#these were how my decisions were made
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Ivy and coney island? Champagne problems and clean? Lavendar haze and the man? Getaway car and lover?
Coney Island, clean, lavender haze, getaway car
Make me choose between two taylor swift songs (or be like em and send me multiple if you want)
#oh you are cruel#asks#vanillalipstick66#em#SORRY FOR NOT MAKING YOU MY CENTREFOLD OVER AND OVER LOST AGAIN WITH NO SURPRISES DISAPPOINTMENTS CLOSE YOUR EYES AND IT GETS COLDER AND#COLDER WHEN THE SUN GOES DOWN#champagne problems is amazing but it has been hyped too much#i just wanna staaay in that lavender haaaaaaze#im in a getaway car. i left you in the motel bar. put the money in the bag and i stole the kEYS THAT WAS THE LAST TIME YOU EVER SAW ME.#these were how my decisions were made
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DATV explaining the 'Regret Prison'
A REGRET PRISON IS STUPID AND I'M TIRED OF PRETENDING THAT ITS NOT
TL;DR: a prison can serve as a metaphor but it shouldn't be entirely comprised of a metaphor.
From what I understood from what the game gave us: Solas has made a new prison to move the God's too - since bringing down the veil would free them from the Black City. This new prison is separate(?) from the fade or so far removed/contained that bringing down the veil would not compromise it...apparently. We interrupt his ritual, Solas gets sucked into the new prison he made, and the elven gods are free.
When Rook gets kicked into the fade they're physically there - which means it's a physical place in the fade, like how it was a mixture of physical/thought when we entered it in DAI. Which makes sense - the gods are real and living beings, they need to be in a place, there must be some aspect of physicality to it.
Alright, cool, it's a Black City 2.0 - I assume it's better defended to prevent people breaking in/out again?
NOPE.
We get there and it's a 'regret prison'?? It's tied to the regrets of those within it? Composed of regrets??? Solas had to wait for the right moment for Rook to be sufficiently 'full of regret' that they could switch places?
So is the prison tied to Solas's regrets? If so, how can Rook escape? The prison seems to work around the idea that it relies on the regrets of the person it's holding to work - which is how/why Rook was able to be trapped and later free themselves (along with whatever remains of the team apparently being able to do something on their end, not that we hear about it).
WHICH IS STUPID!
Are you telling me the prison intended to hold to megalomaniac elven gods was going to imprison them based on their own regrets? Is Solas assuming that Elgar'nan and Ghilan'nain are as self-pitying as he is? They'd break out quicker than Rook did! He made a time out corner for the elven gods to sit in and gave them an out if they reflected on their emotions/regrets or decided that they don't regret what they did. Elgar'nan, a spirit of tyranny, is not going to 'regret' his actions - he is going to justify them by telling himself and others that he knows what's best.
We can come across some of Solas's regrets in the prison if you run around a bit and explore:
Remnant of Failure - talking about the orb from Inquisition.
Remnant of Parting - talking about Mythal
Remnant of Reflection - more vague, talking about the Titans I believe.
So maybe he altered it - maybe he intended the prison to be 'locked' with his own regrets because after a millennia of having a pity party he still can't bring himself to self-reflect and look to the future. But what if Solas died? Or if his guilt lessened - would it diminish the strength of the regret prison?
We already have pre-established lore (though DATV has shown they don't really give a crap tbh) that once the being that has claimed/altered an area of the fade is slain, it's influence diminishes both in and outside of the fade. So if the prison was tied to his regrets then it would require Solas to basically live forever to keep it stable - especially if he brought down the veil and removed the one barrier that kept the world and the fade apart.
Rook and Solas needed some assistance to exit - but it doesn't seem like it was much! Solas used his dagger and Rook just...got out through a fade tear? This is Solas's 'more secure' second prison? It has a worse track record than the Black City! If Rook - who is not an elven god - managed to escape the regret prison what is to stop anyone else from breaking in and out of the prison?
And what did Solas intend to do with the blight - the bulk of which is apparently in the black city?? If bringing down the Veil would free the gods in the black city doesn't that mean that the blight would also be released?! Did he have a plan? Why does he go fully ahead with bringing down the veil at the end if the black city is still there and filled with blight?!
I get it: the 'regret prison' is a metaphor for how Solas holds onto the past and how Rook can move past their regrets and grow. He's trapped by the past - it's a prison. Cool. But this prison is supposed to by a physical place to contain the gods - not just to solely contain Solas. The mission is literally called 'A Cage for Gods'.
The Black City is an actual place that's so far out of reach of anywhere else in the fade that no mage can ever reach it while in dreams - let alone physically, which was only done once and took tremendous effort/blood sacrifices. It made sense - it was cool to see floating in the sky in DAO!
Though it's not said specifically, it's strongly implied that Arlathan is the Black City. You can see in the concept art that floating elven city is exactly the same as the black city in DAO! It's this foreboding thing just lurking in the sky - a constant reminder of the sin that led to the horrors of the blights and darkspawn. A real place with lore and history that also serves as a metaphor for the hubris and destruction of those who call themselves gods and act as tyrants -> for both the evanuris and the magisters.
I WANT TO UNDERSTAND THIS BIOWARE!
