#i would like to propose crows being involved too as a force of nature that can change the course of the game on its own accord

[arlesposting]

got a new 17776-esque football game idea. average football game, but it's all played in a cornfield, but a maze could be involved if you want to get crazy with it. to make it even worse a part of the rules is that you CANNOT destroy or uproot any of the corn under any circumstances or else you'll immediately be out of the game, but you are allowed to eat any fully grown corn at any given time. the entire game field is the cornfield, and if you leave it you'll immediately be considered out-of-bounds. you're allowed to hide the ball in the corn stalks if you think that'll work. scarecrows are also there, not for anything helpful but just to throw players off cause i think that'd be pretty funny, watching someone fumble over a guy made of straw. possibly one of the most rage-inducing game ideas, or the funniest. just imagine the probes watching a bunch of players bumble around a field with extremely thick plants trying to get their way through the field through the maze or by brute force.

[quanticlub]

Long Lore Rant

... Needs to be reformatted into something pretty rip

Background:

Aight so as per the great and infallible wikipedia, Taoist cosmology states that everything started with wújí and then created yǒu jí. The former means limitless and comes from the words "nothingness" and "reaching the end" ... so nothingness at the end aka no boundaries

the latter was the limited. it's only briefly mentioned as its conception brought on a polarity to the universe - yin and yang

taiji itself is the boundary embodied by you-ji with respect to the infinite wuji and represents the Absolute

The split into yin and yang has a the connotations listed above in the pic ((except... for tikki and plagg the feminine vs masculine seem to be switched cuz from the description, tikki is more closely associated with yang)). Yang is represented by one long dash –– while yin is two small broken ones - - . Now, in the middle column where there are category names for what yin and yang represent the wu xing category (elements, second from the bottom) has earth listed as neither. It also doesn't include air, which the wu xing doesnt include in general but is included by almost every other major culture when classifying the elements.

Kwami Origins: Null

In the beginning there was a great big nothingness and then came a tiny blip of umm... everythingness? making the Absolute. This gave the nothingness and everythingness a consciousness. (wow lots of -ness words here). The nothingness part of the absolute became Null. The everythingness got no name cuz it quickly split off into the rest of creation.

Null's concept art is a three-eyed little creature with two kwami tendrils.  I propose Null as the glowing white kwami they originally made but with all black eyes and The Other One as the all black kwami but with glowing white eyes. The prior emptiness/nothingness was energy while the delineation/everythingnes was matter(?). when they created the Absolute, parts of themselves mixed i na typical yin-yang fashion, thus the eyes being like those of the others. This gave them power over the nature of the other sorta???? hard to explain

 For Null, he had power over mass, time, and space - matter is anything that has mass and takes up space at a given moment. The Other One (imma call them Higgs bc of the Higgs boson particle but it wouldnt be the real name) had power over tendencies of energy*. So. energy can be used up to build something (creative force - in human metabolism it's an anabolic reaction), released to tear something apart (destructive force - in human metabolism it's a catabolic reaction). bBt it can also be stored/dissipate with no specific purpose, instead being available for all sorts of possible things later (chaotic force?)

idea is that Higgs, upon consciousness, sacrificed themselves to give rise to existence. The Big Bang. they justs sorta fucked off to become a bunch of cool rocks/stardust floating in space and initiated the course of time (which could theoretically be split into different timelines? idk time travel is weird and this is superfluous to my current ramble)

the three aspects of Null that Higgs had gained powers from became concepts that would gain sentience of their own. The yin and yang markings are, technically, three lines. not two. cuz yin is split ( –– vs - - ).

* = this bit's a little less science-y except for keeping with the triad thing bc neutron, electron, and proton

Three, Not Two: Tikki, Plagg, & ...Hexx?

I imagine Null took up the developing concepts and nurtured them sorta. like they were incubating under Null's protection. Tikki emerged out of Null's sphere first; she had the most power from Higgs though all three were pretty closely matched. she was the creative force. 

