#by the way disclaimer that tv tropes kinda sucks and you should take everything you read on there with a grain of salt

[mobileleprechaun]

An old fan theory from TV Tropes that I still find myself vaguely subscribing to. Note the inclusion of the now-retconned factoid that Membrane is a given name rather than a surname. Maybe he found a knack for science after his time at the asylum, perhaps in some rehabilitative classes, and ended up getting some kind of scholarship that exponentially grew into a career from there? Of course a traumatized kid reinventing himself would change his name to something utterly ridiculous like Professor Membrane. 

Only thing that would really contradict it is that Squee is apparently half-Filipino rather than Latino (I wasn’t able to find an official source on Squee’s ethnicity, though). 

But hey, here’s the crack speculation that managed to cast a pall on Membrane’s entire life! Poor insane dad.

[irkenheretic]

(How I Learned) How To Read Irken: A Guide

(Pictured: Us....) (From @zimgay​ ‘s lovely animatic!)

Okay, I’m finally making this post. 

If you’ve been following me for a while, you might have caught on that I can read Irken. When I started, I was completely confused over wether or not I was teaching myself correctly, how long it’d take, et cetera. But I’ve finally hashed it out for myself, and I thought:

Why not make a guide for anyone else who wants to learn but has no idea where to start? 

So that’s what I’m doing. Some disclaimers, though:

- This is what worked for me. It may or may not work for you, I’m not sure. I think it’s a pretty good method, though.

- Reading Irken and Writing Irken are two different skillsets. I’m gonna show you how to do both, but don’t worry if you’re better at one than the other. 

- This will probably take a while of daily (or near-daily) practice to learn. It’s not impossible, it’s not super challenging, but it’s not super easy, especially if you have memory problems like I do. (For context: I started in September. But I also have a really shitty memory so, like. It might take less time for you.)

Okay! Let’s do this!

First off, you’d probably do well downloading the Irken font for practice purposes. Messing around with it and typing in it is fun, and can help!

You’ll also need a notebook. It’s not required, but having it all in one place is super convenient. (And, if it’s tiny enough, you can carry it around whenever, and also have it on hand to whip out at cons.)

The first thing I did was write each individual letter over and over and over again. This is what’s at the start of my notebook, and writing the letters over and over helped me remember which were which. I also had to focus pretty hard on what letter this actually was, this is tedious as hell but it’s not something you can do mindlessly.

(Pictured: Normal levels of interest in a show.)

This is what my notebook looks like. Don’t worry about those simplified versions of the letters yet, but you’re gonna wanna leave room for them. Don’t worry about learning simplified/handwritten until later, it helps recognition if you really have to focus on actually drawing the letters, at first.

(And yes, I know my pen is really smudgy. And that my H’s suck.)

After this, three letter words are your friend. Pick just, common three letter words you know, and write them down a lot. I have just, the Irken for “THE” written in the margins of my class notebooks a TON. Once you feel like you can remember that word well, go onto another 3 letter word with a different set of letters. Recognition = good, so pick something you like, use all the time. 

While I was doing this, I tried to string together Irken letters I knew into like, coherent phrases. I was very bad at this at first. Acronyms are your friend here, lmao. (I don’t think I can count the number of times I’ve written ‘u r a qt pie’ in my notebooks.) It doesn’t matter what you write, just that it makes coherent sense. 

There are gonna be some uncommon letters that are gonna be hard to practice, like W and Z, off the top of my head. For Z, that was easy. I just wrote ZIM over and over and over. For W... I used UWU. You laugh now, but the absurdity of it cements that I will always recognize those two letters. 

Four letter words are also good. (Please, absolutely write “FUCK” over and over in order to remember letters. I encourage it.)

There is also the absolute cuntwaffles. Y’know how in English, b, p, d, g, all look kinda the same? Yeah, Irken has that too. 

(Pictured: Head hurting juice.)

The I and Z don’t look that similar now, but good luck without a translation guide. By this point, you should have memorized a good chunk of the Irken alphabet, and be able to recognize some others when you see them. If you’ve been writing common three- or four-letter words, it’s likely you’ve been using letters very common in the English language. Which brings us to our next stage, and the actual fun part: 

READING! 

You’re gonna want a translation guide on hand in these early stages, you will need it. The main goal of this stage is to read anything in Irken you can get your hands on- but start small! Fanart with Irken in it was a godsend to me. It’s not that long, so it’s not overwhelming. I did need to look up some letters at the beginning, and I read really slowly, but that’ll change quickly if you keep up with it! The specific fanarts I used are:

@inimoose​ ‘s The Last Irken comic, specifically chapter one: part one, and chapter two: part two have a lot of Irken. But I’d recommend reading the whole comic; it’s good!

