#thank for talking to me bro

[notmuchtoconceal]

Beautiful response. I know I said this before, but you don't have to dignify each of my asks with a response. You can ignore as many as you like. Especially when I'm drunk and say something incredibly stupid and worthless. I'm not embarrassed about those moments put on display (sometimes I need a good reprimanding to get my head back on)--it's just that I don't believe my id and my impulses should be enabled. When someone's being too stupid to breathe, deigning to speak to them is doing them a disservice.

I think you'll find your life is happier when you only reward people who give you worth. And the reward you should give those who give you their worth is your voice. If what I'm saying holds meaning to you, respond. If it doesn't, please don't.

Remember how I was talking about principles? That's one of the principles I follow, and it is the opposite of stifling. It's liberating.

When I make these asks, I do them for me. It's easy to mistake that for selfishness in its purist form, but like, it's more akin to the selfishness of someone who's faced with their own mortality? The selfishness of someone dying of cancer who has let go of their concerns and embraced a sort of optimistic nihilism. And since I ask them purely for myself, you can decide if they have consequences or not. I'm both complex and simple. The simple part of me is that I enjoy watching you perform. The selfishness comes from the fact that you're so good at what you do and so intoxicating that it's easy to forget you aren't some Performance Golem, and there's, y'know, a person behind the mask. Maybe that's a compliment for you. I'm gonna trust my gut and say it is.

I ain't a sociopath. But I'm like a recovering alcoholic. You really, really don't wanna put alcohol in front of me, bro. Because you know and I know that I want it. And if you want passion, you're gonna place that bottle in front of me, and you're either gonna get something really, really wonderful or really, really terrible. Either way, it's the path of chaos. If you don't want to experience a migraine DO NOT put that bottle in front of me. When I grin mischievously, don't look at the grin. Don't even look at the coy eyes. Look behind them. Look for the pain. Look for the person who's screaming for you to NOT, DON'T DO IT, DON'T YOU DARE and pounding fists against the irises.

What you are describing is the healthy attitude formerly adopted which allowed me to beat depression and drastically recomp my formerly morbidly obese body. I'd lost this attitude once I had to seriously reassess the motivations of the self-professed faggot for whom my ire is the substance of life itself.

His behavior was so confusing to me, I took on his perspective, changed the shape of my soul to understand him. I did it voluntarily and let him ruin me. There was a part of me that didn't think I deserved to get better. A part of me that thought I was cheating. A part of me that was leaving behind my family, whose abuse I was complicit with for most of my childhood, partly out of survival, mostly because I didn't know any other way to be. I felt as though I needed to forget so much of my past as I could to change, this faggot refused to forget and thus refused to forgive, and so always focused on surviving, could never thrive.

I did much penance and psychological and spiritual castration in my 20's to separate myself from my former brutality, and I'd felt myself in a place where I had understood my own values and my own limits well enough that I could take on the weight of my darkness in a productive way. I was wrong. I'd become too yielding. The faggot was evil. I remember all the ways he tried to talk me down into agreeing to be as pathetic as he was. I remember how transparent some of it was and couldn't see what was right in front of my own eyes. He wasn't any more evil than anyone in my own family. No more evil than my own little brothers. Small, scared, shivering, needing to poison you for an ounce of self-validation.

I don't owe my family shit. My family are even bigger assholes than I am. They choose to be this way. They don't fucking turn themselves into other people to reach transcendent self-destructive catharsis. Neither did this faggot. When I started ignoring him, it was because subconsciously I realized the game was up and he'd gotten out of me what he needed. If he wanted me to be a finance bro with him, fucker should have had the patience to help me with money blocks, cause I don't like being mindwiped and brainwashed. I got fuckin money issues and trust issues and I don't appreciate some fairy screamin at me.

I'm not gonna become a fuckin Ubermensch listening to scared farmboy chickenshit faggots, okay? Use your big counselor nerd brain to avise your king or go your own fuckin way, but I ain't your lackey. I was your muscle when you deserved it, but when you're a bitch, I ain't yours. St. John My Everlasting Light. It was so fucking confusing to me how pathetic you were. Bafflement. Sheer and utter bafflement is how you got eyes on you, sweetie. Holy shit. Must feel good to finally be totally figured out so you can be totally reduced and limited to a footnote just like you need to do to everyone else to make yourself feel less than tiny, huh? Holy shit. Every time I think about you now, I think about how I'm better in every way and how you deserve to be miserable for being so stupid. Holy shit. I've experienced all your thoughts from the inside and you are a total insipid garbage loser. Completely worthless. You have no value. If your brains were on the wall like Kurt Cobain's (who you admire and resent and long to be, with his beautiful hair and beautiful lyrics and beautiful bitch cunt breeder wife who reminds you of your bitch cunt mother who violated your boundaries so hard, every other woman feels like cheating, so you'd rather just be her and hate your father, the model of all shitty men who abandoned you) then everything would be beautiful.

