#it's not like i dont have plenty to play

[kirkwallguy]

Hmmmmm bg3 on sale just before my new laptop that can actually handle it comes...

[s0fter-sin]

rewatching s1 and in ep2 w*ndigo, dean makes a joke about not bringing provisions into the woods just to pull out a bag of peanut butter m&m’s and stick with me here, it’s why the later seasons’ “goofy dean” loses me

this moment is clearly a joke but if you think about it too much, it also makes some sense; a family size bag of peanut m&m’s is calorie dense and even the high sugar is good to keep you moving which they need on an overnight hunt. it also shows how due to their upbringing, they’ve had to eat lower quality food, things they always had access to that was cheap and also in bulk

what does dean eating ghost pepper jerky then tipping water on himself exist for other than to be a cringy joke? what does smelling old chinese food, testing to see if it's still good then shaking his head with cabbage hanging out his mouth when it isn't serve? it's just to make him look stupid and contrast sam's healthy/clean diet (and superiority but that’s another conversation) which has always existed but it used to be nuanced and natural

we see dean as a child give up the food he wanted to eat so sam could eat it. (“i’m sick of spaghetti-os,” “you’re the one who wanted them,” … “i want lucky charms!” “… there’s only enough for one bowl and i haven’t had any yet!” proceeds to give them to sam, 1x18) we know he hustled and stole food to ensure sam ate. (“so, what’d he take?” “get this- peanut butter and bread.” 9x07)

we also see throughout the early seasons dean teasing sam about his salad or healthy choice while he eats some form of burger or other fast food (or notably, cheerfully eating prison food that sam won’t touch, 2x19). it's typical sibling teasing but it also shows that it isn't new for sam to eat like that and for dean to know he eats like that

sam being picky isn't just a character trait they chose for him, it's a result of how dean raised him; he raised him to like and want healthy food and be food secure enough to reject food he didn't want

but dean eats anything he is given and seeks out unhealthy - cheap, plentiful, filling - food

he is the opposite of picky to the point of it being a consistent bit; they show him multiple times eating when it's socially frowned upon to do so eg. questioning a grieving victim when they're trying to be discreet (1x14, 2x15, 2x18)

a similar moment to the chinese food is in 4x19; dean wakes up in the car while sam brushes his teeth outside and is hungry. sam says there's a sandwich in the backseat, dean smells it and recoils bc it's an old tuna sandwich. the moment is funny on its own but it also exists as a comparison of their lives to adam's; he has a loving mother, goes to school and importantly, a steady stable childhood

it’s a joke with a purpose

it also supports dean's food insecurity; he wakes up and is immediately hungry, enough to complain about it and seek out food before anything else

dean is always hungry bc he never has access to nutritionally rich foods bc he got used to using the money he earned to buy sam's more expensive food. he got used to his cheaper, denser foods and grew up with (and continues to live with) intermittent access to said foods. think of how long it takes to drive from one state to another; how many hours it can take to see another town that offers food, if you arrive at a reasonable enough time for anything to be open. also think how they can’t keep any food beyond what fits in an esky; nothing that needs defrosting, nothing can be heated up. it’s bags and jars and take out for as long as they can trust it

then they get the bunker which has its own kitchen

dean even describes himself as "nesting" when he decorates his room, something he hasn't had since he was four years old, and he uses said kitchen to cook a burger from scratch that he is proud of. he is food secure for the first time in his life and it shows in how often he cooks for both himself and sam

so these moments where they have him acting goofy regarding food are no longer character driven and only exist as a joke which is why they come across as cringy and out of character compared to similar earlier moments

a lot of my issues with dean's characterisation started when they introduced the bunker. the argument can and is made that the reason these jokes happen is bc he feels safe in the bunker, that bc he now has a home he can relax and unmask but that still doesn't feel sufficient. they crank up these sillier moments for both of them, giving them a sort of playing house comedy vibe of two roommates with completely different personalities but it doesn't feel like an authentic progression. it feels forced; an attempt at humour for humour's sake

food stopped being an informed part of their characters and their trauma and instead became flanderised; sam is the judgy vegetarian health nut and dean is his borderline slovenly carnivore counterpart

[sluckythewizard]

these are A BIT OLD but uhhh here check out these aggio doodles i did forever ago. still VERY happy w my colors :3

[thanatika]

yeah i agree with your point about survival mechanics and i feel the same way about the lack of combat mechanics. "why would an educated city doctor need a weapon" because shit is hitting the fan in every way impossible and pretty much everyone is walking around armed... also why am i supposed to believe the the fact that he's a man of intellect will somehow provide him with food? i don't think anyone is going to be too eager to share food during an outbreak intellectual or not...