Plagg came out of Null's sphere last. He was the destructive force. Sorta. It was actually coser to... decay?  Plagg is really more of a kwami of decay than destruction. He doesnt just obliterate things, he accelerates their decomposition. when his powers act on metal, for instance, it rusts. thats not destruction it's just the wear-and-tear expected to happen over time. Destruction as a concept opposite to that of Creation and Order involves more entropy and plagg really isnt as chaotic as would be expected. While he represents destruction in the sense that the thing is ceasing to function as a unit, the chaos would fall more under hexx.

The third force, the one that embodied possibility, was too erratic. they got out of Null's care first but remained in the sphere for a while longer. they didn't get out til after Tikki. I'm thinking maybe  emerged from Null's domain just a few seconds before Plagg (time is still wonky at this point). while Tikki is yang ( –– ), Plagg and #3, henceforth referred to as Hexx, are both yin ( - - ). Plagg is slightly weaker cuz he was "overcooked" and Hexx was "undercooked". Tikki came out just right like a yummy batch of cookies ;)

While Plagg is the biggest cuz he stayed with Null for so long, Hexx is the smallest. Even more so than Tikki but only by a little. I was thinking of him looking like a mix of Tikki and Plagg. More cat-like but with red accents and maybe blue eyes instead of green.

That’s the gist of it with a quick reminder note that time still affects kwamis differently like they mentioned in Sandboy or whatever. so they might be around ten billion years old be the time earth shows up but theyve been very immature. like little kids. and unlike kids that go to school to learn how things work, they were given immense amounts of power and 0 instruction so they have to figure out what they can do, what their identity is, and what purpose they want to have in existence

Tikki has a very do-good attitude and wants to help (even if shes proven sometimes she doesnt give the best advice) and be a Good Kwami. But Plagg isn't a bad kwami. The opposite of love isn't hate after all; it's apathy. Plagg just doesnt really care and will follow Tikki around bc he enjoys her company and his primary concern is himself. Oblivio was a good example of this cuz he's like "no fuck you whats in it for me" but still gets affected by tikki's words and comes back to do as she says eventually.

Hexx would be the "bad apple" though kwamis dont really have moralities cuz those were human constructs and are incredibly subjective. He wouldnt be hatred in the analogy with love, but rather fire-y emotions that are still more negative. quick anger and stuff. usually happy go-lucky. temperamental goes with the nature of being THE force of chaos. while he doesnt wanna help necessarily, he still wants to DO. he's the one that instigates mischief and wants to fuck around for the fun of it.

Making the Miraculous

So from the dinosaur ordeal we know the kwamis DID have effects on earth, but they couldnt consistently intervene - at least not in a controlled fashion. and they couldnt really communicate with humans cuz different field of existence. but their presence became known even if the humans didnt know what they were exactly

the set from the miracle box was made my a mage in china for the purpose of conquests. Hexx’s mischief and meddling probably gave the humans access to the magic/knowledge/whatever they’d need for making the Miraculous. The pitch to get these baby gods to agree was that tikki would have greater control of her powers and could communicate and help! tikki was down. It seemed like a Good Thing and she wanted to do good. Plagg was meh but might as well cuz tikki insisted. hexx wasn't convinced. they werent warned theyd be confined to the miraculous and essentially trapped. plaggs agreement was more out of ignorance of this fact. he figured he could make tikki happy but still fuck off to do what he wanted. never imagined that he'd be subject to another's will. 

tikki was happy regardless bc very young (developmentally) and naive and honestly believing that the human knew best and it's what was best for both the kwamis and humanity. she had so much power her jewel had to be split into two - thus, earrings. all other kwamis inhabit a singular miraculous.

when hexx was being trapped it was against his will, unlike plagg and the others. he fought it. he still got trapped but the miraculous wasnt like the others. the nature was different... it was corrupted. Cue: cursed miraculous(es) ((still not sure of the plural)). If he has to suffer then by Null so do the humans who did this. Thus the name Hexx. Opened the option for kwamis to try to fight it or go for it. Werewolves perhaps stem from a group of cursed canid kwamis? The Miracle Box is basically the kwamis who were aight with the idea but other cursed kwamis exist. 

