#it was really fun and i really can't overstate how much i appreciate the guys there being Not Creepers

[carnelianwings]

Went to my first Vanguard shop tournament today, didn’t do great (1-2 is hardly a stellar result but hey, I won one!) but I had fun, got to enjoy myself, played against people I don’t normally play against, also got to play against people I normally do play against. Will I do it again? Yes. My locals has some pretty nice people, no one hit on me (I was the only girl there, but that’s nothing new to me, I’m used to being the Token Girl of most gaming groups at this point), people were focused more on the cards and the game play, so that’s hugely appreciated. Also got to play against some new people afterwards - I brought a couple of other decks with me that I just play “for fun” as opposed to “for tournament” - so that was pretty fun. Someone did actually pull the Minerva promo and was nice enough to sell it to me, so that’s 1 promo down, 3 more to go? XD

A little further self reflection after the cut (just because I doubt everyone here wants to actually hear me talk cards lol)

First game - went 2nd vs Hexaorb Aquamarine

Funny thing about Minerva - she doesn’t actually have a terrible game going second (going first = you get G3 first, going second = you get to restand on your first G3 turn). That said, it didn’t exactly matter this game because I got onto my G2 turn, rode Chamomile, called Cairbre (hit a dud top 3 and had to call a draw trigger, rip) but made up for it by checking my (blue) OT against my opponent who’d called No Guard (in his defense he was sitting on 1 damage). Swung the game my way after that since I’d pushed to 4 after that turn, and despite my opponent healing down to 3 on his turn, my deck Chose Violence on Turn 3 when I hit double crits on the first check (against my opponent’s PG) and then hit a draw when he did a 1 to pass. Overall just ... very sacky and essentially Genesis Doing Genesis Things with deck thinning.

Second game - went 1st vs Willista

Again checked OT on the offensive on Turn 2, but my opponent also checked his on the defensive, stalled things out, but then I saw zero triggers after that, so there way to defend against Willista and her restanding rear guards after that. I did manage to thin out 2 cards to put into Soul each time, so it was just a matter of not getting lucky - looked at my deck after the game and saw all my triggers ... in the bottom 2/3rds of my deck ^^;;

Third game - went 2nd against G4 Prison

A match up I really could’ve (and should’ve) played better against (considering I own the deck and casually played it for a while), and one I’ll definitely practice a few times in Dear Days just to figure out ways to play out of it and get creative with counters for just the general way the deck plays. Had a decent start early when my opponent sent 3 Drilling Angels to Prison (so I could discard combo pieces with the intention of Soul Charging them later) but then ran into problems on the Purelight turn simply because I had too much board and had cards in Soul (can’t really do the “empty out Soul for the Purelight turn” counter when you’re playing a deck that combos off of Soul). Biggest misplay though was putting my only Angelica from Soul to Prison when I had 2 Ciders in hand and ended up 10k short to guard their second Penetrate Aquas attack. That said, even if I’d made it it’s questionable how much I could’ve done the following turn with what I had since Minerva with 1 Soul and no board isn’t a great spot to be in, especially since I didn’t actually have a Persona Ride in hand either. Not a great match up for Minerva, but one I’ll have to put some time into figuring out An Out for (since I’m pretty sure this player will bring Prison again next week).

[petruchio]

guts ranking part 2 (bonus tracks)

me when i hit the character limit and tumblr says. SHUT UP! but here are my bonus track rankings:

13. obsessed - A GREAT SONG!! oh it's so clever and fun and haven't we all felt this way about our ex's ex?? i loooove the way she delivers "i can't help it i've got ISSUES" and i think the internal rhyme of obsessed and ex is a really catchy hook and i love the chorus. i think this was a great bonus track, i know people said it should've been on the standard edition but i actually think it works better as a bonus track. my one beef with this song actually is that i don't like the music video. i don't understand why it doesn't have more of a story, i feel like this song could've had such a great video with a great narrative (maybe olivia is, like, stalking the ex and trying to imitate everything she does but she plays both roles or something? i guess that might be too similar to deja vu but i feel like the obsessed mv just doesn't feel interesting enough because it's just random clips cut together with performance shots. i wanted more from this video. it was good but i wanted it to be great.)

