#there's still a lot of really great stuff in there to make it like. a surprisingly good show.

[a-shrieking-cloud-of-bats]

okay so let me start off by saying that when I said "influential" I meant "most influential" because, like, pretty much everything that's put out in front of people is influential, my bad on that one, and I was focusing pretty heavily on mechanical stuff (because I like mechanical stuff in games)!

with that said I still don't think it was hugely influential because most of what it did didn't spread outside of it; this isn't a value judgement on what it did, it's just me saying that it didn't influence a lot of other games heavily.

the dialogue, while good, has a very distinct style and it's largely not left undertale/deltarune, probably because it's difficult to do well without feeling like you're imitating it, story is in a similar position, but there is a bit of influence there, for sure; everhood did it as I mentioned in tags, but by and large I don't see A Lot of it. Again, probably because kill/spare is very derivative of the game itself and you've gotta put in some work to make it, well, work. Deltarune is having a similar "sort've influential" situation with the narrative in there, and I'd put it about where kill/spare landed, but it is definitely more prolific, probably because it's easier to work with (in my opinion, anyway).

Cultural impact.... yeah you got me, it definitely swamped internet culture and continues to! I can't argue that at all.

Undertale inspiring other indie games is almost certainly true, but it's sort've hard to quantify, YMMV, I guess, and yeah, it did probably result in a bump in indie game development, but there was a pretty solid flow before undertale hit, and honestly I don't think it went up That much.

and I don't really view any of these negatives as a bad thing really! Undertale is still a great game and it's one of a very small number of games I've played more then once. I'm really looking forward to future deltarune chapters, I personally think undertale and deltarune are some of the better games I've played, toby really did do a great job and I don't think it's an accident judging by how deltarune is turning out, even if he did get lucky in the marketing department for undertale.

Great games, but not wildly influential in terms of other games. I'm sure this could be argued further, but I've said my piece (and taken way too long doing it, too).

Still can't get over the fact that Toby Fox dreamed up a game ending, but he decided he wanted to make something a little less ambitious first, so instead he made the most influential indie game of all time

[zarla-s]

i need to know more about your feelings of tf2 comic 7 because youre the heavymedic expert

I liked it! Satisfying happy conclusion for (almost) everyone, especially since I was a little worried they were going to kill everyone off, haha. Not a lot of Heavymedic stuff in there but I wasn't expecting much, and really it was about the Administrator and her story, so it makes sense the mercs wouldn't really take top billing for it.

There were a few cute things though! I know "standing next to each other" is like the most graspingest of straws but you know what, it made me smile each time so I don't care.

The big thing of course being Heavy grabbing his boob, which to me reads like him stopping Medic from trying to help the Admin, which I think is sweet in his own way. Medic has his healing instincts!

Medic also puts his hand on his back as they walk away, which I also think is sweet. It looks like he's comforting him.

I really loved the ending sequence where everyone gets together for that dinner party. It's just such a great bookend to how the comics started - initially when their team disbanded, everyone split off and did their own thing. Some of them didn't even keep track of where the others were! A few kept in contact, but mostly all of them just left the others and they didn't seem particularly concerned or interested in each other.

Compare that to them at the end of the comic! Seven years after everything that happened, they're all meeting up together for dinner! Voluntarily! They're introducing their families to each other! They don't have any contracts or jobs forcing them to spend time together. They WANT to have dinner together. SPY TAKES OFF HIS MASK AND IS FINE WITH IT! I just love that so much. They care about and trust each other after everything that's happened, all the years that have gone by. Team as family was CANON AFTER ALL

I think this whole sequence also sheds a nice light on Medic! Medic's been perceived as probably the most uncaring of the group, given that he did sign up with another team for the money and said he wouldn't mind fighting them again (although not too soon after that he ended up saving all their lives against direct orders). A lot of people interpreted that as him not really caring about the others or anything at all, but that's not the case!

Medic kept and raised his baboon baby! He didn't abandon it or use it for parts or anything, he kept and raised it for seven years! Responsibility!

Not only that, Medic hasn't abandoned his friends, signed up with a new team, forgotten them or tossed them aside. He's with them at the dinner! He comes with his baboon baby! He wants to be with them too! He cares about them, genuinely. And of course, the final shot is with him by Heavy's side, both of them just so happy to be there with everyone else.

Love that Medic's smile still looks unhinged too lol. Would I have loved Heavy holding onto Medic's waist? The two of them wearing matching rings? Of course! But them so close to each other and an obvious irrefutable confirmation that Medic loves and cares about his team and wants to be with them is really lovely. Makes me feel fuzzy, haha.

There's speculation too that Medic came with Heavy's family as that person in the back there but who can say for sure. |D

[lostinlovingrevery]

Smutty Stuff About Logan: The Reckoning

pt 2 about Logan and cute (and maybe nasty) smut scenarios. Grab your vibrators folks

Logan definitely likes to make a mess. A big mess. He cums a lot, so messes are inevitable. But his kind of mess is the kind where he comes inside, or over your pussy and he just sits and spreads it all over, likes he's in a trance. It sends shocks through you every time his thumb rubs his cum over you clit and stuffs it into your cunt. Is he drooling?

You're on a mission. You and logan get put in a position where you won't be able to go anywhere for awhile. Logan thinks it's a great chance for some bonding. The next thing you know your suit is gonna and Logans been fucking you for two hours. Its when Scott finally clears you both that you have to both quickly get your suits back on and you gotta finish the mission with his cum leaking out. Hes very smug about it (such a perv)

hes big about his cum being on (or in) you in general. it's one of his many ways he likes to "claim" you

making breakfast together, it turns steamy. Now he's pouring whipped cream and syrup over you tits and belly and licking it off you.

He doesn't finished cleaning you when he desperately lunges to kiss you, his chest sticking to your messy body, food covering him. you guys just end up a bunch of lovesick horny fools with syrup and whipped cream. You take turns cleaning each other.

I think Logan wouldn't be a huge masterbater. I think he'd do it out of boredom. Maybe if he was pent up. He'd probably prefer the real thing. But when you come into his life, and you guys aren't sexually together yet- he's yanking his chain nearly every night to the thought of you. An animalistic instinct he just can't control bc if he doesn't get himself off to the thought of you he's going to pounce you (pls do Logan)

Mutual masterbation. You both sit across from each other (or your straddling him) and get off on watching each other. It drives Logan insane. The rule is that you don't touch each other during the session but Logan always breaks that rule

I think Logan has potential to be a peeping tom. He wouldn't do it right away, it starts when you shower and he walks back the bathroom, the doors cracked bc you forgot to shut it- and he catches you in the mirror. You didn't see him.

He's now in his room desperately getting himself off because he's picture you naked hundreds of times but then he just saw a nice view of your tits and they're even better than he imagined

It's not how he imagine he'd get to see you, but he'll take what he can get. Now he searches in moments he could catch a look at you.

One night he catches you masterbating in your bed. You're moaning his name. He could smell your arousal. He nearly blacked out

His claws will pop out at sudden things that arouse him. You're planning to go to the beach, and he sees you in a bikini for the first time. He spots you and snikt! They're out. He didn't even notice, too busy staring at the way you tits looked in that top.

I'm currently writing a fic over this BUT, you don't like alcohol, but when you taste it on Logans lips/tongue, you can't get enough. you quickly discover you really like alcohol, but only when logans spitting it in your mouth.

you gift Logan naughty polaroids. Some are of you scantily clad, others are you just straight nude in sexual positions. He keeps one inside his coat pocket. It's not just cause it turns him on, but he deadass thinks you look so damn beautiful in your natural state. He just gotta be careful of where he is when he looks at it.

Sucking on Old Man Logans dick, you drooling and your eyes are hazy. he tastes so good, and feels so good on your tongue. He's praising you for being a good girl, telling you he's all yours, to enjoy as much as you want. He wants you to get sloppy, to suck on him and forget about everything else. You've made him cum multiple times already, and you're still sucking on him, even as he's soft and gets hard again.

Trilogy Logan ravishing you over and over again. It's been a stressful week, and he suggested you both get away from the mansion the weekend. You got a hotel room- and haven't left the bed other than to use the bathroom, and take a nice romantic (and sexual) bath with Logan. Hes putting you in positions you didn't even know was possible, pounding into you with an animalistic fury, stuffing you full of cum. you should probably consider getting plan b (unless you want a baby)

Having an argument with Worst Logan and you say something that implies that you worried about logan really caring about you, a discreet and quiet anxiety you never told him. Of course, it pisses him off and he has to show you how much he loves you. Which involves hot, rough, and sensual sex. he's fucking you and making you tell him that he loves you and that you believe it over and over.