+ follow up for the previous ask but actually my favorite quest from the original pathologic is the day 11 bachelor quest that involves shooting down soldiers. i think it really drives the point home about how this random fuckass guy who is supposed to be battling a plague doesn't even have the time to do that anymore because the people in charge are asking completely irrelevant things of him now and he's at a position where he cannot refuse what is being asked of him. like i think it was good storytelling that even as the guy who lowkey wants to deal with the plague and solve its mystery you still have other, more pressing, less interesting and or pleasant tasks to complete

i agree! honestly, i feel this way about the combat mechanics even more than i do about the physical survival (food, health, illness, sleep) mechanics. because sure, i can see how it makes sense for daniil's position of authority to mean that his basic needs are somewhat provided for -- although i don't think it makes more sense than what we got in the original game. i've never seen anyone bring up "isn't it kind of unrealistic that the bachelor isn't given lots of food during a massive food shortage?" as a plothole that needed to be resolved. the townspeople generally don't like him much, and most of the people with power don't either, except for the kains. sure, maybe it's kind of weird that you can go see the kains while broke and on the verge of keeling over from hunger, and they won't do anything to help you, but... the kains are pretty self-centered, and they're so goddamn weird that maybe they forget that you need to eat food to live anyway. and it's half-implied that the powers that be are ultimately giving daniil this role as a convenient way to kill him, so it makes sense that they would put no pressure on the town authorities to keep him alive.

(and honestly, artemy is taken under the olgimsky's auspices as much as the kains take daniil's under theirs! which is to say, selfishly, with ulterior motives that are more important to them than the well-being of their healer, but... the olgimskys are set up as the wealthiest of the 3 families financially, as well as the ones with the most access to food, given their control over the meat industry. so if anything it's "weirder" that artemy isn't more materially provided for, though to be clear i don't think there's an actual plothole there either way.)

but anyway, you could handwave it and say that daniil's position of privilege and authority gives him more perks than he got in the original game, but the amount of fighting you have to do to get through town is... kind of an unavoidable physical reality? like you're given so many sidequests that you often wind up walking around town after dark, and that's when the bandits come out. is the idea that the bandits would be too scared to attack him because he's so important? because that doesn't make a lot of sense to me, and even pathologic 2 establishes that he's seen as a valuable target by the bandits:

and then there's the quests where combat plays a more direct role in the story itself, like getting involved in saving andrey from the firing squad, or killing guards to break artemy out of prison, or the quest where you have to kill var in attempt to stop the arsonists (which i include on the same tier as the other ones because i really like the quest journal entry he has if you complete it where he blames himself for willow's death. it's a good character moment.)

hell, even in pathologic 2 itself, one of the biggest Bachelor Moments is on day 11, when you have that big dramatic convo with him after he killed a soldier for the papers he was delivering. plus one of bad grief's idle dialogues in patho 2 is commentary on the bachelor being "quick on the draw" and that he "already shot someone". like he just straight up is not living a combat-free existence. and overall, combat isn't just a good tool from a mechanical perspective, heightening the stakes and placing pressure on the player (though it is), it's also pretty important for him on a thematic level imo, almost as important as artemy and his "rivers of blood". in patho classic, daniil has this early interaction with the inquisitor:

which, thinking about it from a doylist perspective, was probably the writers' attempt to make it sound more plausible that this random medical researcher from the big city was competent with multiple types of guns. and i appreciate them coming up with that hint of backstory to cover their bases a bit, but with those bases covered, i think the fact that daniil ultimately spends more time shooting people than he does prescribing medicines for them actually does a lot for him thematically? i mean, if his whole thing is that he's this "tempted destroyer", someone who frames his career as a combative battle with death rather than a quest to save people's lives, whose "default" solution is to raze the town with artillery because he's too limited by his rationalist worldview and military upbringing (and bitterness over being manipulated and sabotaged) to come up with a solution that saves the any remaining infected survivors on his own. plus the way that clara frames artemy and daniil as two sides of the same coin in being violent destroyers and killers, who without player intervention will immediately devolve to running around chasing each other down in what's either an insanely dedicated tom and jerry LARP or some really elaborate foreplay. imo, that whole dichotomy (which is pretty core to the game, as the idea of dichotomies are core to it in general) works so much better with the way they're both presented in classic, stalking around with gun/scalpel in hand. hell, not to mention the effect that spending 12 in-game days trying not to starve and getting killed by bandits or guards or worms or soldiers every day would have on the player, and the way it would make them feel about the town and their natural projection of those feelings onto dankovsky, who is a perfectly fitting vessel for them as the avatar actually undergoing those virtual experiences.

