#maybe him game ending himself?

[creativitysloyalservant]

i have decided to break my lack of original posting on this blog to bring you my Thoughts on Rot in Paradise. because i played it as soon as i got up this morning and i have scoured for some opinions after finishing it, and now i have my own!!

(and also i posted this on twitter but twitter has such a Shit wordcount that i'm also posting my things here with More Detail)

so! spoilers under the cut, please go and play the game if you haven't. it takes literally an hour (it only took nearly 2 hours for me because i like voice acting by myself and exploring every nook and cranny) and it's also free. so maybe come back into the tag once you're done.

okay, so i noticed quite a number of people being confused and disappointed on the lack of an explanation for the monster. it's brought up in the story as the central thing driving the plot, but it's never explained on what "she" is, why she's compelling people to eat a ton of fish-related food or hell, metal, and why this doesn't impact June at all.

but you know what I think?

i think that that's the point. the focus of rot in paradise isn't supposed to be on the monster.

yeah, it's the thing that pushes the plot along besides June and the gang going on vacation in this island. it's what's causing that uneasiness from the moment that guy grabs June's arm at the drinks, to the sheer unnerving feeling of witnessing people going to the ocean to get Raptured basically. i know i personally felt a chill when i saw that one dude literally eating chains and the other hauling an anchor, as if they're trying to make themselves heavier so they get taken by whatever She is.

but that's not the main point! the main conflict is about June and her friends.

as people have pointed out, this game is about toxic friendships and relationships! it's foreshadowed in the conversation that June has with the gang about her cousin (which i will also get into), and it carries it through the way her friends are horribly warped by this ocean Creature. June goes on a silly little vacation trip with her friends only for them to become so so different from themselves that they lash out at her and even hit her in McCoy's case.

but she still sticks it out with them. through the whole game, even despite their verbal abuse, despite being slapped, despite them being people that she can hardly recognise. she stays with them for the whole game, up until the point where you are given the two options at the very end. and she could still stay with them.

because they're still her friends. she cares about them even if they still hurt her. from the way June still tells Carmen to tell June if she needs anything after Carmen literally tells her to shut up and leave, the way June worries about Vonnie eating seafood even though she continues to stuff herself despite being implied to either hate or make an active choice to not eat seafood, to the way June still trudges out to sea screaming for McCoy to come back to the shore as he wades further in even after he slapped her until her nose bled.

it mirrors the conversation about her cousin, the reason for why June was looking forward to the vacation. that while she did comfort her cousin through all of it, June clearly says that "they were dickheads, and she should have ditched them a long time ago".

but it's funny, isn't it? that June, an outsider to her cousin's friend group, easily sees the pain that her cousin's friends are causing her, and immediately calls it as it is. that her cousin should have left the second they hurt her.

and yet now, when her friends hurt her, even though this was a quick and sudden change that happened in a span of three days, June still sticks around. her friends are dickheads right now, and we can see that in the way they interact with June, but she still stays.

because they're her friends. and how could she just leave them like this if it's something that's causing them to be this way?

so no, i don't think the monster is supposed to be the main picture. we don't need to know what it looks like, or why it needs to do this to the islanders, or how it's even doing it in the first place. it adds to the scariness of the game, as per the Spooktober Game Jam, sure, but that's not the point. might be a bit disappointing to some, but that's not the point.

the point is about June, and the choice that she needs to make at the end of the game.

it's a choice on whether she chooses to be pulled deeper into the tides and be with the friends who hurt her and will continue to hurt her in this way,

or to leave them to their fates, whether deserved or not, and resurface to a world where she's alone without her friends.

and even though the first choice hurts much more in the long run, doesn't the second hurt even more in the moment? knowing that you're alone at the end of all of this?

even if it is the right choice, i'm sure the pain must be unbearable in the moment.

[gayness-and-mayhem]

Father Mulcahy being a spin the bottle champion is something that's so important to me actually.

[triglycercule]

killer being like "yeah i know every single little thing about horror and dust" (because he watches them as a part time hobby (freak) (find something better to do)) and then he acts surprised when they do something that he wouldnt expect them to do in his little predetermined absolutely perfect concept of them

like what do you MEAN horror licks spoons clean when he's using them so he doesn't have to get a completely different one for the main course and the dessert. what do you MEAN dust has a lisp even though he speaks fluently and uses even more complex words than killer himself. horror knows how to sew and he often patches up their things without either of them noticing?? dust always wears oversized and clothes that cover him up just because he finds it comfy?? what??? out ra geous???? these guys have small little quirks to them that killer doesn't already know about???? killer immediately wants to know more. so he can expand his internal profile of them of course. not for any other more endearing and sweet reason. not at all,,,,,,,, (:3)

