#oooh I love the way he's rendered here is this the actual art in-game?

[the-daily-male]

Today's daily male is King Sidon from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild!

for @elliethecat

[sleepymarmot]

COUNTER/Weight liveblog, part 3

Finale +post-mortem

Am I glad to return to the political big picture! It's such a relief that the finale is in this format! Hopefully it won't devolve into another “fighting a giant robot” scene.

Oh, so the Chime are leading the faction game now! Somehow I completely missed the point of the two previous scenes that indicated Aria becoming the new leader of the Righteous Vanguard – I was very surprised and then 10 minutes later went “Oh that's what it was, time to go back and relisten”

Pronoun update: Austin consistently uses “they”, Art consistently uses “he”. End my suffering…

The sheer comedic impact of seven Makos, Larry and Lazer Ted all in a room together has healed my soul immediately. Can we end on this image so nothing bad happens

I'm so proud of Orth!! “I'm sorry, which one are you?” lmao

Oooh the relationship drama~ But how come Jacqui didn't know Jill was alive? Actually, now that I think of it, back then it was clearly said that Jacqui knows Jillian is back and is sad because Jillian doesn't remember her. This show's retcons…

Look I know shit must hit the fan pretty soon but for now this finale is just. So relaxing. I'm having a lot of fun listening to these squabbles. (The only exception were Mako and Orth – boys, stop fighting, why!)

That Cass & Aria scene was cool but please don't give me world leader old friends sneaking away for secret stress relief sparring sessions when I'm not supposed to start shipping them

Oh hell yeah, I was hoping that since Jacqui went with Jillian, Aria would go with Ibex. (Not very relevant here, but Ibex is from Kesh like Maryland, right? If so, there must be fanart of young Ibex and Maryland in 19th century outfits?)

Stop cryptically saying oh Sokrates isn't here, oh they aren't using their candidate name, like what's up with them?! Are they doing well? I'm worried!

Oh Orth wants to dance with Ibex huh *eyes emoji* Rematch! Rematch!

“I'll take anything” “Anything?” My mind, of course, autocompletes “Then perish”

THIS WAS A LOT and I need to take a couple of minutes to start breathing normally again. Also there just has to be a lovingly drawn fanart adaptation of this entire scene (in, like, fukcing Leyendecker style), come on fandom please say someone has done it

Jacq/Jill continuing with the heartbreaking scenes, I see

Mako doesn't like dancing now…… holy shit this is the most upsetting ball ever… (The cynical part of me must say that it's only Austin who talks about this connection, Keith doesn't and still sounds way less emotional about the whole thing than the others assume Mako to be)

I amend my previous statement, I also need fanart with snapshots of every dance: Orth firmly taking Ibex's hand and receiving a surprised but approving look, Jillian throwing her head back in laughter and Jacqui watching with a pained smile, sullen Mako leaning on a wall cross-armed and looking for an opportunity to slip away, Cass dropping his one-liner with a completely dispassionate face.

Wow Ibex is really getting ready for death. Sounds as if he knows the exact date.

HOLY SHIT THE DIVINES' ORIGIN STORY!!! FINALLY!!! I'm surprised they were all created by the same person…

I'm relieved Mako and Orth are on good terms again!

I love the new Aria as this competent politician who does a lot of swordfighting and dealing with old flames

Have I mentioned I really love the game they're playing? It almost synthesizes the best parts of the game they played previously – as if it was written just for this finale. It's so great how this show and specifically this campaign go through so many games, showing the universe and the characters from different angles, instead of having them be defined by only one game system and its limitations and quirks.

That's some real good mech if it can function for 80,000 years, Divines' body or not!

Okay, I fucking knew Liberty and Discovery would split up at some point (which is what I meant above by my expectations for AuDy's fate), but why is Liberty attacking Ibex?

Mako's robots!!! :DDD Now that's the real finale shit!