ultimately i think they are mainly going this direction out of a desire to do something more creative and original, which is fine... it just seems a bit silly to me that they keep saying "well obviously that doesn't really work for the bachelor's scenario", when, well... even as recently as patho 2 in 2019, they seemed to think it fit his narrative pretty well! i'm also guessing that a lack of combat won't be that bandits are just no longer roaming the streets at night. it sounds more like pathologic 3 is set to be more of a nonlinear experience, where you'll probably fast travel from place to place instead of having to walk across town so much? so you'll be avoiding bandits just in the sense that the gameplay will be avoiding them. i guess i'm hoping that at the very least, there's still the implication of the crunch of not getting enough sleep or food and the threat of being stabbed to death while trying to get through town occurring to dankovsky in the background, even if those mechanics are deemphasized in favor of more macro-level town resource management, time control, and sherlock holmes fruit ninja or whatever the hell they were on about back in 2022 lmao.

[unforth]

Prefacing this TGCF post with: people can draw and write however they want forever and I support them and this is about my personal view of these characters.

Anyway.

I saw a post today that had Xie Lian singing "when will my life begin" from Tangled and it drove home what really bugs me about a lot of fan casts of Hualian onto popular media (see also my Howl's Moving Castle take). It's this idea that Xie Lian is, well, waiting for his life to begin, and Hua Cheng swoops in and makes it exciting, when this is imo so utterly antithetical, and in fact opposite, to canon.

Xie Lian has lived and lived and lived. He was a prince, he fought in wars, even during his 800 years fallen the whole book is an exercise in showing that he WASN'T just waiting around, he kept doing things the whole time - Fang Xin Guoshi and General Hua and and and. AND he also cultivated to the point of ascending again. Xie Lian is a fucking bad ass idealistic martyr who doesn't know when to quit and at least to me that's the whole point of his character and I love that about and for him so to see him inserted into existing franchise AUs as the wilting flower waiting for a moment to shine is utter character erasure and it makes me insane enough that I'm writing this post about it even though I think I shouldn't and even though I genuinely don't want to rain on anyone's fandom parade. But like. That's not him!

You know who it is?

It's Hua Cheng!

Hong Hong'er lives in Xianle, a kingdom where all this stuff is happening, and he just watches from the sidelines. He's an observer at the parade. He's just some kid. And then he falls (or jumps, or is pushed, you pick your interpretation) and he's caught by literally the coolest guy in the entire kingdom. He's the nobody who gets swept off his feet! And it changes his whole life! Like I think it wouldn't irk me so much to see Xie Lian get typecast that way if Hua Cheng wasn't right there literally living his "I met God and it changed my whole life for the better" fantasy. He seriously deserves to get recognized for this. I get that he's the loud flamboyant one so that makes it seem like he should get cast as a Howl or a Flynn or whoever, but like. He was waiting for his life to begin, and it does, when he meets Xie Lian.

And like. I get that these are kinda competing interpretations that depend on when you look at canon - I'm looking at the original 800 years ago events, others are looking at Hua Cheng coming in 800 years later - but still the "present" in TGCF isn't imo about Xie Lian having waited to be saved, he hasn't been in a hat shop for his whole life boredly making hats, he's never stopped moving and never stopped adventuring and never stopped striving to change the world. Hua Cheng is living out his "you saved me now I save you" fantasies but fundamentally they save each other over and over and over again and that's beautiful and I hate seeing it erased to make Xie Lian into the wilting flower. Like. The one who basically hasn't done anything that whole 800 years is ALSO Hua Cheng. We don't hear about him going off and having idealistic adventures. Everything we know of that he's done was directly related to Xie Lian (ie burning the temples). Other than that he seems to sit around in Ghost City chilling with his ghoulies. So again, finding Xie Lian is what pulls him out of his funk and prompts him to start acting for good, whereas Xie Lian has been acting for good the whole time.