I can imagine now the beautiful world where you've blown your brains out. I can see you screaming FUCK in that empty room for no reason, then unloading the pistol in your brain. A white flash of light engulfs you and a heavenly Cinerama score plays. The streets of a summer day in Milwaukee are lined with beautiful happy smiling couples in love, and everything is clean and the flowers are in bloom, and your ghost is there, invisible, watching all happiness, screaming about how you're alone and don't deserve love, and your ghost unloads the pistol in your brain again and there's a second flash of light and the day only gets brighter and all the happy couples more in love. I picture you blowing your brains out over and over and everyone around you just being happier.

I picture you being the only person in the entire world miserable and alone, trapped in a box in space filling up with your own piss and feces wile your eyes are spread-open clockwork orange style while you watch other people's happiness forever, damn-well aware you are the cause of your own misery. You have gotten me to temporarily ignore the German boy cause you've gotten your stain on him, but once you're washed off his 5D genius aura, all links between you and me will be gone, and your mental illness will only continue getting more hilarious.

Thanks for pissing on all my time and sympathy and attention, loser.

You begged to be fuckin worthless, and daddy's a giver and an accommodator. Way to go. You didn't like being encouraged for your art. You didn't think Tumblr was worth your time. Frankly, I don't think Tumblr is worth my time either, but what I make on Tumblr definitely is because I value myself. What the fuck was it with you and your heart button bullshit and bitching about people saying "hi"? Oneword? Uh. Is it cause you were a coward who followed broad trends to never be known? See, I believe you can work with broader trends without compromising your integrity, and this is the process of artistry? You don't understand that, though. You only know how to cowtow and beg. That's what you meant when you kept calling yourself a simp and a bitch and I was confused? I really couldn't understand how you saw yourself, cause I was reacting your writing, and not yet aware to the degree to which we were both drawing (as if in trance) straight from the unconscious, and so mutually had blindspots. See, if you had only given your attention to people who were worth it (like I did) you would only attract the people you wanted to attract. You played it safe and attracted safe people, then complained cause you wanted to be told what to do. You chose to be dumb and worthless.

That's why you go into the purgatory sex fantasy hell realm where your infinite suicide procuduces heavenly love auras now. That's why Ask Friend Crazy Guy is You, But Better In Every Way. He's a version of what you could have been if you had an iota of self-respect, but you pissed on everything you were given.

That guy who liked Xiu Xiu who you were bitching about and seemed to just think I was for reasons? Like... come on, dude. Did you just think that we liked similar things and thus were the same person? Are you not aware that art transcends ideology and you can't make blanket assumptions about an audience unless you're giving the game away you can only think like a targeted consumer bot? You're aware different people can like things for different reasons? Was there no thought whatsoever, and it was something like a sympathetic magical association? Are you way more a horny pagan witch than you're willing to admit? Why were you bitching about witches all the time when you so clearly are one? How completely unaware of yourself are you, and how much of the manipulation was deliberate? Are you just manipulative at the level of automatic implanted animal reaction? Are you trapped in the false garden of Eden? Do you just see things that you are and panic cause you think you'll get hit, so you pretend you're not that thing? Do you ever just slow down, stop and think and tell yourself there's currently no danger here? The past is the past? The person you're talking to is not your abuser? If you're hypervigilant, maybe engage responsibility instead of attaching yourself to someone? You're aware that other people have different feelings from yours? Maybe you're not because your crippling mental illness has left you in advanced state of emotional retardation.

You probably already knew I could understand people in ways you couldn't and produce art you couldn't fathom cause I had a deeper grasp of reality, huh? That's why you felt so worthless? I was just loving you and assuming the best, bro. I was hurt all my life and you were special and unique to me and you brought me into a different place. Thanks for shitting on me, though. You taught me I definitely had far more value than even I could have ever imagined possible.

Thank you, man. Enjoy the bullet through your brain, forever.

All is love is love is all.

[turtleblogatlast]

That middle child feel when you’re the one who successfully gets you and your siblings out of trouble only to immediately get jumped by them afterwards

[benevolenterrancy]

Swords pining for each other's cultivator is my new favorite type of pining. Love your NieYao content! <3

I don't suppose we could get Baxia or Hensheng throwing a tantrum while Jin Guangyao / Nie Mingjue are away, leaving their owners to deal with the embarrassing aftermath?

Also, do you have any recs you'd recommend with these two?

this is the exact moment Nie Huaisang realised he was going to have to start meddling in his big brother's love life (con't: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

Hensheng, on the other hand, doesn't throw tantrums but WILL sulk...

[dovewingkinnie]

u know what its so lonely making ocs . and not being part of a fandom too bc nothing interests you but your own ocs . like who do u talk to about them- like someone who is just as invested as you are . WHO DO U TALK TO THERE IS NOBODY im tired of people complaining that their fandom has 5 people... AT LEAST U HAVE THOSE 5 PEOPLE!!! ur gonna have to get lucky somehow and create a fandom urself for your ocs!! cause if u dont then You Are The Fandom!! you are the one carrying it!!!!! yea sure theres no drama or discourse But its lonely as fuck bro!!

