#entombedpost

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So Hades II has been dropping not so subtle hints that the gods are in the wrong and Melinoë may have to question the morality of the war she's been fighting for her entire life. It's present in the way the gods justify their treatment of mortals, it's present in the way Nemesis talks about justice and the fates of characters like Arachne, it's present in the way Chronos talks about his goals (though of course, it's easy to see how he could be lying about the new golden age, even though the history of the mythological golden age does hint at him being right).

But, to me, the number one sign that Melinoë may be on the wrong side of this conflict is the newest boss. I can't think of a single mythic figure who is more instantly sympathetic or more likely to be genuinely fighting for the wellbeing of mortals than Prometheus. I can't think of a single god, titan, or hero who cares more about humanity and its progress. I haven't studied up on Prometheus more than just reading the famous myth about him, but I have never really heard him discussed unsympathetically. I know this may be a biased perspective as a puny mortal, but my gut tells me to side with whoever Prometheus is throwing in with. But I guess we'll see if I'm putting too much stock in him as the plot continues to unfold.

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Call me Fortunato the way I'm wine drunk and bricked up

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Okay so I am VERY late to adoring Supernatural. I watched it for the first time last year and I've been wanting to share thoughts but I feel like I'm just so late to the party it's all been said. But then I realized it was stupid to care about that, so I'm going to talk about probably my favorite line in the show.

In the S5 finale "Swan Song", right before Lucifer posesses Sam he says, "A fiddle of gold against your soul says I'm better than you."

Now obviously this is a fun reference to "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" and it's a super well delivered line. It's funny to have Lucifer himself reference the song and it's an intimdating opening to their internal battle. But my FAVORITE thing about this line is the fact that the Devil loses in the song. The Devil is both cocky and desperate and because of that he picks a fight he absolutely cannot win and Johnny humilates him.

Lucifer isn't just goading Sam, he's reminding him of a story where someone bet against the Devil and won—of a time where human pride overcame demonic pride. He is literally goading Sam into being cocky by implying that he's being too cocky himself. He's telling him that he thinks he's gonna win, but maybe that's the reason Sam will win. And then, of course, Lucifer does win and steal Sam's body.

I just think it's such a brilliant and nuanced line packaged in such a perfect reference. I've thought about this line nearly every day since I first heard it.

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JAMES GUNN, GIVE KARA ZOR-EL A MORALLY DUBIOUS ALIEN GIRLFRIEND IN THE NEW SUPERGIRL MOVIE AND MY LIFE IS YOURS!

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I've gotten back into playing Hades II with my own music playing, and I have to say, there's something that feels very correct about fighting Typhon to Magia from Puella Magi Madoka Magica. It might be the best "fight a big freaky monster" song out there tbh.

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I've been getting dialogue in the new update for Hades II that makes it seem like we're going to get to reverse Arachne's curse! Arachne is one of my faves from the second game so far. I love that she makes magical dresses and gifts them to Melinoë, and I just love how sweet those two are on each other. It's honestly one of my favorite relationships in the game and I hope it can blossom into a romance cause I absolutely ship them. It makes me so sad that she spends all her time feeling like a monster, and I want to see her in her human form getting even closer and more comfortable with Melinoë.

Also Arachne probably hasn't had her pussy eaten in centuries and that can't be making her situation better. PLEASE let me do something about it.

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One of my favorite character types is a character who is so obviously faced with death from the beginning of the story, but just cannot seem to die. Whether the position they've been thrust into seems destined to collapse, or their death just makes the most sense from a meta perspective, I ADORE when someone pulls off keeping a character past their expiration date. Sometimes that does just mean that the storyteller made a bad choice and kept a character too long and it can be a real drag on the narrative, but when it's done right? It's the best thing ever. I love watching those characters cope with this position and with feeling to their core like they shouldn't have made it this long. The icing on the cake, of course, is how often someone (or multiple someones) died in their place to keep them around this long and left them with guilt/regret that they’ll carry through every second of their unexpectedly long lives. When someone pulls this off I want nothing more than for that character to survive to the very end of the story and to see what they make of the life they seemed fated to lose.

This is mostly about Pyrrha Dve. I think about her all the time. I think about how many characters she has outlived, despite being the cav of a ten thousand year old lyctor. Her death was subverted when the world ended and John brought her back, and it was subverted again when she wasn't fully consumed by G1deon. As a result she watched basically everyone she's ever known die from the passenger seat of the Saint of Duty. G1deon, almost all the other lyctors, and Wake all died and she's still here inhabiting the body of her oldest friend. 

I spent the entirety of Nona the Ninth thinking Pyrrha was going to die. Genuinely every time she ran off to work or otherwise vanished from the view of the rest of the cast it seemed like such a sure thing that this death would be what heightened the emotional stakes for Nona and taught her firsthand the tragedy of death. Instead, she was the only survivor of her adorable little household and is once again alone as the last remaining piece of something she will never get back.