I CAN'T BELIEVE Keith missed Tower's brief appearance of all things. It's like a fucking scene from the show on the level of dramatic irony. They were truly not meant to be, even the universe in real life is saying that. Do you ever get rejected so badly that the guy you like runs away from you at the prom, and then lets you fall into a deadly portal with the rest of your planet, and then you get brainwashed, and then you are killed by an ally of that guy, and the person playing him doesn't even witness that?!

I thought Orth was going to challenge Kobus about Liberty…

“I have Liberty contained” *winces*

Every time it is asked what is Mako wearing I just mentally pull out the popcorn

“I welcome anyone to tell Cass that AuDy is a non-person”

Let me restate how much I'm loving how the scenes that in any other show would be minor fluff or short summaries in an epilogue are a legit fully rendered part of the finale

Sokrates & Orth reunion please!!

Aw Ted! It never occured to me that this comic relief character has, in fact, lost his entire planet and almost everyone he knows.

…I think I like Apokine Cass more than Chime Cass

That's a big lore dump holy cow! I'm glad Apostolosians are ex-humans after all, but I wonder how they turned into fish people

So what happened to the idea of Mako hacking Grace?

They just… went and straight up murdered two Divines… If it had happened early in the show I'd probably cheer, and no tears were shed for Grace, but Liberty… Just take a third of another player character and drive it into a sun…

Of course. I knew Sokrates is the kind of character who dies nobly in a grand finale.

I've spent all this time wondering how the piece of Voice in Mako doesn't get infected by Rigor, and it seems to finally happen and Larry seems to die repairing it, but what about all other Makos, aren't they in danger too?

This is way too easy so far, just sacrifice NPCs one by one to win.

This whole time I was assuming Mako saved as many clones as he could, not just his own… If he gets another turn I bet it's submit or die :/

Hello I'm crying over Lazer Ted! Choices in the campaign sound futile now: who cares which guy Mako saved – they both died anyway! All named NPCs did!

Except for Jacqui. Congratulations, the NPC Who Lived! (I mistyped “loved” at first, which is also relevant. And yes, I cried here too.)

How the hell would falling into a sun kill Rigor if it was previously not killed by a bomb that destroys hundreds of suns?

Poor Cass… Not only sacrificing yourself in such a difficult way, but to have a final conversation only just to learn that your friend, a passionate revolutionary further empowered by Righteousness, has deserted… The sheer contempt and disappointment he pours in just three words “Ibex told you”...

Welp. Mako's fate was not tragic like I feared! Good news I guess, but it's still kind of sad. And I think the saddest part is that Mako himself doesn't realize. Because it can just sound like the natural continuation of his character growth – after he had to learn to be the responsible one first in contrast to Larry and then to the other Makos. But it's not that, or not just that, and it's kind of chilling to hear that he never knows it, and never knows peace.

Executive Joie, oh my… It's so strange and cool how Aria somehow continues the legacy of Jace and Ibex at once.

The race is over. It's so strange that now there are no consequences to fear or spoilers to avoid.

I didn't like the final battle as much as the rest of the finale – I hoped for a more clever solution than just throwing bodies at the enemy (but I guess the intro warned me lol…). Especially since these bodies had very unequal impact – I'm not going to care about Diego Rose or Chet Wise or Orth's newly-created lieutenants or as much as I care about Jacqui -- so it felt unfair towards players/characters who had more important or likeable chracters in their faction. I'm opposed on principle to making the big confrontation feel important and emotional just by killing off characters (hi, J. K. Rowling and Russo brothers), I think it's cheap and emotionally manipulative, but in this case the emotional manipulation doesn't even work so it’s doubly disappointing.

If someone's reading this, you can see that what I expected or wanted from the story was not what it gave me, and that was frustrating or disappointing at times. But nevertheless, it was a wild ride.

I've slept on it and it still fucks me up that out of the Chime only Aria gets a genuinely happy ending! Cass is fucking dead, Liberty is dead while AuDy becomes a ghost, and Mako loses everyone and is lonely for the rest of his life!