Riding DOFP Future! Logans lap, after he woke back up in this new life. Hes been begging you to keep riding him, to keep fucking him. Kissing you sloppily as you ran your hands through his hair. You were busy grading papers, but Logan stormed into your office and practically yanked you into your bedroom. he found you, his pretty wife that he lost before he fixed things. Safe to say, reunion sex is fun.

70S! DOFP fucking you in an alleyway by the bar you two were in. "You looked too damn good in there baby. All those boys making eyes at you. Gotta make sure you know you're mine." he moans as he buries himself deep inside you, practically lifting you into the air against the wall

Watching Origins Logan chop wood from your pretty little log cabin. You get an idea, taking off all your clothes and standing on the porch, ass naked and waiting for him to notice. His face is concentrated, a cigar hanging off his lips. He just looked so hot, and you found it funnier the Logan he went not noticing your naked figure. When he finally looked up, the cigar hung off his parted lips almost comedically, before falling as he dropped the axe to his side, and he made his way to run after you, throwing you over his shoulder and bringing into the house as you shriek with laughter. He makes sure to make up for the lack of attention he gave you by stuffing you full of him and eating you out for hours

Having sex on Logans motorcycle. You're riding together when Logan pulls off suddenly, somewhere private. he gets you to sit in front of him, pulling your pants (or your skirt) down. The motorcyle still rumbling he makes you lean down so you could feel the vibrations of it, while he fucks you. Lets just say you don't last long- but logans not ready to stop.

Logan certainly doesn't want you to hurt or be in pain, but a certain amount of pride does hit him when he sees you walking around with shaky legs

This man can eat pussy for days. He'll get lost in you, licking and sucking and licking over and over. You'll have to push him off multiple times before he's done

I did my Logan variants BUT riding around with old man Logan in his car. Your legs across his lip. He's got one hand on the wheel, the other massaging your ankles and feet. He made you feel good, so you move around and give him a handjob and a blow. He pulls over, making you get into his lap and ride him- because he can just never get enough of you

Thigh jobs.

Tit jobs

nuff said

Actually no

Logan gets so damn excited when you offer one of those. Something about being able to fuck a body part that's not technically fuckable

this man would get himself off on every part of you if you'd let him

yes, armpits, elbows, knees included. hes insatiable. and gross. but thats why we love him. keep being a freak baby, i'll be a freak with you

anyway, he's fucking your thighs and you're watching as his tip appears and disappears, his precum soaking your thighs, he cums and shoots it all over your belly.

with titjobs, hes sitting over you, thrusting his cock between your wet tits. he spit all over them to lube everything up. his cum lands all over your face and open mouth

Tying each other up? Yes pls

Logan definitely loves it. Tying you up, having his way with you. I mean, he's strong enough to pin you down of course, buuuut something really fun about watching you be helpless to him

and vice versa

logan doesn't have much self control with you, so tying him up can prove difficult. he ends up breaking through the ribbons, rope, handcuffs- etc to grab you and fuck into you

you finally figure it out though, the way to make him behave

you grabbed his box of prized cubans. expensive, rare. he only smokes them on special occassions. you had him tied up, and blindfolded, taking off the blind fold- you told him the rules

"no touching. no breaking the ropes. if you do, I destroy each one of these."

Logans face fell as he saw his prized cigars. okay, maybe you both knew you really wouldn't...would you?

logan couldn't risk that

powerplay is fun

cue the most torturous session logan has every experience. he swears he'd rather have adamantium bound to his organs this time than what you're doing to him

you're playing with him. like a cat who caught a mouse. your messing with him, edging him, depriving him of your sweet pussy. an hour of sensory play. another hour of edging. He's not sure if he can take it anymore. surely he can find another box of cubans...

but then you reward him for being such a good boy. lots of praise. lots of riding and sucking. lots of kisses. when he finally gets to cum he's begging and thanking you for it

now he's starting to see why you like him being so dominant

you had your fun though. next time, he's putting you through worse :)

that's all folks! I'll make a pt 3 soon, i just got a few other fics i wanna focus on ;)

[drdemonprince]

(i'm not great at wrapping words around my thoughts, so i hope this makes sense!) i like the phrase 'sex exceptionalism,' it really makes me think. this morning i also had the thought: 'youth exceptionalism' -- i have a feeling you've already thought about this, about how we sort of treat children/youth as both sacred and subhuman.

i get this hard-to-describe unease whenever i see signs saying 'protect trans youth.' like changing words doesn't actually change actions, but i wish it said something more like 'defend trans folks.' without trans elders, trans youth don't have a future modeled for them. and we lose the wisdom and insight of people who transitioned in politically tumultuous times, when doing so was at least as stigmatized and difficult and dangerous as it is now. people with the benefit of seeing changes come and go, who have the lived experience of survival-pending-liberation and trans folks helping trans folks through direct immediate action and support.

youth exceptionalism -- it gets in the way of thinking clearly and critically whenever it pops up. it seems more emotional and ingrained than conscious. i feel it around programs aimed at giving youth opportunities, with cutoff ages. which to some extent makes sense, but not to the degree of fetishization of youth & kids our culture hangs on to. one too eager to discard humans as soon as they age (or rage) out of this impressionable, doll-like imposed role.

i think it also puts unconscious stress on youth, a sense of adults/power-havers heaping dreams & expectations on the next generation. and claiming all the sacrifices they chose to make were for the children/next generation. but at the same time expecting a specific outcome, a specific return on that transactional investment.

anyway, that's my jumble o' thoughts.

I think you're getting at something real. I have never liked the "Protect Trans Youth" shirts and banners, the way that certain supportive and well-intentioned parents cling to an identity for themselves as parent to a trans kid (often putting their kid's trans status out into the open and denying them the chance at ever being stealth, should they want to be), the advocacy that gets too perversely focused on the threat of a trans kid killing themselves (as if that were the only reason to give young people rights), the fixation on protection and innocence rather than on liberation... the heart is genuine that is driving a lot of this stuff, but it still sees children as the helpless precious object of their parents, a proto-human that has to be shielded from the world rather than a human of their own, with their own right to make decisions. it still treats transness as a rare fringe case; we might as well be talking about child cancer patients, for how focused the language is on protection and death. everybody's debating about what is best for the kid, and how to best prevent harm, and nobody is letting the kids speak for themselves. there's something so cloying and inert about it. even if the Protect Trans Kids group wins every political battle they get involved in, all they've done is provide children with one exception from the usual denial of body autonomy they live with. and they only get that exception because supposedly death is the alternative and they're that rare and sick. it's not good when you really drill into it.

[a-krogan-skald-and-bearsark]

A few more notes as to how we KNOW Megalodon is not still about.

Part of the reasons why Deep Sea Life is LIKE THAT. Is because there's not actually a lot of nutrient inputs.

You get some stuff that grows around thermal vents, but that's an inhospitable environment at the best of times, and also probably less than edible. The rest of it is marine snow and whalefalls.

So a lot of the stuff in the DEEP ocean, you know, where 'By said Megalodon was theorized to still exist, is adapted to have REALLY slow metabolisms, and be like, 90% digestive system by volume. So they spend a lot of time basically drifting, until the bump into something edible, and use the energy from that to survive until they drift into more food.

This is not a life strategy suitable for an active swimmer like Megalodon is believed to have been.

The other big clue that they're not about? WHALES.

Whales in the fossil record are smaller and appear to have been nimbler than modern Balaenida. The sort of ecological niche filled by, for example, Right Whales (Half-blind, swim maybe three knots at a sprint, spend most of their time near the surface or in shallow water feeding on copepods) would NOT be viable with an apex predator like Megalodon.

The upper size estimates for Megalodon are actually BIGGER than North Atlantic Right Whales get, almost two-thirds the length of Blue Whales. Close to three times as big as Orcas, which are capable of bringing down rorquals when they act in a group.

The existence of Megalodon would apply ecological pressures that would make the existence of the Great Whales untenable.

The Titanoboa, is a 48ft long snake dating from around 60-58million years ago. It had a rib cage 2ft wide, allowing it to eat whole crocodiles, and surrounding the ribcage were muscles so powerful that it could crush a rhino. Titanoboa was so big it couldn’t even spend long amounts of time on land, because the force of gravity acting on it would cause it to suffocate under its own weight.

[genericpuff]

💣💥💣💥💣

so with Episode 67 finally posted and the dust settled, I wanted to share some funny behind-the-scenes stuff with you all.

