#rich the idiot talks

[joshua-flipping-washington]

I'm learning how to make gifs! So, please ignore how blurry and bad they are. I just love these two. I'm in my DBH era of hyperfixation again. I'm doing all of the flow chart choices possible. It's going to take forever- but it's so fun.

Expect more random gifs, and anyone who has any tips, I'm all ears! I know I need to remember to remove subtitles when I take the videos.

[dandylion-s]

Listen man if you're taking the side of the cops beating on students maybe take a second and re-examine wtf could've made you this way.

[yellowocaballero]

Been a fan of your fics for YEARS. I was just telling my friend how despite how much I read fics I never actually love them, with some of your fics (especially TMA) as the exception. Felt the need to reread some of them and saw you reblogged some ISAT fanart. So. Any thoughts on ISAT you'd like to share?

Hope you have a wonderful day!! So happy I found your fics again!!

I avoided answering this for a while because I was trying to think of a way to cohesively and coherently vocalize my thoughts on In Stars and Time. I have given up because I don't want to hold everybody here all day and I have accepted that my thoughts are just pterodactyl screeching.

I love it so much. I have so much to say on it. It drove me bonkers for like a week straight. I have AUs. It's absolute Megbait. They're just a little Snufkin and they're having the worst experience of anybody's life. Ludonarratives my fucking beloved.

I am going to talk about the prologue.

The prologue is such a fascinating experience. You crack open the game and immediately begin checking off all of the little genre boxes: mage, warrior, researcher, you're the rogue...some little kid who's there for some reason...alright, you know the score. You're in yet another indie Earthbound RPG, these are your generic characters, let's get the ball rolling.

Except then you realize that these characters are people. You feel instantly how you've entered the game at its last dungeon, at the end of the adventure. They have their own in-jokes, histories, backgrounds, adventures. They get along well and they're obviously close, but not in a twee or unrealistic way. They have so much chemistry and spirit and life. I fell in love with them so quickly.

But Sif doesn't. Sif kind of hates them, because they will not stop saying the same damn thing. They walk the same paths, do the same things, make the same jokes, expect Sif to say the same lines. They keep referencing a Sif we do not see, with jokes we never see him make and heroic personality he never shows - they reference a Sif who is dead - and Sif can't handle that, so he kills them too.

They become only an exercise in tedious frustration. Sif button mashes through their dialogue, Sif mindlessly clicks the same dialogue options, Sif skips through the tutorial, Sif blows through the puzzles. Sif turns their world into a video game. Sif is playing a generic RPG. Sif forgets their names. They are no longer people with in-jokes, histories, backgrounds, adventures. They're the mage, the warrior, the researcher, and...some random kid.

I did not understand the Kid's presence at first. I had no idea what they contributed to the game. They didn't do anything. As a party member in a video game, they're a bit useless. Why is the Kid there?

Because Sif's life isn't a video game. Because the kid isn't 'the kid'. They're Bonnie. Bonnie, who the party loves. Why is Bonnie there? Because they love them. There is no room for Bonnie in the boring RPG that Sif is playing. And then you realize that Sif is wrong, and that they've lost something extremely important, and that they'll never escape without it.

Watching the prologue before watching ISAT gave ISAT the most unique air of dread and horror, because you crack open ISAT and you see the person Sif used to be. You realize that Sif used to be a person. Sif used to be the person who made jokes, who gave real smiles, who interacted with the world as if they are a part of it. And you know you are sitting down to watch Sif lose everything that made them a person, to lose everything that made them a member of this world, and turn them into a character in a video game who doesn't understand the point of Bonnie at all.

At the climax of the game, when the others realize that something is deeply wrong and that Sif physically cannot tell them, they realize that there is nothing they can do. So Bonnie declares snacktime. And for the first time they have snacktime.

What is snacktime? Classic JRPGs don't have snacktime. There's literally no point to a snacktime - not in a video game, and not in Sif's terrible life. It's not fixing this, because nothing can fix this. But Bonnie gives Sif a cookie and Sif eats it.

It's meaningless. It's a cutscene. It didn't save Sif and it didn't change a thing. It will make no difference in the end.

But it did make the difference. It made all of the difference in the world. Bonnie is a character who you really don't understand the point of before you realize that Bonnie was the entire point.

ISAT is about comfort media. Why do we play the same video games over and over again? Why do we avoid watching the finale of our favorite shows? What is truly comforting: a story with no conflict, or a story where you always know what is about to happen? Do you want to live in a scary, uncontrollable world, or do you want to play Stardew Valley? Do you want a person or a character?

When I beat Earthbound for the first time (and if you don't know, the prologue/ISAT battle system is just Mother) and watched the ending cutscene where the characters part ways and say goodbye...I felt a little bit sad. I wanted them to be together forever. But that's something only characters could ever be.

[is-the-owl-video-cute]

I strongly agree that there are world events that deserve much more news coverage and resources than the Titan because frankly it should’ve been immediately assumed they were dead when sonar couldn’t find them and communication was lost.

However, I don’t necessarily think it’s fair to compare the EU coast guard and the US and Canada's various first response teams that responded to the Titan. Because they’re separate entities.

Do I think people should care more about the refugee ship that capsized due to alleged incompetence of the coast guard? Yes. I do. And I hope more survivors can be found because that was a genuine tragedy.

