#it has a lot of the same themes too

[sparklepony]

Going beastmode (in a bonellian way)

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Turtle Takedown Teamwork.

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[turtleblogatlast]

Something I think is cute is that - y’know how Raph’s eyes are more on the yellow side?

Well, you know who also has slightly yellowed eyes? Donnie.

While Raph’s are more yellow, I think it’s cute that this is something that they share and I don’t see it pointed out too often?

It’s also something they both share with Draxum and Splinter’s current form (though again, these two have much more yellow sclera than the boys do.)

But yeah, I like that there’s this little detail that ties Raph and Donnie together, even if it’s small.

[thunderboltfire]

I have a lot of complicated feelings when it comes to what Neflix has done with the Witcher, but my probably least favourite is the line of argumentation that originated during shitstorms related to the first and second season that I was unlucky to witness.

It boils down to "Netflix's reinterpretation and vision is valid, because the Witcher books are not written to be slavic. The overwhelming Slavic aestetic is CDPR's interpretation, and the setting in the original books is universally European, as there are references to Arthurian mythos and celtic languages" And I'm not sure where this argument originated and whether it's parroting Sapkowski's own words or a common stance of people who haven't considered the underlying themes of the books series. Because while it's true that there are a lot of western european influences in the Witcher, it's still Central/Eastern European to the bone, and at its core, the lack of understanding of this topic is what makes the Netflix series inauthentic in my eyes.

The slavicness of the Witcher goes deeper than the aestetics, mannerisms, vodka and sour cucumbers. Deeper than Zoltan wrapping his sword with leopard pelt, like he was a hussar. Deeper than the Redanian queen Hedvig and her white eagle on the red field.

What Witcher is actually about? It's a story about destiny, sure. It's a sword-and-sorcery style, antiheroic deconstruction of a fairy tale, too, and it's a weird mix of many culture's influences.

But it's also a story about mundane evil and mundane good. If You think about most dark, gritty problems the world of Witcher faces, it's xenophobia and discrimination, insularism and superstition. Deep-seated fear of the unknown, the powerlessness of common people in the face of danger, war, poverty and hunger. It's what makes people spit over their left shoulder when they see a witcher, it's what makes them distrust their neighbor, clinging to anything they deem safe and known. It's their misfortune and pent-up anger that make them seek scapegoats and be mindlessly, mundanely cruel to the ones weaker than themselves.

There are of course evil wizards, complicated conspiracies and crowned heads, yes. But much of the destruction and depravity is rooted in everyday mundane cycle of violence and misery. The worst monsters in the series are not those killed with a silver sword, but with steel. it's hard to explain but it's the same sort of motiveless, mundane evil that still persist in our poorer regions, born out of generations-long poverty and misery. The behaviour of peasants in Witcher, and the distrust towards authority including kings and monarchs didn't come from nowhere.

On the other hand, among those same, desperately poor people, there is always someone who will share their meal with a traveller, who will risk their safety pulling a wounded stranger off the road into safety. Inconditional kindness among inconditional hate. Most of Geralt's friends try to be decent people in the horrible world. This sort of contrasting mentalities in the recently war-ridden world is intimately familiar to Eastern and Cetral Europe.

But it doesn't end here. Nilfgaard is also a uniquely Central/Eastern European threat. It's a combination of the Third Reich in its aestetics and its sense of superiority and the Stalinist USSR with its personality cult, vast territory and huge army, and as such it's instantly recognisable by anybody whose country was unlucky enough to be caught in-between those two forces. Nilfgaard implements total war and looks upon the northerners with contempt, conscripts the conquered people forcibly, denying them the right of their own identity. It may seem familiar and relevant to many opressed people, but it's in its essence the processing of the trauma of the WW2 and subsequent occupation.

My favourite case are the nonhumans, because their treatment is in a sense a reminder of our worst traits and the worst sins in our history - the regional antisemitism and/or xenophobia, violence, local pogroms. But at the very same time, the dilemma of Scoia'Tael, their impossible choice between maintaining their identity, a small semblance of freedom and their survival, them hiding in the forests, even the fact that they are generally deemed bandits, it all touches the very traumatic parts of specifically Polish history, such as January Uprising, Warsaw Uprising, Ghetto Uprising, the underground resistance in WW2 and the subsequent complicated problem of the Cursed Soldiers all at once. They are the 'other' to the general population, but their underlying struggle is also intimately known to us.

The slavic monsters are an aestetic choice, yes, but I think they are also a reflection of our local, private sins. These are our own, insular boogeymen, fears made flesh. They reproduce due to horrors of the war or they are an unprovoked misfortune that descends from nowhere and whose appearance amplifies the local injustices.

