#but the US version is all on youtube nowadays....

[zvtara-was-never-canon]

Oh okay, thank you for clarifying! I have seen quite a few polls on tumblr and on ATLA’s youtube page going hard Kataang over Zutara, that’s why I was asking. I think the best example is the one made by @hundredyearavatar here on Tumblr. Someone had a very interesting take in the comments though, saying that when the show aired the kids liked Kataang better, but the teens with online access preferred Zutara. Now, those kids grew up and everyone is on the internet, so this is why Kataang is more popular nowadays. It’s relatively hard to find a poll online where Zutara is far ahead of Kataang, I’ve seen most either at 50/50 or with a clear Kataang preference. If you judge by fan art and fanfics however, yea, there’s way more zutara stuff out there, but again, that tends to happen with non-canon ships. Ships that could have been tend to get more fan attention and stand out for people not familiar with the show, I agree with that, but I’m not sure if you downright were to ask people they’d mostly say Zutara is their favourite over Kataang. Does that make sense?

Polls are not an accurate reading of how an entire fandom feels, it's just impossible to make everyone not only see it, but also vote it (especially in polls that only have Kataang OR Zutara as an option, without "both" or "neither" as that excludes some nuance).

Polls are, at most, a way to tell in which corner of the fandom you found yourself in. If I, an anti-zutara blog, whose posts tend to be seen/shared almost exclusively by people who have some issue with the ship/shippers, were to make a poll asking people if they liked Zutara the winning answer would obviously be " HELL NO!" If a zutara blog, whose posts are seen/shared mostly by zutara fans, asks the exact same question the winning answer will obviously be "HELL YES!"

The official Nickelodeon accounts tend to have pro-canon results because they (mostly) post about canon content. People who wouldn't change that much about ATLA are their target audience, aka the ones voting. You'll find the zutara fandom in spaces like change.org, making petitions to make the ship happen in the Netflix version.

That being said, I don't think think it's fair to dismiss Zutara's popularity in places like AO3 or FF.NET (or especially in pre-internet era fandom) as being a natural consequence of it being "the non-canon option." There are tons of fandoms where the canon pairings are highly popular and have tons of fan works, even if the story shows us all the "main" things that happen in a romance (first meeting, moment they realize/admit their feelings, first kiss, first time, wedding, having kids, etc). Not to mention, Zutara is not the only non-canon ship in Avatar, so it having been THE most popular for over a decade, and still being super popular today, to the point that it is one of the things even people who never watched Avatar know about, cannot simply be explained away with "people gonna write what the show didn't give them."

I also don't think "Kataang kids got internet now" explains why it became more popular/zutara isn't treated as untouchable anymore. The internet wasn't as wide-spread in the mid 2000s but it did exist, and both ships had fans who were kids, teens and adults. I think this change happened because of three things:

1 - People change their minds sometimes, especially if they watch the same stuff over and over through the years.

2 - The zutara fandom got way too smug about being popular and way too bitter about not being canon, to the point of harrassing others over it, and thus people that were previously indifferent to the ship (or actually liked it, but weren't die-hard stans) grew to dislike it. I used to not care for either Kataang or Zutara, but seeing one fandom be mostly reasonable in their arguments in favor of their favorite pairing while the other was super entitled made me look at both differently.

3 - A LOT of the people in the fandom right now weren't fans back when it first aired (some having not even been ALIVE), but had already heard about Zutara: and watched the show expecting it to be an actual romantic possibility that was taken seriously and got lots of screentime, but simply ended up not being canon at the very last second due to executive meddling. Instead they saw Kataang being set up from the start, Maiko being set up since season two, both having big roles in the story... while Zutara had a few fanservice-y moments. They went in expecting a love triangle in which they'd have to decide if "Katara made the right choice" only to discover she never even CONSIDERED dating Zuko - who also never thought of her like that either. It was a pure "THAT'S IT? IT WAS A PURE FANON THING? THAT'S ALL THERE WAS TO IT?" Expectation is the mother of disappointment.

[franciya]

I love people under this tweet going "I don't care about watching Fraggle Rock because it's for little kids" and that's how you know these people mean it when they say they never watched it, like

There's episodes with "Main Character Funeral" as the title, seriously

And it's far from the darkest episode.

[la-cosmonauta-extraterrestre]

How to learn physics as an adult

I'm creating this post in response to some posts @un-ionizetheradlab made the other day, but I'm creating this as a guide to anyone this is relevant for. It's going to be a long post, but pick and choose what to do from this list based on what works for you and what your goals are, whether it's just to gain basic scientific literacy or become a physicist (or something in between). Also remember that it's a journey not a sprint, so it's ok if you don't understand physics at first (and if it makes you feel better, physics was one of my worst subjects in school and now I have a master's degree in physics). Without further ado:

First Thing's First

There are some mathematical methods you need to learn to understand physics; there's no way around this:

Vectors: This is the most important thing to learn for physics, how to use vectors. It seemed every mathematics or physics class I took in my first year of my physics degree started with an introduction to vectors, and for good reason. You can learn about how vectors work on Khan Academy for free.

Matrices and Tensors: Once you've mastered vectors, learn about matrices and linear algebra, and perhaps go on to learning about tensors once you're at it. You can at least get the basics about matrices from Khan Academy, but you might want to invest in a linear algebra textbook.

Calculus: I said vectors are the most important thing to learn for physics, but it actually might be calculus. If you have absolutely no previous knowledge of calculus, you can watch the video "Calculus at a Fifth Grade Level" on YouTube; it's a little more advanced than fifth grade level but can give you a good feel for what calculus is about. Once you've done that, there are multiple calculus courses available on Khan Academy. There's also a calculus course available on Brilliant, but it might only be available through the paid version.

Ordinary Differential Equations and Boundary Value Problems: You don't need to learn these right away, but if you want to do physics at the upper undergraduate level, you'll need to learn these at some point.

2. Learning to Think Like a Scientist

Some suggestions of apps and things to watch if you don't know much about science so you can start thinking like a scientist:

SciShow: If you don't know much science at all, SciShow on YouTube is a good place to start, I used to watch it and as I recall it's more focused on life sciences but there's some physics videos there, too.

Ciencias De La Ciencia: This is sort of a Spanish version of SciShow but it's more physics-focused. At least some of the videos have subtitles if you don't know Spanish.

Cosmos: If you haven't seen Cosmos (either the old version with Carl Sagan or the new version with Neil DeGrasse Tyson), it's very good and at least some of the episodes are available for free online. It's more pop-science and history of science than actual science content, but at least they make a point of using anecdotes from the history of science to illustrate how the scientific method works.