WHAT IS THIS KINGDOM HEARTS NONSENSE???!!
#we'll need Mickey and Donald to break us out of this one#this screams 'this sounds so cool lets put it in' and not 'how can we do something cool that works with the world we've established'#“it's metaphorical-” it can be metaphorical and make sense!!!#trying to invoke 'emotion' with that black and white tone and only succeeded in getting me to feel pure confusion and rage#THE FADE IS GREEN TINTED - THE LAST GAME WAS LITERALLY COLOUR THEMED AFTER IT#i'm passionate about the fade being green the same way i'm passionate about Aurora's dress being blue and Cinderella's being silver#solas's more secure second prison literally has a worse track record than the black city - why is he so dumb???#I regretted no choices in datv besides the decision to actually play this game lmao#if the game actually acknowledged that Rook's actions led to thousands of people dying maybe I'd feel something in the regret prison#no mention of treviso/ minrathous/ or southern thedas??#the team all knew the risks of what they were doing! they volunteered/made their own choices - ME2 did this so much better#played as an elf so I didn't even feel bad when Harding died because of the weird elf specific dialogue she had#I'm not sorry for the titans/what Solas did - I wasn't even there! Doesn't justify the shit that happened to the elves after either!#this game made me apathetic to LACE HARDING and i loved her in Inquisition#i'm sorry but I had more regret for choosing to speak mean to Merrill once than anything I did in this game#currently writing about the magisters sidereal in my lore post and I needed to blurt this out because its so stupid#typed out the word 'regret' so much is has no meaning in my head anymore lmao#datv critical#datv spoilers#bioware critical#dragon age the veilguard#veilguard critical
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The parallels that hurt so much
They both jinxed the most important event in their lives trying to help...
They both lost their closest friends to this....
And both were abandoned and hurt in the worst way possible by the sibling they've looked up to....
They had good intentions, they were so young......
And they're the monsters others have created.
#arcane#arcane spoilers#arcane s2 spoilers#arcane s2#arcane meta#arcane analysis#as abba sang: the history book on the shelf. it's always repeating itself#these scenes made me think so much about silco and vander. and the parallels between them and jinx and vi#young silco looked so sweet and healthy. he looked so innocent... where did the years go#him and jinx are just people stuck in a cycle of poorly made decisions. internalizing the trauma. doing the worst crimes imaginable.& repea#and I'm not trying to absolve them of guilt. they're pretty terrible people and are responsible for their own actions.. but I can't stop-#-feeling bad for them#also. just how old were they when revolution started? silco said to dekart that he learned a lesson about power when he was his age-#-and tapped his bad eye while talking. how old was dekart? was silco a teenager/barely an adult (18-21 or 21-25) when his life fell apart?#it's sad as hell... arcane stop breaking my heart....#silco#arcane silco#jinx#arcane jinx#jinx arcane#silco arcane#young silco#arcane vander#arcane vi#<- no negativity to these two btw
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i would give anything to watch a full movie on how the entirety of brooklyn came to be "spot conlon's territory". half of the brooklyn newsies are practically grown ass men, and they answer to this scrawny blond fifteen year old??
like come on
#seriously those are wholeass MEN#what made them go 'yes this child will be the best possible leader time to let him make all the decisions'#and like. they agreed to walk a few miles to newsies square just to put themselves at risk of being beat up or arrested ??#also they're like. entering a zone where they could very easily get trapped (like the manhattan newsies were)#and they didn't even know how many strikebreakers there would be ?? for all they knew they could have been outnumbered ??#so these guys literally risk everything because spot says so ??#anyway kudos to them bc like. i would have said yeah nah you have fun with that tho#but yeah logically this is a v inaccurate depiction of brooklyn newsies bc like. they wouldn't bring the 9 year olds to a fight#BUT STILL MY POINT STILL STANDS THAT IS A LOT OF PEOPLE WHO ARE BOTH OLDER THAN AND MUCH BIGGER THAN SPOT#newsies#newsies fandom#92sies#spot conlon#brooklyn newsies#newsies 1992
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(OC) boyfriends..... 🤭🧡💜
#my art#OC#baek siwon#(is the honey blonde one)#PURPLE EYES DOES NOT HAVE A NAME YET....#(idek where to start tbh lol like... HOW DO U NAME A WEREWOLF FOX MONSTER-#thats his default human form but yeah hes not human#siwon is human tho! just to confirm KDJDK#anyway im kicking my feet n giggling#HOPE U GUYS LIKE THEM TOO#also im laughing bc its so obv i have a visual type when it comes to ships#LIKE U CAN SEE THE SIMILARITIES W CEDJESS... (droopy eyes x sharp eyes... height diff...#OH ALSO BLONDE/BLACK HAIR YAOI ALWAYS WINS#I FINALLY MADE ONE OF MY OWN LMFAOOA#giving 💜 two-toned hair was a good decision tbh#bc i had been stuck on whether to give him dark or light hair... until i realized i could combine him <3#*combine them#O BTW... i mean the chibi confirms it but#can u tell that siwon is the bigger/taller one...🫣#golden retriever coded...#OH BTW CLOTHES R PLACEHOLDER!!!#SRRY IDK HOW TO DESIGN FASHION EXCUSE THE GOOFY ASS OUTFIT#ITS JUST A PLACEHOLDER TO SHOW THAT HE DRESSES GOTH...#i feel like maybe he has a cool assassin-like uniform normally#but if he were to dress casually... hed go for goth/emo/punk-like clothes FLDNDJ#could picture him playing guitar or bass or smth
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i just woke up so i haven't actually watched the pokemon direct thingy yet, but i heard they mentioned they aren't pushing out another console release at all for 2024 and if that's true then frankly THAT news is way more hype than any actual game announcement could ever be. go girl let us wait!! this is genuinely what i've been begging for for years now
