent. But they’re also super determined and a good fighter.

WYNNIE AND AZALEA ARE JUST SWEET LITTLE GIRLFRIENDS. Azalea is a total sweetheart, hella shy. She’s lowkey a demon but like c’mon look at her she wouldn’t even hurt a fly. Ever. She’d probably cry if she thought she stepped on an ant. She runs a little tea shop with Wynnie. Wynnie is a total cutie, too, but she’s a lot less shy. A total extrovert and a big ol’ goof. She knows how to make Azalea laugh, and totally 100% will stand up for her girlfriend and fight you without question. Put up your dukes the deer girl will fight. 

[steve0discusses]

Yugio S3 Ep 26: Marik’s Low Speed Escape From the Museum

This episode is quite short and contains about two things 1.) this weird 4-way duel that has little bearing on anything except who gets to play Marik and get super cursed first and 2.) flashbacks.

I am so thankful for flashbacks, because this was mostly watching Kaiba doing his damnedest to manipulate Joey Wheeler and Yugi into not working with eachother so that way Joey would lose and go up against Marik when Joey Wheeler has already decided he was going to go up against Marik.

It was very catty. Kaiba at his cattiest. He really thought he was breaking up this friendship of two people who were once chained by the ankles to an anchor when they’re like “no, Kaiba, you don’t get it. Kaiba, this is totally unnecessary, Kaiba. Kaiba, calm down.”

To be fair to Seto Kaiba, he probably absolutely believes that this is what Yugi is going to do before their Senior Year of High School is over. Kaiba kind of lives in a Game of Thrones situation in his head when in reality...he’s in high school playing cards.

(read more under the cut)

We also get a flashback of this show desperately trying to prove to us that they had planned JoeyxMai this whole time. I’m starting to realize this is just how they write most romances on this show, by inserting flashbacks instead of actually showing any romance in the current timeline.

And by romance, I mean aggressive friendship because yes that age gap is...still there. My bro was like “I dunno if they’re even still in High School at this point. I think they wrote them out of High School without telling us” but like, until they show me directly that they have graduated, then I’m just gonna still believe they’re in high school. Except Seto who is like both 18 and 16 and a college graduate at 14 or just never graduated the 9th grade depending on who you’re talking to. Seto will be our outlier of “he’s in class but don’t ask.”

Anyway, lets go hang out with Ishizu to see what happened when Marik decided to pay her a visit at the museum. This occurred directly after she handed over her God card to Seto Kaiba.

Yes, she gave her God card to Seto Kaiba, and then, once he was out the door, decided to lock herself in a vault, just so she could spook her little brother’s cultists. This family and their weird pranks.

But here’s the thing I just realized that I can’t shake. I know it’s a kid’s show so none of this will matter, but let me go a little Ace Attorney on us here and just throw out a very quick “objection!” to the floor because...there’s some continuity issues.

+++++++++++++++BORKED TIMELINE RANT FEEL FREE TO SKIP ++++++++++

(Shocking on this show that has Seto Kaiba’s timeline, that there’d be some continuity issues, but youknow...now we have new one.)

If she JUST gave that card to Seto Kaiba, and she did not leave Japan from the time that she gave Seto the card and the time the tourney started (since this museum show I assume has been in Japan this entire time), then why is Marik here?

Marik came here on a boat in the middle of S2, he made a big fuss about it, but apparently he was already here just weeks earlier. He was already in Japan, then got back on his boat, and just sailed around in the Pacific for a spell before heading back?

Did he just come here to get these cards and then also drop off Bandit Keith???? Except...Bandit Keith was...before Ishizu showed up in the timeline of this show.

Or, and this is might be even more confusing, what if this is happening in Egypt, and it’s a completely different museum, and Ishizu just left Japan at some point to stand in a vault until her brother showed up,and then got back on a plane back to Japan just in time to crash Yugi’s date?

And here’s the thing, lets just pull out that borked timeline. The Ishtar timeline, from the perspective of the Isthars, lets do this.

1. Marik feels like going on a really exotic yachting trip with his cultist buddies and decides to check out Pegasus’ Island off the coast of America(?) While there, he unexpectedly comes across Bandit Keith, who (and this must have been really shocking to every single cultist there who is used to living underground) is violently shot out of a strange slip n’ slide mechanism, that pops him out of a cliff-face and vaults him directly into the ocean. Curious, Marik picks the weird Trash American out of the sea, and he finds out that Bandit Keith knows Yugi, but instead of invading Pegasus’ island where Yugi was currently residing, Marik decides to go allllll the way to Japan (Which is crazy because Bandit Keith did not know what part of Japan Yugi lived in. Japan is freakin huge and made up of several islands.)