It's also about Amethar of the House of Rocks. I love the way that A Crown of Candy has so many combat encounters and betrayals that seem built with the sole purpose of sacrificing Amethar. There are so many moments that would make for a heroic, tragic death that Amethar will simply never have. He outlived every single one of his sisters and now he has to rule. And when it seems like his time stuck being a miserable king is over because his daughters who have been trained their whole lives to take his place are here? Well, he's going to have to outlive one of them too. He outlives his family, he outlives the mentor of his daughters, and he outlives every enemy that was created to kill him. And all that time you can tell he kind of wishes that he had died in battle—that he'd taken the hit for one of his sisters who had then been able to rule and raise a family in his place. But he was never going to get what made sense to him and it is his duty to carry on.

It's just such a unique tragedy that the reader/viewer gets to share with the character because there's always a very strong meta element to this character type. The reader's expectation and the character's are so often the same as both are waiting for the other shoe to drop. It's a fun reflection on expectation and what it seems like is supposed to happen. And it's such a great recipe for lingering tragedy when done correctly.

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I've been thinking about Katniss Everdeen a lot recently. How she never wanted to be the face of a movement. How she didn't want to be poked, prodded, and have every aspect of her existence captured and picked apart. She may have had ideals that aligned with resistance, she may have fought for them either way, but being their face was as bad as being the Capitol's demon. Such a nightmare of not being able to listen to a political discussion or watch a major broadcast without hearing her name come up. Her existence was a hot button issue. Her life was a display for people who rallied behind her just as much as those who hated her. It was impossible for her to feel safe, impossible for her to experience quiet, impossible for her to just be her without it having to be a significant moment or a battle.

Anyway, for sure completely and totally unrelated, but I hope all the trans women out there are doing well today and finding peace and quiet moments away from it all.

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Okay so I just finished rewatching cowboy bebop (and have apparently unintentionally inspired a couple mutuals to do the same) and I think my favorite episode has changed.

I've always said Ballad of Fallen Angels is my favorite because it gives us so many essential pieces for how we'll build our perceptions of Spike, Jet, and Faye—and also because the cathedral scene is maybe my favorite scene in anything ever. It is without question still my second favorite episode for those reasons (or maybe tied for first, I'm still working it out), but there is another episode that crept up on me: another episode that does all the same things (at least for Spike) in a way that I find even more interesting. I think Sympathy for the Devil is now my favorite.

This episode does the same thing most Spike focused episodes do: It emphasizes that he cannot help himself. We are told yet again that he will run headlong into death and danger until it finally kills him because it's all he knows how to do anymore. But I just think it does so with an extra level of intimacy and establishes something I really like about his character, which is Spike's respect for the dead.

The reason he's got a deadly situation to face in the first place is because he's carrying out the wishes of someone who he watched die (something that Spike does A LOT in this show, like way more than I remembered!) It shows what respect he has for people who have been killed before they could do what they needed to—for people who don't get as lucky as he did. He really wants to carry out the whims of ghosts until he can be put to rest himself. This is a fun detail we get a HINT of in Ballad of Fallen Angels, but in that one it feels a lot more tied to his own past and his own grief/revenge. It's one of the few things it seems like Spike still cares about. He's throwing himself into the jaws of death because he's going through the motions and living out his misery/gunning for cheap thrills, but he completes the final requests of those who he sees die out of genuine sympathy and drive.

I also just love the way he is contrasted by Wen. Spike is often compared with whatever foe he'll get into a duel with at the end of the episode: Vicious, Mad Pierrot, and Andy are all characters that have some piece of Spike which he's forced to face off against and confront without actually changing it about himself. He brushes up against these things, but never admits to them or accepts them. I like Wen because, as the title implies, Spike clearly feels deep sympathy for him. Unlike the others where he's forced to survive his abrasive shadow, he has a chance to save this one. He'll never admit that he understands, that he finds himself in this strange character, but he very clearly does.

He is directly asked to address his own sad existence in Wen's dying moments, and although he doesn't do it verbally, the way that he physically acts does show a level of understanding and tragic self awareness. Especially in the moment where he says the iconic line, "Bang", which he says only one other time.

Sympathy for the Devil does the same thing a lot of other episodes do with Spike, but it does it in a way that I find very intimate, while still managing to capture basically every element of his character in one neat little package. I really noticed the way it not only establishes Spike's endless drive to get himself killed, but also the way he behaves around people who die or are locked in the same cycle as him in this latest rewatch and I'm obsessed with it. So I think that makes it my new favorite episode.