14. girl i've always been - C i'm sorry i find this song extremely juvenile. it sounds like the kind of song you write when you're like 13 and you want to be the next taylor swift but you don't actually have anything to say. i don't like the vocals, i think the lyrics are all pretty cliche and boring, i really just don't think this needed to be released. if it was one of her instagram videos i think it would be super cute but i just don't think it is album worthy even as a bonus track. plus it's so short it just feels half baked anyway. i think it should've stayed in the drafts.

15. scared of my guitar - C+ i also don't like this song. i don't know it just doesn't do it for me at all. it's not catchy, the metaphor/concept doesn't interest me and similarly to giab it just doesn't feel like it's done. i'll say it, i think teardrops on my guitar does a much better job of integrating the concept of songwriting into the lyrics in a way that feels natural whereas this one just feels cheesy and underdone to me. (and even olivia herself has done better at fourth wall breaks, for example in "can't think of a third line" or "i hate every song i write" -- like those are so much better and well integrated than this song, so i just find this song to be... not that good.) i added a + to the grade for the line "stringing you along" though because i think it's clever.

16. stranger - A I LIKE THIS SONG!! i saw someone saying it felt musically similar to her stick season cover and that the sort of folk/rock influence works really well with her voice and i was like YES! i love her rock delivery but i think her vocal timbre really shines on the more stripped back folksy sounds (see also: my love for can't catch me now) and i think this is an example where the concept of the song is good and she does it really nicely. it's also catchy and can't overstate how much i love "you're just SOME. GUY." this is a really good song in my opinion.

17. so american - B+ this song feels almost exactly like all american bitch to me in that i'm like, it's GOOD! i don't buy it as authentic to her though. like it just sounds like "olivia rodrigo does 90s gwen stefani" which she does WELL but it just feels a little too self-conscious. and the studio chatter at the end actually really bothers me in this song, when i heard the ending i was like ok no dan nigro, STOP. it was cute a couple times but like cut it out. just play the song. but i do like the way that the album opens with all AMERICAN bitch and then the bonus edition closes with so AMERICAN like what can i say, i'm a sucker for a callback and an album that tells a complete story. i like that it's the first true love song we've gotten officially released from olivia and it feels like a bright light that illuminates the way forward after all the pain and insecurity on GUTS and so i APPRECIATE it, and i do think it's cute and catchy, it's just not a 100% slam dunk for me. but it's good.

[here2bbtstrash]

✨ jihope month: valentine's build-a-fic! ✨

y'all thought i was done surprising you, huh????? 🤭

that's right besties! the fun has just begun 😈 while i'm gonna keep on keepin' on with filling your drabble requests, and writing and reading alllllll the delicious jihope content for the rest of february - i ALSO thought it would be exciting to try one more thing!!! (courtesy of me actually finding where the fucking polls button is lmaoooo)

WE'RE DOING A BUILD-A-FIC!

aka y'all are gonna tell me exactly what kind of one-shot you want, and then i shall bring it into the world 🥰 the only prompt i'll give you upfront is that, since it's seasonally appropriate rn, this fic will be valentine's themed 💋🌹💌 - but the rest is up to you!!!

basically, throughout this week i will be posting polls in which i will ask you to tell me what you want this ~valentine's fic~ to look like! pairing, genre, tropes, etc. - y'all will vote and then i will deliver!! 🍰

i'll use this post as the "masterlist" so to speak, so you can easily find all the polls and watch the concept for this fic take shape! i really have no idea how many polls i'll do - i'm kinda winging this lmao - but once i'm satisfied, i shall return to my cave to whip it all together, and i'll do my best to get it posted before jihope month is complete! 🌹

hope y'all are excited - i know i am!!! i really can't overstate how much i appreciate all the love you've shown jihope month already 😘 now let's get this party started!! 🎈 (and again, one million billion thank yous to THEEEEE legend @kithtaehyung for working her insane banner magic, we have no choice but to stan - LIKE LOOK AT THIS SHIT IT'S SO FREAKING CUTE OMG 😭)

poll #1: pick a pairing! - you voted: jihope x reader!

poll #2: choose a context! - you voted: enemies to lovers!

poll #3: select a scenario! - you voted: reader is casually seeing two guys-- who happen to hate each other!

poll #4: set your spice level! - you voted: HOT!

poll #5: finish with some flavor!