Clip Studio is a great piece of software, it's what allows Banshriek and I to work on the same episode together via cloud-syncing (it's a function called "Teamworks" in the app) but it's also... kind of garbage sometimes. Without getting too much into it, CSP has a bottleneck issue with how it predominantly uses CPU rather than the graphics card in a computer. And considering it's literally graphics software, yeah, you can probably figure out pretty quickly with the most bare minimum of computer knowledge why this is a problem that's really silly for it to have LOL

ANYWAYS. This has been known to cause problems between Banshriek and I when trying to complete an episode. Problems that - often enough for me to tell you stories about it - result in us having to essentially "rebuild" the episode we're working on. This doesn't necessarily mean having to redraw anything (thankfully that doesn't happen very often) but it usually goes down something like this:

1.) The software suddenly has an issue syncing our changes which results in either conflicted files that can't update, software crashes that refuse to load pages, updates not even going through, or taking WAY too long to update to the point that we'd rather just rebuild and work on the episode independently and then swap the files and layers when it's time for the other person to do their part.

2.) I have to inform Banshriek that Clip Studio crashed again, and in the event that I can't get back into page editing because of the aforementioned issues ^^^ they immediately get to backing up their most recent version of the file that's stored on their computer. Thankfully a lot of the time these versions are pretty up to date, but it's still a moment of tension every single time because these crashes don't always happen the same way every time.

3.) Using the backup version, a new .cmc file (the file that contains every page for each episode, it's the thing that lets you make pages for comics in the software!) is created by whoever has access to the pages without issue (usually Banshriek is the one who's able to do it, this has become a very one-sided problem LMAO) and then is sent to me so that I can upload it to the cloud to replace the old version. This file is then usually called something like "Episode#BACKUP" to distinguish between both versions as we usually still have the older versions downloaded as well.

4.) Work (hopefully) continues as normal. Though it's definitely caused setbacks, so far our survival rate is still 100% 😆

This happens at least every other episode. It's become rare to go a whole episode without having to go through this process. We're still trying to figure out what we can do to avoid it, but we've tried a bunch of other options (and Banshriek has created some test episodes using pages from completed episodes that crashed for the sake of experimenting) and so far it's still a struggle understanding what exactly is going wrong with Clip Studio and it's syncing features. Fortunately, Banshriek and I are both auDHD enough that we're gonna obsess over it until we figure it out LMAO but until then, we're constantly having to treat Clip Studio like a live snake that's trying to wrangle itself out of our hands 💀😆

And the most recent episode? Episode 67, which ran a week and a day late? It set a new personal best for number of backups, because we had to rebuild it not just once, but TWICE.

What we've noticed is that sometimes you can barely make a change to an episode and these crashes still happen, as if major changes have been made. So far the best hypothesis Banshriek has come up with regarding this observation is that the software struggles more to update changes that affect overall pixel count and appearance - stuff like moving canvases, flipping canvases, adding on textured layers (which is what we do at the end of making each page) , etc. that covers a lot of pixels at a time, even if it's only changing the hues / colors slightly, seems to cause the most problems.

During the production of Episode 67, the following plagues came to pass:

Our car exploded

Our cat nearly exploded (btw! for anyone wondering from my last post about him, he's doing better now!)

Our toilet pipes froze twice (and exploded once)

Democracy in the U.S. exploded

My husband's wisdom teeth were exploding so the last 3 of them were removed all at once

The files for Episode 67 exploded twice and had to be rebuilt just to keep it on life support (by the end of the episode we were literally sending files back and forth via Google Drive like peasants 😔 /hj)

The most non-explosive thing to happen was the tattoo shop I work at moving locations up the street, and even then, I came very close to exploding a few times during that process LMAO (and our debit machine just exploded so we're cash only for the next few days sksksks)

This episode was probably our most cursed yet, and frankly, it couldn't be more fitting, I think Dionysus himself had a hand in our madness, just for the sake of being on theme with this episode. And the worst part, we haven't even gotten into the truly chaotic stuff yet. All Dionysus has done so far is slam Hades' head into a table, he's barely gotten started. Dionysus only knows what Episode 68 has in store for me and Banshriek as well 😭💀

[promprom2007]

PromProm2007's Intro Post!

Hi there, you may have known me for my previous accounts GalacticSomewhat and Prometheus2007! I am back from the dead once again. You can call me Promni, Prom, or Galactic!

I post about my Gacha OCs [Gacha Club only for the most part], and do different Gacha Challenges! I love seeing Gacha content on Tumblr and will follow pretty much anyone that does Gacha content on here as long as it's not sexual. GACHA TUMBLR USERES UNITE!!

I do not have a DNI list, I really don't care what people like or support even if it's considered weird. Idk man, if you like Gacha stuff and have cool designs and ocs you're most likely chill in my book.

With that out of the way, here is my main oc! :3 Her name is Promni. She has a GL2 version as well but I don't hav that photo at the moment. IF ANYONE WANTS HER CODE LET ME KNOW! :D

I've had a lot of people ask me before: YES YOU CAN DRAW/EDIT/USE/MAKE FANART OF MY OC ^^ PLEASE DO IT MAKES ME SO HAPPY! you can always draw any of my ocs or edit them or use them! if you need codes just ask.

My ask box is ALWAYS open, I find great joy in seeing asks sent there by anyone, it makes me so excited :D. Please send me asks, show me your designs, tell me your lore, tell me about anything! Just don't be rude is all I ask but that's common sense, isn't it?

I only ask to not be forced into or have my name used in any sort of drama, I would rather not be involved in any sort of issue. Please respect that!

Thank you so much for reading, have a lovely day/night!

PFP art was made @gkemoon2-alt / @gkemoon2

BANNER ART WAS MADE BY MY BESTIE @iok045

@mynameis---m my starlight <3

@kart-ana the most sigma ever

@iok045 number one alfred shamer [and my bestest friend DONT GET IT TWISTED]

MY CLOSE TUMBLR BUDDIES: everyone above ofc and @bethn0tfound404 @espressodepressoconan @sicdios @9mysterybook6 @torrentialchaos @jacksepticeye-simp @nightfox67 @mythically15 @pamithebunterfly2007 @sleepi-toasti @adumblittlegachakid @aiko-the-weapons-robot @jessythebunny @violetthediamondsblog and im sure a lot more im still trying to find you all </3

[4ragon]

I dunno why I've been thinking so much about Galo Thymos recently but I just keep thinking about how much I love him and how a lot of fan stuff kind of almost sands down his edges in a way? Like. Sometimes I feel like people miss some really interesting character details about him that I find fascinating. Like. He's great, and kind, and a dipshit, and also. Kind of an asshole sometimes? And I feel like sometimes people don't get that part and how it ties into the rest of his personality, but it's so important to me.

And like. Hey. Alright. Some of this is headcanon. But there's a reason the cave scene happened like it did.

Like. Insulting the burnish to Lio wasn't a fluke. This happens after the pizza scenes, so we know Galo understands and sympathizes with the struggles of the burnish. And he still insults the burnish to Lio's face, because he wants to get a rise out of him. And yes some of it is Galo just not thinking hard enough to unpack something bigoted he heard, but the only reason he says it is because he wants to make Lio angry and that overrides any other thought in his brain.

Because Galo is 'the good guy,' and Lio is 'the badguy,' and Galo wants to banter and be cool and make Lio mad. He doesn't even think about this implications of what he's saying, he doesn't even register that it's not just him insulting Lio, he's also insulting the injured people nearby, the scared children in bandages, the pizza guy he just tried to save.

But Lio doesn't get mad. Lio gets hurt. He gets upset. (Okay he's also mad, but not just mad.) And when he replies, he's not defending himself. He's defending The Burnish. We're people. We're human beings. And THAT'S what makes Galo realize what he said was wrong. Because in that instant, Lio goes from a sort of nebulous idea of 'cool enemy I have to one-up and fight' to a person who needs to protect the weak, just like Galo. And in that moment, Galo had failed to do that because he let his impulsive need to be cool and fight back override his empathy.

Or. Here's another telling detail. After the pizza scene, Galo just storms off. He gets angry and drives off without a word. And he goes to the frozen lake, because it's "where he goes to cool off." Because he doesn't want to start fights and get in trouble and make Kray look bad.

Which tells me...this has been a problem before? This is an active decision he's made to step away, and it feels like a coping mechanism he's had to figure out for himself. Because he's combative and hot headed, and that's not always constructive. I can see him easily being the kid in school that sees some bullying and starts swinging on the playground. I can also easily see him as the kind of kid that talks back in class, the kid that gets frustrated quickly when he doesn't understand something. The problem child that had to work really hard to direct his big feelings into something constructive.

And I find it so fascinating how these parts of him work together to create such a kind and goofy protagonist. Because he's also so fucking kind and empathetic. He sees a rampaging dragon and INSTANTLY notices that it's crying. He refuses to play by Kray Foresight's rules and decides to save everyone, even if it's harder, even if Kray Foresight tells him it's impossible. Because Galo is rude and impulsive and combative and he cares so so so so so much about everyone and everything, and those parts of him are intrinsically tied together.