[sandflakedraws]

hey-hey-j replied to your post “god i need to draw more dreamworks trolls…”

sits. please. talk to me about JD :)

it boggles my mind that JD is likely the most touch starved out of his brothers. like, branch went gray, but he also stayed with the village, and was routinely roped into hug-time against his will. floyd, for all of my own speculating, must have at least kept around civilization. clay had the putt putt community & viva, and bruce had his own family.

but JD..?

all of the information we can glean about him implies that he went off to the middle of nowhere and just. stayed there alone. roughed it pop idol style....

and there's something so deeply, incredibly sad about that. JD makes my heart hurt, the poor idiot.

(floyd is no. 2 on the touch-starved list. to me. the life of a transient musician is not one filled with a lot of contact. this is part of the reason that this moment vvv)

(makes me so weepy like good lord. please hug each other)

[cuddlykanin]

Okay I can't be the only one who gets so much joy out of him unconsciously doing cat things in the cat suit - like okay I know it's a cat power-up but technically it's just supposed to give him cat reflexes and abilities, not behaviors. When he dodges DK's swing, his cat ears flip down and back, when DK is running at him or moving in an unpredictable way he arches his back, when he was taking in the praise from the crowd he started kneading little biscuits on DK's back. I just love these cute little details they make me so happy

Bonus Tanooki tail wag because it makes me so so happy and I could talk about it for hours and I think more people need to acknowledge it

[laurrelise]

still devastated we never got to see cha cha after season 1

i know she wasn’t like, the best, most morally correct person of all time but she was such a fucking badass. she got shit done and she absolutely ate everyone tf up i do not care

yes she is an assassin and she did kinda suck but also she’s absolutely slaying in more ways than one and i think we should’ve let her continue to do so

[gordon-freeman-phd]

Dr.Freeman why dont you ever talk?

[raytorosaurus]

it was watching this for the first time that mcr tipped over from "awesome band i really fucking dig" to an all-time hyperfixation for me. ray's enthusiasm, the way they wordlessly jump into exactly the part ray's thinking about, the way those parts work together and sound so fucking wonderfully insane...like these are two very talented guys but they could only get as good as they are through dedication to their instrument of choice and their band could only sound as good as it does because of their dedication to working with each other and that's what it's all about baby

[captainhysunstuff]

15 more images below the cut (WARNING: VERY SUGGESTIVE SAUCY SHENANIGANS. Censored a bit. Long story short: They're about to screw, but they run into a couple snags due to inexperience):

Kira and L try to consummate their new partnership... but they're kind of new at this. After doing the approved research, they figure it out much to the chagrin to the hotel workers.

This is the "Safe for Tumblr" cut~.

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Transcript

[lazybakerart]

NO GOODBYES ONLY SEE YOU SOON

for @weird-an !! HAPPY BIRTHDAY! here's a lil drawing of argyle and billy, where Things are still new and hawkins is some place neither of them have ever heard of. you're a wonderful friend an and you mean the world to me!! thank you for being you!! <3!!

++ close up!

[sallymew4]

kids when they hear that their dad is back in town VS. kids when theyre hanging out with a conman that accidentally stole their wallet once

im not even joking btw

bonus heres me being crazy about them in dms ^^^

[alongtidesoflight]

so here's my honest thoughts on dragon age: the veilguard, after ~40 hours of playing. i finished the main quest after having finished all companion quests and major faction quests. just to clear up what content i saw, i played as an elven transmasc rook who is a member of the lords of fortune. he romanced lucanis (although after finishing the game i'm now leaning towards taash). i don't know what's happening in playthroughs that have a different race, gender identity, romance or faction going on.

full spoilers ahead, i mean it. don't read further if you want to avoid them. i don't want complaining about it in my asks.

oh and also, if you're worried because of a few negative reviews online i can comfort you by saying don't give a fuck about a certain big name youtuber who is very much tied to bethesda franchises giving this a negative review. i'll explain why.

i'm starting off with the things i liked

the game looks really pretty. i was worried it wouldn't feel like thedas anymore (with them trying to "focus on northern thedas only" i thought they'd make a clear cut in environmental design. they do and they don't. it's complicated. i'll elaborate on it when talking about the negative stuff). anyway it does. minrathous feels like kirkwall. treviso enchanted me like the winter palace did. the hossberg wetlands reminded me of the hinterlands and a couple other inquisition maps. arlathan looked like... arlathan. the crossroads were different, but familiar. overall i like the way it looks and feels. it's thedas, with a twist. it's a good one, and gives everything a solid but unique feel.

combat is top tier. if you're a hardcore dragon age player you WILL miss the tactical aspect of it for a bit, but i promise you, once you're used to the way the combat works, you will be lapping that shit up. and once you get to ability combos you'll mourn the control you used to have over your companions in battle a bit less

the MAIN quest and its story. i expected worse, way worse. and for a while the game even had me tricked (harr harr you'll get it in a second) it is Really That Much Worse. but holy shit was it good. i walked away satisfied ngl.

