#they kinda drop the ball

[misc-obeyme]

The way that im approaching the "father's love" thing is just that like. Lots of people with abusive parents have a really complicated relationship with them bc, unless they're cartoonishly evil, there are probably SOME positive memories associated with that parent. Since the fall is more of a fresh wound in NB, Lucifer probably hasn't processed his emotions around it so he's still trying to navigate his contradictory feelings towards his father. (Thus, he's a lot easier to manipulate in that way. From Father's pov, it's in his best interest for Lucifer to not hate him since he's in a more powerful position than expected, so I think he set this up while intending from the beginning to "rescue" him.)

Do I think that's what the devs had in mind? No. But it's the story I'm telling myself lmao

Ah, anon, you're right, I keep forgetting how recent the fall is in NB. Lucifer hasn't had a lot of time to deal with how he really feels. And he likely does have some lingering love for Father... and that would make it easier for him to forgive Father now, most likely.

Certainly the devs never have this level of nuance in mind. I don't think the writers put in anywhere near as much thought as we do when it comes to this kind of thing. It could very well just have been oh wouldn't it be cool if Lucifer transformed into an angel at this part? Sometimes they just get on my nerves with their nonsense lol.

Anyway, it does help to think about it in the context of Lucifer's recent move away from his Father. I suspect it's hardest at the beginning, when you haven't been separated from that abuse for very long. Then to have them come around and be like I forgive you? Yeah, okay. I can see why Lucifer might be willing to accept that.

Though I think it's interesting because Lucifer wasn't like okay yeah I'm ready to go back. He's still saying the Devildom is home. So Father didn't succeed if he's expecting Lucifer to come back on his own.

So maybe Father was tapping into those fond memories of Lucifer's, but it still wasn't enough.

I kinda like that, actually. Lucifer's still recovering, he's allowed to be a weirdo about Father's love for a bit, I suppose. Though I don't think I personally would be able to hear him say stuff like that and just let it go. I'd be like listen, I understand that you're going through it right now, but are you sure that's how you should be feeling about all of this?

Lucifer frustrates me because he always seems to be so convinced that his way is the right way. And I want him to consider that perhaps he's wrong, at least about this.

[iisthings]

I think all Leos would follow each other around like ducks

Mutant Mayhem Leo follows Rise Leo because omg he's so confident and doesn't get stressed and is so chill how does he do it?????

Rise Leo follows 2012 Leo because omg he's such a good leader, splinter respects him and his brother's listen to his plans and he brings so much value to the team how does he do it?????

2012 Leo follows 2007 Leo because omg he went on a solo training mission to become a better leader maybe I could get some tips! (don't)

2007 Leo follows 2003 Leo because omg he's LITERALLY 2003 LEO THAT'S SO COOL

You get the picture.

Also these are all the first impressions I think they'd have of each other not how they actually are!

[dinoserious]

light flygon design noodling from a few weeks ago

[sittinginsunflowers]

I can’t stop thinking about how every parental figure in Kristen’s life has failed her by prioritizing their other kids.

Obviously, her bio parents are racist assholes who raised her in a fundamentalist cult, and kicked out at 15, all because her parents were offended she was “taking her friends’ side over theirs.” Which she didn’t, what she did was ask for answers and tell them that Daybreak tried to kill her but they refused to believe her. Instead, they chose to make her homeless so she doesn’t spread the idea that her parents don’t know everything. Two years later, and they’re still doing the same thing at the diner.

Then there’s Jawbone and he’s Tracker’s guardian, and unlike Adaine, she didn’t get a speech about how he’d take her in, or what their relationship was, she just moved in with her girlfriend, and he was the adult of the house. And now that she and Tracker have broken up, he and Sandra Lynn don’t seem to have made the time to talk to her about what that means for her place in this family. Adaine came back from spring break to gifts for every birthday she had without Jawbone and adoption papers. Kristen’s mail from her school was going to her parents’ house when she lives with the guidance counselor.

Then, there’s the fact that when Sandra Lynn and Jawbone moved in together, she took on a role she clearly wasn’t ready for, as she was still repairing her relationship with Fig. Kristen had to be the one to finally snap her out of her self destructive spiral with Garthy and then Sandra Lynn asked her to keep it a secret. Meaning she wouldn’t be able to tell Tracker, the only person who has been meeting her emotional and physical safety needs, above just giving her a room to live in. (And we know this is true because part of the reason Nara and Tracker are together is because Nara doesn’t need those things from Tracker). And yes, Sandra Lynn apologizes to the whole group, as she should, for putting their home in jeopardy, which is a massive step. But she never talks to Kristen about putting her between the 3 people responsible for keeping her out of her parent’s house.