And also I love him.

[meirimerens]

do you happen to have any headcanons about pascal curious and nervous subject? or any other sims 2 character for that matter :p

you get answered with anon from like yesterday #oops i had stuff on my plate teehee but Yes.

the nervous subject:

as far as nervous' #deal is i like to go with the Sims 2 For PSP lore that he willingly (or "willingly" - in quotes to express the murkiness of willingness when you're broke as shit) went in with the Beakers because he needed coin. in my head, like many kids who age out of the foster care system, he found himself age 18 not really having anywhere to go (no contact with the family during his stay in foster care), not really having had the best environment to learn any skill, he tells himself well fml 🤷‍♂️ might as well.

related to his 10 active point i think he's strong as shit. does not look like it (macdonalds_napkin_flying_out_of_window.txt). also very endurant - not necessarily fast, but his ass would smoke everyone in a long-distance run because he can just keep going. this is Not A Great Thing in his current #predicament because that just means he recuperates pretty fast from the experiments and so they just keep happening with little downtime.

bruises easily. and a lot because his prioperception is kind of fried so he's got always a blue spot somewhere.

i've #made #him in my ts4 game with a crooked nose and nose scar (which i draw, the crookedness of the nose translates a bit less since i'm always drawing his ass three-quartered) and those i think he got in foster care. even if he exists with 0 nice point i think that's an Experiment thing, he is not truly a Dipshit, but he's very early become quite rowdy. got into a tussle. got his nose broken. "you should see the other guy". this is also very funny to me because one of my OC has that same broken nose+scar deal

on the topic of My OC Has This in my mind's eye he's got tha Y-shaped autopsy scar. hector I Would Like To Award You the Highest Honor I Can Bestow [scars like the weird lesbians of my mind] did not really die, still has it. he understands that's probably a Scary thing for people to see + his ass doesn nawwwt want to deal with the question so when his best fwiend and his two Unsuspecting brothers try to get him to join for a relaxing heatwave afternoon in the strangetown pool he's like "i don't want to take my shirt off [THINKS FAST] because i'm insecure about being bony" and they're like "that's fine man no pressure 👍" [clueless]

le pascal curieux:

on one hand the phrase "gayscal bicurious" i had in the tags of my art once makes me hysterical and i genuinely leep fucking repeating it out loud to myself so often. devilish echolalic sound. on the other it is genuinely funny to me to imagine him realizing years later "why the fuck do i have beef with this guy over his gf i don't even like women 😐😐😐😐🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️". he keeps the beef though makes him feel alive #hatermindset #scorpio

after nervous told him "i have some... weird... living arrangement... and my roommates don't like to hear me play music out loud" pascal started putting songs he thinks nervous would like on an mp3 player. nervous gives it back to him every once in a while and update him on his taste so pascal can add more songs next time they see each other.

now not to get too deep into the politics of the sims franchise's mpreg. a pregnancy narrative hates to see me coming. but in my head... while he's a loving father and is protective and kind and genuinely obsessed with his kid once they're born & tutti quanti towards his little scrunkly... i think he lived the pregnancy pretty Lukewarmly. he knew that it Could happen, but well. the household description does mention "[getting] more than they were "expecting."". i think until halfway there he was like 😬 and then the Weird Scientist Brain kicked in and he was like "this is an Experience". pascal curious I Would Like To Award You the Highest Honor I Can Bestow. Post-Partum Depression (jesting. unless?)

not new of a headcanon because i've drawn it so it's probably obvious I think he's the shortest of the brothers and a Reliable Resident of Stockytown #shawty

bringing together Buddy Erwin Lore and "In his free time, he practices home psychoanalysis" i know the inhabitants of strangerville hate to see him hang out by erwin's Listening Station and psychoanalyzing every word that comes out of the mouth of the people he's bugged #nosy

erwin detour because i have this to say:

he drives a two-toned (orange and white) 1980 chevy k30 crew cab. a beat-up thing that he loves so muchhhh. looks like this (but imagine Oinge and not tan/camel)

speaking of cars i have something for Lazlo:

drives a 1986-1988 buick riviera. a purble one. exactly. i see it for him for the little screen inside #vintage #slay

stoner. with peace and love and zero derogatory tone. he feels it makes him think. it does. tbh i see the three dabbling. you're telling me vidcund has this beautiful greenhouse and they don't grow cannabis in there? you know that post that's like. my homie was making edibles and discovered passion for baking now he's a baker. this did not happen to lazlo he knew how to cook and bake completely independantly. but it helps. they let nervous smoke with them and they see him blink normally for the first time.

Ophelia Nigmos my shayla....

she has a Motorola RAZR V3 for phone. it is DECKED to the heavens with stickers and stick-on gems and phone charms

2004 is prime and i mean primeeee pop-punk/emo era (hence why she looks #likethat tbh) and she's deeeep in that. like Simple Plan's "I'm Just A Kid" came out 2002 and i knowwww she's having that shit on LOOP on her mp3 player. due to the fact that She's Just A Kid And Her Life Is A Nightmare

the bloggerrrr i know she is blogging. idk what strangetown could have as a mirror to the 2000s-2010s french "Skyblog" [les vrais connaissent tmtc] but girl... is.... BLOGGING!!!! either a Livejournal or a Blogger.

i just realized how long this poast was #oops but Basically Yes.

[disgruntleddemon]

i've racked my brain trying to figure out an in character way for Shifty to be integrated into the better world timeline main cast, but i'm throwing my hat it. they can be a little ooc for this. this is pretty long, so i'll put it under a cut:

sometime after Fiddleford moves in, but before him and Ford are officially together, the trio goes to check on the bunker (ford mentions planning on doing this in j3, so yayyy, an excuse for them to be there)

they quickly realize the cryotube is broken, and shifty has escaped (how did this happen? is that when shifty escaped in cannon? i have no idea, man) anyway, Fiddleford needs to go in with them to fix it, so Ford and Stan are on shifty hunting duty. meanwhile, shifty saw them, and assumes Stan is another shapeshifter

at some point, Ford and Stan get separated, so Shifty goes to Stan like "idk what that guy told you, but it's probably a lie. lets help each other escape!" Stan uses this to lure him to Ford lol

this is where we get the big confrontation/conversation between everyone. shifty wants out cause he was taken by Ford and Fiddleford for the sole purpose of being experimented on and being used to test the cryotubes. he wanted the journal to get new forms as a defense, and to use it as a guide for escape and life on the outside.

he's been playing nice at the moment and not attacking anyone to prove he'll be fine now. he just wants to go to the surface and live his life like he was supposed to if Ford had never found him.

every one else is not sure what to do. well, mostly Ford and Stan. Fiddleford is pretty set on the "put him back in the tube" approach

Ford is really flip flopping, he has a lot of trust issues after Bill, Shifty's original betrayal affected him, and it hurt Fiddleford (which was probably the worst part to Ford). but, he does see Shifty's perspective and feels kind of guilty.

i think i've spent like a week trying to figure out how they settle things, and i'm kinda calling it quits with that too. my best idea is a microchip. basically, Ford points out the cryotube thing really was unethical, and it broke before so it might again. plus, if they just leave shifty down there, he might tunnel his way out anyway, he's already forming some. and finally, killing him would also be unethical, and also a waste of an incredible scientific discovery .

so they decide to chip him and keep him at the cabin as a trial run. not great that shifty's still a prisoner, but i couldn't see them just letting him go. the chip, made by Fiddleford obviously, alerts them when shifty changes shape, if he manages to get it out, and prevents him from going too far out of a certain radius.

as time goes on, shifty is allowed to go further and further, and they trust him more. it's a very slow transition, that's mostly a matter of shifty becoming part of the daily routine. one of those "you can pretty much get used to anything after awhile" things.

i think they realize also, that shifty's still a juvenile. he's true form is still growing and changing. i put him somewhere in the 12-14 range. i haven't decided how they go about raising him just yet, but his human disguise is pretending to be Stan's son. between the mystery trio, stan having a random son makes the most sense.

shifty likes to keep his form kinda close to looking like himself, so if ppl ask about his appearance, he just says he's albino.

the transition period from not trusting him and being a prisoner, to being a proper member of the cabin is one i'm still very undecided on. but for now, i think the summery works well enough. once he's more comfortable with himself and his place in the house, shifty becomes very mischievous and adventurous! he likes doing pranks and getting into stuff

anyways, if anyone has any suggestions about him, i'm very open to it!! he's a hard character to figure out/integrate