The nature of a miraculous depends on the "recipe" used to make the jewels and the kwami's receptiveness to being basically enslaved. The Miracle Box miraculous were all made by the same mage mentioned earlier so they had the same recipe so to speak. All the kwamis in the miracle box fall under yin or yang. Including the elements. So the Zodiac and Wu Xing kwamis are all in either tikki or plagg's domains. Except for one. I propose trixx as the exception, even if they dont fit the traits of earth. i was thinking for the other supporting kwami to hexx there could be one that also refused to join the mage... the kwami representing air (wu xing is basically the only philosophy without air as an element in some shape or form). Possible name: Jinxx, a crow. The fox/crow/cat are all typical tricksters in myths. 

The way the kwamis’ powers can be manipulated varies and the cursed kwamis offer the least control to their wielders - and the greatest side effects. I imagine jinxx just fucks off to follow hexx's miraculous, wherever it may be. Hexx is closer to the original curse on pv chat noir... the curse is possibly activated and summoned by the use of tikki or plagg's powers outside their miraculous? And dormant after death of wielder or kiss from LB or something. So that would mean Plagg activated him in style queen and then helping him get a better location/target with the smaller cataclysm in i think catalyst (when he's like "ive been practicing!).

Together, plagg and tikki have that OP wish granting ability but they cant truly summon Null to the this dimension without Hexx, who adamantly refuses. it's not like Hexx's miraculous can be stolen cuz it's cursed onto the subject. As a summary of combined powers... Tikki + Plagg = wish granting? ... Hexx + Tikki = good luck ... Hexx + Plagg = bad luck ... cuz Hexx is about possibility and consequences. So creation-related effects tend to manifest as what humans deem to be good while destruction-related ones are seen as bad.

Hexx Making an Appearance

For the current Mari/Adri plot I thought of Hexx cursing Felix or sth and bringing him onto the hero scene. Comes with the benefit of jealous CN. Maybe a scene where cat-ish Felix tells Chat Noir that he’s not interested in LB, only Mari and they have some sorta agreement to respect that (would work best in the half brother’s thing if Adri found out). All hell would break loose if/when LBs identity came out.

 Also I like the idea of Hexx having been locked in Pandora's jar with other angry ~cursed~ miraculous and the others immediately fucked off and scattered their miraculous but Hexx remained. possibility and consequence does not mean bad things. it's the uncertainty of the future that allows for hope, which is what pandora found. the greek tales also have varying connotations on whether finding hope was a blessing or a curse depending on how you looked at it

[boothsheridan]

In periods when it iscloser to the Sun as it is now the temperature of Pluto's solidsurface increases, causing the ice to sublimate into gas.

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[brokehorrorfan]

Blu-ray Review: The Mummy

Beyond being groundbreaking and highly influential, the classic Universal monster movies inadvertently created the first shared cinematic universe. Long before the Avengers were assembled or Batman squared off against Superman, the likes of Dracula, Frankenstein's monster, and the Wolf Man shared the silver screen. It's only logical for Universal to revisit these iconic characters now that cinematic universes are in vogue.

The Mummy launches the Dark Universe, as it has been dubbed - and it quickly dashes any excitement in the prospect of seeing the classic monsters on the big screen again. Inexplicably, it largely abandons the horror roots in favor of an action movie that happens to involve monsters. It's the first in a proposed series of massive-budgeted, PG-13-rated, summer tentpoles with A-list casts. While none of these are bad qualities in themselves, The Mummy proves that they do not make a good reimagining of a horror classic.

Army Sergeant Nick Morton (Tom Cruise, Mission: Impossible) and his right-hand man, Corporal Chris Vail (Jake Johnson, Jurassic World), refer to themselves "liberators of precious antiquities," which is a fancy way of saying thieving treasure hunters. When an Egyptian tomb is curiously uncovered in England, they're the first to explore it, along with archaeologist Jenny Halsey (Annabelle Wallis, Annabelle). The sarcophagus within, submerged in mercury, houses the mummy of Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella, Kingsman: The Secret Service).

As Dr. Henry Jekyll (Russell Crowe, Gladiator) explains in a hacky prologue voiceover, the ancient princess was the heir to the throne of Egypt until the pharaoh had a son. Embracing evil for revenge, she was reborn a monster before being mummified alive for her sins. When Nick unwittingly unleashes her in the modern world, Ahmanet picks right back up where she left off: attempting to bring a demon into the world through a mortal man. Naturally, Nick, Chris, and Jenny get caught up in the madness.