Sabine Hossenfelder: Highly recommend her YouTube channel; she's one of the most intellectually honest scientific communicators in the world nowadays. Her videos are a good illustration of how to think like a scientist. She also has a blog and has written a few books.

Brilliant: This is an app with mathematics and science courses that places an emphasis on problem-solving. Most of the courses are only available on the paid version of the app (but you should be able to get a discount on it if you're subscribed to any mainstream science YouTubers), but even the free version gives you access to a few courses, plus a forum where people post problems. I had this app back in the day and liked solving problems on the forum (no idea if it's changed since then).

3. Books to Study

If you're committed to learning physics you should study from some textbooks:

Physics LibreTexts: This is a whole collection of university-level physics textbooks for free online. It's an invaluable resource for learning physics. Use it to learn classical mechanics, electricity and magnetism, modern physics (but don't jump into quantum mechanics straight away if you're just starting out in physics).

Landau and Lifshitz Course of Theoretical Physics: This was the physics school curriculum in the Soviet Union; it's a little dated now but if you're just learning the basics it can't be beat given the excellent pedagogy. It's easy enough to find copies of it online, especially on Russian sites. Most if not all of the textbooks in the series have been translated into English, but if you know any Russian, the original is easy to follow.

Introduction to Electrodynamics by David J. Griffiths: Once you've learned mechanics, modern physics and some electricity and magnetism get yourself a copy of this textbook; you can get used editions on Amazon for a reasonable enough price. American physics majors are obsessed with this textbook, refer to it as the Bible, and for good reason.

Every Life is on Fire by Jeremy England: This isn't a textbook, but reading it took me back to my statistical mechanics class and it's way more readable than any actual statmech textbook so if you are interested in learning statmech, this book is a good start. It's actually a general reading book about England's ideas about the origin of life, interspersed with some parallels to the Hebrew Bible because England is also a rabbi. He actually has some interesting ideas about the philosophy of science, though they can be difficult to get behind, so if you're interested go listen to a podcast where they interview him (obligatory I don't condone the Kahaneist politics he sometimes promotes).

4. Learn About Research and Experiments

Physics is an experimental science, so expose yourself to some experiments:

Look for PDFs of high school physics labs online. You can find some for free and it should be cheap enough to do the experiments at home.

Read scientific papers on topics that interest you to try and understand what's happening today. If you find them difficult to understand, try reading older papers and go from there, for example, in undergrad I did a research internship relating to neutron stars, but I found some of the recent scientific papers difficult to understand, but reading the 1938 paper "On Massive Neutron Cores" by Oppenheimer and Volkoff helped me to understand neutron stars better. (When I returned to some of those same papers during my master's degree, I was proud to have understood them well.)

5. Take University-Level Physics Courses

You can take university-level physics courses without committing to a degree:

Search online for MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses). You can find MOOCs on multiple sites about many physics topics, and they're often free (sometimes you have to pay for them).

If you live in the United States, you can take physics classes at your local community college.

You can enroll in online physics courses through Open University, based in London but you can take the courses from anywhere. It's expensive, but you pay by the credit so you don't have to pay for a whole year of tuition if you're just taking one course.

If you happen to have free time in the summer and the money for it, many American universities (and elite British universities) offer summer courses that one can enroll in even if they don't attend the university. These are usually in-person classes.

6. Get a Physics Degree

Getting a physics degree is ultimately the only course of action if you've decided to become a physicist, the recommended course of action if you're ultimate goal is a PhD in the history of science or philosophy of science, and a good idea if learning physics has made you want a career in science communication of science education. There's no shame in being a non-traditional age student; in both my bachelor's and master's degree in physics I knew students who were non-traditional age. The downside of this is that it's a bad financial decision to get a degree, especially if it's a second bachelor's degree, but there are ways to lessen the financial burden of a degree:

If you attend an American university with American tuition, you can usually get an on-campus job, though that's pocket change compared to the costs of tuition.

On the bright side, if you already have a bachelor's degree you can probably get credit for general requirements at American universities, so a second bachelor's degree in physics might not take long.

You can also do a part-time degree while you work at many universities.

Just some general advice, if you go the American university route go to a university with a Society of Physics Students and get a student membership in American Physical Society; you get all kinds of benefits like access to Physics Today magazine, scholarships, internships, conferences, an honour society induction.

All that said, it's difficult to attend an American university without losing money. For that matter it's difficult to attend any university in the world without losing money, but you can lessen that burden by going to a country where university is cheaper. There the limiting factor is going to be language; although English is the international language of physics and the medium of most postgraduate physics degrees around the world, physics bachelor's degrees are usually in the local language. Some possible exceptions I found to this, for those who are not fluent in a language other than English:

Apparently there are world-class English-medium physics degree programmes in France? I figure there must be some kind of catch given the way the French are about their language, but given the high research output France has in physics, this is worth getting into.

There are English-medium physics bachelor's degrees in the Czech Republic, and tuition there is pretty affordable (for the English-language degrees; it's free for Czech-language degrees if you happen to be fluent in Czech). I don't know Czechia to have a lot of physics research output today, but back in the day Prague was a major centre of scientific research (Einstein briefly lived and worked as a physics professor in Prague), so it you're goal is to do a PhD in the history of science...I'm just gonna say that there's an English-medium physics bachelor's degree programme at Charles University and you'd have time when you're not studying to explore the city and it's history (but you should learn some Czech if you're going to live there).

University degrees in South Africa are usually English-medium, and tuition there is pretty affordable. There's also a fair amount of research output from South African universities. (Though I understand not wanting to live in South Africa.)

[breoasis]

i hate HATE so much that almost every single social media app nowadays has a tab for some kind of full-screen short-format videos (youtube shorts, instagram reels, you name it) like, all apps are the same thing now, and you have no option to disable them

i used to have my youtube modded so i could disable the stupid shorts (because i have no self control and can waste over 3 hours scrolling mindlessly), had to return to normal youtube because the modded version wasn't working properly, but i will find a way to disable those again, i refure to waste so much time because every single fucking app is just trying to mimic tiktok's success instead of doing something original, mind consumming

[glassprism]

hey, im sorry if this sound rude, but ive been getting into musical theater recently, and some of the musicals I've wanted to watch I can only find with people that will only trade them, but having absolutely nothing of my own, how would i start forming a collection so that i can trade them? do i go around asking (respectfully) for gifts? can i download some i find on youtube and trade it? honestly, i just don't know how the "rules" of all this trading system goes, and ive got no idea how to do any of this, and since a while ago you made a post talking about trading and stuff, Id thought id ask you :) and i tyvm for any help you can offer lmao

Hey there! I would definitely recommend reading my FAQ on trading (kind of outdated and definitely geared towards the specific questions I get on trading, but it provides some basic info) and the Sassy Guide to Trading to learn a bunch of stuff. And, just to answer your preliminary questions:

How would I start forming a collection? There are lots of places where people gift stuff, including my own Tumblr! Musical Exchange used to be big, but nowadays people gift a lot on Discord servers. And of course, you can ask people privately for a gift (just one or two audios or videos, don't go overboard).