your choices have SOLID weight. there's consequences, good AND bad. i got minrathous blighted, ruled over by venatori, and the leader of the shadow dragons ultimately died because of my decisions. i made those at the beginning and throughout the game. he died at the end. DAVRIN died because i didn't expect what i was saying to have that much weight. i thought i was in the clear. he had hero status. well turns out, your choices can still get your companions killed even if you do everything right. i fucking love him. he shouldn't have made that sacrifice just because i told him to do everything it takes once.

the inquisitor, morrigan and dorian being there, surprisingly. there's also negatives to this though, see below.

speaking of companions dying and the inquisitor playing a bigger role: the final quest feels like me2's suicide mission. i was blown away by it and the fact that i got to see the results of all my efforts playing out in front of me.

bioware are NOT trying to redeem solas. they love him as a character yes, but i wasn't forced to see any good in him. he betrays you. he fucked my rook over twice. he fucked him over right back, for good this time (the veil wasn't torn down, i anchored it by binding him to it, he's doomed to uphold it). but solas really lives up to his name as the trickster elven god. rip to all the people who grew really attached to him over the years.

varric died. if you like him that's probably as hard reading it as it was watching it. varric died and the game lies about it until the very end. when the realisation hits, it hurts. but in the very best way.

the amount of care they put into gender expression and trans identities this time around. (i'll add onto this with negative points as well too).

rook feels very much ingrained in the world of thedas. he doesn't ask questions that expose the player to lore through dialogue as if he's stepped foot into thedas for the first time. those conversations feel very solid and good. i hope other faction players got as much joy out of this as i did.

and the things i didn't like and boy there's a lot unfortunately

the music. let's just get that out of the way holy shit. it doesn't feel like it belongs in this universe. it gets so incredibly sci-fi-y at times you'd think it's taken straight from mass effect andromeda. there's not a single song unique to veilguard that i really enjoyed. it broke my immersion, real bad. hearing a busker play the tavern songs from inquisition on a lute right after i killed some venatori with wobbly bass songs playing in the background is just odd. weird tonal shift. don't like it. it's made for people who like flashy light-weight cinema.

tevinter nights is required reading. the podcasts are required listening exercises. the game is so fast paced, especially at the start, that there's no time to introduce you to characters and how much weight their names carry in-game. i would not have known who half these people are if i hadn't skimmed over tevinter nights. i'd care even less about them than i already did. there is no time to get properly attached to them. people will act as if you're talking to a legend personified and you'll be thinking man goddamn which chapter of tevinter night were they in again and what did they do???

there's a weird mismatch with the animations. you'll have beautifully fluid ones, like emmrich casting spells. and then you'll have rook's face animating in the most unnatural manner that's sorta reminiscent of mass effect andromeda's "my face is tired" addison, when their emotions SHOULD be landing with the player rn instead.

i'm not vibing with the art style. sometimes it works. most of the time it doesn't. at points i felt like i was watching tangled.

that also brings me to some of the dialogue. same issue. i am watching frozen. i am watching tangled. someone on the writer's team really likes the adorkable trope. bellara is its victim.

for all the talk about identity, bioware sure doesn't like theirs. the grey warden armor got a redesign again and it just makes them look like a generic army. i hate it lol

in general, i don't like the armor design. the wardrobe/appearances system is fine, but it's just not helping if all the armors are just... kinda bland or downight bad looking? and don't get me started on the lords of fortune armor. that is orientalism personified.

the world states should have been carried over, full stop. i know they said they didn't because they want to separate what happens in the north from what happens in the south, which... i could have lived with that. but the inquisitor sends you letters that keep you up to date on... the south of thedas. you learn that there's a blight again, that people are standing strong but it's difficult, denerim's fallen, the rulers are taking care of it, orlais is fighting and they're successful for a while, etc etc. what's good bioware. i thought we don't care about the south this time around. why are you feeding me so much boring generic information. if you're not gonna show any of it and just write letters, then carrying the world state over should not have been an issue. i have a game dev background. those few lines of code would not have broken your budget or pushed your engine's limits. fuck right off.

this gripe of mine carries over to all the cameos. as a lord of fortune you have to deal with isabela a lot. it's fun. i missed her. you get to go drinking with her and taash and bellara! also my hawke romanced her. she's not mentioned once. they had the opportunity to put a sentence or two about her in there with not a lot of effort, trust me.

when varric dies, all she has is a single line about it. for gold, for fortune, for varric. she only says it if you interact with her on your way to the final push. that's not mandatory.

morrigan is there. kieran isn't. the old god soul that mythal and then solas absorbed? who cares at this point, the gods are dead now and solas is locked away for eternity. i suppose? why is morrigan there. she feels unneeded. i wish they'd just left her down south, at least that way i wouldn't have had to witness her god awful redesign.

dorian at least feels as if he belongs in this story. the shadow dragons are a crucial part to protecting minrathous. he's also weirdly underutilised. isabela and morrigan had more lines than him in my playthrough.

on the topic of romance: bro that was underwhelming. no, genuinely. you know when romance picked up a bit? after the point of no return. i heard maybe two lines of companion banter about it before that. maybe i missed something which i honestly doubt, but romance did not play much of a role in lucanis's storyline. i saved his grandmother as he wished me to (and if you read tevinter nights you know she was rather abusive and their relationship not the healthiest) and told him to focus on his family. a reunified family my rook wasn't even introduced to as a partner at the end of all that.