[mymoshangthoughts]

aight so

moshang modern reincarnation au

so in their og life, things didnt go that different from pidw. obvs airplane's behavior was a lot different from og!qinghua, but he straight up just didnt know the key to survive as mobei jun's minion. basically, og!qinghua woulda prolly died even if he WAS a super great and loyal servant due to the circumstances. and airplane wasnt even a super great and loyal servant. without the foreknowledge that crossing mobei jun would be an absolutely fatal affair, he just did whatever he thought maximized his chances for survival. he had no reason to think that mobei jun would be a more dependable ally than an entire fucking sect, absolutely no reason to like mobei jun despite the frequent beatings, no reason to have a nuanced understanding or sympathy for demons, and no foreknowledge that there would be an upcoming war. he did sorta try to play both sides, kinda looking for who had the best thighs to cling to. he DID have a 'onesided' affection for mobei jun, but he also understood that his feelings were irrational, the violent demon clearly hated his guts, and even if he did have a chance there was no future for demon/human relationships. so he was too hyper logical to surrender himself to those feelings and never admitted to them

meanwhile mobei jun also did develop feelings for airplane, but he never found a way to express those feelings that airplane understood. to top it off, airplane being generally disloyal and duplicitous was a srs trigger for all his uncle issues (someone else who he'd loved so dearly and who had betrayed him at every turn)

so eventually it comes to mobei jun killing shang qinghua. they're both really fucking upset about it. airplane bc he'd like not to die, thank you, but also bc having the guy you like murder your ass is a special breed of heartbreak. mobei jun feels he has no choice, but after the deed is done, he's completely broken over it and is felled in battle not long after. it's debatable whether he was distracted by heartbreak or just no longer cared to protect his own life

SO reincarnation

modern times, the convenience of the internet, and demons are now a thing of myth. airplane doesnt have any memories of his past life persay, but he does have dreams and kinda faint memories, that he chalks up to his own overactive imagination. it seems like it'd make for a great story, so he starts jotting down stuff he remembers to use in a novel. the novel isnt really accurate to his memories, but a lot of the core events remain the same

mobei jun remembers but doesnt really believe it. his memories are a lot clearer than airplane's, but it still feels like remembering a dream. he's not even in denial, he's honestly never even considered the possibility that the incongruent memories are of a past life. it's too fantastical for starters, with demons and cultivators and all sorts of crazy nonsense, so even tho he can fairly clearly remember an entire other lifetime, he kinda just dismisses it and ignores it

especially because he hates remembering the end bits. the sharp pain of murdering a person he loved really fucks with him. but also he doesnt even really relate to the feelings of his past-life self. to him, a human who grew up with human rules and human logic, he has a "ofc the dude would hate you and backstab you, you're literally a domestic abuser???" type of reaction to a lot of the nonsensical demonic culture nonsense. due to the emotional disconnect of being unable to relate to his demonic past life, it's even harder for him to consider that person as himself. if he were really pressed to explain the events he remembered, he'd prolly assume "some dumb cartoon i watched as a kid maybe". the emotions are still sharp and painful, but he's filled with ridicule for his own past actions. also just generally "ya know, if you loved him, WHY MURDER HIM IDIOT??" bc mobei jun has no appreciation for tragic irony

anyway, one day mobei jun starts hearing about a new popular webnovel and he's not that much of a reader of this specific genre, but he starts hearing lil snippets that sound like his own memories and he's like "oh maybe this is the novel that im remembering" except when he looks it up, it's way too new for it to be that. so now mobei jun is thinking plagiarism and he's kinda hellbent to figure out which work this "airplane" asshole was plagiarizing but now he really can't find anything anywhere.

which doesnt make sense. he remembers a lot of the events within this novel SO CLEARLY and has for the majority of his life, but no matter how hard he searches, this novel seems to be the only source of those familiar plot lines

so he's gotta read the whole thing, right? figure out some clues? maybe send some comments calling the author out on his plagiarism to see if he cracks?

and look, it's really not THAT important, but somehow mobei jun just can't let this go. especially when the novel starts distorting events. IMPORTANT events. like shang qinghua in the novel is just way more of a scummy villain aND IT WASNT LIKE THAT AT ALL

mobei jun has gone his whole fucking life thinking of shang qinghua as some sort of tragic character who suffered until he broke, someone who was beaten by the man who loved him before being murdered by that same man, and now THIS ASSHOLE is painting shang qinghua as this two-dimensional canon fodder villain. and mobei jun's character has also gotten a serious glam up??? LIKE THE NOVEL IS ACTUALLY FRAMING THE MURDER AS A GOOD AND RIGHTEOUS THING THAT MOBEI JUN DID???? mobei jun is a beloved sidekick of the main character and basically gets presented as constantly cool and cold and smart and THAT'S ALL WRONG, THIS STUPID AUTHOR CLEARLY DIDNT UNDERSTAND MOBEI JUN'S CHARACTER AT ALL!!! mobei jun was stupid and scared and traumatized and lashed out in dumb ways and lost to his own pride all the damn time and never bothered to understand human courting rituals or grasp they might be different than demon courting rituals and died pathetically becuase he never bothered to understand himself properly AND BASICALLY KILLED HIMSELF BC HE COULDNT HANDLE LIFE W/O SHANG QINGHUA, WHY THE FUCK WAS THIS FUCKER HAVING MOBEI JUN SHRUG OFF THAT PIVOTAL MOMENT LIKE IT MEANT NOTHING TO HIM?!?! DIDNT HE UNDERSTAND HOW AGONIZINGLY PAINFUL IT HAD BEEN?! WHAT KIND OF GARBAGE FANFICTION IS THIS?! THIS FUCKING HACK OF AN AUTHOR!!

so maybe, just maybe, mobei jun has started to get into fights with the author. arguing about interpretations of his characters and stupid decisions and basically known in the forum as "that one really weird shang qinghua stannie who srsly woobified that canon fodder villain". other people fight him too, but mobei jun is primarly focused on This Fucking Author

airplane, meanwhile, is FURIOUS over this mobei jun hater that keeps cropping up in his comments. look. he's not about to ban the guy. he drums up good drama with his STUPID comments and also hater money is as good as anyone elses, but airplane isnt used to having a person try to bash his fav. mobei jun is... special. and he's not gonna have this twobit virgin of a creepy shang qinghua fan DARE to besmirch mobei jun's name and he will make as many alts as he needs to win this argument! but also he's willing to get the word of god involved! fuck it! he'll revive shang qinghua for a chapter just to have mobei jun kill the weasel again!

and look, neither of them are being sane about this, but they just feel Really Impassioned about their opinions oki

so next hmmm

A) meet at a con (either a signing or w/o knowing who the other is)

B) meet in real life, maybe at work or something (def w/o knowing who the other is, mobei jun is his boss? lol) and start developing feelings for each other irl while maintaining a strong hateship online

C) meet in dreams bc their souls are too interconnected, but only in their past life forms so they still can't recognize each other irl. but now theyre playing out fantasies together in the dream world

im indecisive LOL

[pegasussomnus]

Tim already did find someone who he can himself with in all aspects: Stephanie

There is also how bernard doesn't embrace all aspects of Tim. Their entire "relationship" is defined by Tim being robin

Bernard doesn't help Tim grow as a character, or even as a person relationship wise as Tim is still doing the same faults he did in past relationships with civilians not telling them he is Robin, keeping secrets, cutting dates/missing them, etc). but they are "resolved" by just making Bernard some ultra perfect guy who knows Tim's identity

Aka the resolution he had with Stephanie in terms of the civilian/hero life balance of having someone who knows both, so Tim is getting a balance he already had and not to mention you can't even say Tim progressed in this manner or learned from his mistakes as he never revealed his ID in the first place, so it requires no growth on his end) (never explained how he does, not to mention watering down Tim's competence in keeping his ID) so it's all moot.

Tim also doesn't progress in his civilian life at all. Like he lives on a boat and (it is said that Bernard helped motivate him to do this but never shown/explained at all and all we see is Bernard saying he likes it and the people there)? Like he doesn't even meaningfuly develop a connection with the people there aside from friendly neighbors at best. As an example There was this "subplot" of them being in danger of being evicted but Tim just doesn't care at all or do anything. Like why not use some of his wealth from his dad or something to like buy people's boats and resell them at a cheaper price so the people can stay?

The people on the boat don't even offer him a meaningful civilian connection as like I said he just doesn't connect with them and even then that civilian connection is kind of moot in the last issue when they all know his identity as Robin so that balance or finding a solution is rendered moot for the same reasons as above as he already found that balance with the Batfamily/YJ friends who know both aspects of his life and again he didn't even it reveal it to them.

Like what do they offer him? People to chill in a non-vigilante way? Like he can already do that with the Batfam/YJ and not to mention that as the series showed the Marina got involved in a lot of Robin related stuff because of Tim's ID, so it's also moot.