Do I go around asking for gifts? Yep you can, just be polite and don't ask for too much or ask too many times!

Can I download some I find on YouTube and trade them? You definitely should not; traders want the original files from the master (the filmer or recorder). YouTube downgrades all files, plus most recorders do not want their stuff on YouTube, and so traders will typically not accept YouTube files unless it is the only version around.

Hope that helps, happy trading!

[hydrangeachainsaw]

just answering some asks ^-^

it's been awhile I dont answer asks lol I was going to release this post way earlier but always leave it for later😂sorryy! will tag everyone who asked so they can see <3

Hi! Check if there's any sims 4 package in your mods folder, everytime something like this happens is bc of an incorrect game file. lmk any other issue and have a nice day! :)

@virtualdolls Hii! ^-^ Ofc! it might just take awhile cuz i'm busy with other projects rn but will def make! :D if u find any other creator for caw to do it i'm okay with it too! hope ur doing well too have a great week <3

@sarasccblog heyy :) tysm! I will release another version for that tv next month for advent calendar. I actually should've released the version without antlers in the cozy days set and leave the one with antlers for christmas, cuz it makes more sense but I only noticed that later after posting xD anywayss thank youu!

@bunnnnnnnnnnnyyyyyyyy copypaste ftw lol 🥰😍💗💗i will!! thank youuuuu

you need to set up ur caw framework to be able to see cc there, here's a page explaining https://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=481967

nope, but I wanna do that eventually :)

@megmeg-chan ty for ur support, i'm glad u like it :3

@marias-assumption 💗

hii! not sure, maybe

sorry i'm not sure what post is that

@pwtti hii! sadly no, i was posting some stuff on cf tho you can find some cc there

hii thanks for letting me know will check it out!

ty already talked to her about it :)

@luyepiaofeng hii it's for both sim 3 and sims 4!

@suteflower Hii Sute! hope ur doing well! yep i'm from brazil, she/her! :) grl you have good memory i don't even remember mentioning that publicly before xD

yep!

@cutebich hii thank u! ofc! will do it eventually there's some more other suggestions i need to make but will def do! thanks!

hii! that's the same tutorial i've watched, it's a bit complicated but give it another try i'm sure you can do it :) also im too shy to make videos sorryyy xD

tysm makes my day to know u guys like it <3

@thesims4babe hii! there's a bottle override for sims 3 too

im not converting anymore ever since i started making my own cc, i only ever convert things for halloween or christmas that i like and that's it (and commissions too) hope u understand! <3

@joshiifox hii sorry for late reply, hopefully you got it working by now. it's working normally here

@francesweyr hii! it's no problem don't worry! petit trianon is a felix conversion, it's been son long i don't even remember how i did that ����😂 I think I just used the game's walls to support it or used cfe cheat, not sure. but nowadays you can use omedapixel mod to do that easily

@bebefege 😁💗

np! it's my fave <3

@chxm1calkid hii! this ask is so old i already made it but haven't posted it yet xD anyway will post it asap, probably after all the christmas cc

@usermitsuri hi! i advise using the latest blender version, but its okay if ur already using older. I used 2.79 for many years and recently changed to newest version and i prefer it nowadays. anyway, there's ton of tutorials on youtube that's how i learned, just choose something you'd like to make and start. I began doing very simple forms like a teacup, so i'd advise doing something similar. you can do basically anything just searching blender + whatever object you wanna make + tutorial on google/youtube. hope that helps lmk if you have more questions

@aiikrstn iirc there is! tnx glad u like

that's it, will post part2 next:)

[saltpepperbeard]

It's the entitlement that really frustrates me. David didn't create this show to fix all problems with representation, he didn't even know what queerbaiting was, bless his heart.

People keep saying "we were promised xyz, we were baited, he betrayed us" ( I wish I was joking about the last once.

He literally promised none of that. And he ows us nothing. Whether people want want to admit it or not, OFMD is his story. This happens a lot nowadays, someone makes something, the response is "well its not what I want ,therefore it's trash".

I dunno, I'm just angry at this point

HONESTLY. And I feel like that's becoming such a large issue that spans across numerous forms of media too. Like, from tv shows to youtube to fanfiction, the audience thinks they're "owed" something. "Owed" something simply for being there and consuming the thing. And it's like??? No??? You are just there on your own volition to consume the thing that's being provided to you???

*hands you a cupcake* "i don't like this cupcake >:(" THEN DON'T EAT IT???

And yeah, as you said, this is very much David's story. This has always been his story. He was passionate to tell it even before it got such a large following. He was surprised it got such a large following!

It seems like he's had a lot of things in mind since the very beginning, and a rather clear direction in which he's wanted to steer the story. And, based on his recent interviews and also very interesting meta pieces I've seen, the whole [redacted] was probably a long time coming too.

That's just the thing. I also feel like everyone just gets so caught up in their own interpretations and their own headcanons and their own versions of the story that it leads to almost inevitable disappointment and/or upset. Hell, even I'm a bit guilty of that; I looked too hard into that one article that described Stede's beach reunion dream, and thought we were going to get a makeout in the waves. And then when we didn't, I was like "oh lol 😀." Same with the little brief snippet of Stede pushing Ed against the wall that we got before episodes 6 and 7 dropped; I went in with preconceived notions which didn't end up getting met.

BUT LIKE, THE THING IS, THAT WAS ENTIRELY ON ME LMAO??? NOT THE FAULT OF ANYONE INVOLVED IN THE SHOW???? And it seems like people are disregarding that very fact! Like, oh I'm upset with how this went, so it's YOUR fault. I'm not responsible for how I'm reacting to this; it's YOU. YOU were supposed to bend exactly to MY wants.

And that's just,,,not! the case!

I'm over here piloting my safe spaceship, but what I've been seeing in my peripherals is making me sad too. Like, just the blatant disregard for everything else this show has given us, and the vitriol being slung towards the cast and crew, and all the negativity around what was supposed to be a hopeful sendoff...

People can be upset. People are absolutely allowed to be disappointed, or sad, or even angry. People can definitely dislike a narrative or character choice. Hell, I'd definitely feel some kind of way if Ed or Stede died, and I've gotten angry over narrative directions in other fandoms before. But just...the lines that have been crossed are just so so disheartening to see. You can be angry without being ugly about it, without pulling so many people down with you.

