#and its true i hadnt

[ashtondawnpng]

i've been in artist hyperfocus mode for a while and my sib just got me out of it enough to actually go to bed. when did 9 pm turn into 4 am??

[thanatika]

yeah i agree with your point about survival mechanics and i feel the same way about the lack of combat mechanics. "why would an educated city doctor need a weapon" because shit is hitting the fan in every way impossible and pretty much everyone is walking around armed... also why am i supposed to believe the the fact that he's a man of intellect will somehow provide him with food? i don't think anyone is going to be too eager to share food during an outbreak intellectual or not...

+ follow up for the previous ask but actually my favorite quest from the original pathologic is the day 11 bachelor quest that involves shooting down soldiers. i think it really drives the point home about how this random fuckass guy who is supposed to be battling a plague doesn't even have the time to do that anymore because the people in charge are asking completely irrelevant things of him now and he's at a position where he cannot refuse what is being asked of him. like i think it was good storytelling that even as the guy who lowkey wants to deal with the plague and solve its mystery you still have other, more pressing, less interesting and or pleasant tasks to complete

i agree! honestly, i feel this way about the combat mechanics even more than i do about the physical survival (food, health, illness, sleep) mechanics. because sure, i can see how it makes sense for daniil's position of authority to mean that his basic needs are somewhat provided for -- although i don't think it makes more sense than what we got in the original game. i've never seen anyone bring up "isn't it kind of unrealistic that the bachelor isn't given lots of food during a massive food shortage?" as a plothole that needed to be resolved. the townspeople generally don't like him much, and most of the people with power don't either, except for the kains. sure, maybe it's kind of weird that you can go see the kains while broke and on the verge of keeling over from hunger, and they won't do anything to help you, but... the kains are pretty self-centered, and they're so goddamn weird that maybe they forget that you need to eat food to live anyway. and it's half-implied that the powers that be are ultimately giving daniil this role as a convenient way to kill him, so it makes sense that they would put no pressure on the town authorities to keep him alive.

(and honestly, artemy is taken under the olgimsky's auspices as much as the kains take daniil's under theirs! which is to say, selfishly, with ulterior motives that are more important to them than the well-being of their healer, but... the olgimskys are set up as the wealthiest of the 3 families financially, as well as the ones with the most access to food, given their control over the meat industry. so if anything it's "weirder" that artemy isn't more materially provided for, though to be clear i don't think there's an actual plothole there either way.)

but anyway, you could handwave it and say that daniil's position of privilege and authority gives him more perks than he got in the original game, but the amount of fighting you have to do to get through town is... kind of an unavoidable physical reality? like you're given so many sidequests that you often wind up walking around town after dark, and that's when the bandits come out. is the idea that the bandits would be too scared to attack him because he's so important? because that doesn't make a lot of sense to me, and even pathologic 2 establishes that he's seen as a valuable target by the bandits:

and then there's the quests where combat plays a more direct role in the story itself, like getting involved in saving andrey from the firing squad, or killing guards to break artemy out of prison, or the quest where you have to kill var in attempt to stop the arsonists (which i include on the same tier as the other ones because i really like the quest journal entry he has if you complete it where he blames himself for willow's death. it's a good character moment.)

hell, even in pathologic 2 itself, one of the biggest Bachelor Moments is on day 11, when you have that big dramatic convo with him after he killed a soldier for the papers he was delivering. plus one of bad grief's idle dialogues in patho 2 is commentary on the bachelor being "quick on the draw" and that he "already shot someone". like he just straight up is not living a combat-free existence. and overall, combat isn't just a good tool from a mechanical perspective, heightening the stakes and placing pressure on the player (though it is), it's also pretty important for him on a thematic level imo, almost as important as artemy and his "rivers of blood". in patho classic, daniil has this early interaction with the inquisitor:

which, thinking about it from a doylist perspective, was probably the writers' attempt to make it sound more plausible that this random medical researcher from the big city was competent with multiple types of guns. and i appreciate them coming up with that hint of backstory to cover their bases a bit, but with those bases covered, i think the fact that daniil ultimately spends more time shooting people than he does prescribing medicines for them actually does a lot for him thematically? i mean, if his whole thing is that he's this "tempted destroyer", someone who frames his career as a combative battle with death rather than a quest to save people's lives, whose "default" solution is to raze the town with artillery because he's too limited by his rationalist worldview and military upbringing (and bitterness over being manipulated and sabotaged) to come up with a solution that saves the any remaining infected survivors on his own. plus the way that clara frames artemy and daniil as two sides of the same coin in being violent destroyers and killers, who without player intervention will immediately devolve to running around chasing each other down in what's either an insanely dedicated tom and jerry LARP or some really elaborate foreplay. imo, that whole dichotomy (which is pretty core to the game, as the idea of dichotomies are core to it in general) works so much better with the way they're both presented in classic, stalking around with gun/scalpel in hand. hell, not to mention the effect that spending 12 in-game days trying not to starve and getting killed by bandits or guards or worms or soldiers every day would have on the player, and the way it would make them feel about the town and their natural projection of those feelings onto dankovsky, who is a perfectly fitting vessel for them as the avatar actually undergoing those virtual experiences.