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We are nearly 2 hours into the Ides of March, which means I am about 2 hours into my goal of playing through Fallout: New Vegas from the beginning until I kill Caesar. I've always built my character for story experience exclusively, so it's new for me building a Courier specifically to rampage through the Legion's camps.

The story I've come up with so far is that she escaped Legion territory with her family as a child and dedicated her life to making people smile and delivering whatever goods were needed for communities she came across. But then, of course, the Legion and groups like them kept expanding and she kept running. Finally, when as a Courier she was kidnapped and shot by Benny, she just snapped. Now she has renamed herself The Angel of Death and has dedicated what remains of her life to killing Caesar and his men at any cost. I am approaching Boone, who I'll take as my only companion for the run.

I'm looking forward to seeing how quickly I can take down the Legion. But I know I'm going to be SO TIRED by the end so there may not be many updates.

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I appreciate that for "Breaking News: No Laugh Newsroom" on Dropout they always give credit at the beginning to the person who wrote the episode, but when we go straight from a three minute bit about Dow Chemicals to one where Richard Nixon writes hate poetry about JFK, it almost feels redudant to tell us that Grant O'Brien was handling the script.

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Well, unfortunately a pile of smoldering ash doesn't photograph that well, but this was once Caesar, done in by Boone, EDE, and myself just under nineteen and a half hours into The Ides of March: Mojave Style. I have successfully slain Caesar on this special day. Ngl I didn't think it would take this long, but I am bad at video games and getting to level 19 took some doing. But I did it! And I'm proud of myself for committing to the bit!

I do really wish EDE hadn't gotten the last shot, but it's okay, this has quickly become one of my favorite versions of the Courier I've ever run I came up with some very silly story stuff for her along the way to justify her doing half the Independence Route after doing a quarter of Mr. House's route, and then ultimately just bailing as soon as her worst enemy was dead.

I think my Mr. House run courier will always be my fave, but I want to put this one in writing and then adapt some of her details into my next full Independence Route.

Anyway all this to say Caesar is dead and gone, he failed to beware the Ides of March, and holy fuck I'm tired I haven't slept in like 30 hours.

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Caesar, your dogs tried to FUCKING BITE ME! (A compilation of named Legionaries taken out throughout the day. I'm prepping for the final push to fight Caesar after 15 hours of setup)

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I've been rewatching Cowboy Bebop with my beloved (who hasn't seen past the first handful of episodes) and I am really just appreciating all over again how masterful this show is at telling small scale stories. Like in some of these episodes there's only really two major scenes with a couple inbetween to explain things or set up our bounty. There's like on location and then the outside of the location. We are typically pursuing a single bounty. These episodes are so intimate and so focused on just exploring one aspect of a character or two and one very specific interactions. And those are some of my favorite episodes.

I know this isn't something unique to this show, but I do think it's something it does uniquely well and I find it a breath of fresh air compared to all the shows rushing to their point without taking the time to build my interest or explore the characters before completing their arcs. I find it so annoying the way I am supposed to care about the competion of arcs that basically didn't take place on screen because they "didn't have time". It feels like everything wants to be on a gigantic scale all the time whether or not they have the time and regardless of whether it fits the tone.

So it's just very nice going back to something that knew exactly what it wanted to do in every episode and really lingers on these specific moments for characters and for the setting. There's no need to rush or make a massive save the galaxy plotline. We're just here to look these space cowboys over inch by inch and then send them on their way.

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I played Superfight A LOT as a tween/teen, to the point that my friends and I had played basically every possible combination and gimmick that the game could offer. It's been probably like eight or nine years since I've played it, and I think I'm still burnt out on it just because I've spent so so much time with it. So admittedly I wasn't immediately excited when I saw that was the game for Smosh Games on Friday.

But oh my GOD was that funny. There are so many bits in that which I know are gonna be instant classics and I'm gonna see them in compilations for years and I honestly cannot wait. They made it so fun, and honestly those yellow cards add a lot of spice to gameplay that makes me feel like I could play it again and have a blast.

But I specifically went back to watch Angela, with tears in her eyes, ask "what's wrong with Mater" like fifteen times spread out across the day and it made me laught so fucking hard each time. Her delivery was INSANE, and watching Chanse, Tommy, and Damien flip between comforting and laughing while Shayne just absolutely lost his shit was the best thing I've seen in months. I think just posting about it means I'm gonna have to go watch that bit again because it's genuinely just the funniest thing I've seen in so long. I need this in every "best of" for both Board AF and Angela until the end of time.

Angela is such a powerhouse in every single thing she does, it's unreal.

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It's officially the new year, and what better way to celebrate than with the second round of Ianthepocalypse? I am going to reblog every piece of Ianthe fanart I had the sense to save in a truly massive wave of spam in tribute to my favorite fail-lyctor. Apologies to anyone who follows me for the tidal wave of of Ianthe that is about to hit—or maybe you're welcome?