I'm not talking about many, many tiny references that exist in the books, these are just the most blatant examples that come to mind. Anyway, the thing is, whether Sapkowski has intended it or not, Witcher is slavic and it's Polish because it contains social commentary. Many aspects of its worldbuilding reflect our traumas and our national sins. It's not exclusively Polish in its influences and philosophical motifs of course, but it's obvious it doesn't exist in a vacuum.

And it seems to me that the inherently Eastern European aspects of Witcher are what was immediately rewritten in the series. It seems to me that the subtler underlying conflicts were reshaped to be centered around servitude, class and gender disparity, and Nilfgaard is more of a fanatic terrorist state than an imposing, totalitarian empire. A lot of complexity seems to be abandoned in lieu of usual high-fantasy wordbuilding. It's especially weird to me because it was completely unnecessary. The Witcher books didn't need to be adjusted to speak about relevant problems - they already did it! The problem of acceptance and discrimination is a very prevalent theme throughout the story! They are many strong female characters too, and they are well written. Honestly I don't know if I should find it insulting towards their viewers that they thought it won't be understood as it was and has to be somehow reshaped to fit the american perpective, because the current problems are very much discussed in there and Sapkowski is not subtle in showing that genocide and discrimination is evil. Heck, anyone who has read the ending knows how tragic it makes the whole story.

It also seems quite disrespectful, because they've basically taken a well-established piece of our domestic literature and popular culture and decided that the social commentary in it is not relevant. It is as if all it referenced was just not important enough and they decided to use it as an opportunity to talk about the problems they consider important. And don't get me wrong, I'm not forcing anyone to write about Central European problems and traumas, I'm just confused that they've taken the piece of art already containing such a perspective on the popular and relevant problem and they just... disregarded it, because it wasn't their exact perspective on said problem.

And I think this homogenisation, maybe even from a certain point of view you could say it's worldview sanitisation is a problem, because it's really ironic, isn't it? To talk about inclusivity in a story which among other problems is about being different, and in the same time to get rid of motifs, themes and references because they are foreign? Because if something presents a different perspective it suddenly is less desirable?

There was a lot of talking about the showrunners travelling to Poland to understand the Witcher's slavic spirit and how to convey it. I don't think they really meant it beyond the most superficial, paper-thin facade.

[spacedlexi]

speaking of fucked up overly hated female twdg characters i find it Super Interesting how people will say carver was the best villain in the whole series, but when lilly is literally just a successful carver (iron fist leader of a community turning children into soldiers) suddenly shes a bad/lame villain for some reason 🤔

[hedgehogcryptid]

Been thinking about Golden Kamuy and all the people who are kinda pissed or disappointed Sugimoto didn't die and my two cents about it are:

1) It's not really about him. His purpose is to be an ignorant fuck so that the audience has a reason to learn about the ainu, and follow Asirpa along as she explains and guides us through their world and their struggles. If Sugimoto dies then it does become about him, and that defeats the purpose. We're not supposed to mourn the likeable young man left adrift by the war who tragically died in pursuit of a higher purpose. We're supposed to empatize with the fight of the native people fighting for the right to their very existence

2) Sugimoto's purpose is to be Asirpa's bodyguard, and that means he HAS to be immortal, because the world construed in GK is one where violence has very real consecuences. The teenage girl facing against war veterans and violent ex convicts, as the sole key to obtaining unimaginable riches, would NOT have a happy ending in that world unless she had a protector that broke the laws of the universe

2.1) The alternative would be that Asirpa somehow be able to protect herself and that would mean SHE became an unrealistically cool, capable, unkillable character, which also defeats the purpose. GK presents the Ainu with respect to their culture and their struggles. It does not present them as an over-romanticized version of themselves with barely any resemblance to the real people they actually are in exchange for cool points. They're not there to be an exotic and exiting new kind of shonen fighter. Sugimoto is the one shouldering the weight of unrealistic action sequences so that Asirpa can be a more accurate representation of realistic human beings with human problems and limitations

So basically, however much I like him, I think Sugimoto is less a human being than he is a plot device. Which coincidentally also builds up on his feelings of dehumanization due to what he went through on the war and his immortality itself

[icewindandboringhorror]

More misc. daily life pictures and such

[sysig]

He’s my little meow meow, my darling, my bbygirl (Patreon)

[autumnoakes]

can i say it now?

sage of time/time powers didn't make sense for totk zelda. at ALL.

when in botw, before the calamity, in aoc, did she EVER show an affinity for time powers? i get that it was like this sort of. hidden power kind of thing, but it still doesn't make much sense. not for zelda.

