#conjectures ideas

[taffywabbit]

so like. at what point are we going to stop listening to game companies saying "the game was poorly received and didn't meet our sales targets, and that's why we're removing it from storefronts and taking down all the servers mere months or even weeks after release" for titles that had a long expensive development, were barely marketed, and nobody knew they'd even released until after they heard they were getting shut down and couldn't be played/purchased anymore?

I feel like the prevailing takeaway for anyone who doesn't just conclude "yeah, game was pretty mid, makes sense to me" has usually been "this company just has unreasonably impossible sales expectations and treats every project like a failure if it doesn't print a trillion dollars". but these ARE allegedly experienced business execs who aren't complete idiots, and after this most recent debacle with Concord I'm starting to wonder if a bunch of these "games getting wiped out of existence when they underperform instead of just being allowed to persist as they are and maybe improve with time" cases in recent years might be more of a Warner-Discovery type situation, like nuking an entire animated series or film that was worked on for years and preventing it from being sold because it has to be officially unprofitable for the company to use it as a tax write-off. I look at a game that was worked on for 8 years and only made available for 2 weeks, and it's hard not to see the parallels.

great work, AAA games industry, really normal and sustainable stuff you're doing over there as usual

[adozentothedawn]

You know, objectively I already knew that the powers in Dishonored are related to their wielder's fears and issues but I don't think I ever really thought about what that means for anyone but Corvo. (I am ignoring the shared powers for now, in which I am including Emily's far reach as a version of blink although you can probably get something out of that as well)

Corvo can summon rats, the thing that arguably has ruined his life. The rats brought the plague which led to his being sent away and in the end Jessamine's murder. He can possess people, take their place in the way people have accused him of doing, a foreign invader leaving everyone behind worse than they were. He has wind powers, a force that in his home is used for electricity, in a way for independence because they don't need as much whale oil, and all he can do with it is destroy, push people away and break things.

Daud has pull, the ability to take things from people without their noticing, and the ability to take people themselves, hold them helpless against their will, like he was taken as a child. He is immune to poison (which is from a gameplay perspective just so you can't just sleepdart him and run but bear with me) which to me feels like an ironic ability and indicates that he was poisoned before, and though he can't be anymore it can't save him from what he's already suffered. I also think it's fascinating that summon assassin and arcane mark are two different powers. One to share his powers, the stronger the bond the more of himself he shares, giving of his own volition what he was forced to before. And the summon ability with which he forces his will on them as someone else's will was forced onto him.

Emily has domino (the unironically most useful power in these games aside from maybe blink but I digress), the ability to tie people's fates together while she's grieving for having not been able to save her father and having watched the murder of her mother. She has Doppelgänger, the ability to put a fake of herself in her place while she can run from the consequences of her actions, or alternatively, a representation of how she feels like the Doppelgänger of her mother, unable to live up to her memory. There is mesmerize, a fake construction keeping people from seeing the real her. And Shadow walk, turning her into something unrecognisable and nearly invisible, as she grapples with the uncertainty of what she will do now that her life has once again been upended. What is the world making of her and what is she making of herself?

And then there's Billie. Semblance. The ability to become someone else. As she has lived as someone, anyone else for 15 years. Farsight. The ability to see what's coming. As she has not those 15 years ago. And Displace. The ability to basically swap places with herself. And still she cannot put herself back there when she made her greatest mistakes.

I don't know man I think that does pack a punch.

[finelythreadedsky]

ok wait when athena addresses odysseus in the prologue of ajax

καὶ νῦν ἐπὶ σκηναῖς σε ναυτικαῖς ὁρῶ | Αἴαντος, ἔνθα τάξιν ἐσχάτην ἔχει

guys i've been so focused on the skene as a point of conjunction between the dramatic world of the play and the reality of the audience for plays set at the camp at troy but. i think sophocles' tetralogy went last at the dionysia this year. and/or ajax was the last of his three tragedies. like yeah on one level it's because homer situates ajax on one edge of the camp and achilles at the other. but on another level...

[kindaorangey]

recently i've been thinking about rowan omondi in terms of the "supportive black best friend" trope. i've had this idea for a while that it would be interesting to see a story that deals specifically with the psychological effects of being the designated "support friend", especially in cases where that character addressing/expressing their own emotions and advocating for themself would be stigmatised because of their race... and obviously, rowan fits into this neatly, actively repressing and refusing to talk about his feelings because he isn't usually given this sort of support by his friends, it's usually him who's supporting them. and i guess on a metatextual level, once he begins to address his own emotional repression and step down from that support role, you could view it as him becoming cognisant of his own role as the "supportive black best friend".