@paketdimensioncomic​ ‘s page of lore for their comic! Spoilers, though. Again, I’d recommend reading through the whole comic, because it’s just that good. 

@xryn-art​ ‘s Linguistic Au’s first comic has a good chunk of Irken! The other comics do have some, but it’s all translated. Still good practice, though, if you wanna... read them......... ;) ;) ;) 

Yes, this segment was partially a way for me to plug my favorite fan-artists, (or at least the ones that use Irken,) sue me. It’s my guide and I make the rules here.

(I am very sorry if I bothered any of you by @’ing you.)

But just some sources isn’t enough, so I introduce you to browser fonts. And changing yours to Irken. 

It will not effect everything in your browser, and it can be toggled on and off, so don’t worry. If you really want, you can download a separate browser to change the font of, and leave your normal one be. It’d be convenient if you could, since having your browser font be Irken is inconvenient if you need to use Wikipedia, like, ever. 

Here’s a guide for that, for Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and Internet Explorer for some reason. You’ll see four options to change, I just changed all of them. Not every page is going to have Irken on it, though. For me, Wikipedia is all in Irken, and so is TV Tropes. And some Tumblr blogs (PAKet Dimension’s is one, just in case you need a reason to go back there ;)) But it might be different for you. 

Whatever it is, now you have a nice way to practice. I read Wikipedia articles on stuff I already knew about (so I wasn’t completely lost and could figure out what letters I didn’t know were from context clues,) but not a page I’ve read before in recent memory- you might just be recalling what the page said, instead of actually reading it.

And about the absolute cuntwaffle letters: yes, this will help you in recognizing which are which. Seeing the letters in context is always going to be much more helpful than just, a bunch of meaningless squiggles floating in the void.

At this point, I personally am much better at reading than writing Irken. It’s one thing to know a letter when you see it, and another to recall it and write it down from memory. Right now, I’m trying to write song lyrics and dumb little phrases in Irken, to improve my writing skills. Again, nothing too long, don’t overwhelm yourself. This sounds stupid, but Vines are good. When I don’t remember a letter, I just leave it blank and look it up after I’m done. 

Another thing that helps is having a friend to practice with, or someone to just give you Irken phrases for you to translate. 

Once you’re around this stage, you can try to learn simplified/handwritten Irken. You can also try to learn it before this, I started it around when I started reading fanart for practice, it’s up to you. This guide is a good starting point, but you don’t have to follow it exactly. This is your handwriting, do what feels natural for you!

(Also, don’t even worry about speedwrite Irken. That has no place in this holy land and frankly I am scared of it.)

And that’s... pretty much it! Most of the process is just... practicing a lot. 

If this post does well, I might make a server for people who wanna learn Irken to practice together and stuff. It all depends if anyone even wants to learn Irken. 

EDIT: Well, guess what I ended up making just the next day. Here’s the post for the server, and please read the joining rules.

Also, if you wanna learn Irken numbers, here you go. But start with letters first, worry about numbers later. These are never used, aren’t even in the Irken font, and three of them look a lot like those cuntwaffle Irken letters. 

Anyway I just really hope this guide helps someone out. If you do use it, tell me! And have fun learning Irken!! It really is just, a blast to do honestly.

[apathetic-revenant]

What are your Bottom 5 episodes of Gravity Falls?

huh, interesting…I never really thought of that, at least not quite in that way. but I guess there are episodes I like less than others.

although, I feel I should put a disclaimer on the top of this, that like…even the GF episodes I like the least, I still like way more than a lot of TV. even when I dislike something about this show it tends to come out of a place of “aww man, I know you guys can do better than that” than RAAAAAAAAGEEEEE or anything.

but okay, let’s see:

1. The Stanchurian Candidate. this episode bothers me a lot, tbh. there’s more on that here but in a nutshell: usually GF is really good at handling the balance between dark humor and genuine emotional consequences, but that episode kinda fumbled it. I mean, there is a lot of great character stuff in there for Stan, but that’s actually part of the problem, because it’s like the episode wants to have both this nuanced and sympathetic look at Stan BUT it also wants to play up the moral ambiguity and casual suffering for laughs like GF usually does. so basically what you wind up with there is Stan being put through the wringer right when the episode has set us up to feel really bad for him, so it’s not funny it’s just hard to watch, and everyone involved comes off as a thoughtless jerk and never really gets called on it. and Ford’s involvement also really bothers me; I know it’s Ford and he very often doesn’t think things through, and his casually entrusting children with dangerous artifacts is a running gag/character trait, but I just can’t help but feel like after everything he went through with Bill and his own paranoia, he should be way less casual about the use of mind control. especially on his own brother. what the hell, man.