If people are that upset, I really encourage them to just step back, take a breath, and focus on other outlets. Because the entitlement and accusatory bits are certainly not it.

[bluehairlaunch]

Top 7 BEST Dragon Ball Transformations

Honorable mention: Yung King Piccolo

Does this count as a transformation?

Mecha Tao

Yup, the best villain in all of Dragon Ball also did this first.

Eat your heart out, Frieza.

Muscle Bottom Trunks

This is where Super Saiyan and its myriad iterations (including "SS2" and whatever you nerds call the version Goku and Gohan have when they emerge from the Room of Spirit and Time) would go, but I decided to choose just my favorite one instead.

I think this transformation has over half a dozen names: Super Saiyan Third Grade, Super Saiyan 1.5, Super Super Saiyan, Ultra Super Saiyan, lmao jesus christ, Power-weighted Super Saiyan, Power stressed Super Saiyan Bitch Super Saiyan, and somehow the list just keeps going on. But what I like most about it is that everyone can do it.

Well not the Super Saiyan part, you have to have a little bit of Saiyan in your brainpan to do that, but the getting big. Doing so makes you stronger, but also so much slower that the difference just doesn't matter (for those of you that just watch youtube videos, and don't read the fucking comic). Frieza is such a useless he/they thembo that he also mistook it for a legitimate transformation against Goku on Namek. Y'know, his 100% (this time for real guyz).

Golden Fuuureeeza

I railed against lazy recolors in my worst transformations list, but Frieza is the physical embodiment of sloth and affluenza. He was the strongest being in the universe by far barring an ancient alien prophecy for fucking decades. And what does he do with all that power? Well, ride around on a rascal scooter, of course, while sending endless swathes of Appule's to do his dirty work. Instead of lifting a finger for an hour and then being immortal FOREVER.

And that's why it works for me in all the ways Resurrection F didn't. He's supposed to be stupid and ostentatious. Dragon Ball Super writers, you're NOT.

Janemba

Frankly, this is the biggest glow up in Dragon Ball history. From lazy Buu clone to, well, admittedly a lazy clone of another great character. But he has a sword! And that moveset. And it's an actually good filler movie in which Hitler dies (again).

Just look at him

Legendary Super Saiyan

Why is greenish Super Saiyan soooooo coooool??? Well, I'll tell you why.

It's because it just is. Super Saiyan? Actually so cool. Green? Such a good color Victorian aristocrats were willing to kill themselves using a shade of it that contained arsenic. It was basically their version of Oceangate, but they all did it! We could only be so lucky nowadays. And the lore implications? Mmm, yeah. Yeah!

You see, in canon Goku did a little prophecy, but Toriyama can't help but be a great writer, so instead of just being the generic Chosen One a la every bad shonen we all know and love, he's not. He's just not. Goku, Gohan, Vegeta, Trunks, baby Trunks, baby Goku, they all do it too. Turns out, Super Saiyan is something each and every Saiyan can do. And then filler happens, Broly shows up, and everyone sees that this is because he's the real Chosen Boy.

And he's green! And we all loved it so hard we got a quality version a century later in the form of Super Broly The Movie

Nice. That's history for you.

Great Ape

The OG. Look at this trendsetter. If this isn't the second best, what is? You're wrong.

Perfect Cell

It's perfect

[the-jnadf-man]

So. I've been making the thumbnails for a series me and some friends have been doing for a few months at this point. We're doing some (Halfway accurate) dubs of Ace Attorney! It's called The Defense Rests, and you can find it on the Totallyjazzed channel on Youtube. please watch us I need the validation

I am the voice of, among others, Winston Payne, Manfred von Karma, Matt Engarde, and Luke Atmey. There's plenty of others, but those are my favorites.

So anyway, I'm gonna put the thumbnails below the cut here and hope those convince you to at least give us a shot.

1-1! I was really out of practice when I made this. I could've made the ghost Phoenix look SO much better, and actually make the Sahwit work with the bit in the actual video. See, we make jokes about how his head does not move despite his whole body constantly swaying, and compared him to the gyroscopic chicken. I couldn't do what I was going for with his neck at the time, and had to settle for rotating him 180°, but I think I could do it nowadays.

Okay how the Hell do I explain 1-3. Okay so to start with the only thumbnail I didn't make was the 1-2 one. And uh. Here you can see us disliking Sal on every possible level and deciding he should go to Hell?? I dunno, I made this mid-video, and. Have you looked at it. Oldbag taking fully clothed pictures in the bathtub standing up was just. A thing that happened in this case because of us. For some reason. And now it's everyone's problem.

Okay, with 1-4 we're starting to pick up speed in terms of the thumbnails, as we get to the first one I genuinely feel pretty proud of. 1-1 was somewhat basic and 1-3 was. Just plain weird. But then we got to 1-4 and I made TDR: DL of 6. It's directly based on Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, though Von Karma's location is more based on Dracula from the original Castlevania. Don't mind that most of them are see-through, it's because almost everyone in TDR is a ghost. We get carried away at times. Fun fact: This wasn't gonna be the thumbnail! I made it before we started recording for fun, but we ended up going with it anyway.

1-5! Another one that doesn't make much sense, but this time I really like it. In clockwise order, Winston Payne keeps dying and was the Ghost³ of Winston Payne by this point in the series, Von Karma, Damon Gant, and Redd White were on Boys Night which involves drugs, and Jake Marshall's joke evolved from MAH INFINITE BEARD to MAH INFINITE TEXAS to MAH INFINITE [blank]. It's not terribly complicated, but it worked amazingly with the TDR version of the case.

Please make fun of Winston Payne for looking like he's Animorphing if you want to, we encourage it.

2-1: WELCOME TO PAYNE THEORY! Definitely one of my favorites to make, but it doesn't have as much basis in the jokes we make during the case as I'd like, aside from the Custom Made Glove and the Lobster. I generally think 2-1 was just okay, so I didn't have any other ideas for what to do for it.

2-2 IS MY FAVORITE END RESULT OF ANY OF THESE THUMBNAILS. Practically everything in it references a joke made in the video to some extent, from Payne's kazoo, Hotti wanting to steal every organ, The Bloodlement, and the part where we played tic-tac-toe on Pearl... It's all here. And it coheres amazingly. I'm incredibly happy with it.

I think we all know what 2-3 is like. Moe the Clown throwing hands with J. Udge carried it for us. They should fight onscreen. It is written that Moe's back was about to shatter and create a whole new case from how hard he was carrying the case.