Another point is how Bernard for a 'relationship for Tim beyond Robin' really is a relationship where the substance largely comes from Robin. Like aside from Robin is how they got together which Bernard even states in issue 3, in the beginning of issue 7 when Bernard list why he likes Tim all the things he likes about him are reflective of his role as Robin. Like his whole trusting Tim to keep him safe, Tim being special, and Tim being his lucky charm, the examples he uses are of Tim saving him as Robin/being Robin.

And issue 7 also shows like I said above that what saves the relationship is Bernard knowing that Tim is Robin. Not to mention how he really only opens up to Tim/confides in him seriously when Tim is Robin as shown in issue 3 and 9. Hell in issue 3 when he talks about wanting to help Tim, knowing that he knows his ID, when he talks about Tim 'taking too much on his own and not asking for help and loosing himself or whatever' we know it's about Robin.

And issue 10 the grand saving moment for their relationship after the 'falling out' in issue 9 was Bernard saving the day in a Robin related mission and getting the ID reveal (but not really)

Issue 7 highlights how Tim really doesn't do anything for Bernard as Tim. Like all he does is tell him that his parents suck, he's great to make him feel better, and tell us a bunch of stuff about Bernard we've never seen before.....twice and given how the issue kept emphasizing this point (to the point where villains commented on it) and how over the top his parents/with Bernards heroic it felt generic and like the bare minimum and Tim felt like an exposition device.

Tim never really talks to him about his issues with his parents or actually substantially helps him as after Tim does the above it immediately cuts back to their relationship for cute moments. Like Bernard giving him the necklace isn't even connected to Tim 'helping' as he was gonna do that anyway.

Tim as a civilain is just the BF and the real substance comes from Robin (as it was a Robin related mission and Tim saving civilians as Bernard which lead/inspired Bernard trying to save his parents and oh look Robin once again is tied to their relationship)

Also you can't just have characters do thing with little to no motivation or reason. That is bad writing.

idk why everyone wants tim to be a cheater again and the hate for the houseboat like is this character finding a stable relationship and a home which he clearly loves too much for you to handle

like the he's rich why doesnt he live in a mansion argument means nothing to me ik everyone whumps on this guy but like aside from that maybe he likes living in a houseboat? maybe he's matured enough to not cheat on his partners?

and i love that tim found someone he can be himself around like in all aspects of being himself. thats my blorbo. that's the guy i imprinted on and have stuck with for god knows however long.

Facts

[coimbrabertone]

Offtopic Offseason #5 - CoimbraBertone and the Indiana Jones Blogpost.

So, I watched the first three Indiana Jones movies for the first time these last few weeks. Those being Raiders of the Lost Ark, Temple of Doom, and The Last Crusade. Also, before that, I was watching my friend Andy play through the video game, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. I have thoughts.

Plus, the Super Bowl was last weekend and that's kinda an unavoidable black hole devouring anything else that could've happened that weekend, so there isn't much racing news to discuss right now.

Indycar aired some commercials during it which hopefully draw people in, but until we get to St. Pete for the first race, it's hard to say how effective they were.

So, onto Indiana Jones.

I liked them. Raiders of the Lost Ark and Last Crusade are both great movies, Temple of Doom isn't as good, but it still has plenty of iconic moments and I enjoyed it well enough.

My first impression was honestly...wow, I've seen so much references to this stuff. Like there were moments I knew were from Indiana Jones, like the giant boulder chasing Indy, opening the Ark and it melting the Nazi faces, and the minecart chase from Temple, but there other things I didn't realize.

Like in Family Guy, Road to Germany, they do the whole escape the plane in a raft thing, with Stewie even making fun of one of Willie's lines. I didn't know that was from Indiana Jones. The motorcycle chase in that episode is probably a reference to Last Crusade as well, albeit a bit less 1 to 1.

So yeah, iconic movies that I've seen referenced a lot, and now I finally understand those references.

So, Raiders of the Lost Ark...

I liked Belloq as a villain. His Egypt clothes with the way his hair looked kept making me think of Alain Prost even though objectively he doesn't look all that much like Prost, but there's where my brain went. I like that he's a different kind of evil than the Nazis around him - he doesn't have a cause, he's just self-interested and wants to get one over on Jones - but he is still very much evil.

Toht is another fun character because he's just so ridiculous. The coat hanger scene made me burst out laughing.

Colonel Dietrich is probably the flattest of the villains, but I get that they needed more of a straight-up Wehrmacht guy to be the direct threat that neither Belloq nor Toht could really be.

As for the heroic characters, I have to admit, with everything I heard about Marion from watching the game and reading up on the movies a bit, she is not at all what I was expecting. For some reason I kinda thought she was gonna be a non-action rich girl who is the daughter of a rich gentleman type - and in fairness, Ravenwood does seem like it would be an old money name - but instead she's a lot more of a rougher and more confrontational character.

And I suppose that is more interesting.

Sallah's fun, John-Rhys Davies has a great voice, and I was happy to see him back in Last Crusade.

Some of the effects are very dated and the sounds - especially the punch sounds - are as well, but it's an old movie so what are you gonna do? I accepted that as a relic of the time and enjoyed the movie in spite of that.

Something dated that's a bit harder to forgive is Temple of Doom.

Let's start with the positives: Lao Che's club is a lot of fun. I think his club is a reused set from Return of the Jedi because with how white and smooth it is, along with the seating bowl we see in one of the shots, it reminds me a lot of the Mon Calamari cruises from Episode VI. I could be wrong about that, but they were filmed a year apart and Lucas literally named it Club Obi-Wan, so I wouldn't be surprised at all if the whole thing is a redressed Star Wars set.

Willie's a bit grating. There's no way around that, I'm sorry.

Short Round though...yeah, he has a few annoying moments, but I actually found him endearing. The ways that he looks up and mimics Indy - sorry, Dr. Jones - are fun, and it's nice to see Indy cares about him too.

The portrayal of India though...oof.

Spielberg and Lucas have apparently said that the whole dinner scene with the eels and eyeballs and monkey brains and all that is supposed to be a ploy to scare off Indy and the British officer dude, but...they did not do a good job of conveying that at all. It just feels like over the top orientalism.

Same thing with the Thuggee cult in general. Mola Ram's costume is all over the place and with his skull helmet off, that red paint on his forehead feels a lot more like the other type of Indian. It's like a storm of foreign culture cliches thrown together at random and it's pretty damn jarring. They even got the Maharaja torturing Indy with a voodoo doll which...okay then, I guess we really are just throwing anything and everything at this, huh?

From what I understand their portrayal of Kali is also completely off.

There's also a lot of brown face in that movie. The late Pat Roach was playing the slavemaster, for instance.

Then making the British Army show up at the end to save Indy & co...sheesh. No wonder this movie got banned in India for awhile.

Still, if you can get past all that and see it as a product of its time, it's a fun enough movie. It's the weakest of the trilogy though.

Onto Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

Harrison Ford and Sean Connery, what else do you need?

No seriously, that's it. It's good, watch it.

...

...

...

Okay fine, I'll talk about it.

I like this one a lot. I know Raiders is the classic one that everyone loves, but this one might be my favorite.

Venice, Austria, Berlin, Antioch, down to Petra in Jordan...it's a lot of fun set locations and set pieces. I really enjoyed Elsa as the "Indy girl" of this movie, I really enjoyed the banter back and forth between Henry Sr. and Indiana, and I think the Nazis in this movie are just great antagonists.

They look evil as fuck, they have the Hugo Boss fit on fleek, Vogel is a great villain, the modified World War I tank was a great set piece, and we have plenty of old car porn in this one - particularly the old Rolls Royce, which is not, in fact, a Phantom II - so what's not to like?

Well, Donovan probably goes down a bit too easy. I know that these movies are big on the whole villains are destroyed for trying to harness a power they cannot understand, but he does die pretty quickly and pretty stupidly. I guess the Vogel fight was pretty long, so a long Donovan fight probably would've bogged the ending down a lot, but it was a bit disappointing to see him easily duped into killing himself.

Elsa's end, meanwhile, i thought was fitting. She couldn't let go of her obsession, and in the end, the grail's spell got to her. It almost got to Indy too, but then Henry gave him the fatherly love which is what he really wanted. And yeah, that's a bit schlocky, but who cares? it's nice and meaningful.

So yeah, none of them are perfect movies, but I enjoyed them a lot.

The Great Circle fits in among the movies quite nicely, I think. Gina fits as another "Indy girl" and is probably my favorite when adding her in to the classic movies, and Troy Baker does such a great job as Indy that even Harrison Ford gave him his blessing.

Plus ending on karate fighting a Nazi on the top of Noah's Ark is exactly the type of goofy shit these movies would come up with and I mean that in the best way possible.