Ugh. I should shut up now, just, I've been in this fandom for four years and this has become such a pet peeve of mine because it reflects such a huge disconnect between how I perceive these characters and how much of the rest of fandom does. And that frustrates me, cause I wish there was more content in line with my perception.

[claitea]

whoa guys did you see the new cards i really want alto's full art!!

made with this site! art without the text under the cut :D

[skitskatdacat63]

In the Pre-Quali show, Will Buxton and James Hinchcliffe discussed the team orders controversy from today's sprint. I agreed with some of what they were saying, but at the same time I felt they were being a bit too harsh in the way the talked about it. Commentators are allowed too be opinionated, of course, but I was curious to see if anyone else was a bit put off by this, or if I'm just being irrational/oversensitive(sry in advance for it being four mins lol)

[inamagicalhallucination]

i dont think bsd is poorly written at all

[thedrotter]

I have a gift for y'all today !!! 😊 Ever wanted to find a line in Re:Kinder in a single place for the sake of reference?? How about multiple chunks of lines. how about all the little variations that arise in the text with it's many endings, item descriptions, text that comes from interacting with the enviroment, and character info from the menu without having to boot up the game and go through it at long minutes!!???

well i sure did😊 Since I do a lot of fanart and think up my own silly theories and thoughts that need me to reference the game lines a lot, i have made a transcript for it for convenience's sake. A weirdly thorough transcript handwritten and proofread by me including all character lines available in-game. And I'm sharing it with you all today for anyone that wants it !!! :3 To use as a reference for creative fanworks or a quick search for a line in-game, whatever you wish to use it for!!

It uses the english translation of the game by vgperson. So naturally all credit for the game lines available in here is to her and Parun who made the game.

I did my best to organize it in a way easy to digest. Do note that I'm still human, and there's still the chance for mistake in it no matter how much I've proofread it, since I'm not even an english native speaker ^^. But I hope it serves you well nonetheless if you wish to use it.

That's my gift for today!!! Not the usual art, but still a project I'm proud of. Enjoy!!! 😊

[todayisafridaynight]

Share Mine notes please I beg (and on the arakawa fam if you have the timefkfd)

forgive me if these are messy as all fuck i'm not good at making notes BUT here's everything i generally keep in mind when drawing mine and hijikata + the reference sheets i look at when drawing them :)

arakawa family notes + references below:

(more notes about aoki + sawashiro's faces ft. ikumi here)

[orcelito]

What they don't tell you about a true switchblade is that it is a marvelous stim toy

[eggbagelz]

gale voice here feel the pulse of the magic in my heart that will eventually be the end of me. im on my knees before you like an animal showing its belly. im in excrutiating pain bc of the contact with the magic in my heart but please dont take your hand away please dont stop touching me

[cyrantelnovapaleorayeeso]

"i dont see what ppl see in the lore its so boring"

shuffles my feet around, most ppl talking about the lore are exclusively talking about love nikki and shining nikki, the two games most ppl started the series with and have been around longer so theyve had time to explore their stories

now granted im assuming this person has only played infinity nikki, if not then hey not everyone is gonna like/care for the lore thats just how it is with video games

i havent spent too much time with infinity nikki bc i move at a snails pace and only play a little bit at a time so i cant say much on its lore

but these games tend to slowly move towards the more out there lore ok you gotta wait like a year before someone dies off

its also a gacha game so ur not getting all the lore at once ok they gotta have reason to keep ppl coming back and playing

[sonknuxadow]

the fact that sonic x shadow generations costs 50 dollars makes me even more confused about the pricing for sonic superstars . because for a second there i thought they were going with the nintendo system of "all our games are 60 dollars now regardless of quality or content" now since frontiers also cost 60 and that price tag felt more reasonable there. but no sxs gens costs 50. which means that 60 Isnt the new default price for sonic games and they actually thought superstars was worth that much. okay

[hassianlovebot]

i know the rare and epic bugs are supposed to be yknow,, rare and epic so it wouldn't make sense if they spawned all the time. that being said, it's bad enough that the game has time limits on certain bugs, adding super low spawn rates just makes it worse. imo players should never feel like they have to spend hours playing to catch one bug