HERE WE GO HERE WE GO HERE WE GO. 2-4 started my little personal tradition of taking every final thumbnail in a game seriously, though that was already starting to form in 1-4. This had my favorite development phase of any of the thumbnails, and I don't regret a second of it. I also finally learned how to use a new tool or two in my editing software because of it! Wonderful! It's not all serious, though. Wendy Oldbag is still very much the Blue Eyes White Woman.

...I didn't have any ideas for 3-1. We settled on making it a discord flashback for all the characters involved (And Redd White) ((And The Poison Genie)) during a session of Buck Bumble.

I love Luke Atmey with all my heart. He's really funny, and some of the most fun I've had in The Defense Rests. I made his superpower identity theft and had him boast about how he could "Steal your place in the thumbnail of this video!", which resulted in this. Don't mind that the bag looks like that, I had very little to work with.

I ran out of my 10 permitted images, so. I guess I'll do 3-3 through 3-5 and the scrapped thumbnails in a reblog after I finish tagging this.

[usernamesuggestionsarefunny]

Wish spoilers ahead.

The start of Wish is exactly like that of Encanto but without all the heart. It is literally the meme of "Can I copy your homework?" "Yeah but change a few things so it is not too obvious."

Also Asha deserved a pretty dress in the end like wth are you going to sell to little girls Disney you are all about money and you failed miserably even at that.

And it is for real soooo unfair how the queen did get a pretty dress the whole movie and Asha only got some lazy ass sparkles added to her boring ass dress.

Asha... not bad, ok, but she is copy paste Anna, Mirabel, and Rapunzel. Youtuber ModernGurlz is right about Disney's "adorkable" problem. All their main girls since Rapunzel have the same "quirky" personality save a few details. I have liked them all but it is getting boring. Give me a princess with a monotone, sad personality, give me a shy princess who only smiles and talks around close friends, give me back the classic super girly personality Aurora and Snow White style, give me an angry girl with a brutal sense of humor like Merida. Be creative, please!!!

I love the queen's design, super gorgeous. Too bad her character added nothing. Her help was barely needed since Asha's friend had already sneaked them into the castle and it was her who deciphered the king's magic. A super villain couple would have been way more fun.

Oh, yeah, Asha's friends. There were so-damn-many of them and only like 3 were rememberable or needed for the story.

The villain is a complicated issue. I appreciated Disney's attempt at another fully evil character, I liked how he wasn't yet another badly set up "twist villain" revealed only at the end. But I didn't like the end result that much.

His backstory was super underdeveloped and to "get" his motives better, if they really wanted to make him evil-yet-complex, they should have shown us a flashback of him losing his family Encanto style (They copy pasted the start might as well do the same with the antagonist backstory.

What the hell was the missing piece of tapestry for if it wasn't going to have any significance later on? Did the writers just forget or what even?

Worst part for me: The stakes were low as fuck. Disney doesn't respect its target audience, nowadays it thinks that children can't handle anything worse than a main character getting disappointed. The worst this "super evil" villain does is make people sad temporarily, for like two minutes (Kid you not), like one character stays sad for longer but MOST people in the kingdom seem happy and normal after giving up their wishes, he legit just makes people sad a few minutes (Again, I kid you not, no one dies, the wishes he "eats" to make himself stronger come back, nothing he does has a permanent, devastating effect, he is not even revealed to have killed Asha's father in a dramatic way or something). Yeah he makes people forget their wishes which is pretty sketchy but up to that point he seemed to have complex reasons for that, reasons that seem to disappear or have never even been there the second half of the movie when he magically becomes more evil due to a forbidden green spooky magic he uses, and then suddenly he becomes Maleficent (The cool, perfect villain version, not the woobie one) style evil in a very, very rushed and over the top way. I feel like he should have started up as fully evil with no backstory (Just a simple, Gaston or original Maleficent style, self centered guy, who wants more and more power and adoration), and simply gotten worse and stronger OR given more complexity as to why he became that way, but instead we got this weird thing in between where it is clear he just wants power and love from the people for the sake of it and yet he has this half-made sob story on how his family died.

There was a great lack of originality in this movie at the climax as well. Anyone watched "The little mermaid II"? That was pretty much it. Villain gets power boner, says he will enslave everyone (Worst thing he does in whole movie and yet no one trying to defy him dies at least off screen or gets hurt in any meaningful way). Then heroine saves the day.

The funniest part of this movie is that the villain's fate is worse than anything he ever did in the movie I swear. He gets trapped in a freaking mirror and then locked up in a cell (Similar to the Little mermaid II villain's end too lol). That is straight up torture till death, it is so fucked up. And his wife who literally sees how the green spooky magic is the main thing responsible for his bad day (If we are being honest that is all it was, other than the taking wishes part he seemed to be a good king) leaves him to rot and becomes queen Catherine II style, it is hilarious. Like girl, you turned against your husband like five minutes ago because apparently through decades of seemingly loving marriage, you never knew he was evil but now somehow you are ok with him rotting in solitary confinement till the end of time? So dorky and silly. So bad, so bad.

Lastly, that goat was annoying as hell.

[lyinginbedmon]

B-banned Minecraft mod??

Okay I can probably explain it here, so:

During Minecraft version 1.12.2 there was a mod called Kidnap.

It mainly dealt in adding ways to hinder other players (as one might expect from the name) in terms of how they could move around, what they could interact with, and to an extent even how they were able to use ingame chat. But for game balance, and in a stroke of genius game design, everything you could do to someone else, they could oppose, even without specialised tools. They could struggle out of being tied up, they could pick the locks on their manacles, so on and so forth. This meant that despite the mod giving you ample ways to debilitate your fellow Steve, they always had some way to respond to it.

Additionally, you could counter-act their escape efforts by checking up on their restraints regularly, which created a kind of emergent mind-game mechanic as abductees tried to outwit their captors and escape (or just wait for them to log off). The captor in turn had to stick around to ensure their prey didn't disappear from under their nose. The restraints were also very rarely absolute, even gagged you could type gibberish into chat.

If you haven't yet spotted the problem here, well... Kidnap was a BDSM fetish mod, and it did NOTHING to hide that fact. The basic rope binding was straight-up fetish knots, there was a variety of ball gags to use, there was even blatant slave/domme mechanics you could enact on your captives.

Mojang quite swiftly caught wind of this, and in a move unheard of before or since they stepped in and forced the one-man mod team for Kidnap to pull it offline in very short order. Almost overnight the mod became vaporware, nowadays even the wiki is barely visible on Archive.org, and it took me a good while even to identify the screen name of the author. From what I gather, Mojang were so intimidating that they deleted the source and basically quit modding altogether after that.

There's basically nowhere to find Kidnap in a downloadable form, though there are copies floating around outside the anglosphere and foreign language mod showcases for it still pop up on YouTube occasionally. As they say, nothing ever quite leaves the Internet.