[jamiethebee]

Fully caught up on the manga (minus spoilers for the last chapter) and..... Ya know what maybe I am a villain stan because I just.... Don't trust that anything really changes in society. Everyone outside of heroes, when given speaking parts, seems to indicate that they'll step in or do something in order to protect themselves - not out of any sense of responsibility or community, but to safeguard their lives in case the other person ends up a villain. Or maybe I'm just pessimistic? But we've seen irl time and again that this ending attitude doesn't work. Doesn't have change. Certainly not long lasting change. I really really wanted to finish the series still liking Deku but throughout the fight, every cut back to someone other than Deku, talking about his heart and how good he was and how much he was doing to fight for the person - and the cut back is just "punch". He never responded to Shigaraki's words. He never engaged with the man himself. And at the end of the day, I feel more trust in Uraraka. More trust that she'll actually work on saving people's hearts. And she's back in construction work like her parents. And of course the camera dies and no one sees Toga's heart. Because how dare anyone think a villain could be a person (paraphrased that one interview guy).

I really really wanted to end this manga happy with it. I'm not stupid enough to conflate the reality of the story with fandom. I'm not. I really wanted to enjoy it for what it is. But when they directly ask "how do we fix villains being made" the answer is "you don't. We can't" and ???? That's supposed to be what the manga was working towards this whole time? I - .....

[starrysharks]

zeno's ultimate pokemiku tierlist ⁉️(it's all his opinion and he loves them all regardless⁉️)

[taylorswiftdebut]

people on other platforms saying ttpd is the laziest album taylor has ever written/laziest album ever written in general is crazy to me and really loses the plot in terms of appreciation of art for me. one of the main things of ttpd is that its not edited down, its pure emotion and all of the emotion plain and ugly and not watered down as well as not over produced, it is written out of the need to write and continue to write until you bleed on the page until you can’t tell yourself apart from the ink. it’s raw and authentic, that doesn’t make it lazy and i’m soooooo tired of seeing this take

[bacchuschucklefuck]

What about sorcerer Adaine? It'd keep the way her parents treated her consistent because of in that case they'd see her having the easy way of casting instead of studying to be a "proper" caster

this is a great idea!! the only reason why I'm not gonna pick it up is bc I've already locked down sorcerer for kristen haha

[fragmentedblade]

I think I've become an official HI3 player. I check the HSR leaks hoping for iterations of HI3 characters now

[reel-fear]

Honestly, every single time the whole 'poppy playtime is a bendy rip-off' stuff ever shows up I find it all extremely unconvincing and silly.

For one thing, rip-off usually is meant to imply that it's a cheap lazy copy of a better more polished thing, and uh. Sorry but even from chapter 1? Poppy Playtime is a better game than Bendy, it has a simple but understandable story, the game manages to be thrilling, creepy, and very intense at times... I mean that Huggy chase in the vents ALONE puts it way above Batim for me.

I mean BATDR had the most slow stupid chase I've ever seen [and every other encounter with the ink demon is text telling u he's there and then a timer goes down and u get jumpscared] and batim's chases were either silly or just not nearly as theatric or terrifying as that.

When making the vent sequence I mean not only is it absolutely horrifying to realize how fast Huggy is in there but also it's so theatric and cool? The fact that you round a corner after thinking you escaped only to see a terrifying animation of that thing crawling toward you is awesome! I wish Bendy had stuff like that!

And all the stuff it shares with Bendy are generic things Bendy ripped from other horror games/media anyways. I'm not saying Poppy Playtime isn't inspired by Bendy I for sure think it is but Bendy is such a generic story that somehow fails to do tropes 100 other horror games have done any comparison only makes Poppy Playtime look better.

"It has employees being sacrificed for their company" That is not a concept Bendy invented, literally look at any of the sci-fi horror series Bendy is very inspired by. This is literally a twist in the original Alien.

"It has a scary woman forcing you to do tasks for her" Once again, not a concept Bendy invented, a scary mysterious person forcing you to do fetch-quests is a concept found in tons of horror media. And at least Poppy Playtime gave you a chase with her and let you defeat her, look at poor malice. She's barely on screen for more than 10 minutes before she gets stabbed.

"It has a cult worshipping the monster" This is something tons of horror games and media have done too. I mean In The Tall Grass has a guy who worships a giant magical rock in the middle of a grass maze, Bioshock [which Bendy has only been taking more and more direct inspiration from while failing to grab any of the compelling parts] also had a lot of themes of religion and cult-ish behavior, almost every horror media franchise has at one point done a cult thing.