Oh, one other thing I wanted to yap about: there are a lot of scenes in these movies where the guns are very clearly not firing anything, and again, I get it, old movie, but wow, sometimes it's really obvious. There was a bit in Last Crusade where Indy thrashed around an MP40 that wasn't doing anything, and it straight up took me a second to realize they were trying to show him shooting.

Old movies gonna old movie.

I'm gonna watch the next two movies soon, probably this week, but from what I hear, they're not quite up to snuff. Let me know if you guys want my thoughts, otherwise, this is probably gonna be the last Offtopic Offseason for awhile because it's the Daytona 500 this weekend. They'll be a NASCAR race every weekend from now until November, and once NASCAR starts, the likes of MotoGP, F1, and Indycar aren't far behind.

Looking forward to the Henry Jones Jr.polis 500.

[real-fire-emblem-takes]

I’m going to be honest about Fire Emblem Engage’s endgame: yes, it’s the weakest part of Fire Emblem Engage IMO, but the only thing I would change about it is the time traveling crystal. And even then, in hindsight it’s not as bad as people say (I still would have preferred something different).

I think people took the whole Zephia and Griss deaths at face value and fail to realize that it’s a final nail in the coffin on how the Four Hounds (coupled with Veyle’s evil self) are meant to be foils to Alear. Despite being a team longer than the Four Royals and Alear, their “family dynamic” fell apart because of their selfish desires as well as how badly they mistreated the real Veyle.

Whereas Alear’s army still choose to accept Alear even after learning the truth of their origins, the Hounds (except Mauvier) were just using Veyle to satiate their desires (Zephia getting closer to Sombron, Griss desiring pain as part of his Fell Dragon cult tradition, and Marni for wanting praise) and/or only see her as Sombron’s daughter and not her own person.

That aside, again; while I would have preferred we didn’t go back in time, in a vacuum, what the chapter was going for was actually pretty good. It’s an important step in Alear’s growth by facing themselves in battle, getting more context on why Alear fears the corrupted, etc. and heck, it actually ties back to the prologue being a dream. While back then, I only just saw it as a Alear having a vision of the future, only that it was in their image to fit their desire to become a hero (sort of like a Monado vision, but not really).

As for everything else, I just thought the Corrupted Lumera fight alone was far better than what happened with Fates Revelation, for various reasons I don’t feel comfortable talking about. But one of the main things is Lumera themselves, within the time after Alear’s origins are revealed, we got more context on Lumera’s character than I ever felt we got with Mikoto (not helped by the fact the game is split into three routes, with Revelations, where she is fought, being DLC). It was the moment where Veyle again proved why she’s my favorite character in the game, some great voice acting from all of Alear’s VAs, etc. Chapter 25 is my second favorite chapter in Fire Emblem Engage.

And as for the final chapter; while I think a lot more could have been done with the gameplay and the story of the chapter itself, I do think it was the perfect way to cap off Alear’s character and them and Veyle the fight against their evil father that they rightfully deserved. (And Nel and “Nil,” if you have the DLC, also get the closest chance they will get to getting compensation for the stuff they endured in the Fell Xenologue).

Again, I definitely wish that the Dark Emblems did have complete forms, but it also makes Sombron foil to Alear by giving Sombron, who was connected to Zero Emblem, the ability to summon the worst enemies of the other Emblems. While Alear is the 13th Emblem, only recently added to the roster, is the one leading his fellow Emblems into battle one last time, and must take up the mantle of protecting Elyos afterwards.

Again, this game is far from perfect, and I can understand why people would prefer Three Houses over this game. But still, after really thinking long and hard about this game, and Alear’s character (they are the Fire Emblem of Engage after all), I just can’t bring myself to hate this game. It’s a much better experience after looking at things from another point of view.

.

[supercap2319]

Peter meets the grandson/great grandson of Steve who exists from Endgame's time travel shenanigans. He's short and skinny like pre serum Steve but he has all his post serum physical capabilities.

Legacy:

Peter Parker had seen some weird stuff in his life. He’d fought aliens, been dusted by magical stones, and even dealt with alternate versions of himself. But this? This was new.

The kid in front of him—James, he’d said—looked like he had walked straight out of a history book. He was short and wiry, barely over five-foot-four, with a frame so thin Peter was sure he could see his ribs through his shirt. His face, though? It was almost unsettling. The resemblance to pre-serum Steve Rogers was uncanny, down to the sharp jawline, the determined blue eyes, and the slightly-too-big ears.

But then James moved.

One moment, he was standing still. The next, he had leapt six feet straight into the air, catching a frisbee mid-flight before landing effortlessly. A group of kids in the park cheered. Peter just stood there, staring.

“Okay. You’re gonna have to explain that,” Peter said, pointing at him.

James grinned, the kind of cocky-yet-good-natured smile Peter had only ever seen on one other person. “What, the jump? Not bad, right?”

Peter narrowed his eyes. “Not bad? That was a Steve Rogers kind of jump. You’re what, a super-soldier? Some kind of… enhanced experiment?”

James snorted. “Not exactly. It’s kinda complicated.” He scratched the back of his neck, suddenly looking a little nervous. “Look, I don’t really tell a lot of people this, but… my great-grandfather was Steve Rogers.”

Peter blinked. “Wait. What?”

James sighed, sitting down on a nearby bench. “Yeah. I know it doesn’t make sense. But, uh… turns out, when Cap went back in time to be with Peggy, things got a little… messy. Long story short, he stuck around, lived a full life, had a family, and, well… here I am.”

Peter sat down next to him, trying to process that information. “Okay. That’s a lot. But that still doesn’t explain this.” He gestured to James’ entire body. “You’re, like, a short super soldier. No offense.”

James laughed. “None taken. And yeah, that’s the weird part. I don’t have the bulk, but I’ve got everything else. Strength, speed, reflexes, even the healing factor. It’s like I inherited the serum… just not the height.”

Peter rubbed his temples. “So let me get this straight. You’re the great-grandson of Captain America, but instead of looking like a blond Superman, you got all of his abilities in a tiny Steve package?”

James grinned. “Pretty much.”

Peter exhaled sharply. “God, I love and hate time travel.”

James chuckled. “Yeah, tell me about it.”

Peter shook his head. “Okay, one more question—why are you telling me this?”

James shrugged. “Figured if anyone would get how weird legacies can be, it’d be you.”

Peter blinked, caught off guard. But then he found himself smiling. “Yeah,” he said. “I guess I would.”

[your-turn-to-role]

if it helps at all (reblogging directly from you starry bc can't tag you) - as someone who gave up on it pretty early on bc it wasn't really my thing, i have been wanting to look up more positive opinions on the campaign recently, i've just been really busy so haven't had time to respond to anything but what's on my dash, which yeah is a lot of critique, and with what i do know there's definitely stuff i'm not a fan of, sure

but also like. the critical role cast aren't some corporation just trying to squeeze money out of this show, like a lot of the things c3 has been compared to are

while they could have, in retrospect, probably made better decisions to really pull off whatever they were going for, they're also playing the game that makes them happiest (and they're putting it all online for free it's not like they're obligated to follow the fans' ideas of what should happen)

if you enjoyed it all start to finish, you're honestly a perspective i'd like to see round tumblr more! you're seeing what the cast see in this narrative and that definitely doesn't make you wrong or stupid. if there was no value in this story whatsoever they would have stopped a long time ago

as megs said, being able to articulate an opinion well doesn't make it objective truth. god knows i can pull out a million references for any of my essays but when i write them it's always gonna be me shining light on a specific angle of the narrative that appeals to me. other people can choose to pick a different angle and still be just as right, regardless of whether or not it's something i personally would enjoy looking at. and that's even more true in a fandom like this, where every narrative is in fact 7+ narratives that we hope will weave together well, and there's a million things to focus on that haven't all been handpicked by the creators for the sake of telling a singular story

if you're seeing an angle a lot of people aren't focusing on, hell, celebrate that! i love hearing about the moments that genuinely appealed to people, it just feels like there's been fewer and fewer of them focused on bells hells the longer the story went on. but i've also been in fandoms where i truly genuinely enjoyed the ending of a particular story and thought it was well told the whole way through, and then it turned out 99% of the fandom thought the ending was rushed and it ruined the whole thing, so i definitely get how that can feel a bit crushing and like you're fighting a tidal wave

(and hell to your tags about being worried c3 will become an automatic skip in the fandom - i also really love a lot of the c1 episodes before ep24 and think there's some great character stuff there that a lot of people skip bc orion or because the briarwood arc is where it gets 'good', so im with you on that one. it sucks but it doesn't mean i can't talk about, say, trial of the take, there still are and always will be people in the fandom who've watched it, and there will be even more people who didn't watch it but are glad to find out what's in it because they couldn't find out themselves)

so yeah all to say if you ever wanted to write about c3 stuff you loved, im on your side here

if you're just sad that the fandom reaction to stuff you liked has been overwhelmingly negative, that's also fine, and doesn't make you any less a valued member of this fandom

idk I kind of feel like I'm an idiot bc I actually enjoyed cr 3 from the jump to the end but like the blogs who follow bc I feel they are definitely more articulate and insightful than me are like "the whole thing was meaningless and pointless! matt fumbled everything!" so maybe I'm wrong to have liked it all? I'm not really sure where I'm going with this sorry

I think one thing to keep in mind is that many (and in fact, I would argue, most!) people who are critiquing the story and construction have also generally enjoyed the campaign as a whole! Certainly I don't know anyone who stuck it out through the end who did not overall enjoy watching it, for various reasons; I know there are people who hate watch, which I think is an absurd and honestly really stupid waste of time, but from my experience they are normally making snide and vicious tweet-length posts rather than long considerations of what isn't working for them.

