#life of a PA

[southern--urbanite]

Great to get back out working in the field helping to film Team Rubicon and interview people being helped by their disaster relief.

[ed13d1]

Andrew Wyeth • Pennsylvania Landscape, 1941

[stargirl230]

brush test inspired by a road trip through the Pennsylvania countryside 🏞️

(no reposts; reblogs appreciated!)

[im-totally-not-an-alien-2]

Halloween prompts year 2 day 30

Danny became aware suddenly, the memory of his mothers parting shot as he fled fresh in his mind. He panicked, thrashing around in what felt like a thick liquid when his hand hit what felt like a wall of glass.

A tube? Was Danny floating in a freaking vat somewhere? He didn't remember anything after being shot down by his mom but he knew if he was in a lab somewhere he needed to escape!

In moments he was on the ground surrounded by wierd fluid and shattered glass. He ripped the oxygen mask off his face and threw it away from him as a violent shiver wracked his body.

Looking up he was surprised. He was expecting the bright shiney metal of his parents lab, or the white of the GIW lab, heck, even the wierd purple thing Vlad sometimes had going on would have made sense. As much as he would have hated to have been saved by the fruitloop, it would have been a familiar fight.

The devil you know and all that.

But no, this lab was all dull blacks, dark grays and inky shadows. The tubes around him bathing the atmosphere in a soft green glow that barely illuminated anything.

Great. Wonderful. Just what he needed. More people making more problems for him.

Danny picked himself up off the ground, shuttering again and was surprised to realize he didn't have any clothes on.

Danny decided that whoever had kidnapped him was going to get acquainted the Anti-creep stick. Luckly there was a closet nearby with what looked like a superhero costume in it. Okay. Hes dealt with weirder situations.

He put most of the suit on, leaving behind the cape, mask and chest straps. Danny had to admit he liked the red and black look. The gold was a nice touch...too...

Oh no. Where these supervillian clothes?! Red and black are totally Saturday morning cartoon villian colors! His mind started whirling, somthing that it doesn't usually do as he made his way over to the darkened computer almost by instinct.

Then he looked up.

There wasn't a lot of light in this place, but there was enough to see his reflection in the blackness of the computer monitor. One problem.

That wasn't his face.

He was as this strangers face twisted into confusion and horror. Was he overshadowing somebody? No. No...he was...Tim Drake? He watched as his reflection furrowed his brows.

No. He was Danny Fenton, son of Jack and Maddie Fenton. Local mad scientists.

But...he was Tim Drake, son of Jack and Janet Drake. Archeologists.

A distressed sound left his throat as he slid to the floor, two entire lifetimes flashing before his eyes as he tried to figure out what was real. He tried using his powers but nothing happened. That should have answered everything, right?

But that wouldn't explain how he had shattered the entirety of the thick glass of his tube prison. The glass had been completely shattered and landed in a circle around the tubes base in a way no punch could have done, no matter how powerful. Does he have powers that are simply unavailable right now or is there another explanation?

Either way he should probably wear a mask so people don't ask why Tim Drake is dressed as Red Robin, huh?

Oh god. Red Robin.

He woke up in a cloning pod in one of Red Robins secret labs! He remembered Jack, Maddie, other Jack, and Janet's treatment of him. He recalled each and every dismissive comment, every empty promise. Every time the bleachers were empty at his vollyball games. Every time he was left home alone for an "important" dig. Every time his parents ran off because a ghost might be nearby. Every time Tim would throw everything to the wayside to focus on a case. Every time Tim would throw away his own health and well being for a goal. Every time...

Danny straightened up and pulled himself off the floor before he started typing away at the computer and planning his next moves.

Regardless of what was happening, if he was Danny overshadowing a clone or if his life as Fenton was just a dream from a pod, he knew one thing for sure.

He did not need another neglectful parent.

Aka Danny runs around Gotham avoiding the bats, the press, the rogues, the petty criminals, the mob, and the police. He fails of course and manages to somehow make enemies out of everyone all while having a massive identity crisis and searching for a new home far far away from here before Tim Drake figures out who he really is...