like, oh a new Legends game? that's neat i guess. oh wait it's being given literally ANY time to cook and they aren't crunching Game Freak to hell and back in order to pump out a bunch of half-baked annual releases for the first time in ages?? NOW we're fuckin talking. LOVE to see the torturous cycle broken
#buny text#pokemon#granted they may have just delayed their plans simply because nintendo still isn't releasing a new console til pretty late in the year#and they cannot feasibly keep trying to squeeze things down into a format the switch can (barely) handle without losing goodwill#but i'd like to hope that this also proves they don't need to be pumping out 3 console titles and multiple DLCs in such short spans of time#i'd love to see what might happen if the pokemon devs were ever given the kind of long thorough dev cycles that the zelda team gets#like let gamefreak cook for as long as they need and release when they actually feel it's ready. please.#as frustrated as i am with how SV turned out the majority of my frustration was that you can still FEEL the devs' passion in there#but it's massively overshadowed by jank and lack of polish and design decisions that would only ever be made under intense time pressure#the last chunk of that game's story is cool as hell but getting there was such a depressing experience that it's very hard to recommend#these are clearly artists who still have good ideas and interesting experiences to create! give them the time they need to do it properly!
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thank you noel malevolent for saving me from my complicated thoughts about john’s requests regarding arthur’s interpersonal relationships
#we’re not out of the woods yet i’m only partway through part 39#comparatively speaking those requests were morally better and more reasonable than several other decisions they’ve made#but it still tensed every muscle in my traumatized body#this post needs grammarly i hate how it’s phrased but i don’t know how to fix it. anyways#malevolent#noel malevolent#arthur lester#john doe malevolent
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very funny to me when people point at ruby and castiel as the obvious intentional parallels meaning that samruby being canon = destiel when like. how it actually went down is anna was supposed to be the parallel but spn hated women too much to have two of them playing a central role in the brothers’ lives at once. what we’ve encountered here is sexism, not gay people.
#this is not getting into how much better destiel would be if we leaned into it being like samruby but thats besides the point here#hi yeah its me still annoyed at a decision made on a tv show over a decade ago to can my girl#oh alternate spn where anna is a recurring character my beloved#its just like. no she was the parallel. there were two episodes about it actually. and then they changed their minds.#castiel lives because god forbid women do anything (<- have a relationship with dean winchester that makes the fans hate her and has too#much agency for the writers to let her live)#spn#anna milton
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thinking about "you have a life" / "i don't know what i have" + "what do you want, dana?" / "i want everything that i should want at this time of my life" + the perceived shame in scully's loss of normalcy... "unlike you, mulder, i would like to have a life" + "do you believe in the afterlife?" / "i'd settle for a life in this one" + "don't you ever want to just stop? get out of the damn car? settle down and live something approaching a normal life?"
her friend ellen saying, "well, first you have to get a life." tara, pregnant with their christmas gift, saying that life before one grew inside her was "somehow...less, just a prelude," while barren dana cries in the kitchen. "i know you and dad were...disappointed...that i chose the path that i'm on."
thinking about how mulder said, "this is a normal life," and how she smiled. (he doesn't know any different). how, in the end, he said, "hey, scully? i know it's not your normal life, but thanks for coming out there with me."
(christmas before quantico, "i guess i'm afraid of making a big mistake. dad thinks i am." and missy's response: "it's not his life, dana.")
her application to adopt emily was rejected: "you're a single woman who's never been married or had a long-term relationship. you're in a high stress, time intensive, and dangerous occupation."
bill's reaction: "sounds like something your partner would say. this isn't about any little girl, dana. this is about you. it's about some...void, some emptiness inside you that you're trying to fill."
and mulder to the judge: "the fact that she can adopt this child, her own flesh and blood, is something i don't feel i have the right to question, and i don't believe anyone has the right to stand in the way of."
(that last christmas with missy before everything: "there is no right or wrong. life is just a path...just don't mistake the path for what is really important in life. the people you're going to meet along the way. you don't know who you're going to meet when you join the FBI. you don't know how your life is going to change, or how you're going to change the life of others.")
and ultimately, it all leads to a leather couch. and after contemplating that sacrifice of normalcy, what she should want, the decisions she could have made, she says, "i once considered spending my whole life with this man...what i would have missed."
she could've been a doctor, like her father wanted. she could've settled down, married waterston, had a normal life, like her friends and brother wanted. but what would she have missed?
"what if there was only one choice and all the other ones were wrong?" / "and all the...choices would then lead to this very moment. one wrong turn, and...we wouldn't be sitting here together."