[dykedvonte]

I was rewatching mouthwashing, and I ended up thinking of the different reactions that Curly and Jimmy had in doing their tasks. How during the scene of Anya evaluating Jimmy and showing dread towards the idea of doing his evaluation, Curly was the one that offered to take it off her hands. He had no issue with adding more to his plate, because he knew - or well, thought, he knew that Jimmy wasn't going to "bullshit" with him since he's known him for a long time. When Anya hands Curly a note from Swansea, Curly goes to check out what the issue is and he takes care of it without a complaint, the only "complaint" he has is how this incident could have damaged the pods. Which is reasonable, those pods are their only way to be saved if anything tragic happens on the ship. However, in comparison to Jimmy being asked to do things, he's passive-aggressive about it. When Anya asks Jimmy if he could help her out with Curly's painkillers, he tells her that people should be worth their titles, specifically using her title as a nurse when she asked him for help and then when she says forget it, since he made her feel insecure, he still goes "Oh no, I'LL take care of it" as if he was doing a chore, a favor for her. Then, there's that part where he blows up at her for things that she didn't even ask him to do - more so the others asked him about it, like the code scanner, him deciding he needed to find the axe for the foam, and then, there's the medicine part (which when she does ask, and she reconsiders - going to do it herself, he takes that away from her). Jimmy complains about the tasks he has to do and he treats it like a big issue, a "woes me" that he has to do this and that - wanting the praise of the capital without actually doing any work. While Curly doesn't complain about it, in fact, he even mentions that he's aware of how well he is doing at his job as a Captain during that cockpit scene with him and Jimmy. If Jimmy only had to do a small amount of tasks to get irritated and annoyed at being captain, while Curly didn't which I feel like encapsulates their personalities. Curly understands what he's doing is a job, it's a responsibility, why would he complain at any point for doing what he's suppose too? Why would he be upset at people asking him to do tasks? While Jimmy on the other hand, isn't used to it at all and it's different to what he's had before and he's realizing that he doesn't actually like doing the work he has too. I just wanted to ramble about it even if it seemed kind of obvious xd

It’s obvious but it is a thing people miss or understate when trying to find parallels in Curly’s and Jimmy’s relationship/personalities.

Like the way people portray it as neither taking responsibility when it is almost split down the middle of Curly taking responsibilities and faults that shouldn’t be his and making himself unequipped to handle the ones that are while Jimmy refuses to handle the responsibilities he has because he wasn’t expecting the work that comes with them.

Not a lot to say but people forget that another thing the game comments on is prioritization of issues and responsibilities and how the guys fail at it in one way or another in the situation.

[goldensunset]

dude if kh ends ill. probably cry lmaoo. but also. fandoms continue after their thing is finished dont they?? like. 10 years after its done ppl will still talk abt it?? i hope so at least

given that the kh fandom has survived several massive droughts over the years at this point i think it's unkillable. some of my mutuals on here are from like the ice age of kingdom hearts and still alive and blogging the exact way they always did. it won't be a huge fandom but even now with the series still being alive the fandom isn't as big as it once was in its heyday. but those of us here are incredibly loyal. and the nature of any long-running thing is that people carry it with them over the course of many years and it'll become impossible to drop it once it does end. but! it truthfully all depends on How it ends if you ask me. if it's a trainwreck a lot of people might abandon it out of resentment. if it's good or even mediocre as an ending it'll have its fans throughout eternity

[entering--hyperspace]

Cannot imagine whatever is going on through Mr Leonard Echowatcher's head. You spend your life yearning for a world where you lived differently, where the day wasnt soaked in war, blood, and battle. Where you could envision a future where you have a partner and a family with friends to live gracefully with. But then you are given such opportunities only to find you were never taught to be gentle, you have a gentle, empathetic nature and yet the physicality of it is a stranger to you. You are expected to raise a child with gentle hands so that she saves the world, What does that even mean? How can you accept your growing love for your friend when you were never taught how to love, that intimate love is a luxury best left forgotten, there are no need for such things in war. He has to learn to become the things he wanted bc he grew too old to develop it naturally. He becomes a father to taimi fumbling his way into learning how to care and parent, he is defensive of Aurene bc he is from a culture where they arent expected to raise their own young and yet has to do so with a dragon. It feels like a test, He has to prove both to others and to himself he is capable of being a father, of nuturing, that calloused, stained hands can still be gentle. He has to accept that love is a terrifying leap of faith in vulnerability in order to gain a partnership that is considered a rarity. I love the idea that he spent 30 years yearning for things he thought he would never have and when he is actually given those opportunities (albeit admittedly through unusual circumstances) he has to learn how to actually live in them, becuase they were always just Concepts until now. Ohhhh my god Mr. Leo you are my everything