2. Roadside Attraction. I get where they were going with that and it does have some stuff going for it, but I just feel like they really fumbled the moral there. I mean, I remember the first time I watched it I actually thought “oh cool, they’re going to do a moral about how pickup artists suck and don’t treat women/girls as objects that you can put niceness coins into to get affection back” and all that sort of thing…but instead it just came across as “never be friendly to anyone or everyone will hate you”. it winds up being seriously uncomfortable to watch Dipper have to apologize TO CANDY at the end because she pushed him into a situation he made it clear he didn’t want and then got upset when it didn’t go how she wanted…again, I know what they were TRYING to do there but it just felt like it wound up giving out some really uncomfortable relationship morals to its audience.

it also just bothers me from a pacing standpoint. I know they said they wanted to have some levity before the finale, but it just feels weird being there. you have this slow build up of tension throughout the latter half of the season, the sense of something dark building on the horizon, and then LIGHTHEARTED ROADTRIP EPISODE and then okay now back to the tension. plus it’s just kind of hilariously weird that the episode before that is all focused on making the Shack safe from Bill, and having accomplished that against all odds and earned a brief respite, everyone immediately runs away from the Shack. c'mon guys. c'mon.

3. The Last Mabelcorn. this one is kind of odd here because there’s a lot of great stuff in it, lots of great character stuff and plot stuff and funny stuff and it just…it could have been really great. it very nearly was really great. but I feel like they fumbled it at the last minute. I just don’t like the ultimate reveal with the unicorns. it bothers me for a lot of reasons, which probably deserve their own post. one where I’m not trying to hurry up and finish so I can go make tea and also one where the code is working properly (what are you DOING tumblr), but, uh…yeah. yeah.

4. Fight Fighters. now, don’t get me wrong, I love the video game tropes and references and that beautiful pixel animation as much as anyone. but after seeing someone pick apart some of the problems with the whole setup of Dipper being pressured into the fight and to ‘be a man’…yeah, I can’t really disagree with that. it’s awkward and it sucks and it just feels like it’s reinforcing some ideas about masculinity that don’t need to be reinforced. I feel like there is some saving grace there in that Rumble himself kind of also demonstrates a lot of the problems with those ideas (he sees everything as a fight and in real life terms this is actually just dangerous and pointlessly violent and causes more problems for everyone) but in the end it’s just uncomfortable to see everyone telling Dipper that if someone challenges you to a fight you either Take Your Beating Like A Man or you’re a coward. especially since we already went over something very similar to that in Dipper vs. Manliness and it turned out way better that time.

5. Little Gift Shop of Horrors. see, now, I don’t even dislike this one really. it’s okay. and it does have some subtle but good character stuff with Stan and claymation, which is always great. but I had to pick five, so…this one just feels weird because it’s so suspended from the rest of the show. I mean, what exactly is happening? Bottomless Pit at least had a framing device, but this is just kind of…there? it’s not really happening but maybe it sort of is? and I think that stands out so much because there were so few episodes anyway. like, if it was a real long-runner, having an inconsequential non-canon Halloween episode would be fine. but when you only have 40 episodes total and you have SO MUCH story to cram into them, it feels a little odd to use one of those episodes for something that detached from the main story. especially in season 2. I mean, I know there are things in the stories that foreshadow or reflect the main plot, but it’s so hard to know how to take them because we don’t have any context for how they’re happening in the first place and by their nature they can’t actually progress the plot at all and…yeah. it’s just…weird. it does have Stan trying to sell a Palantir, though, so that’s good.

okay, there you go. if I had to pick five, those would be it. I mean it all in a constructive criticism sort of way, except it’s not really constructive criticism since they’ve all long since aired and no one involved in making them was asking for my input but…uh…you know what I mean.

[amorremanet]

ten facts about sara grace!

“ten facts about my oc’s” meme // previously on… (+ sara grace’s part one)

—okay, I suck, because I meant to do this on Sunday when I got it, then spent the whole day on TV Tropes, and I meant to do it yesterday, and spent the day with my sister’s dog instead, but anyway.

1. She’d probably tell you that police procedural shows are her guilty pleasure, but it’s really just Law and Order: SVU, and as much as she loves her girlfriend, she tends not to watch it with Lucy because Lucy will probably try to argue about the science, and Sara Grace gets that science is one of Lucy’s Things and she appreciates this a lot of the time, but sometimes, you just wanna ignore real-world science and watch Olivia Benson be a bad-ass, okay

2. Her MBTI type is ENFP (Extraverted iNtuitive Feeling Perceiving), one of the Idealist types, known as The Campaigner or The Champion. She shares it with, among others, Robin Williams, Dr. Seuss, Adelaide, and Stephen.