#i truly believe that what's made this show so lasting and rich to so many generations#is how completely in touch with raw human experience it always was. there was always this kind of bleak undertone of...this is how it is...#and very rarely was it ever overcome or accepted or boldly subverted. it just was.#the pressures and the grief and the traps of abuse and trauma and power structures. this is how it is. this is how it feels.#'people thought the storyline and characters for x-files made it a 'dark' show but i never saw it that way.#i always thought mulder and scully were the light in dark places.'#my favorite quote about the show and why i think it's so comforting. it's the harsh reality of the world#of which mulder and scully are not exempt#but it's also mulder and scully going wherever they are needed with their unending kindness and their perseverance and their passion#and they bring all of those things to each other too. that's why she chose THIS life. despite it NOT being normal.#despite it NOT being what her father wanted for her. despite it NOT being easy. she chooses it over and again#because he is bringing light to dark places and she wants to be where he is and she wants to be doing important work. she wants to be#'on the side of the victim'#and that's rarely supported by societal structures and it's hard. but like she says#what would she have missed??#txf.txt#you people make me crazy when you dismiss her decisions and act like she Ruined Her Life or mulder Ruined Her Life#congratulations! you've missed the point!#all things#emily#dreamland
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i ate a cupcake recently without first spending five minutes talking about how logistically stressful it is to eat a cupcake, so. i am capable of growth
#i just don't understand how you're supposed to do it without making a mess#why would someone design a food that seems like it is specifically impossible not to get smeared somewhere?#like just design it differently idk??? but everyone else seems to be fine with it so i guess it was a fine decision and i'm the problem#this time i didn't want to say anything about cupcakes being stressful to eat because i was being given a cupcake by the person#who had made the cupcakes and also it was her birthday. so. would have been kind of a dick move.#instead i just unwrapped the cupcake very slowly to give me time to observe how other people were eating theirs#and then i decided i didn't like their methods and did something else#this makes it sound like i've never seen someone eat a cupcake before or eaten one myself but i have many times#i just have never liked it. and i keep holding out hope that someday i'll see someone do it in a way that makes sense#i want someone to crack the code so i can just eat cupcakes. i don't think they're very interesting but it would behoove me socially#to be normal about cupcakes. since everyone else seems so into them for some reason#food#my posts#that said i do know the wrongest way to eat a cupcake and that's the way my younger sister does it (or used to do it)#which entails eating the entire wrapper as well as the cupcake#so in my quest for an acceptable way to eat a cupcake i have at least ruled out several including that one
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still cant believe OM is ending it's services, at least on the gaming front
#i said this on twt like an hour after the announcement but greed.... oh how it ruins everything huh....#i just keep scratching my head cuz like. theres still so much unsolved that theyre just abandoning.#and ur ending the app services but still? continuing stuff outside that? are u just going to rely on the anime podcast specials n irl stuff#ppl were mainly there for the game content hello??? and anyone who wouldve found OM through other avenues would still?#divulge back to checking out the games????#they literally introduced dateables that nvr became dateable that still fries me what were they thinking truly.#it only confirms that they were made to drum up attention on the game but had no plans to Really make a cohesive inclusion 😭#not that the story was super cohesive from the start i mean me n friends would always joke abt rewritin OM so 😭 but it had stuff goin 4 it#ive not understood their business and marketing decisions for a very very long time. even before nightbringer. tbh.#well anyways! useless thoughts ive left in my drafts a bit too long....#i will still miss kenma and mori and friends and connections made through the fandom.... (perhaps will reshare some old art)#the other annoying parts of fandom have been beaten with a broom and put in a corner of my mind i no longer care abt so!
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people who do STEM or administration as a career full time and continue to do art as a hobby, I am scared of you but like in a hot way. youre like if we were allowed to have cold drinks in winter. i look at you and think of miles morales with his two cakes. do you want to make out sometime
#i say all of this positively bc i just! i cant help admiring it!! even if its mundane or not a big deal to you i seriously cant wrap my head#around it.. this is in no way at all meant to be condescending or anything. whenever i look at someones bio and theyre like oh im working#as a lab assistant biologist pharmacist realtor etc im like woag.... thats insane.. and then i peep your art tag and it knocks my socks of#how?? what lives do you lead??? im so curious. i seriously want a peek inside your brains someday. or at least shadow you at work lol#i cant help but feel sad when someone says smth like well i have to support myself and art cant do that for me. or maybe you were#pushed into pursuing a 'safe' career bc i hear it a lot. all of my relatives have the same story working as nurses and OFWs for the family#i think for me its not about missed potential but rather its being sad about making a decision to put your happiness aside to get by#ive tried so hard to do it but it didnt work out. i guess watching you guys do it is fascinating to me#or maybe youve made peace with your decision or actually like what you pursued but im still amazed!! it makes me wonder what made#you pick one over the other in that case.. is it like putting time for two different things the way you would for a schedule?? hmmm#im doing graphic design so i dont really interact with ppl in other faculties even humanities like sociology or childcare... so i cant help#wondering what it must be like as someone whos pursuing visual communication both as an interest and career#i seriously wish i could do smth like a desk job or even admin and maybe ill try that if this doesnt work. or i could look into trades#but dyscalculia already makes it hard to do things like cash and mental math so i get overwhelmed if i think about this too hard#yapping