really, do not buy this game if you're only in it for the romances. others might be better, lucanis's basically gave me nothing. except for an outing (the second coffee date i had with him, it was getting repetitive) all of it played out once i committed to the final quest. the sex scene was a fade to black. annoyingly right after davrin died. if you're looking for well paced and good spice, pick up something else. the sweet talk and the final goodbye were nice though.

for all the good the ever-presence of gender identity does, it is brought up in such a disruptive manner too. it doesn't even play out naturally if you CHOOSE the lines that are meant to be said. hearing the words trans and non-binary in this setting doesn't feel right, and i'm saying this as a trans guy. i think it could have been handled more gracefully. the amount of times my rook went "i'm a MAN" as if he's about to start drumming on his chest and roaring any second now got super nerve-grating. "i'm so glad you're into me... the me who is trans. remember?" just. tell me one trans person who'd talk like that to a person they've grown close with and are trying to romance. this game doesn't handle sexuality well, so all this hey my body might not look like the way you're expecting it to look talk amounts to nothing anyway. i feel about this the way i feel about krem: this is partial exposition to trans experiences... packaged up for cis consumption. the ONLY exception to that is interacting with taash. holy shit was all of that heartwarming and bro did it feel good and natural to talk to them about theirs and rook's gender.

rivain and nevarra are new locations added by veilguard. they're also incredibly underwhelming, small and constricted maps. rivain is a coastline with a few ruins. the hall of valor is a partial ruin nestled into a cave on a beach, with a fighting pit. isabela is there in her skimpy outfit commentating your pit fights. that's it. i'm sorry if you were looking for a bustling pirate cove or whatever. you're not gonna get it. the nevarran crypts btw are a long ass dungeon crawl. that's it.

speaking of maps. i thought people were being dramatic when they said you're gonna be fighting the same enemies on them again and again. i thought they were figure of speeching it. they're not. you WILL fight the same amount of enemies. in the same spot. every time you reload the map. best to stay on a map and clear out the enemies and do as much questing on that map as you can before leaving, because you WILL have to do it all over again once you return.

the three choices i made for my inquisitor didn't matter lol she didn't have to face solas and therefore couldn't stop him at any cost as she had sworn (maybe because my rook tricked solas into binding himself to the veil, there was also an option to fight him. would she have stepped in? who knows). blackwall wasn't mentioned. and either her using a small amount of her forces in the final fight was the reason the civilians of minrathous fared so well..... or it just didn't matter. ultimately i think she had very little impact on anything

[thanatika]

yeah i agree with your point about survival mechanics and i feel the same way about the lack of combat mechanics. "why would an educated city doctor need a weapon" because shit is hitting the fan in every way impossible and pretty much everyone is walking around armed... also why am i supposed to believe the the fact that he's a man of intellect will somehow provide him with food? i don't think anyone is going to be too eager to share food during an outbreak intellectual or not...

+ follow up for the previous ask but actually my favorite quest from the original pathologic is the day 11 bachelor quest that involves shooting down soldiers. i think it really drives the point home about how this random fuckass guy who is supposed to be battling a plague doesn't even have the time to do that anymore because the people in charge are asking completely irrelevant things of him now and he's at a position where he cannot refuse what is being asked of him. like i think it was good storytelling that even as the guy who lowkey wants to deal with the plague and solve its mystery you still have other, more pressing, less interesting and or pleasant tasks to complete

i agree! honestly, i feel this way about the combat mechanics even more than i do about the physical survival (food, health, illness, sleep) mechanics. because sure, i can see how it makes sense for daniil's position of authority to mean that his basic needs are somewhat provided for -- although i don't think it makes more sense than what we got in the original game. i've never seen anyone bring up "isn't it kind of unrealistic that the bachelor isn't given lots of food during a massive food shortage?" as a plothole that needed to be resolved. the townspeople generally don't like him much, and most of the people with power don't either, except for the kains. sure, maybe it's kind of weird that you can go see the kains while broke and on the verge of keeling over from hunger, and they won't do anything to help you, but... the kains are pretty self-centered, and they're so goddamn weird that maybe they forget that you need to eat food to live anyway. and it's half-implied that the powers that be are ultimately giving daniil this role as a convenient way to kill him, so it makes sense that they would put no pressure on the town authorities to keep him alive.