3. It’s not that she is completely hopeless at raising plants, but Sara Grace is easily distracted and easily bored in ways that make it hard for her to remember to check in on her plants as often as she needs to, and they aren’t as cute as cats, which makes it harder for her — because she definitely prioritizes the cute kitties over the plants — so, she’s pretty much given up on having any plants.

4. Pretty much everyone who knows her thinks that she is kidding about wanting to learn how to ride a motorcycle. It’s not that they think she can’t (not least since, thanks to her mutations, Sara Grace has a literally superhuman sense of balance), but to her parents, her siblings, her girlfriend, her friends, her coworkers, and her former classmates, the motorcycle thing just doesn’t mix with Sara Grace’s usual femme style and her fondness for the pretty pretty princess aesthetic

Like, when she does get a license and Seb gives her Bettie because he never rides Bettie anymore, several of the other characters are going to go, “What the Hell, Sebastian? You can’t just give a motorcycle to someone like that” and he will have to point out that Sara Grace took the classes and got her license, and he let her take Bettie on a few practice rides so they could figure out how to adjust a few settings to better fit Sara Grace’s needs and riding style, and like??

What do you want him to have done? She was serious about learning to ride, so she learned to ride. Then, she wanted a bike of her own, understandably, and he has a bike in really good condition that he’s no longer interested in riding and Sara Grace liked Bettie, and there was literally nothing underhanded about any of this so what is so hard for people to understand about, “Sara Grace wanted to ride a motorcycle”???

5. All things considered, it’s probably a good thing that most of the, “ancient magical artifacts” that could come up in the prime timeline won’t actually work, because if they did, Sara Grace would probably get curious about what they can do and try to play with them.

She’s a Ravenclaw for a lot of reasons, but one of the biggest ones is, “Curiosity killed the cat, satisfaction brought it back, and then Sara Grace had to go and figure out what happened because she can’t talk to animals and didn’t understand prrrrfffbt when she asked the cat about what it found out.”

6. Nominally, she’s over the fact that she never got a pony for her birthday as a kid (because, like most people’s parents, hers couldn’t afford a pony, much less the care and upkeep of a pony, especially not if they were also putting money into her dance lessons, and Sara Grace was offered the, “Do you want more dance lessons, or do you want a pony” choice more than once and picked the dance lessons every time). She’s also nominally over the fact that she can’t have a unicorn because they don’t exist in the prime timeline.

—But, when the villains decide to screw around with ancient Celtic rituals they don’t understand and tear a few choice holes in the space-time continuum, thereby allowing a few alternate universes and parallel timelines to dump their contents into the prime timeline, uh…… well.

Sara Grace understands the gravity of the situation and she is very concerned about fixing things, but in addition to getting kind of distracted by things like, “coming up with nicknames for all the AU counterparts who get dragged into the prime timeline because we can’t just call everyone by the same name or it’ll get confusing” and, “the version of Lucy from the AU in which everyone has magic instead of superpowers? Yeah, she came over with a unicorn.”

She is going to be somewhat less thrilled with the fact that some of the Silent Hill-inspired demonic monsters from the canonically designated Darkest Timeline can take the shape of unicorns, and then turn out to be…… well. Nightmarish beasts that were inspired by the Silent Hill series.

The Darkest Timeline earned that title because…… yeah, okay, all of the AU’s have problems, and some of them have it worse than others, and the canon coffee-shop AU is actually a dystopian Hellhole that takes a lot of its cues from Brave New World (like, in-universe and everything; the guy responsible for making the coffee-shop AU what it is cites Brave New World as one of his big inspirations)…

—but none of the other AU’s have Silent Hill-inspired demon monsters on the same scale as the official Darkest Timeline, so…… yep.

7. If she ever challenges you to Dance Dance Revolution, do not accept. She pointedly will not challenge you to a dance-off, because dance-offs are ultimately subjective and there’s no way to know for sure who wins, so she believes that they should only be used for fun and creative expression, not for challenges. But DDR has points and an objective score, and between her reflexes, her sense of balance, and how much she just genuinely enjoys DDR, you are probably going to lose against her.

If you’re okay with that, then by all means, take her up on that challenge. But if you’re a sore loser, just don’t do it. Because she will beat you, and while she won’t intentionally lord it over you with unsportsmanlike gloating, she can be prone to post-victory preening that most people would probably find pretty irritating.

8. Of all the movies she’s watched because her girlfriend likes them, Sara Grace has the most complicated relationship with Blade Runner. Like, she wants to like it, because she thinks that there’s a lot of it that’s interesting and well-done, but she doesn’t feel like she really, “gets it”?