[leavingautumn13]

god you guys, i am so so sorry for the radio silence here. i have been slammed since i got back from indianapolis last month and it hasn't been with like, fun stuff either.

commission updates will be going out before the 23rd. i'm very sorry for the delay but i want to say thank you for everyone's patience; i really can't overstate how much i appreciate it.

commissions will also be closing until after art fight at the earliest. that may extend further into the fall; we'll see how i feel when the time rolls around. i may wind up putting energy into doing adoptables instead; those would be less pressure on me i think.

the Mental Illness(tm) has been kicking my ass and i'm kind of in a rut with art, but i just have to keep reminding myself that like--people would not commission me if they didn't like the work i was capable of doing right now!! people like my art and that's why they pay me.

but i do think i still need to take a break. at least for artfight.

also, if you're doing artfight and want me to draw your character without having to pay me money, please reply or reblog with your artfight account. i'm planning on doing at least one attack a day so i should be able to knock out everybody eventually (unless this post somehow gets a ton of traction, which i doubt). if you see me doing more than that, hit me with a cardboard tube or something. i did three in one day last year and burned right the fuck out in like, a week. i'd like to stay in for the whole game this time.

anyway, here's my artfight account. i follow back most of the time. i'll be adding more characters to it soon!

[woozapooza]

Hi, I’ve been following you for ages (were you once a DW blog?) and you seem like the right person to ask so.. Can you explain the right mentality to have when watching breaking bad? That’s probably not the right phrasing but my dad (a very cishet white 60yo dude) recommended it bc he loved the show so I tried watching it but went into it assuming we’re supposed to like Walter which made me dislike it and obviously there’s something abt the show that people love but is it hate watching a cruel character? Being fascinated by a series of poor choices and/or bad luck that changes everyone’s lives and often not for the better? Seeing someone else as the person to root for? I’d love any insight you can give bc I’d like to try the show again especially since I’ve noticed that a lot of people love BCS and I assume breaking bad is a prerequisite.

Omg I'm so sorry, I put this post aside because I wanted to take some time to think about it and give you a thoughtful answer, but then I totally forgot about it!

In case you are still out there and still interested in what I have to say, I'll try to sum up the main things that I and other Breaking Bad appreciators love about the show. All the things you suggested are elements of what makes it appealing, plus there's some other stuff as well.

Walt is, as you have obviously noticed, a deeply flawed person. There are lots of shows that have a protagonist who isn't a particularly good person, but Breaking Bad is unusual in how far the protagonist falls (morally speaking). Vince Gilligan wanted to break from the TV mold and "have a show that takes the protagonist and transforms him into the antagonist," so he created a leading man who starts as a flawed but fairly normal guy but over time leans into his flaws until they consume him. It's really bold storytelling that I admire both as a matter of principle and because it's so well done. You can see Walt's justification for everything he does, which makes his transformation frighteningly realistic. And yeah, there's probably a bit of a hatewatching element, as you suggested! He's fun to hate!

That said, you're also onto something with "Seeing someone else as the person to root for." Jesse is the one who stands out, but there are a lot of other great characters as well, most of whom have something or other that's sympathetic about them.

On a related note, one thing I love about the characters of Breaking Bad—and Better Call Saul, as well—is how well they all parallel each other. So there are a lot of characters who have some significant points of commonality with Walt but diverge from him in other ways that can be really interesting to observe. (This is something I'd love to write more about in the future, but I'm not there yet.)

"Being fascinated by a series of poor choices and/or bad luck that changes everyone’s lives and often not for the better"—yes, exactly, especially the choices part. Choices and their consequences are on of the biggest themes of both BrBa and BCS. And that theme is so, SO well done. There are a lot of bad choices made (an episode of BCS is literally called "Bad Choice Road"), but as I said about Walt earlier, you can almost always see why the characters make the choices they do. These shows excel at putting characters in agonizing dilemmas and examining the consequences of their choices. Also, these dilemmas simply make for some very exciting viewing!

On a related note, the plotting in BrBa is amazingly well done. It feels incredibly organic, the way causes lead to effects which in turn become causes for other effects.

Finally, I can't overstate the importance of the fact that BrBa is really funny. The levity doesn't undercut the intensity of the drama; it just makes it easier to deal with. Also, going back to the topic of Walt himself, the fact that Bryan Cranston is so hilarious makes Walt much more bearable. Even when he's being a garbage human being, you can still laugh at him.

So to answer your initial question: I think the best mentality for watching Breaking Bad is to view it as a story about choices: how people make choices, how people justify their choices, how the consequences of those choices play out, and how difficult choices can change who people are—sometimes for the better, sometimes not so much.