So Sandra Lynn calls Fig, “her only daughter in the world,” and Jawbone is only legally responsible for Adaine and Tracker, and neither of them, nor any other adult, has asked if Kristen feels safe or if she’s okay. Like I’m sorry, who the fuck is taking care of the cleric who’s god and teacher died in the same year, is going through deprogramming from a cult that wants her back, her first breakup, seeing her estranged parents and siblings again, and now being expelled on zero grounds despite working herself to the bone to make sure her party gets to go to college?

[crimescrimson]

Albert Wesker in Resident Evil Remastered (2002)

[mekha-draws]

boyo! Joule is my second bday hatch of this year and dang what can I say? he's so fucking lovely to me I had to draw him eventually lol

[theswedishpajas]

Magma art dump of random gay Stanley things (Featuring me! Go figure!)

Anything that isn’t in some kind of blue or yellow is by one of my friends

[tcfactory]

I know we technically have a canon look for Balduran as a combination of people peeling the hood off him in the flashback, the mural and the statues (and it was one of the things people gave me shit about when I initially tried to be more involved in the fandom), but I have a very 'it's boring so I'm ignoring it' reaction to it. Because come on, the man was a sailor and adventurer, are you really telling me he sat still long enough for people to get that good a likeness of him for his statues? Go wild, I say!

So here's the thought process behind my take on Balduran:

Probably looked quite ordinary as a baseline, like any other local guy. A little darker to begin with, he's going to spend his entire life at sea, let the guy have some melanin so he won't burn like a sad piece of toast. Has an uneven tan whenever he returns from a voyage, you know how that goes, no time to laze around and sunbathe for the sake of aesthetics when there's sailing to be done. His skin is windbitten and freckled, with the odd scar here and there. He can probably tell you where each scrape came from and he's remarkably consistent about it for someone who's making up at least half of these anecdotes, because "I slipped on a puddle when I tried to sneak up on Ansur for a kiss and headbutted him instead" is much too embarrassing to share in public.

A little older, at least forties, and has all the little signs to show for it - wrinkles (laugh lines!!) and white hairs, a lifetime of adventures tattooed all over his skin - maybe only in places where he can cover them up when making a public appearance, but this is a man who got tempted away on adventures over and over even when he already had a very good thing going on in Baldur's Gate, you can't tell me he wouldn't have the sea etched into every available inch of his skin.

His hair would be a very nice dark brown, if only he would stay out of the harsh sun for a few months. As it is, his hair is usually sun bleached and the texture leaves something to be desired too except for the times when he's grounded for an extended period of time for some reason or another. Probably wears it in a style popular around port, too, because he might be a high-charisma liar (rip Emperor, ceremorphosis tanked his charisma into the single digits), but he isn't ashamed of being a sailor. Has his ears pierced, but probably only puts in his earrings when he's on shore. I like the thought of him being like quarter-elf, with his ears just slightly pointy.

In general, he's the sort of man you could lose at the dock because he wouldn't look out of place at all. Especially if he takes his shirt off. Just one sailor among all the others, nothing to see here. You wouldn't clock him as The Balduran unless you knew or you saw him on the Wandering Eye.

Not how the city wanted to depict their founder, honestly. So there was some uuuuuh creative license employed when they made the statues. Because while it's all fun and games to have a local hero whose modus operandi is, at least part of the time, "I roll to seduce the sea monster and sneak away with the treasure while it's too busy making a fool of itself", it's a little awkward when he 100% looks that way too. That, sir, is a scoundrel, a trickster, an adventurer. A man who can say "my lady, I can't marry you because I have a dragon husband back in port and he's terribly jealous" and people don't doubt for a moment that he's telling the truth, because he looks the part. Of course Balduran kisses dragons, have you heard what other kinds of crazy nonsense he gets up to? Anyway...

[theboyskisser]

Ngl it's funny to me how there's a bottle blonde religious trauma gay named Ezekiel and he isn't getting torn TF up by fandom on the regular lmao

[cdroloisms]

hot take: las nevadas four does not queue up a c!q redemption arc. las nevadas five makes some interesting forays in the direction of comeuppance but fails to make the narrative link between that comeuppance and, ultimately, any change. the reason for this is because the prison arc is inadequately integrated into ln4 and ln5. (i'm writing an ln5 essay rn and this is my prompt for you to join me in hell)

i think people who think LN was heading towards a c!quackity redemption arc were tripping fr 😭 like it's not that i would oppose the idea of c!quackity like, even heading in a different direction. but he didn't? he literally didn't. his interactions with c!slime were never examples of c!quackity realizing the dark course he was taking and changing his ways--if anything, they were a reason to double down? he makes a literal slime army in LN5 like. a literal slime army.