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onto the unreleased stuff. halloween was going to be "crisp air halloween". or "fresh air halloween". tbh i dont know which, because my files call it fresh air, but i thought we usually called it crisp air... basically, crank up the darkness, crank up the glowy bits, and cover the whole island in fog. i was given a moodboard and room direction by an admin. most of the island would be covered in cobbled paths, gas lanterns, and victorian architecture, but welcome room in particular was going to be a farm area with a dirt patch, full of crops and pumpkins that players would spawn in the midst of. there would be an abandoned, unenterable farmhouse on the left, with a bunch of spooky animations in the windows and such. the fountain has been drained and infested with spiders, and on the right was a barn, which would actually be quite cozy inside rather than spooky. i wasnt in charge of the lookout (second story of this building) but i put hay sticking out of the window because i wanted to suggest a cozy hay pile with a pillow fort up there
there was lots of rooms already done for this party, and they all look incredible. everyone working on rooms used those as style guides for how the rest of the rooms would look. if those end up getting posted later, ill edit this post with a link
#club penguin#club penguin journey#stoppy.png#i was put permanently in charge of doing welcome room a week into me being hired#so thats why a lot of my work is that#its pretty funny because like a few days before#other designers were talking about how much everyone dreads working on welcome room#because the file is kind of a huge mess#and then someone made the decision to hand off the file to the newbie to deal with forever LMAO#to be clear i Accepted the job because i thought it was a huge honor to do the room-#that would be the first thing everyone would see upon logging in#and would set up the first impression for the whole party#so this isnt on them or anything. i take them putting me on the task at all in the first place as show of my own skill and capability
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Asking because I’m extremely curious about this, how did MonProm’s writing get different over time? I remember you saying that the lore and characters feel different, and that it's missing sincere character interactions, too. I know almost nothing about the lore and I’ve only seen a few people mention the characters, so I’d be interested in a rundown of what aspects you think got worse in the series
I wouldn’t mind a very long response since I’m not that active in the fandom, I need to catch up on what happened
sorry for taking so long to answer this! i kinda waffled on it for a long bit, mainly because i started doubting myself again, and whether or not this was me simply overreacting or being tinted by nostalgia or simply being extremely picky and choosy in what i like (the last of which is true, i seldom get into fandoms at all for this reason and stay away from most popular media, but i wasn't sure if it applied here). i've posted about it already, but i'm in the middle of a psychotic episode where i can't feel a lot of pleasure to begin with + most things i do experience ending up solidly in the "very bad" category, so as you can imagine, i really didn't want to mislead and check that i was actually in objective reality.
as it is, this is also when a lot more screenshots started to be posted in the monster prom tag, and that helped me bridge the gap back into returning to the games themselves and feel like i was making a more accurate judgement. if you're one of those people who have been posting screenshots, i sincerely thank you, and i appreciated seeing you in the tag greatly.
for those not in the know — i've been in the monster prom fandom since it first released, prior to even the first additional ending to be added (the "Punch the sun" ending, and i recall the minor fandom drama that happened at that time due to it). my impression of monster prom is very much influenced by this, as what got me into the first game was the fact that the characters genuinely seemed to care for each other and were friends with each other (not merely tolerating each other's presences nor dressing it up, they sincerely thought of each other as friends and were open about that fact), on top of the wide variety of small details and statements that, if taken at face value, could create compounding complexity in the lives of each and every character and had wider implications for their lives.
no, they were not necessarily explored nor even necessarily "real", with so many conflicting events and statements, but i liked this too, because it meant a wider flexibility in what you could imagine, helping to create a more tailored experience for everyone who thought about these characters. this was what i liked about the early fandom too. what was baseline "canon" was so vague and minimal that you could have wildly different interpretations of the same characters' histories and relationships with each other. you would have radically different perspectives on what the world itself looked like, what it was like, that there wasn't really any wrong answers so long as their personalities remained the same. this is where you got the old headcanon of polly and liam being childhood friends who knew each other as humans, or that the world of monster prom was post-apocalypse where humanity itself had gone extinct or only existed in tiny pockets, or my personal headcanon that both monster and human society existed right next to each other and had minimal crossover for petty cultural reasons. this was also prior zoe-as-ro, and there were wildly different interpretations of zoe's personality, with most going for a far more disquieting creepy-cute than the deep nerd we got.
this is why you get stuff like the timeloop theory, where everyone is repeating the same weeks leading up to prom over and over, and are perhaps vaguely aware of it but broadly unconcerned. this is also why it felt like the joke that, the characters were still in high school but were all fully legal adults with most in their 20's, best landed, because it was absurd and strange and didn't quite make sense, but the world itself was inherently absurd and semi-malleable to begin with. realistically, i felt like everyone understood it was making fun of the trope of having adults play teenagers in american sitcoms and wildly casting outside the age range, but for more in-universe explanations it wasn't any different from the way that you would have a large, dramatic ending in which everything changed, but then you'd restart and everyone would be right back at the beginning with nothing different, or even having conflicting events in the same run. it was a dream-logic that fit with the tropes and, thus, diagetically made sense.
to be clear, i don't mind canon having a set, well, canon on which it refers back to itself. i don't mind expanding that or including more things which are set in stone. but there was a perceivable shift in how the games handled this over time, becoming a lot more... bitter, it felt, towards all of these different branching ideas and concepts that, yeah, the people making them knew wouldn't necessarily be "canon" because "canon" already liked to contradict itself so much. most people weren't even sold on any one idea, and there was a much greater sense of enjoying and appreciating all the varying ideas people would come up with even if you personally didn't share them. making the characters be out of character was the real crime, because then it didn't diagetically make sense in the same way, didn't wholly fit.