At time of writing Minecraft is marching towards version 1.21, and in the intervening time absolutely no mod has ever come close to replicating the game design elegance that Kidnap did. For a lot of projects, it continues to be a tough question of how to impede players without utterly spoiling their play experience. Most of the time it's either done with status effects that can't be meaningfully opposed or by keeping the stats low or just giving up all pretense and hosing the unfortunate recipient.

But in a kind of Streisand Effect, Mojang stepping in to squash one brilliant mod with a proud and upfront adult thematic did more for it than the author likely ever could: It created a legend.

[tymime]

I'm of the opinion that society only became ready for characters like Mickey Mouse and Popeye to be in the public domain now, and no sooner.

When you look back on the copyright extension acts of decades past, I think maybe, just maybe, it was a good thing for Mickey Mouse. To be clear, this isn't about how these copyright extensions benefitted the Disney Company financially. I'm talking about Mickey as a fictional character, about the artists and creators, not the CEOs. I'm not thinking of Mickey as some kind of idealistic, free-for-all-people sort of thing, but as a work of art. Disney was only just getting back on its feet in the 1980s, after a long period of stale, formulaic, somewhat low-effort films and comics. If Mickey Mouse had gone public domain soon after Mickey's Christmas Carol had been released, Disney would've lost control of their flagship character during a time when they were just figuring what to do with him again. I think this would've made Disney's Renaissance era just a little bit worse. I couldn't tell you how exactly, since that would be mere speculation, but they may have been less inclined to build Mickey's Toontown or reprint Floyd Gottfredson comics, or anything like that.

The same thing goes for the late 1990s. If they had lost Mickey then, I have a feeling that wonderful cartoons like Runaway Brain and House of Mouse would've been less likely to have been made.

Here's what I'm thinking: Say that a Steamboat Willie horror movie had been made in, I dunno, 1988. Coming right after or before Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Disney seeing their most famous character tainted by a slasher film probably would've taken the wind out of their sails. Would the Eisner-era "returning to their glory days" attitude have been so prevalent? The entire decade of animation might've looked a bit different.

Disney today is very, very different. While they still see dollar signs when it comes to Mickey, and they still make good quality cartoons with him in it, the last time Disney really cared about classic 1930s Mickey was in the late 2000s, around the time when Epic Mickey came out. A retro, proud-of-our-heritage version of Mickey is something Disney no longer cares about, which goes hand-in-hand with the revisionism that plague the remakes of their classic films. Despite the "Rebrushed" version of Epic Mickey, I don't think Disney really wants to be retro anymore.

The other half of the equation is the internet and its indie creators. Remix culture is basically a revival of how most humans made art throughout most of history- not trying to come up with an "original idea", but making something derivative of what came before. Critics who complain about "endless sequels and remakes" probably despise this idea, but the fact of the matter is that nothing is completely original, and stuff like YouTube Poop, video game music covers, memes, and fanart is the 21st century version of that. There's a feeling going around that big media corporations aren't truly making the content we want to see anymore, and I'm inclined to agree. Marvel movies have already peaked and have gone downhill, we seem to be burnt out on Star Wars, and Warner Bros. generally seems to hate animation nowadays. We're also in a world where indie artists have much more power and influence than ever before, with platforms like YouTube, social media, and online art galleries to spread the word better than pre-internet media ever could. I've been waiting for Disney to relearn what makes Mickey Mouse great for years. A cartoon series equivalent to DuckTales (the original, mind you), adapting Floyd Gottfredson stories has been a pipe dream for some time now. Disney isn't going to make it, so I just might make animatics for that idea myself.

So that's my take on it. Public interest in using these characters is coming at the right time, in my opinion. There have been drawbacks of course, and I think sequel-haters are one of the biggest results, but did anyone else actually give a darn about the public domain until Winnie-the-Pooh was "set free"? I've been interested in the subject for over a decade myself, but I'm willing to bet most people weren't even aware of the concept until now. What I'm mainly concerned about is artistic integrity- Mickey being free to use doesn't mean that everybody's going to be thoughtful and tasteful. That much is obvious. As for Popeye, I'm gonna wait until the whole spinach thing, as well as Bluto and Wimpy, are in the public domain before I seriously consider using the character.

(PS To any jerks who think I'm some sort of corporate shill- read this a bit more carefully. There's plenty of criticisms of corportations littered throughout this, but I guess if you're too stupid to notice...)

[alatabouleau]

You know, I was always theoretically aware that whitewashing was a problem, but it never occured to me to how many examples i'm completely oblivious.

So, I just learned through a YouTube video by a Romani person ( https://youtube.com/shorts/A-kF9BBVfu8?feature=share ) that Romani people were just as much part of the target for the "final solution" in World War II by the Nazi government. Which, first of all, came as a complete shock to me, because in school, we would learn all about antisemitism and how Nazi Germany executed Jews brutally and factory-like, but we rarely, if ever, talked about Roma meeting the same fate. Honestly, even most people around me growing up didn't talk all that positive about Romani people, usually reducing them to systemic beggars.

And this all plays into the fact that I never saw how Magda, you know Magneto's late wife, one of the few people in his life he actually loved, was not Jewish but actually Romani. So, Wanda and Pietro Maximoff are actually half Jewish, half Romani (because I REFUSE to accept the 2014 retcon it makes no narrative sense, I hate it)! And even their original adoptive parents were Romani as well.

So, why is it, that in the X-Men-movies, as well as in the MCU, their Romani side is COMPLETELY eradicated and their maybe-Jewish-background never touched upon?! Why are their parents in the MCU, real or not, white?! And yes, I feel like I'm late to the party, but my goodness! It's probably just that I now realise that I have been due to my ignorance, participated in white-washing, because in my Cherik fanfictions, I always use the movie version of Magda who is, maybe a Jew? But rather, just a Polish woman and IS ALSO WHITE, WHY?!?!?

I mean, not to start an oppression olympics, really not, but you know Jews have at least ~some~ examples of positive representation in the media nowadays. The only one in mainstream media for Romani people is probably Esmeralda in Disney's "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" (https://youtube.com/shorts/zXHctFGKM1M?feature=share ) and even she falls into the trope of "Disney overse*ualising Disney princesses of colour". The other one is in the Paramount+ prpduction 1883 (https://youtube.com/shorts/j1DiLR27LyI?feature=share)

Man. This is bad.

I really don't want to make this into a white saviour complex thing, it's just something I realised I was unaware of before I found the Youtube-channel of florida.florian which has been really informative and made me see how little I actually knew about Romani culture and how much this demographic still faces severe discrimination to this day. Also in my country, Germany, which is probably why this hits so hard to me, personally.