She’s not sure that Lucy really, “gets it,” either, and all of the different versions of Blade Runner floating around don’t help at all. Like, she’s watched all of them with Lucy before, but Sara Grace doesn’t feel like any of them have really cleared anything up so much as they’ve made everything even more confusing, and trying to read Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? just made everything worse because she started comparing it to Blade Runner and looking for what the potential significance of the changes from text to movie could be, and she’s gotten a whole lot of nowhere on that

On thing Sara Grace knows for sure, though? Ridley Scott’s original Alien trilogy might be a good collection of films, but they’re scary and gross and given her druthers, she’d prefer to watch almost anything else.

I mean, she might not really like Todd very much — she doesn’t have much against him, but he also kinda bores her as a person — but she will be so happy to tap out and let him talk about movies with Lucy, because they can talk about gross things and give Lucy an outlet for that while Sara Grace does something else without having to deal with said gross things when she would really, really rather not, and that way, everyone wins.

At least, everyone wins unless Todd and Lucy decide to do more than just talk about movies, like if Todd tries to get Lucy to come along on some harebrained movie-making adventure that neither of them has put any real planning into so they may well end up in some ridiculous, life-threatening situation and/or trespassing somewhere that they shouldn’t, and……

Todd, please do not drag Sara Grace’s girlfriend into something like that, she would really appreciate it if you didn’t do that.

And Lucy, please do not listen to the silly white gay hipster with all the cameras and the delusions of being John Waters, Jean-Luc Godard, Gregg Araki, Christopher Guest, Wes Anderson, Quentin Tarantino, and Tom “Human Centipede” Six all at the same time. Sara Grace supports the two of you being friends and talking about movies, but not anything that involves the two of you getting in trouble while doing something ridiculous and probably dangerous in the name of making them

Which, really, is probably bound to happen at some point, and as tends to happen when people go, “What could possibly go wrong?”, pretty much everything will go wrong, and Sara Grace only won’t say, “I told you so” because:

1. she’ll likely be more worried than smug;

and 2. Margot, Josie, or Pete will probably say it for her

9. She thinks Stephen’s jokes are funny, which will make her one of his favorite teammates.

That said, between the two of them, there is almost no impulse control when it comes to things like:

“Sure, we could Google the answer to our question, but Google is full of a lot of different possibilities and it isn’t really helping, so let’s just do this potentially dangerous thing ourselves in order to find our what would happen”

and, “Omg, an ancient magical artifact, and sure, I can see its disclaimer not to touch it, but I wonder what it does, let’s ignore common sense and touch it,”

and, “Oooooh, what does THIS button do?”

—so, as much fun as the two of them would have together, and as well as they would click and work together, they really, really shouldn’t be paired up with each other for most things unless someone else comes with them

……Strictly speaking, that someone probably shouldn’t be Sebastian, because if this doesn’t end with the three of them at an ASPCA shelter and Stephen totally failing to resist how cute Sara Grace is around the poor kitties who need homes (and yet managing to tell his boyfriend, “I love you, but no, you really do not need another dog, you have SIX already, I know that all the dogs here have sad stories and need homes, but you have six already, you’re good”)

—then it will probably end with the three of them in a situation where Seb has to try and tell Stephen and Sara Grace that hey, guys, maybe they probably shouldn’t touch that possibly very dangerous thing that they don’t understand — or at least, they have to get it back to the others, so they should only touch it as much as they absolutely have to and definitely not use it for anything yet

—and he will probably fail because shit, they’re both so eager and it’s so cute, and his boyfriend is adorable as Hell when he’s curious and excited about stuff, and okay look, Seb tried to tell them, “No” but he just…… completely lost his willpower in the face of them being cute and eager, and yes, he knows it’s sad that he is a thirty-year-old superhero who still has problems with peer pressure, but they made a really good case for why it was probably okay to experiment with the shiny thing a bit first and they did learn things, and he’s really sorry for being easily swayed by the idea of making other people happy but at least nobody got hurt, right???

At least, once Sara Grace figures out that, as much as she likes them, Stephen is easily swayed by curiosity and has an, “Oooh what does this button do?” impulse that matches her own, and Seb has problems saying, “No” to people he likes and/or cares about, especially when they’re being adorable, she’ll have the good sense to go, “Okay, we can have fun together when we’re off the clock, but we really probably shouldn’t be paired up with each other”

She will be much more resistant to the idea of not getting paired up with Lucy on different assignments — like, she’ll go along with it if there are obvious good reasons why she really shouldn’t be on a team with her girlfriend…… but Sara Grace’s idea of, “good reasons” does not include, “The two of you may get distracted from the actual task at hand because you end up looking out for each other.”