[huariqueje]

Bread with Tomato - Marcos Cárdenas , 2023.

Catalan , b. 1973 -

Oil on wood , 60 x 60 cm.

[tangledinink]

uhm excuse me this is not an honest depiction of the current happenstance. as such i've created an accurate recreation of the above, for the sake of historic integrity.

[vampyriclykoi]

I think that Gru and Maxime are "exes".

Here's my explanation (copy and pasted from discord messages i sent):

i was thinking about gru and maxime being "exes" and i thought of a possible headcanon that could be tied to that

i think that neither gru or maxime were particularly popular when they first started at lychee pas bon - gru because he is generally offputting, and maxime because of the cockroach thing

gru would tend to keep to himself, while maxime would try to hang around more popular kids to try to fit in

at some point the kids would want to pull a prank on gru, and would use maxime for that because he was the least liked and they wanted to see how far he'd go to gain their friendship - that prank would be to ask gru to date him and pretend to be his boyfriend for a while. very mean-spirited, but something that should be expected from a bunch of future villains

maxime would ask, and gru - not realising it was a prank - would say yes. he'd be excited to have someone to hang out with

after a while of maxime pretending to like gru, he'd actually start catching feelings, as gru would be the only person to care about his interest in cockroaches. theyd be happy

that is, until maxime's "friends" would push him into telling gru that the whole thing was a "prank"

their relationship would end, and their rivalry would begin

i also think that when maxime tells him its a prank hed be mean about it and thats where hed start calling him "gru-ser the loser"

i imagine that after that interaction gru goes home and cries to the minions snd they all try to do things to make him feel better 🙁🙁

maxime would go home and talk to his cockroaches about it. i envision this event to be the beginning of (my version of) maxime's imminent descent into derangement

[the-gom-jabbar]

[rad-roche]

evil art style challenge

friends. when i say 'out of my wheelhouse'

took a while, but this was really fun. not something i do... well, ever. but it's good to get out of your comfort zone. now if i'm in a survival situation, like the plane i'm on is crashing and it can only be stopped by drawing a cute pastel anime girl, i will be safe in the knowledge that i can do it and we'll crash for much more typical reasons

there is no problem a deco brush can't fix

[profounddefendorcrusade-blog]

Starlo should be Clover's dad

Why? Because ↓

1) Both dress into cowboy-themed attire to feel braver/more important than they are

2) Clover, instead of a regular kid, wants to feel like a hero; Star, instead of a regular farmer, also wants to feel like a hero

In reality, Star is not the tough guy he pretends to be. His optimism, protectiveness and caring nature make him a hero though.

In reality, Clover started off as a scared kid who became more confident and skilled thanks to Flowey's resets. Their heroism comes from their forgiving and selfless nature and the hidden courage they got the chance to explore.

2) Both acted childish during a dangerous situation Clover came down the mountain with a toy gun so that it would bring them comfort/they'd feel more in control of the situation (if you remember, Frisk refused to play with Asriel's toys in UT, saying how they're "too old," and I assume Frisk and Clover are the same age).

Starlo brought a fake gun before confronting Clover in genocide, just to feel cool.

3) Both not only value justice, but base it on compassion

Clover's entire mission was to bring justice (avenge the kids), but along the way changed that mindset (in pacifist). Star says how him and his posse aren't bandits, tests Clover's sense of justice and morality with the trolley problem, and wants to give Ceroba a second chance despite her actions.

4) Starlo's got protective fatherly instincts

5) fatherly pride

8) a lot of monsters associate Clover with the Dunes/Wild East

9) oh and... Starlo referred to the Wild East as Clover's.... home. Twice.

he could have easily said 'Wild East'

... get the adoption papers.

[starmist]

I genuinely believe Naksu haunts the narrative. Her actions and existence as Naksu heavily impact the entire story. Her past, the life she lived and the shadow of it in Mudeok. But we don't actually know any of it because Naksu is not in the story.