And yes, I was once primarily a Doctor Who blogger! You must be one of my oldest followers if you remember that era!

[vidreview]

VIDREV: "We Finally Watched Nukie: The VHS Grading Video" by RedLetterMedia

[originally posted april 24th 2023]

there's so much i could say about RLM and won't, at least not today. you can't claim to have a serious conversation about video essays on youtube (or the tenor of nerd-related online media criticism generally) without talking about the Plinkett Star Wars reviews, and even still that convo would be incomplete without discussing their on-again-off-again relationship with abject somethingawful-style offensive edgelord shitposting. unlike an embarrassing quantity of their contemporary peers, however, the RLM guys grew and learned and changed, which is a big part of why i've stuck with them for so long. i was a teen in the 2000s, i also said slurs and thought being offensive was just good honest fun. i grew up as they matured, in contrast to a sea of other adult entertainers existentially committed to never doing so.

RLM is probably the closest thing i and a fair few millennials (from a very particular background) have to a Roger Ebert. i don't always agree with their takes, and there were a good couple years after The Last Jedi when i stopped watching them because it felt like they were playing too hard to reddit's tastes. i came back to them in 2020, when they (like me) finally just threw the entire mainstream blockbuster hollywood industry in the trash out of exhaustion and boredom, thus kickstarting what's honestly been the most consistently good run they've had in a long time. and i have to say, as someone who has been watching and reading online media crit for damn near two and a half decades now, i cannot overstate the immense psychic value i've come to place on the opinions of actual honest to god adults who like sci-fi and hate what's become of it. their spite for all things corporate schlock gives me infinite life. the fact is they've been producing entertaining, ambitious, and often shockingly insightful media analysis for more than ten years now. their Jack & Jill review remains an essential touchstone on the nepotistic business of modern ad-funded filmmaking! at least for me

but okay, i said i wasn't gonna talk at length about the legacy of RLM so i won't anymore. i'm here to talk about this relatively recent one-off documentary of theirs, which is nominally an extension of a years-old running gag but is in actuality a very matter-of-fact conversation between adults about the role of speculative collector's markets in nerd media. they begin by discussing the news story of a Back to the Future VHS tape selling for tens of thousands of dollars on eBay, thus sparking much buzz about the potential unmined value of old tapes. this serves as a springboard for an honest to goodness investigation of the entire phenomenon: the grading process, the inferiority of VHS, what it means to collect things, and to what extant the whole damn thing is a scam. they approach this topic with all the unflinching cynicism you'd expect of the crew who melted 2,387 vintage Star Wars figures in a vat of acetone simply out of spite.

the real throughline of this video is the question "what creates value?" and their answer is what i came here to talk about. condition, scarcity, and providence are the words they come back to-- how well-preserved is the collectible, how rare is it, how much story does it have as an object? they cite Beanie Babies here, the perennial example of corporatized speculative bubbles. one thing i really appreciate is how they clearly differentiate casual collecting from the activity of speculators. there's a pernicious expectation culturally that anyone who keeps a functionally useless Old Thing (vhs tapes, action figures, trading cards) must be doing so at least in part in hopes that its value will increase over time. as someone who does collect a few Old Things i've always hated this expectation. there's a lot of stuff i used to have and sold because i didn't really have a choice economically, and honestly in most cases it left me feeling kind of dirty. i don't like the idea of a toy that never gets played with, a movie that never gets watched, a card game that never gets played. i don't want to own a thing because it might get me money later. the things i collect are collected because they represent something personal to me, much in the way the RLM guys keep and display their own collectibles.

nothing can be called valuable if you can put a dollar sign on it, in my opinion. can there be a worse fate for matter than to be transmogrified into a metaphorical lottery ticket?