Bendy couldn't even come up with a reason Sammy worships the ink demon, the best motivation we've ever gotten is just that 'he's crazzyyyy the ink made him insaneeee'. Who is the cheap rip-off here?

At least Poppy Playtime gave their cultist a motive for worshipping the monster + a proper boss fight that feels intense and looks awesome! Bendy didn't even let you kill Malice [she got stabbed in front of you and then just collapsed on the floor how thrilling] meanwhile you get to kill three of the villains in Poppy Playtime and the gameplay and action in those scenes have only gotten better as the game went on.

I mean Sammy walks into a room and goes "AAA SCARY I'M BEING MURDERED" then later shows up and for NO REASON sees a normal human man and assumes it's the ink demon before once again someone else kills him for you. In Poppy Playtime you defeat Catnap as he floods the world with this horrible nightmare-inducing gas that intensifies the color palette and his design. Fight off versions of him that are illusions that you need your flare gun for, then watch in a wonderful animation as he mistakes the monster for his savior before getting killed by it, in a brutal way I might add, which game are we accusing of being cheap, lazy garbage again?

I just find this argument to be people who Really Really need to find a reason to hate Poppy Playtime which I think is silly. The devs being weird, shady people is already enough reason to dislike the game, you don't need to invent reasons why secretly every part of the game is malicious or bad. But esp when I see Bendy fans saying they don't support Poppy Playtime or dislike it bc of its devs or even saying its cringe ummmm.

I have bad news about the fact Bendy's devs are worse and it took not one, but TWO over an hour long videos to cover it all. Plus the Bendy games are just the worse games in every aspect, if I could sell my batim copy for a copy of Poppy Playtime I wouldn't hesitate at all.

Saying this as a bendy fan, we have no right to be super judgy towards Poppy Playtime. If Poppy Playtime is embarrassing cringe, Bendy is too and is way more embarrassing of an interest. We shouldn't spread misinformation just because we all want to hate Poppy Playtime, you can dislike Poppy Playtime without making up a bunch of nonsense to justify it.

Honestly seeing people just blatantly be unfairly mean to Poppy Playtime only makes its critics look worse and makes it hard to take any backlash to the games seriously. Because surprise surprise if you spread misinformation to make a point people will quickly stop listening to Anything you have to say bc they won't trust you're telling the truth anymore.

[silent-moons-camp]

I love space SO much. And it absolutely terrifies me too. If I wasn't terrified of space, and I was good at math, I'd be working at NASA. But even then I won't ever get to explore the galaxy in my lifetime, because we are nowhere near travel that equals the speed of light, and even then, lightspeed is still painfully slow on the cosmic scale.

Did you know that, no matter where we are in humanity, our sun will begin to die billions of years from now? We may all be dead and gone, or we may have evolved into something unrecognizable, or we may still be around. But one day, the Earth will be engulfed by the sun. Or it'll be thrown out of orbit. It'll be the end for Earth. We may have figured out how to go beyond the speed of light by then. We could have discovered that the Einstein-Rosen Bridge theory - wormholes - is real, and we could have used that to bend spacetime to our will and find somewhere new to call home, potentially even new universes.

But we don't know. Earth will likely become uninhabitable before the natural lifespan of our sun can engulf it, as a result of our very human mistakes and actions and impacts.

And... this is just a longwinded way of me saying, that's what Starfield is about.

It's about being human in the face of the divine, in the face of being so so so small in the universe. It's about conflict, the tragedy of it, how it can so easily destroy our humanity before time itself has the chance to. It's about looking at the petty wars between the UC and the Collective and going, "what are they doing? There is plenty of space for us all. This is only our galaxy, what about beyond?" It's about humanity pushing forward for answers about the universe and how they will always resort to the same petty violence over those answers. It's about how you can decide what you do with those answers. It's about looking in the eye of sure destruction that will certainly come one day, and say, "I will live and love in spite of it."

You can certainly become like the Hunter. You can continuously perpetuate the cycle of very human violence because that is all that is left to you, because you have embraced the uselessness of it all. Or you can become like the Pilgrim. You can settle down and bring love and kindness to others, and bring them knowledge, despite the fact that everything is pointless.

We are just starstuff. We come from the stars, and back to the stars we will eventually go, one way or another. And it's up to you to decide if you will embrace that as the only meaning in the universe, or if you will reject the simplicity of that, and embrace humanity, embrace love, embrace compassion, embrace meaning in spite of it all.

That is what Starfield is about. That's what it is about to me. And I love it.