ultimately i think they are mainly going this direction out of a desire to do something more creative and original, which is fine... it just seems a bit silly to me that they keep saying "well obviously that doesn't really work for the bachelor's scenario", when, well... even as recently as patho 2 in 2019, they seemed to think it fit his narrative pretty well! i'm also guessing that a lack of combat won't be that bandits are just no longer roaming the streets at night. it sounds more like pathologic 3 is set to be more of a nonlinear experience, where you'll probably fast travel from place to place instead of having to walk across town so much? so you'll be avoiding bandits just in the sense that the gameplay will be avoiding them. i guess i'm hoping that at the very least, there's still the implication of the crunch of not getting enough sleep or food and the threat of being stabbed to death while trying to get through town occurring to dankovsky in the background, even if those mechanics are deemphasized in favor of more macro-level town resource management, time control, and sherlock holmes fruit ninja or whatever the hell they were on about back in 2022 lmao.

[linkito]

Doc in particular being on Scar's side post-rescue gives me warm fuzzies. Because arguably he did see Scar at his worst and had to hold hold him back, he could have been the strongest voice for Scar coming back "wrong". And sure he saw the trap on Grian's wings but he never saw the hunters themselves so he never saw WHY Scar fought so hard.

This thought lead to another thought of oh, oh Impulse and maybe Pearl are really the only ones who saw both, aren't they? Pearl got a little experience with the hunters and then was evac'ed to where Scar was being feral (tho she may not have been focused on that). Impulse got the opposite, got to see Scar like that and then got to see the hunters and why Scar might be like that.

Gem saw the hunters and sure saw Scar fight, but didn't see Scar on the ship by himself. Cub got Scar out early so didn't see the whole fight. Doc and X never left the ship so they didn't see any of the fight.

Also Mama Cleo, we love her. And I mean, not to dig too deep into them, but depending on if you think people are born zombie hybrids or get turned.... Cleo that got turned? Seeing Scar changed by a world into something he wasn't before? Neither of them feeling like that change is something needing to be fixed? 👀

-🎀

I'm a big advocate for friendship between Doc and Scar, in general and especially in hhau. It's so obvious he has a soft spot for Scar. It's hilarious to watch how often he dashes over to hang out with Scar on stream hehe

And yeah! He saw Scar at his worst, without the context of the battle, but it doesn't change how he sees Scar. Doc is the scary one, obviously. Of course. Duh.

And gosh YEAH that's such a great point about Cleo. I might steal that and make it canon, the idea of it being something they were turned into from a human instead of something she was born as.

Becoming what is deemed as a monster, but owning it, embracing it. No longer wishing to be what she used to be. This is who they are!

Something about this creeper-goat-cyborg and a zombie being some of Scar's closest allies during all of this. Reminding the hermits that "monsters" aren't always what they seem.

[genericwizard]

Ok I can't keep it in my drafts this time. enlighten me if you want; why do people think Diluc is like, a good guy?

Let me be clear, I love Diluc, but I also think he's kind of a shithead. I don't think his actions towards Kaeya can ever be construed as reasonable, his decision to seek vengeance alone irresponsible (even if Kaeya encouraged him), and his vigilantism a product of his paternalistic belief that only he knows what's good for Mondstadt (untrue).

Diluc in the present is the man trying to come back from the bad person he has been. But his solution is to force himself to do a job he never thought he'd have and challenge random Fatui factions to a fight so he can torture them in his basement. I think he has the capacity for good in him, and is trying to change, but I don't see why people think that his actions were all totally a good idea and when we say he's "an uncrowned king of Mond" that's not like, frightening.

[popppyfur]

in the entire trilogy I think the first movie is my favorite, but I'm ngl. If neither world tour or band together existed I probably wouldn't even be here

[beatcroc]

been rereading idw to my baby sister and gotta say im a big fan of how direct this is

[theskymahtin]

I can't stop thinking about the Watcher thing it's just so fascinatingly bizarre . like so many components of that decision and how they handled it were so bad and so completely out of left field for how they've operated in the past I am baffled . Someone put these guys under a microscope Stat

[ozziesdisco]

honestly the scene where Ji Ah finds out that Yeon killed her in her past life and her subsequent reactions to it provides so much of an insight into her character and her abandonment issues and her absolute devastation when the first person she opened up to after so long turned out to have been hiding things from her (esp something as big as that)

Like woman lost her parents at the age of nine, nobody believed her when she said that something supernatural sent them away, she was sent to a mental hospital, which she escaped, and then she presumably lived mostly alone with little to no friends and put all her energy in her job and finding her parents again so she wouldn't be alone anymore

and then Yeon turns up and saves her and protects her and cares about her and believes her for the first time- she can't help but open up to him because of all of this because she isn't used to this- she starts out not trusting him, but as time goes along, she slowly starts to get attached

for the first time, she doesn't have to deal with the world on her own- for the first time, she has someone who doesn't invalidate her feelings and is willing to bear the burden of the weight of the world together- someone who has proved multiple times that he will always be there for her, and that she can trust him-

how can she not get attached?

and when she finds out he killed her in her past life... and when he tells her it was all an act-

that's what's happened to her all her life, hasn't it? anyone she cares about just leaves, and she grew to prefer being alone because that's only way you won't get hurt. and her view just gets proved when she sees what Yeon has done to her. Yeon, the man who she gave up so much for, and who gave up so much for her, and it was all an act

of course it was all an act. of course she believed the lie the second she heard it because all her life, she was left alone by everyone. why would it be any different this time?