(again, this is not to say fanon didn't happen and characters weren't smoothed down into a simplified personality that fit these varying fan-interpretations instead of the game itself. certainly damien love/lust was just as bad as it had ever been, and everyone loved to mangle his character into a more stereotypical "bad boy with a heart of hold" all the time. but it certainly felt less set-in-stone about it than it does now, with any deviation from the norm being considered strange and odd and even broadly shunned from the wider fandom.)
all of this is setup for establishing what the writing, lore, and characters felt like in the earlier days. the characters were the strongest part, with their relationships to each other being equally as important. the lore played it fast and loose and was far less interested in setting anything in concrete because that wasn't the important part. the lore wasn't the important part, which was what made it all the more intoxicating to think about, all the more fun to play with.
montrip is easily the biggest offender when it comes to setting everything in all-or-nothing terms and demanding absolutism from the world. broadly i blame the hitchhiker conversations for the worst of it, but i think ultimately the way they handled the entire premise of the game is where this problem stems from. it's not really an exploration in the same sense that you might explore the first game, discovering different perspectives and different people with different relationships to each other. it's an exploration in the sense of a sequel that over-explains the monster, that takes the most boring option out of all those that were possible and floating around and settles on something that was blatant, obvious, typically rejected not because of how novel it is but how trite and par for the course it is in the rest of the genre.
yeah, okay. humans know nothing about monsters and there's a "monster dimension" that exists separately from the human dimension. there's no crossover between the two of them. of course there's a big grand-scale fight between the eldritch powers that zoe used to be a part of, from which not only are slayers the main organization against them, but also the merkingdom has some horse in this race too. it's an urge to make things so universal in explaining them, in revealing connecting threads which unite everything that's ever happened in here, that makes the worldbuilding and lore immediately much more boring than it ever was before.
and it didn't have to be this way! nothing in the first game contradicts any of this too explicitly (see the above, the first game loves to contradict itself), and i would even be happy if this was basically canon but never stated or confirmed to be the big overarching everything going on underneath it all. i believe you should probably know these things about any world that you create and have them in the back of your mind. the difference is that you can know these things and keep them in mind, even focusing on things where its very relevant, and still not reveal them. this is why you have lore bibles, after all. every horror writer knows exactly how their monster works and the full underlying reason for everything that happens, but that doesn't mean the audience will see it or possess this same information too, and leaving it intentionally obscure will make far better stories.
which, this is bad enough, but it wouldn't be the breaking point for me if this was all there was.
but the worst thing of all has to be the slow decay of the very same characters that sold me on this world, this lore, this game in the first place. monster prom is nothing without the characters in it. it's a dating sim, it has nothing but characters to get you to play, and liking these characters are the entire reason anyone would pick up monster prom in the first place.
and the first game pulls this off extremely well. it's all in the tagline: be your worst self. they are, indeed, all terrible people. yes, even that character that you just thought of right now. they all have points in the game where they commit atrocities, where they kill or hurt people, where they do inexcusable things that could not be ignored in a more serious setting.
but that's the point. i think there's something very powerful in creating a character who not only do you love and love their personality and the way they interact with the world, but who also are inapologetically terrible, and to have the humor and the charisma be so good that you don't get bogged down in the "this is awful". likewise, it never feels the urge to really go out of its way to justify what's going on. this is not to say theres no discussion of if someone "deserved it", but usually there's still the sense that the joke is on them, that this is still an extreme reaction specifically for comedy and not necessarily something that can be justified. you can have damien set leonard on fire and have it feel earned, without prompting the needed reaction of what it's actually like to watch someone burn to death.
this is what sets the prank masterz ending apart from the rest of the game, and really establishes it as the first real "bad ending". because nothing that you do or happens in the prank masterz ending is any different from anything else that happens in any other run. you summon evil beings from other dimensions as a throwaway gag on how visiting one location raises your stats. you kill other people and damn them to terrible fates. you watch as body horror happens. the only difference is that, in the prank masterz ending, the laugh track doesn't play.
the rest of the game and the writing echoes this philosophy, this careful interplay of tropes that keeps everything tongue in cheek and yet sincere enough to make sure emotional beats still land when they're needed. the characters feel true to themselves and their own emotions, even when the world is extreme and excessive, when everything else runs on comedy logic.
this is also what i noticed failing first as time went on.
like i said, fanon has always existed and there's always been very specific ideas as to what characters are like in the same way fanon always flattens down characters into the same tropes over and over. scott is stupid and innocent and doesn't know what sex is. damien is violent and hot and too cool for anyone else. miranda is the idiot girl character. repeat over and over and over until you get sick of it.