Like. What she lost as Cho Yeong is something that we are never allowed to forget, the loss of her body, her powers, her freedom, and her impending death as a soul shifter hangs over Mudeok's head like guillotine.

All the while we don't actually know the Shadow Assassin Naksu, she died in the first episode, as soon as the story began. Other than training and killing (soul shifters) what kind of person was she when she didn't have to rely on another person else or hide or live as someone else? We don't know and we don't ever learn any of that.

Still, her absence is the plot, yet her former existence as Naksu influences everything; Yul's actions and what she was to him, Jang Uk's goal of returning her powers, the revelation of soul shifters to Park Jin, Jang Gang's departure, Jin Mu's accomplishments, the King's Star even.

Everything is about her existence but she doesn't actually exist at all anymore.

[bellshazes]

been thinking a lot about people's varied reactions to the chaos & perceived inconsistencies around the rules of limited life and because i taught games professionally for a decade and have done a lot of reading on games academically, I have a few propositions for the fandom to consider.

proposition one: Your interpretation of gameplay events is not the same as a monolithic "the narrative" to which all players are equally subject.

Narrative is not what happened, but the interpretation and meaning attached to the events that occurred. Narrative is when we "give experience a form and a meaning." (Harris-Miller)

This construction of narrative - giving meaning to experiences - can occur in the way a video is cut an edited, as well as in the audience's interpretation after the video is released.

Social play is player interaction, both in the derived from the structure and rules of the game (being "It" in tag) as well as the social roles brought from outside the game. (1)

In transformative social play, players use the game context to transform social relationships.

Most players in the life game are more concerned with narrative as it relates to transformative social play - such as, what does this event mean for me, my alliances, my enemies, and the shifting of roles along that spectrum?

Narrative within the game is dynamic and always changing in response to ongoing events and shifting relationships. Viewers' narratives about the games are more static since they exist outside the game context and are not a part of ongoing social play.

Letting go of a single unified "narrative" lets us think about the differences, tensions, and resonances between players' in-game construction of narrative, the narrative constructed by the player's video edit, and the retrospective audience construction of narrative. (*)

proposition two: Fairness is decided by the players, not the rules.

Playing a game requires trust and safety with the other players. (DeKoven) Even in tic-tac-toe you have to trust that your opponent will take reasonable amounts of time per turn before you sit down to play.

We can distinguish between ideal rules (rules as writ, such as a physical rulebook) and the real rules (the general consensus on what playing the game should look like). (2)

Real rules can include how sportsmanlike behavior is defined, and when "breaking" a rule doesn't count; a common example is forgiving a player who genuinely made a mistake on accident and did not intend to "break" the rules.

The real rules are what actually matter in developed gameplay, and they can be negotiated and constructed inside the game as new events, situations, and dynamics occur. (3)

Brushing past Scar's "illegal" kill on greens is not him getting away with breaking the rules, it's the group coming to a consensus on the real rules of the game. Cleo asking Impulse if her kill on him can count and him finally agreeing is not the breaking of (ideal) rules so much as it is defining the real rules.

proposition: Players' own individual motivations and definitions of sportsmanship or interesting play inform their contribution to the general consensus on real rules and leading them to play "imperfectly" in favor of having more fun or staying true to something.

Purely optimal play is boring to the players and viewers, and taken to an extreme allowed by the ideal rules, would violate the real rules implicitly agreed to by the players.

"Optimal" gameplay in the life series could look like hiding in a hole underground for the entire game if the end goal is to survive the longest, but that would make a boring video and would likely be considered supremely unsportsmanlike by other players and their audiences.

Playing perfectly optimally is one motive to play a game, but is basically never the sole motivator if it's one at all.

Even if everyone in the life series has a goal to "keep playing the game as long as possible," that could mean being focused on winning, or being focused on making allies or not making enemies, or it could compel you to give up your life for someone else who's running out of time because to you to play the game is to play together. (4)

Scar is a perfect example of someone who consistently chooses "non-optimal" goals such as always having the enchanter and goes to great and stupid lengths to achieve it even if it means sacrificing winning.