[s0fter-sin]

when midoriya punches the zero pointer at the entrance exam, all might says “show who you are, embody what it means to be a true hero, nothing is nobler than self sacrifice” do you think aizawa heard kill bill sirens

[lupismaris]

Sometimes self care is having a very stern talking to with the wounded scared parts of yourself that don't want to do the hard and difficult things and reminding them that nothing will get better if the hard and difficult things aren't even attempted

And then as a reward you promise to buy those wounded parts of yourself an entirely hot pink/pastel pink practice set if they agree to do the work required, as a little treat

[geometricalien]

It's 3 am. I can't sleep. And I'm still a little drunk so I'm going to word vomit into the void about Last Night in Soho.

I absolutely adore this movie. The acting, the directing, the cinematography, the themes- it's all fantastic! ... except for the character John. And this has nothing to do with the actor portraying him but John's place in the narrative as friend/romantic interest to Ellie while being a foil to Sandie's own "Johns".

Ellie's John is everything Sandie's aren't: kind (apologizing for taking her coke and offering to give it back, saving a seat for her in class, checking up on her through the semester), respectful (of her boundaries and her passion and personhood), supportive (showing up for her exhibition), and helpful (offering to look for Sandie in missing person cases and moving her out of her apartment at the end of the movie). Even Sandie - the character who hated men most - pardons him and absolves him of any perceived wrong doing, "Save the boy downstairs"; although just minutes ago she stabbed him in the gut and left him for dead.

Unfortunately, it reads alot like "Not all men!! ☝️"

For a movie to be so focused on the relationship between two women and one of them understanding the other as if she was herself, the crux of the film, the resolution of it is Sandie saying "You can't save me, it's too late for me. Save yourself. Save the boy downstairs." And it's only then that Ellie goes to safety, she saved herself to save a man.

It's frustrating.

It's also frustrating that any other girl around Ellie's age is vapid and facetious "So brave ❤️" or an insecure bully dragging people down. Of course, this serves to make Ellie's attachment to Sandie stronger but writing John as a woman without romantic connotations would not stop her from being starstruck by Sandie. It would only highlight the sisterhood theme.

Sandie saying, "Save the girl downstairs" would make way way more sense for her character, Ellie's character, and the themes.

You can still have Ellie bring home someone near Halloween and still have his name be John and still have him respect her boundaries when the vision bleeds into reality.

Gotta keep in mind that this would edge itself closer into the black best friend being a prop/support for the main white character without being afforded their own personhood cliché, but that could be easily circumvented with decent writing.

Overall, it would tighten the film's message of sisterhood, women supporting women, and advocating for each other. This film is at its best when Ellie is showing kindness to Sandie by pulling the blanket over her feet. Her being protective over Sandie by shouting, "She said no!" Trying to hug her and show her she isn't alone. Her hugging Alexandra and seeing Sandie. Her refusing the Johns' their revenge. By taking Sandie's side time and time again. And Alexandra asking Ellie after the dance when her John left, "Did he hurt you?" As if she would hobble down the street that very second with a knife to track him down.

Another girl must not suffer in that room. Not under that roof. Not in the whole damn world. Not if Sandie or Ellie or I have anything to say about it.

[harmonicunt]

my /// tag is such a testament to my bullshit i want to delete it sooo bad because the whole thing is just Wrong but its so honest at the same time that id feel bad sweeping it under the rug like i never felt like that at all just because i shouldn't have yk

[sonknuxadow]

tbh the most annoying part about that whole sonic is canonically trans because he has a girl clone thing that gets spread constantly is that the misinformation can be traced back to one specific tumblr post that went viral and got reposted a bunch of places. if that one person hadnt made that post i wouldnt be seeing this particular piece of sonic misinfo being spread on every site ever

[comas-are-for-sleeping]

i love things that happen because of a specific thing

[stressfulsloth]

It is fucking terrifying looking at the racist rioters across the UK, hate crimes, counter protestors getting attacked, attempts to literally burn refugees alive, triggered by lies being spread online mixed up with the deep rooted seething racism and islamophobia in this country. And then to come online and seeing some of the most unhinged conspiratorial thinking, people twisting themselves in knots trying to blame some massive evil Jewish conspiracy, and people mindlessly sharing it to "spread awareness".

[babybabymerrychristmas]

the way taylor and some of her fans think marriage is the ultimate marker of true love is wild to me but it tracks for a fandom that likes the prophecy that much tbh