It's so strange to listen to the opening theme in the post-mortem and think that this is the second-to-last time. (Relistens don't count, it's not the same thing.) By the way, I love that theme – it sounds like a half song with the words on the tip of my tongue, like space, or like city at night. Really atmospheric.

I love how everyone continues to be into that moment where Aria has the opportunity to kill Cass lol (I am too)

Yeah, thanks for reminding me about that coin toss moment for Kobus in the finale, that was so sudden and shocking I was completely losing it for the long few seconds it lasted

I'm glad someone asked whether Jack knew the Big Spoiler in advance – he was so calm about it in the following episodes that I started wondering

Oh so it wasn't my imagination that the players needed the comic relief of the Lazer Ted episode no less than the characters

After a sad talk about Mako's dead friends, Andi, cheerfully: “I love to kill and I love to hurt and I never regretted anything I ever did! :D” which won the least surprising comment of the hour award lol. Honestly, after that one scene with Diego I started to get a bit nervous whenever Andi announced they had an idea… C/w was fun because I now realize the cinnamon roll Aubrey was actually them playing against type.

I love that someone asked about Mako's first kiss and/or Orth's fandom life!!

Keith's answer is sad, though… He “had literally never considered Mako even being capable of kissing someone, like it wasn't something on the table” and that was unexpected to me. I'd mentioned several times that he sounded reluctant to play up the romance, but I was assuming it was the player's preference, not an innate trait of the character whose attraction to someone was a part of his character creation. How do I interpret it? Mako is aro? Mako never had a chance to properly grow emotionally because his youth was fake and for the rest of his life, all emotional connections were sabotaged by Rigour's shadow, and also literally all his potential love interests died? Ugh, I just keep making myself more and more upset.

Holy shit I forgot about Art asking if there's an old Apostolosian mech on September by any chance lmao

Cene always knew?! Holy shit w h a t

It's nice to hear Ali talk about her growth in confidence as a player because she's definitely kind of an inspiration – for years I've thought tabletop roleplaying is too intense and I'll never do it, but when I finally tried out it was not so scary, so maybe there's hope for me too!

The concept that the real challenge of the final battle was that the easier it would be to defeat Rigor, the worse shape would the world be afterwards sounds much better than what that battle actually felt like to me. Instead of paying for victory with the health of society and their faction's political power, in the actual gameplay they paid with NPCs from their circle and that was it; the political consequences came later and sounded entirely unrelated. Maybe if they had to go against their faction's goals or sacrifice its assets – e.g. “use Minerva's Rigor-tech mechs in exchange for the promise to leave them alone afterwards” instead of “sacrifice all Mako clones”… Aria had something similar with Weight, but it was the price of Jacqui's life, not the price of a victorious battle against Rigour.

It's very cool to learn where the sound effects in the theme come from! And god, every line as its own take? My head hurts just imagining that…

Austin getting distracted by the idea of fucking Rigor was hilarious, but I never, ever want to hear the word “daddy” in this context! What's with these jokes this season, ew, please stop.

Excuse me, Ali wanted to kiss Ibex as who exactly, Jace or Aria? Both options are equally crazy!

See, “You wanna say ‘Oh he was just doing what was necessary, he was just doing the thing that's good in the end’, and yeah that's him working on you” is exactly why he reminds me of Dukat! Literally the same mind game on the viewers/listeners!

Why is the link broken, I want to see AuDy in Titanfall!

Listening to team “Fuck Ibex!” and team “Fuck Ibex ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)” yell at each other is very entertaining

“Nobody on the Kingdom Come is cishet” is a nice sentiment but I'm kind of confused by which definition of cis Cass is not. Have I missed something about them changing pronouns in-universe? Just because English doesn't have exact analogies for the Apostolosian pronouns doesn't mean everyone who uses them isn't following their own society's conventions. And now Austin also's saying “We never wanted to say these pronouns are equivalent to gender” which is, a, not true, and b, sends the whole problem back to square one – because if that's not the Apostolosian gender then what is? This! Is! A! Mess!