While there's no conceivable need to turn The Mummy into an action movie, I'd be forgiving it were a good one. There are a couple of solid action sequences, but even a thrilling plane crash shot in actual Zero G cannot pull the film above mediocrity. A cool underwater sequence in which Cruise's character is attacked by ravenous, zombie-like creatures set out to the Mummy's bidding is too little, too late. Watching Cruise and Crowe share the screen and duke it out is fun, but Crowe is forced to spout cheesy dialogue between blows.

Despite minimizing the horror elements, The Mummy draws unexpected comparisons to two beloved '80s genre films. Most apparent is American Werewolf in London: a deceased friend intermittently appears to the main character, more decomposed each time, to dump exposition and make the occasional funny quip. Even more unexpected, The Mummy's modus operandi is seemingly lifted from Lifeforce: she literally sucks the life out of hapless victims in order to become whole again. I hesitate to classify either as a mere homage, as they're more like lifted plot points.

This is only director Alex Kurtzman's second film, following People Like Us, but he's written such blockbusters as Star Trek and Transformers. Despite his relative inexperience behind the camera, he teams with cinematographer Ben Seresin (World War Z, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen) to create a fine looking picture. The sun-soaked ancient Egypt flashbacks are particularly gorgeous, as if Terrence Malick made Lawrence of Arabia. The special effects are largely computer generated, but the fine artists of Industrial Light & Magic (Star Wars, Jurassic Park) pull off impressive work per usual.

The script - written by David Koepp (Mission: Impossible, Jurassic Park), Christopher McQuarrie (The Usual Suspects, Edge of Tomorrow), and Dylan Kussman (better known as an actor from Dead Poets Society); with Kurtzman and two other screenwriters receiving story credits - is sloppy, to say the least. No doubt the result of too many cooks, the main struggle lies in the film's uneven tone. No one seems to know whether they're making a serious, big, action spectacle (like your average Tom Cruise movie), incorporating its horror roots (a la World War Z), or infusing comedy (akin to the 1999 Brendan Fraser version of The Mummy). Spreading itself too thin between the three, none of the aspects play successfully.

Cruise's character feels like it was written for Chris Pratt. He desperately tries to be the likable, unexpected hero, but he can't shed the typical Cruise action star persona. He's perfectly good at that, but the incongruous goofy bits don't play to his strengths. Crowe chews the scenery as both Dr. Jekyll and his evil alter ego, Mr. Hyde. His character(s) is obviously intended to serve as the bridge between the monsters, similar to Samuel L. Jackson's Nick Fury in the Marvel cinematic universe.

Boutella isn't given enough to do, but she does well with the material and looks cool in the process. The welcomed gender swap is inconsequential. Wallis is introduced as a strong female character but is ultimately reduced to the token love interest. Johnson is great as the comedic relief - further proving Cruise had no business cracking jokes - though he's forced to play it more broad than usual. Courtney B. Vance (The People v. O.J. Simpson) is wasted as a military superior. Javier Botet (The Conjuring 2) provides creepy motion capture for a ghoulish character.

Special features on big studio movies are almost always fluff pieces full of precisely-edited sound bites, but The Mummy's home video release includes a 21-minute conversation between Kurtzman and Cruise. It's quite interesting to hear them discuss the film from the ground up so candidly. The same can be said about the audio commentary from Kurtzman, Boutella, Wallis, and Johnson. They excitedly discuss their experiences, including Kurtzman pointing out practical vs. digital effects - many of which are surprising. He also reveals that numerous scenes were written at the last minute, improvised on set, reshot, or completely reworked in editing.

The numerous shorter featurettes are more in line with what you'd expect: "Rooted in Reality" finds the cast and crew discussing how they approached a realistic, modern take on a traditional monster; "Life in Zero-G" takes viewers through the fascinating process behind the place crash scene - which consisted of 64 cycles, each with around 22 seconds in Zero G; "Meet Ahmanet" centers on Boutella; "Cruise in Action" explores Cruise and his stunt work; "Nick Morton: In Search of a Soul" is another Cruise-centric piece about his character; "Becoming Jekyll and Hyde" highlights Crowe; and "Choreographed Chaos" details a large action set piece. Special features are rounded out by four deleted scenes and an animated graphic novel, which is essentially a four-minute animated version of the prologue.