This "non-optimal" play provides something for other players to play off of and react to, often leading to transformative social play, significantly meaningful narrative, or interesting negotiations of real rules. (5)

synthesis: The most interesting narratives are born out of situations where players negotiate the real rules, not ones where the (ideal) rules are broken.

The life series is inherently highly experimental - even as more seasons build on the experiences of prior ones, the constant addition of new mechanics mean the game is more or less always being playtested rather than simply played.

The "rule" against carrying Third Life into Last Life failed because it is basically impossible to eliminate the out-of-game contributions to social play, especially in a social deduction game where knowledge of other players' habits and behaviors is useful metagame (6) currency that can't be un-learned.

Some of the series' most iconic narrative moments - the end of 3L or DL, he loves me, etc. are born out of the tension between ideal and real rules, where players are forced to take a stand or advocate for something opposed to the "ideal" rules such as allying with reds, sticking with your soulmate, or that there can only be one winner. (7)

I'm offering the above as a way of showing that I think these imperfections and changes between seasons are actually the coolest thing about them and have the potential for transformative fan works in addition to transformative play.

if limited life's copious tnt minecarts via skynet and highly-manual, inconsisent giving and taking of time for kills which may or may not be deserved according to strict interpretations of the rules as stated aren't to your taste, that's just how it is sometimes! It's understandable to not enjoy ideal rules that are loosely defined or interpreted or are imperfectly implemented from a mechanics perspective, but understanding that the players of the actual game did agree and consent and get to negotiate the consequences and meaning of these imperfections is not some unfortunate side-effect but in fact an important part of any gameplay.

The various types of narratives and the various motives for playing mean there can't be a single unified narrative for all players - but thinking about these things in terms of tensions and synergies opens doors for talking about the many narratives and the relationships between them. you can hold multiple seemingly-conflicting narratives as a viewer and put them in dialogue and produce new meaningful narratives in their contradictions or overlap! go forth and embrace the chaos and tension between the chains of context that produce meaning and the freedom to look at that complex web and derive fuller meanings from it!

because this post isn't long enough, more citations and examples from the series below the cut:

Some footnotes:

(1) Social roles within the game are more artificial than the ones that exist outside of it. That doesn't make them less meaningful, but when we consider the consequences of breaking a social role defined by the game compared to a real-world breaking of a promise or law, it's hard to forget the artificiality of the game. The consequences are relatively minor; the morality of betrayal, for instance, during a game can be acceptable because of that artificiality where it would be reprehensible in real life.

(2) A few different ways to think about game rules that are not mutually exclusive but complementary to each other:

Three layers of game rules: the underlying constituative rules of a game, the operational rules that directly guide player action, and the implicit rules of proper game behavior, such as etiquette.

Piaget's developmental stages from the Moral Development of Children are useful background here: the first stage is loose play without rules, second is strict adherence to ideal rules, and the final adult-leaning stage is the understanding that the real rules are what matter. You could call putting ideal rules over the real ones juvenile.

"Ideal rules refer to the "official" regulations of a game, the rules written in a player's guide to Zelda or printed on the inside cover of a game of Candyland. Real rules, on the other hand, are the codes and conventions held by a play community. Real rules are a consensus of how the game ought to be played." (Rules of Play)

(3) "It is not that the basic rules of the game undergo a radical change; rather, they are experienced within a social context that decreases their value in favor of a socially-biased ruleset over which players have more control."

(4) I'm thinking of Bdubs in Limited Life session 7 here, since he gives time and stays alive, but if you take this concept a little further and more broadly you just get players like Skizz.

(5) Metagaming, defined broadly for my purposes as the larger social context of the game and not just the pejorative, could be its own too-long post, but I think it's worth mentioning as an avenue for thinking about the complex dynamics of the life series as social play. For example, Etho consistently is thinking from a metagame perspective, from stalling by accusing Cleo of metagaming or remarking that Scar's lost the dramatic moment so he can't attack now in Last Life, or threatening to break roleplay in Limited Life when he's mad at Scar.