Like, “We need your skills and your talents somewhere else on this job”? Yeah, okay, that’s perfectly reasonable to her. But in the face of the other argument, she would go, “Nuh uh, no way, we can totally work together without distracting each other”… and then the two of them would do exactly that

Which? I mean, they’re not the only ones who would do the same thing if they were partnered up with their significant other (I say, pointedly glancing aside at Seb and Stephen) or with someone else they care about (I say, glancing aside at Seb and Todd, though to be fair, Todd has no business being in most of the places where Seb can be and would force Seb to look out for him instead of focusing on the task at hand because he’d be in way, WAY over his head)

But Lucy and Sara Grace are still probably going to end up learning this the hard way, and Sara Grace is going to have the harder time with reconciling the logical, “Okay, I know that this is a fair point and that there are more important things than my personal anxieties and desire to protect my girlfriend” side of her opinion, with the emotional, “But my heart says that I need to protect my girlfriend and I trust her and our teammates but I want to do it myself”

—Not that Lucy won’t have any difficulty with this, but her big issue is more that she compartmentalizes things and then tries to get out of dealing with the emotional ramifications of that compartmentalizing, not that she can compartmentalize but she would really rather not

And in fairness, they’re both 22 (with Lucy turning 23 shortly after their introduction in the first book, and Sara Grace turning 23 in the early parts of book two), whereas Todd is 30 (turning 31 toward the end of book one) and his biggest reason for ever going, “No, I want to be paired with Seb in what is blatantly not a good idea” would be that he’s working on his jealousy over the Seb/Stephen relationship, and he’s accepted the fact that he is partly responsible for this because Seb offered him quite a few chances to talk like adults and go back to being in an official romantic relationship and Todd blew him off, and yeah, he wants Seb to be happy and on one hand, he’s glad that Seb is actually with a good guy for once

(because Todd and Julian are two of Seb’s better exes, and one of them got seduced into working with very literal supervillains while the other is pretty much three bad decisions stacked on top of each other inside a pair of too-small skinny jeans and one of his Mom’s vintage sweaters, wearing a scarf in summertime and Buddy Holly glasses that he doesn’t need)

—but Todd is still jealous of Stephen (and unfortunately, things don’t magically get better after Todd gets the message that he is just jealous and completely wrong in thinking that Seb having dated multiple douchebags before means that somewhere, Stephen must have skeletons in his closet, a Bertha in his attic, an old man hidden underneath his floorboards, and/or an old friend walled up in his basement after being lured there by the promise of tasting a fine vintage Amontillado), and Todd’s being immature about dealing with his jealousy (and he’ll get through it eventually, but it’s gonna take him a while)

So, like…… Lucy’s and Sara Grace’s reasons for wanting to be paired together when they maybe shouldn’t be, and how well they deal with it, are legitimately doing a lot better than one of their teammates

10. It’s probably a good thing for Sara Grace that I cannot have the Star Trek universe in canon without getting sued, because she would absolutely try to have a Tribble as a pet. And whether she got herself an unmodified Tribble and wound up with a few billion of the little shits spilling out of her entire apartment building, or one of the ones Cyrano Jones doctored up in the animated series where they don’t reproduce like bacteria but get really huge instead, this would be really, really Not Good for everyone.

[csgnewstuff]