Do I think that it should be getting the same kind of attention as the Titan? Not really. Because people are just memeing on the Titan, and the average tumblr user has around $0.20 to their name and maybe 400 followers so this isn’t a very good platform for getting meaningful help for those affected by that situation.

This isn’t even a “you can care about two things at once” situation, because again with the Titan you should be very amused by 4/5 of those deaths whereas there’s nothing funny about what happened to that fishing ship. These are very different niches in cultural awareness and your ire should be towards media companies over random people on social media.

[vampyroteuthid]

i don't understand why some people care so much about living as long as possible. "follow this diet designed to help you live past 100" in this economy?

[lottieurl]

youtubers setting up a streaming service where you have to pay 6$ monthly to access JUST THEIR VIDEOS and nothing else is so hilariously out of touch

[coconut530]

BAD TECH CULT. BAD. 💛📦🗣️🪤🖤

[entamewitchlulu]

not gonna lie like as much as it’s fun to make fun of twitter the thought of it actually going under makes me Sweat. It’s been an overwhelmingly important force for communication and information and like, if it disappears, years of human history is just poofed. It’s not just the artists and creators and the publishing community that uses it as an important source of networking and advertising that’s gonna get fucked. governmental institutions that use it as a major source to reach their population are losing years of records. in-jokes and art will be wiped out, especially those people who used Twitter and are no longer there, either if they’ve died or just are locked out of their accounts and can’t back up anything on there. memories of historical events as they were experienced by people in real time: gone.

yeah there’s a lot of misinformation and bullshittery and trolls there, but i’d argue even THAT has SOME cultural relevance. If you erase all the bad things, then it’s harder to hold people accountable for it AND we might lose important context for certain events or even just, you know! understanding how humans interact with each other in spaces like this in this era!

all of it! gone! poofed! into the ether! no means of back up and the wayback machine isn’t strong enough for it. It’s horrifying! the digital dark ages are horrifying! and i have no idea how to comprehend or face it! the textbooks aren’t big enough to record and preserve all this!

[tomurakii]

I truly apologise but I've never found a character more irritating than Ruby Rocks. It is severely impacting my ability to watch a crown of candy because this bratty literally-the-embodiment-of-the-status-quo bitter bastard child won't stop sulking and being shitty to the only good surviving member of this royal bloodline (Saccharina).

The immediate Rocks family in general is so unsympathetic, I'm sorry but if you want me to feel bad over your personal growth journey you can't ALSO be a monarch who has absolute power over an entire nation-state. If you had literally the best education of everyone in your country and you're still an idiot I don't know what to tell you except that you're a resource hoarding pig who has not earned an iota of the power or luxury you have. They have SERVANTS and all they do is complain about going to class or doing their job. Hey if it sucks so bad demolish the state and redistribute your wealth <3 you won't <3

[slightly-awkward-sunshine]

My condolences to the UK people :/

[joshua-flipping-washington]

I'm still working on making DBH gifs! I think this set came out much better than my first set did. It's much clearer, that's for sure. I'm also still working on getting the flowchart 100% and getting the Platinum. So, if you have any requests for a character/scene/mission, let me know, and I'd be happy to do it!

[mrskayathefrog]

in all the excitement about the submersible, I haven't seen any talk about the Musk vs Zuckerberg fistfight drama

[cherry-shipping]

^ me being completely normal about my own dumbshit fucking self inserts

[acitybythelightunited]

Mmmmmk… then do something about it instead of complaining about it on the internet accomplishing nothing but making clickbait companies rich over it trending. I’m getting really tired of this Hamas/Palestine spam from pornbots. Stop getting rich off people’s suffering and donate every fucking penny of that to aid the refugees over there you scumbag fucks. The only thing worse than wars are the soulless money bags that brand #blueandyellow everywhere for a year then leave the Ukraine in the dust when they find a new cash cow to exploit. A place that has been in 7 wars since the Holocaust that will never cease to stop fighting over religious territory and revenue over a super natural being they can’t even prove exists that murders and rapes children with their cultish buildings all over the planet. How about you stop fighting over a God that doesn’t even exist. We’re all just scientific matter no one understands the origin of. But God sure as Hell wouldn’t let priests molest and bury 6,000 children alive along Canada’s border if he even existed so shut the fuck up and just start being decent human beings. Start with that. And fuck billionaires. You greedy motherfuckers suck up all the world’s economic systems and then wonder where all your consumers went when they die of financial constraint YOU created for the whole globe with your greed. We don’t need a pissing contest to a trillion dollars, we need affordable living and vacations with the money you’re ciphoning up by inflating cost of living higher than minimum wage increase so that it changes nothing but poor people’s financial leashes and not your continual profits. Ban increasing cost of living and that will solve like 80% of the world’s problems. The point of raising wages to create comfortable living for ordinary citizens. We don’t care if you can’t afford 15 exotic cars instead of 12 while the working class ends up on the street over one missed paycheck. Fuck off. 🖕🏽

"Murdering 14,000 children is not 'Self-Defense'"

Poster spotted in Boston, Massachusetts

[zoeyserpentluck]

Had a guy in 6th grade tell me that his Gucci hoodie was worth more than me. And looking back he must have been really bad at math to think that a Gucci hoodie is more expensive than a 12yo, short, pale, blue eyed blonde girl. Like in what universe? I was more expensive in both euros and camels