There's a line in The Mummy in which Crowe's character refers to Cruise's as "ultimately devoid of soul," which doubles as an apt metaphor for the film. The titular character lacks the sympathy that made the old Universal monsters so effective. There are few things I would enjoy more than seeing the classic monsters back on the big screen, but The Mummy's approach is clearly not the right one. Critics and audiences both seem to agree, so hopefully it's not too late to retool the Dark Universe into something that lives up to even a fraction of its enormous potential.

The Mummy will be released on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, and DVD on September 12 via Universal.

[taiblogcomics]

At The Man-Things of Madness

Hey there, pizza delivery vans. Sorry I'm late again, but if you follow my modblog, you'll see that today was kind of an ordeal. I really did sit down and say "Oh, I'll start today's update at 8", and then BAM. I wake up and it's suddenly midnight. This happens to me a lot, so please bear with me. To celebrate this, though, join me for more of a waking nightmare in this week's review~

Here's the cover:

...Where do I even start with this cover? Like, it's not a bad cover. It's actually pretty trippy and cool. That's the problem: how do you comment on this? It's weird and cool and insane. I like it, I just don't know how to describe it. Anyway, sticky-hand Man-Thing visits the Distortion World~

So we open on a recap page that's essentially a less-interesting version of the cover--and I should note that every issue opens with a recap page for the series overall, which seems to be a thing Marvel does with all their series nowadays, now I think on it. Those aren't included in the trades, but this second page probably will be. It completely interrupts the flow of the story, and is ultimately pointless, because we immediately go from that to where the story is actually: Man-Thing--now demorphed into harmless Ted Sallis--in the alternate dimension ruled by goth teen Irena. Ted just defeated a giant named Tiny Behemoth by way of forfiet, and now is granted the chance to go home--if he beheads the guy he came there to save in the first place~

Anyway, Ted doesn't have much choice. If he doesn't behead Oldfather, the queen's goons will do it for him. His only option is to concentrate and will himself into transforming back into Man-Thing. ...And he succeeds! But for some reason, he also ends up about a foot tall. No explanation why, it's just a thing that happens, because this comic likes to screw with Man-Thing and the universe is therefore randomly a dick to him for no reason. Regardless, at the size of an action figure, Man-Thing is too small to do anything other than stare helplessly at the goons as they lop off Oldfather's head.

Except, of course, continuing the theme of jerking Man-Thing around for no reason, Irena reveals it was all an illusion! Oldfather is much too important to kill right away--she'd like to torture him first. Lovely. Man-Thing returns to his human form and asks why Irena wants to do this at all, since Oldfather's death would cause a load of devastation on Earth. The answer? She doesn't have any other form of entertainment. Netflix doesn't exist in this dimension. No, that's seriously the answer she gives. She has the pair of them thrown in separate cells, and goes to consult her favourite book: "Pain and Torture for Dummies". Again: no, really, these actual things that are said in this comic.

Ted mopes in his cell, frustrated that he was unable to do anything. He squeezes that medallion he brought with him, wondering if he could wish hard enough on it to send him home, then drops the thought on grounds that he can't leave without Oldfather. Despite this, the medallion starts to glow, and suddenly Lily-Ann appears. She claims she escaped the snakes and followed him into this other dimension to help him. Apparently she recognised him the whole time, and the two start making out.

Time to be an ass to Ted again~!

When the kiss breaks, Lily-Ann suddenly turns into one of the pythons that carried her off before. It turns out they were magic pythons from this dimension, the Python's World, and living in the Florida swamps has been very good to them. Now they're ready to take over everything else. Ted quickly discovers that wrestling with a giant snake doesn't work so well. The snake gets around him, and swallows him over the course of an entire page. Well, of all the things in this issue I didn't expect, "vore fetishism" is pretty high on the list.