(and honestly, artemy is taken under the olgimsky's auspices as much as the kains take daniil's under theirs! which is to say, selfishly, with ulterior motives that are more important to them than the well-being of their healer, but... the olgimskys are set up as the wealthiest of the 3 families financially, as well as the ones with the most access to food, given their control over the meat industry. so if anything it's "weirder" that artemy isn't more materially provided for, though to be clear i don't think there's an actual plothole there either way.)

but anyway, you could handwave it and say that daniil's position of privilege and authority gives him more perks than he got in the original game, but the amount of fighting you have to do to get through town is... kind of an unavoidable physical reality? like you're given so many sidequests that you often wind up walking around town after dark, and that's when the bandits come out. is the idea that the bandits would be too scared to attack him because he's so important? because that doesn't make a lot of sense to me, and even pathologic 2 establishes that he's seen as a valuable target by the bandits:

and then there's the quests where combat plays a more direct role in the story itself, like getting involved in saving andrey from the firing squad, or killing guards to break artemy out of prison, or the quest where you have to kill var in attempt to stop the arsonists (which i include on the same tier as the other ones because i really like the quest journal entry he has if you complete it where he blames himself for willow's death. it's a good character moment.)

hell, even in pathologic 2 itself, one of the biggest Bachelor Moments is on day 11, when you have that big dramatic convo with him after he killed a soldier for the papers he was delivering. plus one of bad grief's idle dialogues in patho 2 is commentary on the bachelor being "quick on the draw" and that he "already shot someone". like he just straight up is not living a combat-free existence. and overall, combat isn't just a good tool from a mechanical perspective, heightening the stakes and placing pressure on the player (though it is), it's also pretty important for him on a thematic level imo, almost as important as artemy and his "rivers of blood". in patho classic, daniil has this early interaction with the inquisitor:

which, thinking about it from a doylist perspective, was probably the writers' attempt to make it sound more plausible that this random medical researcher from the big city was competent with multiple types of guns. and i appreciate them coming up with that hint of backstory to cover their bases a bit, but with those bases covered, i think the fact that daniil ultimately spends more time shooting people than he does prescribing medicines for them actually does a lot for him thematically? i mean, if his whole thing is that he's this "tempted destroyer", someone who frames his career as a combative battle with death rather than a quest to save people's lives, whose "default" solution is to raze the town with artillery because he's too limited by his rationalist worldview and military upbringing (and bitterness over being manipulated and sabotaged) to come up with a solution that saves the any remaining infected survivors on his own. plus the way that clara frames artemy and daniil as two sides of the same coin in being violent destroyers and killers, who without player intervention will immediately devolve to running around chasing each other down in what's either an insanely dedicated tom and jerry LARP or some really elaborate foreplay. imo, that whole dichotomy (which is pretty core to the game, as the idea of dichotomies are core to it in general) works so much better with the way they're both presented in classic, stalking around with gun/scalpel in hand. hell, not to mention the effect that spending 12 in-game days trying not to starve and getting killed by bandits or guards or worms or soldiers every day would have on the player, and the way it would make them feel about the town and their natural projection of those feelings onto dankovsky, who is a perfectly fitting vessel for them as the avatar actually undergoing those virtual experiences.

ultimately i think they are mainly going this direction out of a desire to do something more creative and original, which is fine... it just seems a bit silly to me that they keep saying "well obviously that doesn't really work for the bachelor's scenario", when, well... even as recently as patho 2 in 2019, they seemed to think it fit his narrative pretty well! i'm also guessing that a lack of combat won't be that bandits are just no longer roaming the streets at night. it sounds more like pathologic 3 is set to be more of a nonlinear experience, where you'll probably fast travel from place to place instead of having to walk across town so much? so you'll be avoiding bandits just in the sense that the gameplay will be avoiding them. i guess i'm hoping that at the very least, there's still the implication of the crunch of not getting enough sleep or food and the threat of being stabbed to death while trying to get through town occurring to dankovsky in the background, even if those mechanics are deemphasized in favor of more macro-level town resource management, time control, and sherlock holmes fruit ninja or whatever the hell they were on about back in 2022 lmao.

[atlasthecactus]

wisdom saga and vengeance saga are my favorites can you tell? :>

[paris-geller-was-straightwashed]

okay so, having now seen furiosa: a mad max saga opening night and having Ruminated on my thoughts, I am going to give my two-pence on the movie even though nobody asked or wanted it - you're getting it anyway!

but before going into the full thing, I actually re-watched fury road today, bc I just wanted to contrast it now that we know furiosa's full story that lead her to her trek in fury road, and I just had mad max on the brain (and also I love that movie).

spoilers under the cut below!!

first, I already knew before seeing the prequel, that that scene in fury road where furiosa breaks down after learning about what happened to 'the green place,' was going to now hit 2x as hard once we learn what really happened the moment she was ripped away, and...yeah, it's super painful to watch. it was already a very emotional scene, but now having known how much pain and struggle it costed her, how many times furiosa desperately made her bet to get back home and fell short - you can really feel her grief

funnily enough though, I was shocked to find myself tearing up not during that scene, but when furiosa was reunited with the last of the many mothers. having just watched her ripped away so unfairly as a defenseless child, her whole world destroyed and clinging onto this dream of one day, getting to embrace her family - you can't help it!! I started tearing up when the other woman rushed to furiosa, embracing her with the gentle touch of their foreheads, 'this is our furiosa' 😭 like..she did it!! she made it home!!! - also, I learned in the credits - that woman was actually the same little girl, valkyrie, in furiosa who was her friend!!! that girl saw her friend get snatched and pulled away from their home, and then finally, both grown, they reuinite! I just thought that was sweet

what max says to her about hope in the scene after they find the mothers, 'if you can't fix what's broken..you'll go insane.' - my mind immediately jumped to dementus. we get this glimpse that he once had a wife and child(ren) he loved, that were either taken from him or killed, and he tells furiosa in their stand-off more or less how that destroyed him mentally, further plunging him into this hateful madman who acts so cruelly to others. he couldn't 'fix' it by getting them back ('I want them back!!' 'I can't!!'), the one thing he loved that kept him sane, and so he lost his humanity.