but it's been an issue as time has crept on that canon has started to approach fanon and began to merge with it. now, scott is so innocent that he can't even curse. polly starts being mean to her friends and saying things that would be very hurtful to hear. the merkingdom isn't really super evil and fucked up, it's just miranda that's like that. they become simpler, easier to digest, streamlined for social media posts and mass-sharing. they become less and less subversions of existing tropes and moreso just another example of them, something else to add to the collection, not their own individual stories.
even further from this, what more complex traits they had are now stated and not shown. polly is stated to be smart and clever in a way that her party girl persona doesn't imply and to be sincerely rather down to earth with the people she cares about, but we seldom ever see this anymore unless its the game specifically trying to make a point about it, in which case it won't let her do anything that implies cleverness and moreso will just outline it in the narration. vera is stated to care for people in a very genuine and heartfelt way, but seldom will get a chance to do so, and every opportunity for her to do so to their faces is missed while she will just outright state it later. it does not feel consistent, it does not feel like any of these are intended reads of their actions. it feels like the devs have something they want to do but no idea on how to actually do so. and forget it if you want these traits to manifest in small ways that show up in unrelated moments and scenes.
the dialogue becomes harder and harder to tell between each speaker, if you are just looking at what's said and not at the pictures attached to it. the characters' distinct voices have been eroded away, so that they speak more and more like each other, relaying the same terms and ideas in the same words. perspective becomes a suggestion, instead of a must.
this is something that started back in monster camp too, as all of the endings in that game felt ultimately the same as every other ending. it's very hard to place or define the full reason why, why there feels like there's no emotional stakes nor investment, why everything feels moreso like selecting different coats of paint and trying to find all the different ending pictures rather than being interested in exploring the characters as characters.
stranger yet, the series that started with the tagline of "be your worst self" has experienced a kind of... softening, for lack of a better word? what i mentioned about being able to handle the balance between terrible people who do terrible things and the light tone of the game starts to change, as abruptly the same characters who were down with violent murder in the first game start to lose their nerve, acting more and more on more typical morality. it's one of those things that feels like it's starting to damage the tone, as abruptly it's not as absurd as it used to be, demands less suspension of disbelief which could buffer and support the rest of the setting on it. there's even a part in one of the endings in montrip which involves current-polly and current-scott looking back on their monprom selves and reacting in horror at how violent and careless their pranks are, in a way that fundamentally felt like it was undercutting and disparaging all the things that felt fun and made monprom what it was.
which is odd, really, because more and more i feel like the characters in these games like each other less and less. the friendships and genuine enjoyment of each others company that brought me to this game in the first place has gone. now they don't mention each other as much, don't care for each other's feelings and reactions as much, aren't as willing to support each other. they are more and more found on their own, relied on their own, seem to seek out contact and interaction with their own friends less and less. it feels like they're all separating out into their own worlds, but also feels like they wouldn't willingly want to interact with each other if they weren't already forced together by some other outside contrivance.
if anything, i'd compare it to every other dating sim out there, where you, the player, are the most important person in these characters' lives, and they only feel ambivalent or antagonistic towards every other character. which, again, is not why i picked up monster prom or why i liked it so much in the first place.
and it's because of this that it feels like the current state of the series has to focus on its increasingly weak worldbuilding and lore, trying to form a more serious foundation without character relationships being so tightly bound together, without the characters themselves being more developed and rich, without an aspect of absurd humor to rely on.
more and more i've noticed monprom has to rely on referencing other series to make itself funny and create humor, which, again, it's always done. it was just easier to ignore back then, if you didn't know what was being referenced, because there was always more going on in the exact same scene to bolster it and give context clues as to the setup and punchline at play. it feels like the current games are much more dependent on you knowing pop culture references in order to have any fun with it, and i'm someone who, again, is very picky in what i like or what i'll seek out. i'm not interested in a stream of references about other things that i would much rather be doing than playing through a game that feels like it hates that i like it at all, when i could, again, just be engaging with the thing that takes itself seriously and knows what it wants.
#all the care guide says is 'biomass'#monster prom#asks#vanillabeenflower#this is. so long i am so sorry.#and its still not my entire thoughts because i have so many thoughts#this is an unedited ramble tbh and im very sorry for that#i have more complaints like#how fucking snide and condescending the narration is to its own characters#which it already had but gets even worse in the later games#which is why despite loving aaravi i dont want to play moncamp at all#where a character says they like something or feel something and the narration has to be so. sarcastic about it?#like how i mentioned about how it feels like how its looking down on them as people#instead of whats probably the intended read which is#more jokingly calling them dumb in an affectionate way like how you might do with friends#and ofc theres the whole miranda rant#i hate what theyve done with the merkingdom and i HATE adrien as a concept i wont lie#just. cool. this female character is too stupid to count as a lore character. we obviously need a MALE character to fill in instead#we cant just have miranda talk about this or center any of the other female characters#and how they feel about this and whats going on for them#no we need to make up a new man to talk to instead#im. im still really bitter about it i wont lie.#like i said i could go on and get way more specific about it#i just feel like any and all emotional weight to this has died and the characters are more and more obviously actors on a stage#for your own self gratification rather than their own people living their own lives#this is so bitter and i really shouldnt put this in the main tag#i am so sorry everyone who will see my rant. but my peace must be made.#dont worry im already asking myself if im just making all this shit up myself#what if some of us liked that the characters were so mean to the player and had no qualms about aggressively rejecting us#because it gave some illusion of them being able to make their own choices and decisions in what they wanted
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BFTC isn’t really a case of terrible characterization for Jason so much as it was a terrible case of victim blaming. Like yeah, some of the things Jason did were a bit extreme compared to his “better” appearances, but that’s nothing new and pretty much true of many stories that aren’t utrh or lost days. The bad parts are are also definitely exaggerated by fans.