The snake begins fantasising about how he's free to take over the world now, and how handsome he is, when suddenly he feels sick. Before he can wonder any more things, Man-Thing bursts out of the snake, blowing it into big, bloodless chunks. Yeah, no gore, despite the decapitation in the earlier scene. Also, Man-Thing is now regular-sized, despite turning tiny the previous time he transformed. And if you think it was just a visual choice, no, he literally exploded out of the snake--there's now a big hole in the wall from the force of the explosion. If you like when things follow a logical pattern, this is not the series for you~

Anyway, this prison cell shares a wall with a lush, well-decorated hallway that ultimately leads to Queen Irena's personal chambers. She spends half a page making extremely lame jokes until she reveals she can read Man-Thing's mind, just for the writer's convenience of making their conversations easier. She promises to help him get home, mostly because she can't stand having him around in her nicely-decorated apartment or whatever.

Queen Irena leads him to another room, where we meet a fellow named The Eye. Guess what his major defining feature is. The Eye tells Man-Thing to clear his mind and look deep into his guess where. Man-Thing pshaws the idea of hypnosis, and then is put into a hypnotic trance. He is now fully under The Eye's--and therefore, Queen Irena's--control. They immediately return to the arena, and begin the whole beheading thing again. And the comic ends with a cut to black with a gory sound effect written over it.

Oh, right, I nearly forgot about the backup feature. Seriously, I put the comic aside and was about to wrap up, until I suddenly remembered that the dumb faux-horror storytelling is not limited to the established characters~

Anyway, our two-minute protagonist here is Martin Freed, a man on the local Neighbourhood Watch, whose adherence to duty is commendable, but his tact is somewhat lacking, noted by his comment of "Ewwwww, that hunk of meat used to be a human being." upon finding a person's corpse. And why is this Neighbourhood Watch carrying rifles and patrolling the streets, finding mangled corpses? Werewolves.

My main problem with "werewolves are bad guys" stories is the notion that 20-something days of the month, werewolves are just normal people. It's a real morally sticky kind of era, and I bring it up because this notion doesn't factor into the story at all. The very next scene is a group of other Neighbourhood Watch guys at a bar crowing about how they's gonna bag them some wolf trophies fer their den, or whatever. Martin, to his credit, doesn't really join in with these guys.

Naturally the police deny any werewolf involvement on the TV news, but everyone's convinced this is a cover-up. Martin gets his gun and a pair of infrared goggles, and goes out for his first patrol. He's still somewhat jumpy at the prospect of werewolves, and unfortunately, tragedy strikes. Martin fires at the first sign of movement, and guns down an innocent man. Panicking, Martin pulls out a knife, and makes a bunch of cuts to mangle the body into looking like an animal attack rather than a gunshot. I'm pretty sure forensics will figure that out right away, but the guy's just committed accidental murder and isn't thinking straight.

Martin goes home, and can barely sleep. He's honestly wracked with guilt over the whole thing, and it's this more than anything that's selling this story. The next night, back on patrol again, he hears a shot and finds his friend Jack standing over a mangled corpse much like the one Martin made yesterday. Suddenly overcome, Martin confesses his deeds to Jack. Jack gives him a long, quiet look, and then points to the body at his feet. "Me too," he replies, "That's what we all do. You didn't really think there were werewolves, did you?" Wow, so this isn't so much a horror story as a badly put-together proposal for an episode of CSI~

Honestly, this might be the stupidest, most “what the fuck” thing I’ve ever read. The ads for this series bragged that R.L. Stine was going to bring “his brand of horror” to Marvel Comics, and this right here is what that meant. Everything is disjointed nonsense with no reason behind it except to shit all over the protagonist and make him look and feel like an idiot, much like some of the worst Goosebumps books. It’s really kind of fascinating in a way. It’s such an amazing example of how terrible a writer Stine can be that I don’t know whether I hate this comic or adore it. And don’t even get me started on that back-up feature, what the fuck.

You’d better believe that next week we’re going to look at the fifth and final issue of Man-Thing. I’m even pre-empting pony comics to do it. It’s just gotta be done. Trust me, the sooner we’re done with all this, the better~