Cabro's legacy - Various

Doom 2 - Single Player - ZDoom Compatible - 16.5 MB

Disclaimer: I know none of the mappers in this compilation, so there's no way I could be going into this with bias. So, remember that before you slam the reply button. Thanks! Cabro's Legacy is a compilation of 15 years of Spanish Doom maps, a "commemorative megawad". That's 2000 to 2015. Fifteen years of Doom maps! Whee! Not only will this be fun to play, but fun to analyze, as we go from Y2K to last year. Within those fifteen years lies a lot of weird mapping fads and trends, some good, some just terribly embarrassing... and we all know what I'm talking about. Yep, those maps. Mmhm. The ones you liked but can't believe you did in the present day. Don't worry, I was exactly the same. Cabro's mapping tournaments, if I'm going by the text file only, was a contest in La Página de Cabro. From what I see, the contest had these rules: Limit-removing maps with custom music and sky. That's it. Participants had to use only stock textures. All maps must be playable in their own right, which means all maps shall be pistol started in this compilation. Thanks to ZDoom, this mapset has a portal map! Lots of games like to do this portal/painting thing these days, eh? Anyway, the mighty ZDoom ensures that you start each level with only the pistol, and when you complete a level, you're sent back to the portal map. Fair enough. The navigation of the portal map is a little disorienting - it took me way longer than it should to find the second portal room! I'm going to warn you now: This journey is going to be long, tedious, and near the end, you'll be begging for mercy. Sorry, you started reading this review, not me! You think I'd read a review this long? Fat chance! So anyway, here are the trends I could make out. Let's see if they match the Doom community as a whole! I (2000). The first contest. Only one map is playable, and it suffers from Wolfenstein Syndrome. There are some details here and there, but this is otherwise a very clean map. The other maps weren't included. II (2001). Still hallways, but rounded corners in places. Mappers are starting to branch out a bit, use some open areas, but still, hallways. Was this the year that everyone decided to copy The Darkening? Details all in the walls that serve no purpose, and crates, because CRATES. III (2002). Not as boxy, but the sense of scale has increased dramatically. Feeling small? Some rooms are ridiculously huge, beyond Run Buddy proportions, into Equinox territory. Still, nothing that'll knock your frame rate down a peg. This is 2002 after all. IV (2003): I think 2003 started like this: "Hey, y'all know this newfangled thing called 'detail'? I think we should take a look into it. Naw, you just spam the hell out of 1S lines because a clean room just ain't cool enough." I blame Caverns of Darkness, personally. Also, why did detail start to mean "smaller" ? Thankfully one map decided to pull this stunt; the others still did last year's "huge" trope, which is refreshing for a change. I'm starting to see midtex abuse, though - I know what's coming and I don't like it. Gameplay is about to take a back seat, isn't it? V (2005): OOOH MAIII GAAWWD DDDDEEEETTTTAAAAIIILLL! HNGGGH! *various ape noises* Yes, this is the year everyone went full potato with linedefs. Do I blame PA:R? All I know is that this is when my computer started to sweat, and my framerate started to dip. And nowhere to move, because not only are we detailing everything, we're playing with the proportions of a model train set. Spam those midtextures, ya bastards! Do a line of cocaine off a UAC crate! These maps aren't flowing well, and are artificially difficult with copypasta syndrome creeping in. There is no way to dodge attacks in cramped quarters, especially hitscanners! VI (2006): I will not rest until every map unit has something different in it. I will fractal the fuck out of this map, because detail, in the holy name of detail. Inject the midtextures, borders, and flat detailing directly into my bloodstream please. Pseudo-slopes! Tanking framerates! Gradient lighting! I got stuck in DETAIL SECTORS. What the Chri-OH GOD THE MONSTER COUNT WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH THESE HORDES? Forty imps in a room that otherwise serves no purpose other than to connect two hallways that are also filled with imps...because why the hell not? Who needs gameplay? My map looks c00l d00d! Surely there's a good map somewhere? These have not aged well at all. And I know why, because the entire Doom community was infected with this. Gameplay is locked in the trunk, and we're cruising down Detail Boulevard. No brakes! VII(2007): ? *Throws down controller* Ya know what? I'm not even going to play these. I've had enough of the unfair difficulty. It's total bullshit that there are no skill levels, either. I can't see much of anything in one of the maps anyway, so hooray, mapper, I'm not playing that garbage! Another map is just very basic techbase, but still copypasta heavy. And then there's this slaughtermap - nope! What the hell is going on here? We started off with some decent maps, but as I step through the years, it's like, what drugs were we on? I cannot be the only one that sees how lazy these maps are. Yeah, visually impressive, I guess, but I'm not enjoying any of these - this is the No Fun Zone. And the slaughtermap is just so flat, so bland, so boring. VIII (2008): First map, and of course, a horde of revenants just punched my face in. I can see this being fun with an overpowered weapons mod, but as it stands it's just a boring KABLOOM-click-clock-clack SSG spamfest after the arch-vile scare. Yes, it's beatable, but I could only beat this one after savescumming the ever-loving crap out of it. Avoid, avoid. Okay, next ma--nooooooo we're back in detail land! PLEASE STOP! Oh, and even better, you can exit this map in two seconds, because the exit switch is right at the start of the map! This map looks really, really bad. The lighting in the complex is way too bright. I can't see anything in one room due to midtexture grate spam, everything is grey. That is an accomplishment, being so terrible. Oh, and hitscanners everywhere, because that's always good, innit? The last map is everything wrong with the uber-detail fad. This is total shit. Some sort of "city" map: the outside is so dark, nothing is really visible, and the buildings are so packed with little details that it looks downright comical. I'm not bashing these maps because I have any personal beefs with