The story isn’t centered on Jason. Of course every other character’s description of Jason would be knee-jerk dismissive and misunderstanding, since (again) the intention was to make Jason out to be the cartoony bad guy villain. But if you look past the layers of grime they added, the bare bones of his characterization are not entirely incorrect. It’s a biased story in which their intended criticisms of Jason’s morals often fell short, so to compensate they deliberately cranked up his motivations to be more extreme and unrealistic (but one which, nonetheless got Jason’s overall thoughts and goals relatively consistent with stories that portrayed him accurately).
Yes, him shooting Damian was out of character, but granted we’re all in agreement that it was a true case of “bad writing decision”, I don’t think it’s hard to look past. The only other bit people probably complain about (which felt iffy at worst) was him being “a bit enthusiastic” at times in trying to convince Dick to become another lethal Batman (you can just as easily say Jason wouldn’t have been personally invested enough to have acted in the way he did). I don’t care though because he was probably doing it for shits and giggles, and it was funny watching him push their buttons on his spare time while being excellent at his job. Same old ‘none of them deny that he’s effective, they just can’t get behind the killing’ conflict.
Looking past the fact that Jason still had a valid point, the “he’s the bad guy” plot falls apart for other obvious reasons, which happen in the 3rd issue. It’s kind of hard to focus on how much of a bitch Jason’s being when the other characters are written in an infinitely more problematic way (which ends up happening in most “hate Jason” stories). Not only did they heavily imply Jason is a victim of SA, but the way Dick/the batfamily treats Jason about this is … horrible. Arguing that this was a case of character assassination for Bruce and Dick would be more realistic than using this story to claim Jason is a Bad Person™.
Even though Bruce does have a bad track record with his perspective on victims of SA.
Hey. Maybe listen to the living person begging you to turn it off.
Geez. I wonder why he never felt safe enough to confide in Bruce or any of the rest of them. Implying that enduring what he did made him “broken beyond repair”, that he needs to be “fixed”, and saying verbatim, “you are my greatest failure”, not “I failed you greatly”. Then deciding on behalf of Jason that a bunch of people who weren’t involved in what happened to him should all know about this so they can decide what should be done. And everyone agrees with this garbage. Unbelievable.
Aka, any sort of healing he may have tried to accomplish was ruined by you lot. When exactly am I supposed to see that Jason was evil all along.
The story collapses in on itself in the third issue because where Dick is supposed to be at his prime within the arc, he just sort of rambles about how Jason was a shitty victim and then awkwardly shifts to talking about personal growth and coming to accept his own heroic destiny.
I do resent this, but not because “Jason sucks here”. Jason’s “bad portrayal” pales in comparison to the problematic mindsets given to the other characters (namely Dick) which were framed as good-natured intentions and “tough love”. As for people who describe this as “vilifying Jason to prop up Dick” … I don’t really know what to make of that.
#my post#the way they constantly go out of their way to praise Jason’s marksmanship and overall combat skills#and how everyone he killed died because he meant for them to#and Tim and Damian weren’t critically injured. he didn’t attack them with the intention to kill and it’s obvious#not only that it’s made clear they were both wearing heavy duty kevlar#and considering Jason’s an expert on this stuff himself he knew it wouldn’t really do long term damage.#he also knows how to attack people to do any specific kind of damage. if you claim that about Bruce smashing a dude’s skull#against a brick wall and not killing him then you can claim the same thing for Jason#but of course people will always dwell on inconsequential bullshit and try to make a grand point out of it if it’s about Jason#even as they point out that it was a dumb decision made by the writers#‘Jason was violent towards children' do you want me to never shut up again about who is consistently violent with his own children?#not only was this pretty tame compared to the things Bruce has done to Jason and the other batkids#in the majority of his appearances Jason has always been deeply sympathetic and caring towards kids#hence why people always point out how this is a shitty outlier
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X-Men Evolution is definitely one of the best animated shows I've ever watched. Wolverine's anime bangs 🤌
wolverine was peak in that show he was SO shaped ESPECIALLY with the bangs and haircut and im glad he got to act as an old mentor figure to everyone ... like man you're right he IS technically everyone's grandpa he better act like one ....
#snap chats#like i just loved logan's vibe in the show 😔wish he was shorter but cant win em all right#my favorite bit will always be logan telling scott to tell jean his feelings or logan'll spill the beans for him#like thats it thats the ideal dynamic . .. to me ....#its rare i enjoy high school settings but with the x-men they made it work .. thems my kids ... or at least the og5#kinda funny how beast and warren were grown while bobby/scott/jean were kids but im not mad bout the decision#i do wish warren was around more tho .. like where you goin beautiful .... please come back :((#but yeah no i liked the decision...... if i speak on human hank i might have to put myself in jail so we're moving on#at least warren didnt turn blue in this series tho ... heh ..... im blue tho i miss him :(
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