(6) From Rules of Play: "Sutton-Smith's model for player roles includes an actor, a counteractor, and an overall "motive" or format for play. For example, if the motive is capture, the actor's role is to take, while the role of the counteractor is to avoid being taken. [...] In Sutton-Smith's model, the roles of actor and counteractor are both equally important in constructing the experience of play." I don't think this model is sufficient on its own, but it's a worthwhile point that conflict is part of the game and is in fact desirable within certain bounds.

(7) Scott in LL is really interesting narratively because his motivation is at odds with what the game asks him to do: he is extremely true to his word and chooses to take the penalty of being knocked down to red rather than trying to kill someone and making an enemy of them and/or failing and dying anyway. He's not breaking any rules, but his choosing to experience consequences because of his own motivation and social relationships is compelling. It pays off when he wins, and it pays off again when Cleo can't bear to kill him in DL - the metagame element of past social play relationships and player knowledge of other players contributing to the current dynamics of social play.

ETA: An important point I also wanted to make but didn't have space for up top is that Jimmy being a "canary in a coal mine" as a result of always dying first is not some immutable truth about fate that actually influences his games, but if you can accept that it's not actually fated then you can start to think about and react to the way that the in-game players construct narratives in response to the actual events of him always permadying first. Joel's futile attempts to prevent this are a product of previous seasons' social play, the transformative current social dynamics, and his own player narrative (again, narrative as meaning giving form to experiences).

Also, I strongly disliked DL's premise and thought the best parts were the chosen soulmates precisely because I think predestination is best left to Calvinists and choice, especially in opposition to prescribed rules or narratives, is the most interesting thing in the world. Of course Etho and Bdubs in Last Life is what hooked me and I am also smug that the players tend to refer to the series as "last life" even if 3L came first and it's been two whole seasons since then.

(*) On meanings:

I think that meaning is necessarily the complex web of relationships between any given things, and there is no objective meaning to anything. Words and events have no meanings outside of our interpretations of and dialogue about them - this is not nihilism, but a beautiful gift of communicating with other people. A real deep dive into semiotics is beyond the scope of this post and also my own abilities, but it informs this view. I don't think you have to read academically to know it; you can find the proof in arguments about whether a pop tart is ravioli. A stupid argument, but one that is negotiating the boundaries of words' meanings by drawing on the words' relationships to other words and the things those words represent. It's the act of making meaning, not uncovering it. So too is watching the life series and arguing about or making arguments for a certain narrative angle or emphasizing a detail etc. - I just think it's a loss not to celebrate the complex web that tugs in many different directions with many different motives. It's less simple, but much richer.

[chrliekclly]

How did you get your job on sunny? I really wanna go into the entertainment industry.

iv told th story b4 but i got onto th show bcuz i just happened to b n th right place @ th right time

was working on smthn completely different nd drunk on th camera truck during one of our wrap days me, the DIT, nd the loader wer talking abt fave tv shows nd when i said tht always sunny was mine th loaders just like "oh lol funny im the 1st AC on that. i can get u some days if u want" ???

so i...did some days...then i did a season...and now im core crew i guess

[cabinetduo]

"Everything I've ever let go of has claw marks on it" is so Sunny coded it's unreal

when she addresses her loved ones and goes "MY pa" "MY panada" "MY mustache boy" etc. when qtubbo had to leave for purgatory and she kept saying no and denying they'd take him because she cannot fathom being away from him

[bastardbeewoman]

I still can't believe they made a whole episode to deal about how Kazuki needs to allow himself to move from a past love and past life and then one of thr very last scenes of the episode is him coming home and then the camera focus on Rei and it is simply the most lovestruck, heartwarming and tender expression we have ever seen him doing in the anime

[maculategiraffe]

thinking about her (caroline "ma" ingalls née quiner)