oh i hate this shit. i hate how our entire goddamn economy is just a series of gambling addictions stacked up in a trench coat called "banking." let's set aside cost of living, rent, education, healthcare, etc. i resent how expensive used clothes are now, how expensive vinyl is, old lenses for outdated mounting systems, weird analog a/v equipment, and honestly just like… everything? we're living in an era of such inescapable productive stagnation and engineered obsolescence, the only place left to turn to find something built to endure is the past. the demand for that stuff (and a lack of regulatory pressure to limit resale value) means sellers raise prices exponentially, which ultimately just ends up crowding out all the poors like me who just wanted some stupid little object to put in a corner where we can look at it and feel a fleeting moment of joy between shifts at the Food Pyramid. like i know this isn't A Big Problem but it fucking gets to me. everything old is expensive, everything new is expensive (ESPECIALLY if it's worth the money), and all the while we're just drowning in subscription services that treat every individual bank account like an oil field they've got mineral rights to. voting with your wallet doesn't make a lick of fucking difference when drainage enters the equation. god damned capitalists see a nickel changing hands and want a dime for each finger it touched. i made a video some years ago about all the Halo collectibles i had at the time and how conflicted they left me as i got older. i've all but removed the bookshelf from my recent essays because it just feels weird to me. the collection lingering softly behind you in a youtube video serves the same base function as a framed diploma at a doctor's office, which is… a little bit disquieting? i don't like that the only qualification that seems to matter in the world of media analysis is, functionally, how much money you have. but then that's true for becoming a doctor as well, isn't it. i guess it is kind of true of everything now. so yeah, the fact that RLM share both my enjoyment of collecting and my resentment towards most collectors means a lot to me. makes me feel slightly less psychotic

the big gimmick here is that they get a handful of tapes professionally graded (including a fake one just to see what happens), one of which is a copy of the wretched 80s b-movie Nukie. this is the aforementioned years-long running gag, a film that's been sent to them hundreds of times that they hadn't bothered to watch until producing this video. contending that this makes them owners of the largest private Nukie collection on earth, they proceed to put every single copy they own into a wood chipper to inflate the tape's perceived value ahead of listing their final, graded tape on eBay. i love this. i love this so much. generally i love how often the RLM guys destroy shit. in a world where everything is wrapped in plastic and rated for inevitable resale, there's immense catharsis in simply smashing something into worthlessness. we could use a lot more of that in some slightly more consequential arenas of human existence, imo

the tape sold for $80,600 and the proceeds were all donated to charity. that's awesome. but i wonder to what extent this whole episode works as an experiment. it certainly proves that you can create value where none ought to exist, though i think they should have listed a second Nukie tape without publicizing it like a week before releasing this vid just to have a control sample to compare from. but what i keep asking myself is, did destroying all those tapes ACTUALLY increase the speculative value of Nukie? it's not like they were in circulation before, and certainly the RLM guys had no intention of selling them down the line. the purpose of the wood chipper stunt is to create scarcity, but that scarcity only really exists in the narrative of Nukie as a running joke in RLM's videography. you're not bidding on the tape because it's the last, you're bidding on it because it's a funny joke from a youtube video. and that's providence, right? of course all that context imbues this worthless object with a parasocial value, it's the same thing as bidding on a prop from a movie you like.

but what kind of kills it for me as a proper experiment is that they explicitly say "we're donating the proceeds to charity." of course people are going crawl over each other to bid higher on this thing now, the internet LOVES seeing big numbers go to good causes. on the one hand, that's more providence. all of this is part of the mythos. whoever won the bid got plastic trash in exchange for giving RLM an $80k tax writeoff, which i think is hilarious. but that's precisely what pushes it into the realm of a stunt for me, rather than the proper experiment the rest of the vid puts a lot of effort into setting up, because our guys are very much pressing their thumbs on the scale. which, you know, i'm not REALLY complaining about this. anything they listed would sell for a lot, and i think we all know the aspiring VHS speculative bubble is a pile of shit. it doesn't need to be proven even faux-scientifically. but if we just seclude ourselves in the self-contained universe of this one video on its own, i feel like the stunt of the tape auction eclipses and maybe even undermines a lot of what came before. would it have been better if they'd held onto that now more-scarce graded tape with the intention of auctioning it off for charity someday at an unspecified date? for me, maybe yes. but of course everything you'd do to avoid unduly influencing the results of the auction ultimately results in giving less money to charity. i dunno. i don't even know if i'm complaining about anything at this point. i just know i've watched this video twice (once when it released, once last night because i was bored) and both times i found myself feeling somehow vaguely uneasy by the end. what does that mean? does it mean anything? supposedly it's my job to figure that out, but here i am at the end of this review and i've come no closer to really resolving it. maybe i am just unfairly cynical about youtubers doing charity.

in any event, i think this Nukie vid is an excellent example of what makes RLM special at their best. if you want a much more pure, personal, and distilled exploration of this emotion but filtered through the realm of memes stolen by corporations, definitely check out RLM's Dick the Birthday Boy: The Legacy Continues. anyway it's a good video so go watch it