2. Since Marik wanted to get to Yugi ASAP, he tosses Bandit Keith onto the coast of Domino in order to abduct Yugi on his way to soccer practice. We can assume this happened...like a few weeks later (I really am not sure how fast his party yacht moves, but like...considering we also don't know where Pegasus’ island is (Maybe like the coast between California and Mexico?????) I can never say.) At this point, Marik probably just peaced out and went to Guam to hang out 20 leagues away from where Noah was currently plotting his revenge.

3. While Yugi is recovering from 3rd degree burns form the warehouse fire, and during which time, Yugi’s doctors were also trying to figure out how the hell to get Yugi to let go of the goddamn golden puzzle that remained in his hands from the moment Yugi passed out to the moment Yugi woke up in the hospital, Ishizu lands in Japan via a plane (although the English version erroneously says she lands in America, because for a little while they wanted to pretend that this entire show takes place in the US.) She unpacks her cargo, sets up a museum exhibit, and then on the news/psychic phone call, invites Seto Kaiba over so she can give a God Card to Seto Kaiba. I assume al that happened the very evening that the museum show opened. Like maybe this happens over the course of maybe a week or so from when Marik left Japan after dropping off Bandit Keith?

4. Shortly after (within the amount of time it takes Kaiba to get the idea to do the tourney and the time to hastily throw it together (which could not have been long, this tourney is a complete disaster)) Marik crashes Ishizu’s museum in.......Japan? Japan or Egypt. Something like that. Considering he wants to go where the God Cards are, he’d probably go to the exhibit that also has the giant God Card tablet that will curse everyone that looks at it. So...probably Japan. However, there are palm trees here, and so maybe it’s Egypt? I don’t know. After that doesn’t work out, he peaces out yet again, and then gets back on his boat for the second time, and goes straight back to Guam or wherever.

5. A few days later, Ishizu crashes Yugi’s and Tea’s date. (and if she has been in Egypt spooking Marik in a vault, this means she had to get off of a plane in order to make it in time to spook this date as well on the other side of the world) She tells Yugi about the tourney because for some reason, Kaiba has invited everyone with invites but just...didn’t send an invite to Yugi for some reason although Yugi is the only reason he’s throwing this tourney. Then she shows Yugi the cursed God Card tablet and then peaces out so she can join Kaiba’s tourney and play cards peacefully while everyone else was getting attacked by cultists.

6. About a few days later into the tourney...Marik arrives in Japan and we act as if this is the first time he ever has and it’s with a MUCH better motorcycle, but we’ll get to that motorcycle later.

It’s not as bad as the Kaiba timeline--I can’t even put the Kaiba timeline in a consecutive order, but mm. This brother sister team realllly likes to travel across the entire world and back within the span of a couple of months, huh?

++++++++OK THAT’S ENOUGH ABOUT THAT TIMELINE, BACK TO THE SHOW+++++++++++

I am so weirded out that Marik doesn’t wear like anything under his cloak. Like nothing. It’s just a gross sweaty cloak and that’s it...and like I have NO idea if he has pants on, they never scroll down. I mean, I assume he has matching purple pants...or probably cargoes, but...does he? Or does he just wear that cloak over a pair of golden boxers?

Also, why is he wearing golden arm bands with a long sleeved cloak? It’s because he knows he’s gonna take that cloak off at EVERY opportunity, right? Like that’s the only reason you would bother with the arm cuffs?

And then we get the most unexpected motorcycle in history.

So like...remember how Marik was hella into Motorcycles? Remember how it was really cool hot rods that made him start towards the evil side in the first place? Think about the coolest motorcycles you know and then...admire this one

This motorcycle that moved so slowly that the cultists casually jogged behind him like it was a parade or something. Like, did he steal the motorcycle from this museum collection?

Anyway, bro let me know that apparently in the Japanese version she’s got armed guards with guns, but they were edited out. Funny thing is, bro also mentioned that since Marik can just mind control people, it makes more sense that Ishizu wouldn’t bring an armed militia with her. I gotta agree, this is the one instance where the English version actually works better.

Although that motorcycle though. Wow. It’s like out of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

Marik just stuffed himself into that baby side car, making vroom vroom noises with his mouth as he glides away at a smooth 10 mph.

This is our serial murderer that killed Bakura, folks. It was this guy.

Kinda wish he kept the side car this entire time, that would have been a treat throughout S2.

Anyway, here’s a link to read all the recaps from Ep1 S1 in chrono order.