anyone, I'm being totally honest here - this map, and every one of these detail fad maps for that matter, are absolutely terrible. They look gaudy, the gameplay is either boring easy or frustratingly hard, and oh, of course I had to get stuck somewhere, it never fails with these maps! I got stuck in the hell section, on some "detail" rocks, and had to noclip out. IX (2010): ? BOO!!!!111 Yaaaay, we're now using the jumpscare technique! Nothing like going through a cave only to trigger something that causes two hell knights to pop up out of the floor instantly! Well, until you've overused it. And my poor framerate in the cave map! It looks pretty, though, and it's tough! It's not copypasta hordes either! I really like the cave/forest map. But that jumpscare abuse got old. I bound MDK to a key because I just can't be arsed fighting insta-monsters one after the other like that. Especially in this map where there isn't a lot of ammo. As for the rest, looks like we're hitting that era of "Try something simple for a change". Still, this was also the era of slaughtermaps - and expect an ass kicking. Some copypasta here and there, but at least it's something besides the super-cramped nonsense. This is not bad! Of course I could be totally wrong, and these suck, but in comparison to the previous few sets, this is really different, and I'll take that. Now let's pick these apart - some don't have difficulty settings. In fact, I've been meaning to bring that up - some of these maps so far have no difficulty settings whatsoever - ITYTD can be almost as hard as UV - and the only saving grace is that ammo is doubled and damage to the player is reduced. I guess in a community that only plays UV these days anyway, the other skill levels aren't even used. Boo! I use different levels all the time! It depends on how much I'm willing to use my brain at the time. X (2011): What. The. Fuck. We have entered the "what is this I don't even" zone. First map is a circle.. thing? It's kinda hard. Weird, but it wasn't the boxy junk from a few entries back. Second map is some kind of story-based map. The detail in this map is over the top, but at least all the detail looks like it's something in real life - computers, beds, tables, TVs, that kind of thing. Lost souls coming out of nowhere scared the piss out of me. And then there's this absurd hell map that is actually pretty cool. Got my ass thoroughly kicked, but someone is trying something different and that's more than I can say for previous entries. I can't hate these. Play 'em. There's one of these maps that feels like it belongs in the next category, so I'm going to hold my tongue on that one until a few lines down... XI (2012): MY MAP'S BIGGER THAN YOURS! Switch hunts. Everywhere. Ugh. NO. It's taking dozens of seconds sometimes to load these maps. What on this earth is taking that long to load? These are rapidly becoming unfun by how much time it takes to complete them. I'm not here to read 1,000 page novels, this is friggin' Doom! Why make an entire episode in one map? Is something fun not good enough anymore? Honestly at this point I'm not even really playing these. I don't have a month to play this, I don't have a week to play this. This is absurd. Make your own decisions on this one, but as for me, they've turned Doom into a chore, and when you do that, you FAIL. This doesn't bode well for the rest, does it? XII (2013): MORE *excessive swearing cut* NOVELS! Yes, your map is pretty. Yes, it took three minutes to load. Do I know if it plays well? Hell if I know, because my framerate dipped to 486 levels just trying to play the goddamned thing. This mapping contest has become the equivalent of Roman gods quarreling, each one of them trying to outdo the other in some ridiculous, hilarious fashion. It's becoming comical now. Whatever happened to making a map? It doesn't have to be a LITERAL MAP! There was one entry that didn't tank the FPS, and that was really mazey, so I'm not sure if I liked that one either. My head is beginning to hurt. NEXT! XIII (2014): Okie dokie, we're going absurdist now? Not sure what happened here! Still, maps far too damn long to enjoy casually, or even seriously, what the heck! At least level designs are cleaner, here. We're still switch hunting and maze-navigating though! Is anyone still playtesting these? Is anyone still reading this? Banana? Banana! I'm really sleep deprived, now. Starting to see things, and I'm not sure if it's me or the maps. And of course one of them is the size of Alaska, because that's the only language some of these contestants speak now. Are we almost done yet? XIV (2015)...Heh. So this is it? A city map that's somewhat playable, and a techbase map that doesn't suck? Cool, cool, what's the last map? A Sl.. sl..slaughtermap... *faints* So, to recap: we went from simple, fun maps, to detail-fests, to supergiant maps that take minutes to load and days to beat. What did we learn from all this? That the community has a lot of talent, and some of that talent might be going a little too far and trying a little too hard (read: way too hard) to prove itself. I have no idea why the contest entries went from short, fun romps to Greek epics, but I can't imagine being the judge, having to sit through dozens of entries, each trying to be megabiglargehuge, because the entrants are desperately trying to impress the judges. it's just not impressive if every single map entry tries to do this garbage. The larger the map, the less likely the gameplay is going to be tuned to anything sensible, unless there are teams of mappers looking at this stuff, and I doubt that was the case. There's no way to test this all the way through, multiple times, by yourself. My hands hurt, my eyes hurt, my ears are shot from blasting Ween all day and night playing this map over the Labor Day weekend. I don't even know if I played all these fairly; I may have cheated a bit to speed things up, but at this point it would take a team of reviewers to tackle this one and give each map a thorough assessment. I have given each an honest try (with the resurrect command bound to a key) and the majority of these maps are just too friggin' big. In conclusion, Cabro's Legacy is a set of forty-two maps trying to justify their existence, with many of them slipping and falling flat on their faces. Where did this go wrong? A better question is, "When did it ever go right?" Answer: Rarely. Maps taking minutes to load didn't help, either. Play if you dare.

http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/?id=18402