If you now excuse me, I need to rewrite Magda's character in this one Cherik-fanfic I've been working on

[kittyprincessofcats]

Okay, let's talk about Germany

because seriously, wtf is happening to my country?

So, a few weeks ago Germany outlawed Hamas and Samidoun. And with that, our interior minister Nancy Faeser also explicitly outlawed the phrase "From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free", with the reasoning that it's linked to Hamas / implies genocide against Jewish Israelis. You can now be fined or go to jail for using this phrase.

I was at a demonstration a few weeks ago that was an absolute nightmare. So, usually at the beginning, the rules for the demonstration (what is or isn't allowed to do/say) get layed out. At pro-Palestine demonstrations, there's always A LOT of police and they sometimes check protest signs in advance, too.

At this demonstation (which was organised by several Jewish organisations btw), one of the things we were chanting was "Stop the Genocide" - also a lot of other chants involving the word genocide in some way. At first, this was allowed. Then, halfway through the demonstration, the police suddenly decided that using the word "genocide" is forbidden now. Halfway through, after they were okay with it at first!

Then they arrested a Jewish Israeli woman (who they'd already wrongfully arrested once before) because her protest sign said "Stop the genocide in Gaza". Then they also arrested another person because their sign said "From the River to the Sea, we demand equality". THAT LITERALLY ISN'T EVEN THE PHRASE YOU BANNED! If you're going to ban FtRttS because it "could imply genocide against Jewish Israelis", then this changed version which makes explicitly clear what's actually meant should be fine! But nah, doesn't make a difference to them. If it starts with "From the River", you're gonna get arrested.

What shocks me the most is the arbitariness of it all. How can you just randomly decide in the middle of a demonstration, that something that was fine at first is now forbidden and then arrest people for it? I've been to demonstrations later where the word "genocide" was used again and it was fine. They literally just made up random reasons to arrest people. There's no logic behind any of it.

I've heard from other demonstrations in Germany that they apparently also arrested people for signs like "From the River we do see, nothing like equality" and "Bombing children is not self-defense" (what?). Also apparently they arrested one person for drawing the famous raised fist icon onto their poster because it "implies violence".

I don't want to live in this country anymore. What is going on? When has Germany become... this? I mean, I never thought we were super great, but I didn't think we were this.

And before anyone says that it's overcompensation for Holocaust guilt: That might play into it, but I don't think it's the real or only reason. Because the thing is, Germany didn't use to be like this. Israel-Palestine isn't exactly a new conflict and I remember that when I was younger, people from both sides were allowed to talk in talkshows etc. There's a clip on Youtube of a talkshow from 14 years ago where a CDU(!!! - big conservative/center-right party) politician talks about his trip to Palestine and the humiliations the Palestinians suffer every day and how no people would just let themselves be treated like this - nowadays you'll only hear something like this from the very left of the political spectrum and never on TV because anyone who speaks up for Palestine won't even get invited to the talkshow.

So like... what happened? Germany didn't USE to be like this. Why is EVERY party, even the Greens, suddenly talking like a copy of the AfD (extreme right-wing party, basically Nazis) and trying to paint Mulims as evil? And why are we at a point where anyone who speaks up for Palestine gets arrested and charged with "antisemitism" while actual Nazis are allowed to protest and get protected? We Germans are always so quick to call out other countries for lack of freedom of speech, so what is... THIS? WHEN DID THIS HAPPEN?

[borisbubbles]

Eurovision 2024: #16

16. PORTUGAL Iolanda - "Grito" 10th place

Decade Ranking: 56/153 [Above Circus Mircus, below Alika]

OH NOES THE FINGERNAILS!! SO BLATANTLY POLITICAL!! I legit had to zoom and enhance to even NOTICE, jesus christ EBU.

For an entry that I have ranked relatively high, Iolanda is such a pain to write about? I feel like the appeal and placement are both obvious? There are also no real fun things about it? It's all fairly cut and dry (hence why I skipped yesterday to give myself extra think time for the write-up).

I find it hard to believe that anyone can muster up feelings beyond 'yah this is good, next one please' for a song of Grito's calibre. Especially over the more immediate (read: better) "Pelas Costuras"?

That said, I must soldier on and write a few more words. "Grito" is actually a pretty competent Growth Ballad. It starts slowly but then gradually builds up the tension. It handles the overcoming of inner demons with a beautiful touch of melancholy (it IS Portugal after all), and never stays too long in its phases.

In other words: it dodges the main pitfall of many other cerebral ballads: Despite what Joel and Myff were insinuating (Aus NQ'd, in your FACE) Grito is not boring.

But it's also not that engaging of a composition. My gripe with it is that it banged the hardest in studio for me, and studio cuts just... don't matter to me? At last not post-show. I get all of my listens from Youtube, not Spotify. In the studio version, "Grito" goes from zero to hero IMMEDIATELY at the first chorus, and doesn't back down. It goes quite hard. Live, the transition is more gradual and subdued, which pulls me into the immersion at a later point. Almost too late? "Grito" is a slow burner, and I'm not a patient man. You need to make me care about you immediately, not until you're halfway through the song.

It makes sense that Iolanda was sort of the Alika of the year resultswise (getting a good amount of jury votes into a negative televote) but she had the opposite problem for me. Alika came across like she was aimlessly screaming at a mic without any sophistication. Iolanda came across as frosty introvert who deliberately held back on purpose to sound frail before the big note. BELT WOMAN, YOUR SONG DEMANDS IT.

Eventually, she did. And it was pretty good.

That was a really good climax. Grito succeeds where Ramonda and Before the Party's Over (and in a sense Veronika which I'll address in a few days) struggled with or even outright failed to do.

So going into the contest from FdC, I always expected Portugal to be a qualifier (why were SO many people sleeping on it? I know a lot of eurofans are dumb (sadly, not of the mute variety), but also hard of hearing?) but I was hoping for Iolanda to inject more life into her song. This was why I had difficulty getting into her at FdC.

and she... sorta did?

Like, if I'm honest, the performance wasn't enough to fully win me over. It went from a 7 to a 7.5, it's not the LEAP forward I had hoped.

However, Portugal managed to elevate the act from its FdC counterpart, and respected the song's strengths. Befitting the lyrics, Iolanda ~transformed into a better verison of herself~, serving personality.

The staging in Sweden was also better - the use of the cubes to create a confined space for an intimate performance, the interactive choreography and the camerawork that framed it beautifully were great. In FdC, it felt like Iolanda had too many ideas for her staging, and they were poorly implemented. In Sweden, it clicked together smoothly. Her styling was great (die Joel!). She got the message across, while staying classy and sophisticated, which I suppose is Portugal's entire spiel at Eurovision nowadays.