[ibuprofinator]

this is a long, stupid, rant about the emperor and shit that happens in act 3 of bg3. watch out.

i still don't fucking understand the timeline for balduran founding baldur's gate and him turning into a mindflayer. i think bg3 changed him into an elf from human? but even so, after turning into a mindflayer he should've died ages ago right??

okay, balduran erected the first wall of the city in the mid 1000s DR, so anywhere from 400-600 DR, and then vanished. wiki says it started to be known as baldur's gate in 446 but I haven't verified that by reading the source text. presumably he wasn't turned into a mindflayer RIGHT away after traveling to moonrise. so when the fuck did it happen?

lets, for a moment, take him at his word (since nothing in-game contradicts him here at all, and there isn't even a passive role to see if he's lying) and assume that moonrise towers was already in existence when he turned. lets also assume that the wiki is right in the sense it was built in the mid-1300s. which, eh, I don't think anything in the game says shit confirming its build-date, and there isn't really a ton of external stuff about it. it also feels older than that but I digress. balduran would've heard about the treasure and pursued it (again, taking the emperor's word) before the shadow curse which popped up in the 1390s.

it's unclear as to if he went there before or after ketheric turned to shar, so that puts it anywhere from 1350-1390. which is weird because he implies it was something cool he heard about and presumably was already abandoned. except moonrise was VERY much actively used by a lot of people until the shadow curse...but whatever. regardless, doesn't matter, because he'd be an ANCIENT elf by this point.

lets assume he's, max, 70 when he fucks off after building that wall around grey harbor. lets say he leaves in 450 DR. that puts him at 970 years old AT MINIMUM as of 1350. honestly, no matter what dates and age you choose that's in the ballpark of FR canon it's bad and unrealistic.

cool, sure, lets go with it and assume that he's that old because TECHNICALLY elves can live that long. despite the fact that they're typically community elders and/or weird hermits by that point if they haven't sailed west because their bodies are decrepit and they're not, you know, still adventurers. again, whatever. maybe he hung out in the astral for a few hundred years. no one fucking knows. for all we know he was sucking the cock of eternal youth for an extended period of time before getting bored and going to moonrise.

now, he gets captured and turned into a mindflayer. mindflayers live, on average, up to 125ish years. if he's 970 when he gets turned (which idk that they'd use someone that old for anything but food because that brain has GOT to be juicy and full of cool shit, but again: WHATEVER) in 1350 and was turned the same year, he would be a 142 year old mindflayer by the time of the game. which would be insane. he'd be in the illithid equivalent of hospice and it would be a bit weird for him to spend a bit of time in the astral considering the whole githyanki living there thing.

if we change it so he's turned at the tail end of when he could've been poking around moonrise, 1390, he'd be a 102 year old mindflayer which is old but not "you're on death's door" old. but that'd put his elf self over 1000 making all this even more unlikely. put him in a damn home either way. it makes more sense, imo, for him to have been turned AFTER the shadow curse is in effect but that contradicts the bullshit vision he gives you that isn't disputed anywhere in the game.

and also, WHEN does he escape? is it a short amount of time after he turns? before he turns (which would be insane since after a day or two you are not you anymore and it's too late for an extraction, also he'd be basically inert for the rest of his transformation)?

a lot of larian's timeline assumes that he's a Super Special Guy who, through the power of Sheer Determination and Will, overcame everything in his path, including retaining his entire mind and personality as a mindflayer without the help of netherese magic that altered the tadpole we were infected with in the game.

which, I guess you have to be something of a special guy in order to have a long term romantic relationship with a bronze dragon. so one point for balduran's gay ass, I suppose.

MY PROPOSITION TO FIX THIS CLUSTERFUCK OF DATES AND LARIAN'S WEIRD ATTEMPT AT SHOCKING THE PLAYER WITH A TWIST DURING WHAT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE WYLL'S QUEST WHILE ALSO MAKING IT SO HE ISN'T COMPLETELY LYING ABOUT BEING BALDURAN

the illithid colony under moonrise is ancient. like, crazy ancient and has remained intact for an indescribably amount of time. maybe it's had a few different elder brains over the years. doesn't really matter. it's old and there's a lot of history there.

balduran can still be an elf, larian is allowed to still have that change because you know recorded history is kind of muddled anyway. lets say he gets captured and turned in the colony under moonrise way earlier on in the timeline. exact year doesn't matter.

so he's turned, and because he has terminal main character syndrome the sheer force of his will makes the illithid born from his corpse basically him personality and memory wise. mindflayers, historically, hate other mindflayers who keep even small unintentional habits from their hosts life - viewing them as defective. even trying to hide it, he would've been ostracized from the community very early on which is when he would've escape.

lets say, though, that he had a very big impact on the local mindflayer community causing more to leave once they're outside of the elder brain's range and seek him out. small elder-brain-less cult pops up. eventually they eat balduran-illithid's brain and inherit his memories etc, effectively passing along his "spirit". this continues for a good chunk of time, potentially diluting it over time. one of them (maybe even the emperor!) runs into ansur who tries to cure him, and it ends like it does in-game. the emperor then sets up shop in baldur's gate and runs the knights of the shield.