I saw a post of someone saying how ricktus's death (immortan joe's son) is 10x more satisfying after having seen what he (nearly) did to child furiosa...abso-fucking-lutely (though, I think with that in mind, furiosa should've gotten a part in it..)

also, max & and furiosa's dynamic after knowing about her & jack...the parallels! the parallels!! their gradual bond of trust, how fluidly they work together to kill/fight the enemies of the citadel akin to her and jack vs. dementus and gang, etc.

this saga, of course, is about hope and redemption, alluded to in both fury road and the prequel. in fury road, max says (I think in his opening monologue) how he was once strived to be a 'righteous warrior', who could do good and help others. later, when one of the wives finds the warboy nux, he's distraught bc he thinks his chances for greatness are gone, but then she tells him that maybe, he's destined for something greater - and that would be, of course, later sacrificing himself to save her and the rest by crashing the rig into the war party. in furiosa, jack says how his parents were valiant warriors, and how he hopes one day, he could be the same - also, later, fulfilling that by sacrificing himself so that furiosa might escape dementus and the destroyed gastown. it's just such an amazing string of parallels - all three men, looking to do something great, and then, through furiosa, they're given that chance and achieve something good even amongst the destruction!! but it's only bc of furiosa, this harbinger of hope, that they do so - she's the tie between them all, the embodiment of that goodness!!! it's! just! so! good!!!

honestly there's probably way more parallels out there I'm sure ppl will bring up, but those were the things that struck me. now, onto my actual thoughts on the prequel.

--I'll start by saying I was unbelievably excited to see this movie. I'm annoyed though, bc despite knowing about it and wanting to see it once it was released, I literally only learned it was coming out a week before the release date. straight up, the press for it was so poor, not once did I hear about it before the trailer randomly crossed my feed one day - and considering how popular fury road is, I find that bizarre (but, I'll bet you a good couple bucks, that the press/hype was deliberately poor bc of the movie company execs, due to this being a female lead film 😠) - but it did mean I didn't have to wait too long, and that I did watch the trailer about 13 times on my own accord until then..

--having read the reviews, I do agree, it is a bit slower then fury road - but, that's really only bc it's a character story instead. fury road takes places in the current time of the film and the actions that follow, whereas the prequel is specifically about furiosa, so it's honed less to the action and more about a certain character, in my opinion. but it's just as good for a character story! it does an excellent job of unfolding furiosa's journey, and really, if you're gunna compare everything in the franchise to fury road, it's never gunna live up. that said, there's still excellent action and real nail-biting moments.

--I will say though, that I found it almost...darker, then fury road? fury road is definitely intense and there's of course violence, but it never openly tips into anything past pg-13; the darkness that is there, is more or less touched upon by the narrative (like, we can get a sense of what must've happened to the wives (ie assault) and why they escaped once we see how immortan joe regards them as property, the suffering furiosa must've went through by the pure vitriol look she gives him when their cars are side-by-side and later, 'remember me?' before killing him (my favourite scene)). but it's never explicit - furiosa is. from the torture of her mother, to that scene right after the max cameo when he drops furiosa off at the citedel's underground where I literally had to cover my eyes and ask my friend to say when it was done..there's an overtone of darkness that gives to the tragedy of furiosa, this child molded from pain (not to mention, again, that scene of ricktus and her as a child which to me, was the most nerve-wracking moment). fury road gives you a glimpse, but furiosa doesn't hold back.

--chris hemsworth, meanwhile, made an excellent villain. not just as an actor, but dementus as a character was fantastic. he's got lots of great lines and brings in a lot of humor - he's both deranged and erratic, while also clever and simultaneously childish, and mostly, cruel. he's wonderfully dynamic. bringing in a backstory of losing his wife/child was a great added piece to his story (I love a good backstory), and the way he takes the loss of his kid and tried to mold it around furiosa, tries to fill that empty piece inside, was a great choice in terms of their dynamic. it made him more then just a mad-man who stole a child for yuks - he had a deeper desire to tote furiosa around, almost as a security blanket in the same way the teddy bear also acts as one. his final monologue was great - the ramblings of a hateful man, but it was, in the end, what got furiosa to see past vengeance, and become better - to choose hope, and not destruction.

--anya taylor-joy did a great job I thought - while I wish furiosa had more lines, she made up for it in just the facial expressions and how full they were, really giving us a glimpse of what furiosa was feeling. even still, it would've been nice to have known what was going on in her head, or even hear her talk about her past - the green place, and then dementus, are the pure driving force of her character, yet she doesn't ever mention or grapple with her grief around these things, simply stays silent (except for the final confrontation with dementus). I would've loved maybe, if she had confided in jack, or maybe even one of the wives, to give more depth to her feelings.