There are also a lot of levels of critique—I've greatly enjoyed a lot of moments in isolation that I simultaneously felt weakened, contradicted, or even actively undermined the structure of the story as a whole, but those moments were still really fun and interesting beats. The Arch Heart's cameo comes to mind, as does, in hindsight, some of the construction of the post-Solstice split, but there are plenty of others of higher or lower impact on the story. In the finale the Raise Dead falls into this place very strongly, so I'm going to talk about it at length for a moment, since it was an absolutely stellar moment for me personally and as such I do think it serves as very illustrative of an example where I simultaneously fucking love a moment while finding it worth significant critique. I think it also touches on the critiques you're referring to, which I would summarize overall as the idea that many of the outcomes feel influenced negatively by pulled punches on the part of the DM rather than a flaw of one player or another. (Also, I want to talk about it cuz I love it. :3) This got very long but I think that to your point, it is worth examining in this amount of depth.

First, the good: it is an absolutely phenomenal culminating point of an arc that was only really concluded in summary; I have, as noted earlier this week, written at length about how Essek is never situated as a protagonist, which is functionally fine and even good. He ends up tied very strongly to Caleb's arc, and moves in the narrative in such a way after 2x97 that allows Caleb to reach a concluding note, and strengthens that narrative. So we only really hear about the outcome of Essek's choices, his inevitable leave from the Dynasty, in the summarization of the campaign 2 epilogue. This is not inherently a problem, because he is not a protagonist. But this moment does functionally create a material representation of that denouement, which does strengthen his arc in its own right.

This moment also, hilariously, bears out my argument from this post. That the resurrection should only work with this intervention, particularly while the Nein are involved, does follow through on the Nein's general positioning within Exandria. Essek's leave happening without a fight (and, frankly, with only one attempted Counterspell) both makes for a very well-paced moment and also maintains the overall sense of story that the Nein impart when they are on screen; I'm thinking again of how their Ruidus episodes feel, much like their campaign and their post-campaign one-shots, like an intrigue action thriller series, and this fits well in that framing.

So overall, it is a fantastic moment... for the Nein. The Nein are not the protagonists of this story. They exist in the world, and are such active agents that they do continue to develop and exert motion on the narrative into this campaign, and frankly, I think this would have been fine if the party given ownership of this story and campaign did not abdicate their responsibility for it with unfortunate frequency. They do not exert a strong control over their story, which is at odds with the fact that the Nein do, and are present and also involved by the nature of their ending. It completely overshadows Ashton's heroic moment, in that the culminating action beat of this sequence is Essek getting away, which kind of takes the wind out of the sails of the Hells' involvement in the gods' outcome. It doesn't negate it, certainly, but it does refocus the story from them to, for some reason, Essek. So in this sense, it occurs at the expense of the Hells.

I find that while the handwaving of using dunamantic intervention to push Raise Dead beyond its limits (if indeed the reason it didn't originally work was because Ashton's brain was essentially gone) fits fine and even well within the framework of the Nein's story, and an NPC being able to do so without a roll is fine, since NPCs are vehicles the DM uses to guide the story, this is a significant divergence from the overall mechanics of the world at large; even the Nein had to do a full ritual for the resurrection of their tiefling. Matt put those mechanics in place specifically to create narrative meaning behind resurrections, which can feel very unmotivated and like a get out of jail free card in D&D, and while it's been noted that this would've really strained the runtime beyond its existing length, prioritizing it at the cost of, for instance, more truncated end notes for the Nein and Vox would've bolstered the Hells' presence in an ending to their own story that even many of their fans felt was ultimately lacking.

Giving the resurrection full weight would've also given Ashton's sacrifice and the Hells' involvement more narrative weight; the reason the other parties are involved at all is because the Hells were truly running on fumes by that point, but any lack of involvement this created could've been alleviated by having them directly involved through pre-established ritual elements that are not contingent on them having any mechanical offerings. So this moment sits within the context of critique that I agree with: that it felt like a pulled punch that ultimately also served to decenter the Hells within their own narrative, when it could've been used with more deliberate narrative force.

At the same time, I fucking love it, and watched it four times in a row yesterday, because it is so good—and it is, as I described, narratively and thematically coherent in one sense! And I think that is one issue of the campaign: many, many great moments are excellent and coherent in a certain framework but are weaker to varying degrees when considered as one piece of a larger whole. There are so many frameworks at play in this narrative, and not enough direct intervention to manage those as frameworks rather than as a single story, but at the same time, I think those frameworks are far more apparent if you're really looking for them, and that's much more difficult, if not impossible, when you're in the midst of them and telling the story.

I also don't think this means one cannot critique this; in fact, I would say this is more an issue of being a serialized narrative than an improvised one, which is often how critique of it has been pushed back against within the fandom. I was thinking about this as I'm currently in a course on, quite literally, how to critique comics, and we discussed this week how Marjane Satrapi said in an interview after making the film adaptation of Persepolis, which was first a serialized comic, that she ended up preferring the film, and I speculated that was because with a film, one has the ability to make a more cohesive narrative purely by virtue of the fact that with a serialized form, you cannot go back and make retroactive edits when no developments come to light. This is something that long-running comics must constantly navigate (as do many long TV shows), and in extreme circumstances such as decades-old comic franchises, ends up resulting in infinite timelines and hand-waving, which becomes so ridiculous that at this point it's a meme. In that scenario, though, it is not presented as a non-contradictory story, let alone a cohesive one.

Many of the critiques of campaign 3 are operating within the idea that this is presented as one overarching narrative. (And honestly, comics and other narratives that don't utilize that presentation are also still critiqued on that merit by people who greatly enjoy the texts they're critiquing anyway.) Within that context, I feel that the framing of the Raise Dead, as well as much of what would be my critique of the other pieces I referenced (the Arch Heart's cameo and some of the party-split sections) if I was to do the same kind of rundown of those, actively undermine this presentation by introducing and forefronting too many conflicting frameworks that are not interwoven well enough to create a single, cohesive overarching narrative.

This is a very long-winded way to illustrate my point, which is that I would really encourage reading critique not as a lack of enjoyment of the campaign, let alone a suggestion that no one should've enjoyed it (and if you did, then you're not smart enough to know better), but as a way to engage with the text(s) as presented within one framework or another. I think this is sometimes obscured in online fandom spaces, where we're not engaging in critique in as formal of a sense as one would in, say, an academic setting, where the norms generally dictate the framework one is using is explicitly stated if not fully delineated within the critique, but it is, more often than not, still implicitly present within the critique.

And as a final note, I would also really urge everyone reading others' opinions on something they enjoy to resist the urge to elide their own opinions from the conversation, even if you don't feel as articulate or as well-versed in critique. Critique is a trained skill, so it is certainly something one can pick up if they are inclined, and at the same time, someone doing it does not mean they are inherently right—and in fact, with all argumentative writing, it is up to the reader to consider the argument and decide whether or not they agree with it. (You can decide that you disagree with me about the Raise Dead! Just because I wrote a thousand words on it does not inherently make my interpretation truth; it's just an interpretation. You get to say whether or not you think my interpretation makes sense based on the evidence presented.) Even here I'm using the framework of some critique that others have made, but I don't delineate in full myself. In doing do I'm not presuming that you agree, but I am presuming that you've read it and know what I'm referring to. Strictly speaking it's also not even saying that I take that critique as true; it's saying that I feel the conclusions drawn are applicable as a basis for my argument. If you wanted, you could even say that you feel that my argument is irrelevant to you because you don't feel those critiques are true! But you ultimately do have to be the one to decide any of that, which does involve a balance between a confidence in the formation of your own opinions on the text and an openness to entertaining others'.