[literally-1894]

So, Lothric, Gwyndolin's (probable but not determined) nephew, imitates him quite a bit. Not only do they have a lot of physical resemblance between eachother, as well as the same VA, but Lothric hides at the back of a room in a very Gwyndolin-like manner and uses the same variant of Homing Soulmass as Gwyndolin, though Lothric's sorceries seem to do holy damage and *might* have more to do with the Angel Worship of Gertude (Lothric's younger sister, ergo Gwyndolin's probable niece).

The one depiction of Allfather Lloyd we have is pretty difficult to parse, as it is a sprite of a single coin. Lloyd's associated covenant is called the Way of the White and their symbol is a white ring, and "white ring" is the semantic meaning of "Gwyndolin". Furthermore, as Lloyd is described as being Gwyn's uncle, though this is disputed by later generations of the Way of the White by the time of DSIII, Lloyd would also be Gwyndolin's granduncle.

Does this mean that Allfather Lloyd is/was as feminine as Gwyndolin and Lothric?

[athenasplan]

Yeah honestly it’s really hard to guess what Sam means with “If we ever get future seasons we have plans to honor that moment in a different way” bc on one hand Scanlan’s goodbye speech still had his lingering self doubt/inadequacies like him specifying stuff like “We really REALLY shouldn’t have succeeded” and “For the first time in my life I matter” and he’s still the only character the show has done no childhood/family backstory for but on the other hand how would that stuff even play in with him now having left on this journey of self improvement? Maybe Pike confronts him about the “Now I have a real family” line which leads to conflict?

Either way here’s the article, and it really frames it like the sole reason for changing his big moment was the uncertainty of season 4, hence them still giving it buildup despite the lack of payoff which is… frustrating. https://www.pastemagazine.com/tv/amazon-prime-video/the-legend-of-vox-machina-season-3-finale-interview-spoilers-ending-explained

Thank you for linking the article!! This part explains a lot about the decisions they made.

And as you said, the self doubt and uncertainty surely were in the speech, but idk if these few sentences could really be ground for a massive fight? It would make sense that Pike felt hurt by his "real family" comment, but still it seems to me that making him leave again would be redundant, and I'm fairly sure they want to avoid that (they even said in the article that the reason Percy was dead for a longer time this season was because they didn't want to just repeat what happened with Vex in season 2)

Also the fact that Sam said that they will "honor the moment in a different way" makes me think it could be a COMPLETELY different scenario.

Like maybe the lament is not even directed towards Vox Machina, maybe it's some other person from Scanlan's past that he realizes knows nothing about him?

I really don't know. But I do have the feeling (and hope) that season 4 will be a bit more Scanlan centric

[pigeonstab]

The vampire Killer /werewolf Cross thing (WHICH I HAVEN'T EVEN MADE DESIGNS FOR YET) has made me kinda maybe want to try writing. A fic. Of some kind of other. Lololol do not take this as a promise I've only done creative writing in middle school T T

[sewer-swan]

I'm really interested in that irrational realm of absolutes and archetypes. Fantasy fiction, gender roles, sexuality, psychosis, drama, conspiracy theory, poetry.

[cyreneduvent]

The human brain really is designed for cooking up batshit theories

[martyrbat]

the batman nobody knows! — batman #250

(ID in alt!)

[autistic-shaiapouf]

Okay nonzero chance that I could land an overnight shift at a 24 hour pharmacy and get an extra dollar on the hour as well as a quieter work environment

[innerward]

gotta work on my crazy doctor cadence

[unscramblerer]

Todays Word Of The Day is: Conjecture

Conjecture originates from the Latin conjectura(guess). English usage of the word began in the 14th century.

[wonder-worker]

"And where it hath pleased [God] to take out this transitory life the most victorious Christian prince of famous memory King Edward the iiijth our king, loving lord, and father, whose soul God of his infinite mercy pardon. The lamentable and most sorrowful tidings thereof was shown unto [us] the xiiijth day of this present month. [...] We intend...to be at our city of London in all convenient haste to be crowned at Westminster."

— Letter by EDWARD V from Ludlow to the burgesses of King's Lynn upon the news of his father Edward IV's death (16th April 1483)

[maliciousalice]

So many people in the spaces i lurk will be be thiiiiiis 🤏 close to an interesting and valid point , and then it's like oop here comes the delulu

[arodrwho]

hoooo. okay. i feel better knowing she's crossed the threshold there w the delegates