i watched My Neighbor Totoro for the first time, here's my chronological viewing experience:
woo-hoo! dusty old japanese house with japanese architectural details aplenty
these kids got some ENERGY my goodness
family dynamic's adorable. peak quality dad humor
kids: our house is haunted. parents: that's so cool!
hell yeah, wrinkled old lady rep. we need more friendly old women with potato faces and warts like storybook witches. the backbone of society, these ladies
Plot Summary: Small Child Bothers Local Wildlife
sacred tree sacred tree sacred tree
Introducing Totoro! nobody said this fucker's got TEETH???
Uh-Oh! Inadequate Parental Supervision Detected
(you misplaced your four year old! you're not supposed to do that)
4-year-old: i met a magic forest spirit. dad: oh shit fr?
4-year-old: *angrily hugs sister* missed u bitch
this small child has a smile like a toad. like a really really cute toad. like the cutest toad in all existence. i love her she's perfection please just let this child be happy
rice paddies are so pretty....so back breaking....rice is such a prissy crop
*my crush is stranded in a rainstorm* takethisumbrellait'syoursnowBYE *runs away in panic im so good at flirting*
Giant Chinchilla Learns To Hold Umbrella, Is Fucking Delighted By Experience
take this, it will help you on your quest! *hands u trail mix wrapped in a leaf*
LO-FI HIP HOP STUDY LIST!
crouching down to peer at dirt--A++ top notch foundational childhood experience
mom has a big ass forehead
honey! the chinchillas are performing Rituals in the backyard again
help yeah let's jack and the bean stalk this shit
huh so we're all just climbing aboard the giant chinchilla's tiddies now ok
class trip!
the pure adrenaline of Vegetable Gardening
no! the small child is crying! she is bawling her eyes out. no no no. i can't cope with this. emotionally i cannot cope 🥺🥺🥺
i've only had Mei one hour but if anything happens to her i will raze this earth and everyone on it
please someone make this small child smile again
oh no the tall child is crying too
i can't take this. my heart can't take this.
i need a drink
small child running determined to deliver magic veggies to the hospital. this kid is my hero
she is also unsupervised. so, so unsupervised
babe you are FOUR
godDAMMIT ghibli, you cannot give me watercolor sunsets while a small child is missing. u are killing me. my heart is giving out. this is me, experiencing heart failure.
Totoro to the rescue!
no wait CATBUS to the rescue!
i admit i initially thought the cat was a creep. alice in wonderland prejudiced me. i have revised my notions of smiling cats
i've decided the cat is a metaphor for the magic of a robust public transport system
MEI'S OKAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!
and so is mom. she's a lovely lady im sorry for what i said about her forehead. it's a noble forehead.
happy ending YES bitch!!!!!!
ok. ok ok ok. that was magical.
(as a first-time adult viewer i was worried i wouldn't be able to Access the Magic. but i could and i did and it was incredible. that was culture. that was ART. joy distilled into animated form. holy rites of childhood. i understand now. how glorious, this world we grow out of. how full of marvels. i'm going outside to smell grass and sun and get dirt under my fingernails. miraculous.)
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Several weeks ago, my retirement-age mother requested that I play Baldur’s Gate 3 for her because she has trouble with controllers/keyboards and wanted “to see what all the fuss is about with that cute wizard boy.” For context, my mother and I have done this sort of thing in the past with certain RPGs (dragon age, mass effect, etc.), but it’s been a few years since she’s personally requested a game like this. Basically, I control her Tav but let her make all the choices so she can determine how the story plays out without worrying about mechanics. She treats it like a choose-your-own-adventure book.
Anyway, here is a list of some of the things my mother has said and/or chosen to do throughout the course of BG3 in no particular order:
She is (obviously) romancing Gale. She is quite smitten with him and his passion for books and learning; she also thinks he’s polite and qualifies as “relationship material.” She also REALLY likes the things he’s said about his cat so far (my mom is a cat lady), so I know she’s gonna flip shit when we meet Tara in Act III.
She’s playing a normal druid Tav with a generally good alignment. Her favorite spell is Spike Growth because she thinks it’s hilarious whenever enemies walk into the AOE and die. I usually end up having to cast it at least once per battle per her request. Sometimes twice.
Contrary to her alignment, my mother tasks me with robbing every single chest, crate, barrel, and burlap sack we come across; this also includes people and their pockets. The party is always at max carrying capacity. ALWAYS. She doesn’t like selling things because “what if I need them.” The camp stash is in literal shambles. There is no hope of organizing it. She’s got like fifty seven sets of rags and a billion pieces of random silverware.
She MUST talk to every animal and corpse in the game. I think five hours of her total playtime so far (47ish) has been spent speaking to animals as many times as humanly possible. Like, I was thorough in my own playthroughs, but this is on a whole other level.
She did NOT get Volo’s lobotomy, but she did let Auntie Ethel take her eye in hopes of a cure for the tadpole. I did not understand the logic then. I still do not understand it now.
She is far more interested in fashion than equipment stats. Do you have any idea how much gold I’ve had to spend on dyes just to make things match? SO much. Same vibe as that “please someone help me balance my finances my family is starving” tweet but instead of candles it’s thirty thousand fucking bottles of black and furnace red dye.
We broke the prisoners out of Moonrise, but they got on the boat too early and bugged the fight by leaving Astarion and Karlach behind. Wulbren Bongle somehow got stuck in combat mode even after engaging the cutscene on the docks below Last Light; he he kept trying to run ALL THE WAY BACK TO MOONRISE nine fucking meters at a time while I frantically tried to finish the fight with the Warden, otherwise Wulbren would have run straight into the shadow curse. (I would’ve let him go; fuck Wulbren Bongle, all my homies hate Wulbren Bongle. But my mom didn’t know that, and she wanted to keep him safe. So.)
She had me reload a save like eighteen times to save the giant eagles on top of Rosymorn Monastery. Wouldn’t even let me do non-lethal damage just to get past things. I think getting that warhammer for the dawnmaster puzzle took us like an hour and a half alone. (Yes, I know you can use any warhammer, but SHE didn’t.)
She’s started keeping an irl notebook to keep track of her quests between play sessions. She writes down ideas and strategies when she thinks of them during the week, then brings them to her next game session at my house. I think she wrote about three pages on possible approaches to the goblin fortress alone.
She insists that I pet Scratch and the owlbear cub before every single long rest, no exceptions. Sometimes I have to do it multiple times until she is absolutely sure that the animals know exactly how much she loves and cherishes them. She has also commissioned a crocheted owlbear plush from a friend of hers and is very excited.
I’m sure there’s a bunch of stuff I’m forgetting, but those are some fun things I thought of. She’s enjoying the game and is telling all of her retired friends to get it and play it for themselves. She asked me “what is Discord” yesterday and I think my life flashed before my eyes.
anyway shout out to my mom for being neat
Part 2 — Part 3 — Part 4 — Part 5
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