I like this specifically because it kind of ties into what squidlach says at the party as to how she's essentially become a graveyard of memories for people who were terminally ill and is a way for both karlach and all these people to keep living.

MY REAL PROPOSITION TO MAKE THIS ALL MAKE SENSE

the emperor is just lying and thought balduran was cool and wanted to get ansur on his side, and when you ask him about it he just lies to you again because he's embarrassed and thinks being balduran would make you like him

WHAT I WISH THEY DID INSTEAD

the emperor never met ansur pre-game and he's being weird about it in the tunnels because he genuinely thinks it's a waste of time.

balduran turned into a mindflayer ages ago and killed ansur, but it was long enough ago that his mindflayer-self is long dead. and then, being a revenant (WHICH THE GAME NEVER EXPLICITLY SAYS HE IS, BUT IT FITS TO A T) ansur smelled illithid shit and set his whole body to kill immediately.

also if I got dates or lore or whatever wrong and you read all this pls lmk

[fantasymoongirl999]

Omg why did no one tell me about Ninjago????

I swear the fandom and this show have me in a chokehold!!!

I'm over here close to tears on the couch watching a show made for 7 years olds and hysterically yelling “Just let the child have his father!”

Like duuuude!!

I was obsessed with the movie when it came out, how in the world did I not know there was a whole 15 seasons of this??? And apparently an entire new series??? Huh????

Literally these past few months I have done nothing but unhing my jaw and Kirby slurp Ninjago content. (You fanfiction writers are amazing!! You guys have single handedly ruined my sleep schedule and have infested my mind!) My friends are so tired of hearing me talk about this dumb show, but my gosh I will not give this up until they join me!!

[blue-eli]

Ink October day 16: Cryonics

The cryopreservation of a person with medical needs that cannot be met by available medicine until resuscitation and healing by future medicine is possible.

[willkimurashat]

Okay, I’m catching up to casa now, and mmhh it feels so weird not having Marshall in the company of Andy and Hamish (and Francis lol). Like, they were THE casa boys, the dynamic was 🤌 but this is just like, odd:/ and it’s like someone had said - Marshall feels stuck in a time loop or something lmao, just can’t let casa go lol

[allegoryofthebeast]

I am obsessed that Jedi: Survivor explores Cal more or less slipping into the dark side/dark behaviors and patterns and how leaning into emotion as a Jedi can make you significantly more powerful though also extremely reckless and aggressive - however a balance could perhaps be reached by Jedi with the patience and support to understand their darker emotions and how it could be beneficial or harmful given the situation. But they fr don’t. Every time something within that vein happens to Cal everyone is like damn… crazy. Anyway

[puhpandas]

I keep thinking about how on earth they would canonize ggy bc like. at this point if they have to sacrifice Gregory screentime of just him to make something we already know actually canon, I would rather just take the screentime, but on the other hand they have to canonize it if they want to do anything at all with that plotline, and that makes me wonder if theyll stick with it as canon in the games at all or just leave it as background knowledge if u read the book 😭

[bubblybloob]

I can't help now but imagine that when Cold finally falls prey to the hibernation scheme (as they all will, eventually 👁👁) Hunted will take the opportunity to put him in the washing machine until the mange crust is all gone.

First of all, who’s to say they fall to the hibernation? 👁️👁️

Secondly, NO DON’T WASHING MACHINE MY BOY I’VE BEEN THERE IT IS HELL HE WON’T SURVIVE-

[arainaizevran]

taking the time to actually write down ajax's paladin arc and how it relates to his dark urge redemption and suddenly nothing is making sense 🥲

[todayisafridaynight]

would it be okay if u told me why u like aoki😭/gen😭😭😭😭BEEN TRYNA LIKE HIM FOR SO LONG I JUST CANTT but i love ur art so much so i still consume it otherwise lol

i liked tohru adachi in high school and tbh i think that alone is enough of an explanation for why i ended up liking aoki

[felidaefatigue]

one thing thats nice abt boy trying to quit alcohol is like. withdrawl made him extra anxious-which is super shit and bad- bUT. he is smart and healthy coping mechanism'd it into bullet journalling and like. it is nice because now he participates more in the mental load of things. small silver lining.