--I also wish furiosa could've bonded with someone else besides jack, or at least before him. it would've been nice for to have had at least one ally, or, I dunno, a friend? like that war boy who had dwarfism - she seemed almost sad, when realizing after the battle that he was dead. instead, she's alone, but a fellow misfit friend could've been nice.

--speaking of jack, loved him! thought he was great! it's unfortunate his part was so short, would've loved delve into his background (also, I'm as gay as they come, but he's like..an objectively Good Looking Man, so well done all around).

--I was really nervous, for how they were gunna do the romance. I was against it initially, bc the great thing about fury road, was that romance was not at all forced into the narrative - you can read that between max & furiosa if you want, but for one of the very, very few times when a woman and man team up, romance wasn't forcefully wedged in, and instead they could be respected allies. so I was skeptical - and then I totally fell for them. they were so sweet! the two actors had great chemistry - their bond was just so soft. the way, after they crash and are caught by dementus, furiosa, who can barely stand, gently leans herself into jack's shoulder, sweetly muttering to each other as he leans his forehead back against hers, like 😩😩 it was so lovely, and so tragic. you could really feel the respect and care they had for each other; it was so organic, bc jack genuinely wanted to help furiosa. he respected her and asked nothing of her - he was a purely good man, and through that, furiosa was able to open up to him and trust him. it's the great curse of the mad max universe though - no romance can escape it's claws, same with how nux and one of the wives were torn apart. in my heart of hearts though, there lives a little AU fic where dementus doesn't catch them, and they make their way back to the green place and live happily ever after with a kid perhaps, and maybe, furiosa and him go back to later rescue the wives (they say, like they're not thinking of already writing that very fic...).

--one more thing about furiosa I wanted to mention, if I can call back to earlier saying how she becomes a beacon of hope for the various men that enter her life (and the women too, when you think of the wives..) - that, despite all this horror handed to her, at the very end of the rope, she gives into her hero's heart. time over, we see, even as the destruction of the wasteland chips away at her, furiosa can never quite betray her heart. she runs back to her mother even after being pushed to leave, she goes back for jack despite having the perfect escape to finally make it back home, and in the end, takes all her hurt and anger wrapped up in dementus, and turns it and him into something that can bring good into the world. it's about choosing good, above all!! a hero's heart, even in the darkest of worlds!!!

--the trailer really emphases the green place, but we only see it for like...a couple minutes? I was looking forward to more lore about it, maybe seeing some of it's inhabitants like the mothers. but furiosa is taken immediately and then her mother starts her hunt after her, and that's it. kinda a bummer.

--there's a couple inconsistencies here and there - like, when furiosa is first brought to where the wives are kept, there's gotta be about 20 women in there, roughly. but then, as she becomes a young adult, we see at the very end her approach the 5 wives from fury road (I was expecting a call-back, so loved that) and it looks like there's only them there - what happened to the rest of the women??? did they all die in childbirth?? also, when furiosa runs away and hides herself as a warboy/mechanic, how did no one know she was gone?? it seems odd, since immortan joe specifically picked her out and probably has a mental line-up of all his 'treasures', you'd think he'd notice. or how, later on, the new 'imperior' with jack looks oddly similar to that young girl ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

--also, I wanna know how furiosa got away with being the only female imperior - you'd think immortan joe might snag her away instead to be a wife bc she's young and viable, or that she'd be either dismissed or preyed upon by his sons/the other men. maybe because she was partnered with jack it was easier, but that was kinda confusing.

--final thing, bc this post is already too long - my last gripe is mainly about furiosa's dynamic with immortan joe. in furiosa, her revenge is purely motivated towards dementus, but then, switching to fury road, she now holds contempt and anger towards the warlord. part of what I wanted to see in the film, was her past with immortan joe; we didn't know initially how furiosa got to the citadel, but my interpretation, was always that possibly (because she was branded with the logo on her neck) she was brought on as a wife, inevitably abused by him, and then something happened where she was no longer useful as a wife (maybe an accident that cost her her arm) but was still useful as a tool. but, immortan joe isn't really looked at in the prequel; he's here and there, but doesn't show any particular cruelty or act towards furiosa that I was expecting. that vitriol she shows in fury road, and of course, 'remember me?', makes you think there was something there to fuel furiosa's revenge. instead, nothing really occurs between them - of course, furiosa is brought on to breed him children and then is expected to do his every bidding in getting supplies, so, I think we're supposte to assume that she has seen how cruel he is up close, and so acts against him. still, I was expecting something deeper there.

all in all, I loved it and had a great time. fury road will always be one of my favourites, but this is a great addition. fury road is great on all fronts; a fascinating world, great characters, amazing action, a well-made and clearly cared for story, but the thing I love most - is that it's about hope. it's about choosing, every day, despite the horrors around you, to get up and hope for something better. to do something better, even at your own cost. it's about hope and what we mean to each other when we extend it. and I just love that so much

go see furiosa! support it! it's a great time!