In terms of my personal preferences though, it doesn't set my soul on fire, or makes me raise roofs tonight. Iolanda was good across the board, so she makes perfect sense as a high jury carry, but at the same time she also makes perfect sense as a televote bottomfeeder. It cuts both ways - "Grito" is good on all accounts, and outstanding at none, nor particularly is it particularly high on Fun Factor. It's too polished and competent for that. Like, "Grito" is not Eurovision. it is a well-executed live of a well-written song that found it's way there by winning the NF. It's highbrow. And I can appreciate that, but ultimately, others this year have delivered entires that were more to in line with the vibes I like to receive from my Eurovision entries.

AND NOW WE'RE MOVING UP A TIER. Here are whoever's left:

Which one is #YOUR favourite?

THE RANKING

[the-larxist-manifesto]

GameGirl36 ~ Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins (1992)

Can we just admire this box art for a second? Mario games have a knack for the whimsical, but there are few that spark the imagination as bright as this. The fish eye lens gives you the feeling that you're peeping into the world inside your GameBoy; so small that it all fits in this one vortex of action, but so vast that every inch is covered in details to admire and wonder about. Older Mario games in particular tapped into that sense of wonder so effectively because, well... what IS any of this stuff? I've never seen that particular boxing shark before! Why is there another island-sized Mario in the background? The moon is out during the daytime?

We do take for granted how strange the Mario world is to begin with; walking mushroom people probably shouldn't feel so normal to us. But due to how standardized Mario's brand is nowadays, it throws you for a loop to see him jumping off of a bomb turtle in front of his own castle. These details just don't line up with who he's been in the latest games. No, these older Mario games showcase a cartoony, plastic version of Mario that is stretched and squashed to fit whatever mood Nintendo was in that year.

Today, we're talking about one of the masterpieces of the GameBoy. I have played it before, so this entry will be less raw and reaction-based than usual. My goal is to explain what sets this one apart from the other millions of Marios that you could be playing right now.

Take a shot every time I say "Mario" for a fun and moderate drinking game! /j

~Guided tour of Mario Land~

This game feels like playing a Saturday morning cartoon many ways, including the plot. Since the developers were forced to come up with a reason for Mario to be scuttling around in the rafters of your home wearing rabbit ears, they settled on creating a brand new world and villain for this game only. After the events of the first Super Mario Land, Mario returns home(?) to "Mario land." Here, he presumably lives in peace with the giant birds and turtles and toy robot clone of himself in his castle at the center of the island. Just... when did Mario get so bougie? His own island? His own CASTLE? Always thought of him as a more modest guy, myself.

Either way, Mario is met with a nasty surprise when everyone in Mario land turns against him upon his return. Everything he loves is taken away and twisted into a flipped-around funhouse mirror of what he remembers by his arch-rival... Wario. (Yes, this is Wario's introduction to the Mario series as a whole!)

World map included with the game manual!

Okay, so now we have our reasoning as to why everything is so weird, and we have to set it back to normal. I like the larger plot subtext that this game implies about Mario villains—while Bowser often employs brute force with merciless fiery obstacle courses and an organized army, this escapade has Wario written all over it. The enemies feel like scrounged-together mercenaries he purchased on the cheap, and each world is some bizarre head trip; like the whole adventure is a giant prank on Mario. Wario is a truly disturbed little goblin man.

To win the day, Mario must journey to all six zones, defeat their corrupted bosses, and collect the titular six golden coins. Once they are all collected, he can once again enter his castle and beat up the man child that wrecked everything.

UGH, as goofy as it is, I genuinely love cartoony space aesthetics in old games .-~*

YouTube comments, everyone. They're not wrong, though

~Weird to watch, weirder to play~

This adventure does technically follow the typical formula for a Mario platformer, but with some... strange twists. Much like Mario land itself, the controls introduce and remove a lot of staples willy-nilly, in such a way that I never quite felt comfortable controlling it. To be perfectly clear, I like this disorienting and unique effect. It's one of those things that sets classic Mario games apart most from the modern entries. I'm gonna lightning-round the weird changes I'm talking about, exclusive to this one game:

Defeating 100 enemies awards an item, shown by a counter on the HUD

Press select on the file screen for easy mode

The player loses ALL golden coins upon game over

High jump by holding up on the d-pad and jumping

Spin jump by holding down on the d-pad while jumping

Spin jump can open ? blocks from above

Jump continuously by holding the jump button (only with Bunny Mario, though, for some reason)

Neither koopa shell kicks nor continuous enemy jumps award 1-ups (but stars still do!)

Not all of its uniqueness is completely random, however. As you might expect, this game does share some DNA with its direct prequel, Super Mario Land. For example, the game does not freeze when collecting a powerup, instead allowing the player to move while Mario's body stretches or squashes into its new form. The end-of-level goals split into an upper and lower part, with the upper being a skill check that awards the player a powerup minigame. Though most of the soundtrack is original, it borrows some ideas from its predecessor: the invincibility theme similarly differs from The Famous One, and SML2 recycles the unique underground theme from Super Mario Land for the haunted house level! I thought that was a very subtle but neat reference; it's an ambient theme catchy enough to deserve at least two games.

The entire soundtrack sets the golden standard for GB music; pop on this 30 minutes of merry melodies for your next walk

~Lil guys~

Next, I just want to show off some highlights from this game's art style by lining up my favorite lil guys I ran across. SML2 definitely has an all-around Hannah-Barbara type feel, with lots of down-to-earth concepts stylized to look more alive and dynamic. The moon gets moody, the distant islands frown at you, and the tiling of Mario's castle halls have teeny goomba likenesses trapped inside of them.

I'm seriously in love with the stylistic choice of "add tiny eyeballs to otherwise unremarkable background object"

Little witchy tongue~! :P

~Conclusion~

Now, I acknowledge that not every Mario platformer is a remarkable game. I will not be the first or last person to tell you that many entries in the series feel like rehashes of the same ol', same ol'. With all the hundreds of Mario games out there, it can be difficult to sift through and find the most unique and worthwhile ones. Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins is the game you are looking for. (And if I had to provide a short list, also write down SMB3, SMWorld, NewSMB, and SMBWonder)

Do I recommend it? Yesss please play it!

100% completion of this game only took me 5 hours, so even if it is a waste of your time, at least it's a small amount of your time! ^^; (For completion, by the way, you just have to reach every level exit. There are 38 in total, including secret exits and the bonus levels that you unlock through these secrets)

I fw with the NSO gameboy color and LCD filters

Alright, we're cooking through this row of GB games! Only two games to go... and the next one promises to be unique on a whole different level...

Thank you very much for reading.

~Lark Lyke