i feel like it comes from this misconception that c!Quackity's whole deal revolves around how he ~cares~ for people, and when he felt betrayed and whatever by the fiances and such then his heart froze over and he went for ambition instead. and therefore learning to care for something can unfreeze his heart and make him good again, or something (<- oversimplified). but c!quackity's deal isn't that he closed his heart off to love? like c!quackity's issue is that he's terminally insecure and therefore kinda terminally self-centered--even in c!karlnapity, he was frequently portrayed as being insecure as hell about c!karlnap and preferred when the attention was on him. when c!karl was freaking the fuck out at him in LN4, his immediate reaction to c!karl like having literal memory loss was to scream at him.

all of this is way oversimplified for the record but it's like.

like, c!quackity and c!slime isn't about redemption as much as it is giving c!quackity an opportunity. and what we largely see, honestly, is c!quackity caring about c!slime...and also grooming him to be like, the successor of his country, seeing him as something malleable that he could use to create another version of himself. it's not that c!quackity was necessarily seeking to harm c!slime, but was he being manipulative? i mean, yeah???

and yeah, for sure, LN4 and especially LN5 heavily suffer from a lack of the prison being properly addressed. the prison and c!dream in specifics haunts c!quackity throughout the entirety of LN--any conclusion to this arc no matter what direction c!Quackity took needed a proper resolution to the prison imo ???

like i don't hate purpled's revenge quest, but bringing it back to purpled-quackity-slime Again in LN5 after the conclusion of LN4 made that all hit a lot less hard. i liked the c!punz scene tbh and i also liked c!dream's ditching las nevadas, but that also feels a lot less impactful when he had like, five lines and barely a confrontation (fuck the internet connection there FR). like, c!Quackity rejecting change isn't bad in itself, but it feels like later parts of las nevadas emphasize his decisions less in favor of what's done to him, and what's done to him doesn't feel enough like a consequence of his own actions. furthermore, so much about Las Nevadas and the Prison (the revive book in specifics) has everything to do with self-centered ambition moreso than revenge, and it feels like that in particular gets kinda poorly addressed? like, the deal with c!Purpled doesn't have to do with revenge, he's not really taking revenge on Purpled--he is, however, ambitious and doing everything that he thinks will make Las Nevadas Great, and the whole thing with him still continuing doggedly on LAS NEVADAS!! even after alluvthat is much more of a commentary on his relationship with power and ambition than on revenge.

this is kinda scattered (like the LN finale LMAO!) but yeah. las nevadas is literally created as a response to imprisoning c!dream, the beginning of this arc happens in parallel to the beginning of his visiting the prison, so having c!dream play as small as a role as he did in the latter two streams really ends up hurting the arc as a whole when so much emphasis had been on c!quackity and ... violence? both outside of the prison and inside it. having c!quackity come to terms with the fact that he does in fact suck fell kinda flat without properly addressing the ways that he actually does suck...? anyway yeah not the best essay kat dorry

[buttfrovski]

they should've done more research b4 making henrietta cishet

[front-facing-pokemon]

[sieglinde-freud]

wish intsys did a little more owain and his brand cuz as far as i remember, and i could be very wrong its been a while since i last binged supports/dlc dialogue, but it’s mostly used for lissa and ophelia’s characters rather than his own which definitely makes sense for owain’s purpose as a comic relief character, but i wish it did more for him as a person. specifically the fact that he loses it as odin, and while i think that you could say he was sad about it, which i think he probably was, i think he was probably more relieved in a sense? not in a “FUCK the brand of the exalt i HATE it” kind of way obviously, but in a “i’m finally free from the expectations from my heritage” kind of way you know? cuz he does admit to having feelings of inferiority and in adequacy to chrom and lucina, which he probably wouldnt feel as much if he wasnt connected to them by blood. i feel like, for him, his brand could be both a symbol of pride but also ineptitude. and once he’s in a world without lucina and chrom and without the mark on his arm (???? i think) he might feel a little more free.

[goldensunset]

gaaaaah i’m just so so so obsessed with the transition from ‘shy and soft’ to ‘self-aware and absolutely furious that he isn’t the main character but refuses to give up and acknowledge that without a fight’. like i think it’s neat that kieran kinda leans on the fourth wall in some places (his critical hit dialogue in the last fight against him having him be like ‘what, are you the hero of this story or something?!’) bc it’s been demonstrated how he loves stories and him seeing himself as a character in one (the whole ogerpon thing and him directly comparing himself to her as a misunderstood victim)

just. it’s so tasty. how he ends up being the toxic bully himself instead and doesn’t realize that for so long bc he saw himself as the hero here. it hurts so bad that we had to put him in his place bc he was out of control but it’s such a delightful tragedy. like i have never felt so bad about being the main character before. i’ve never wanted an npc to punch me so badly

[iniyaas]

oh found the kind of shit Kiyora-Kaiser duo pulled in his Magnus goal lmao

(tho fictional, kiyora made the ball stop midgame, so can we give kiyora proper credit for that wonderful assist please??)

[reliquiaen]

i've slept on it. here's my alien romulus review

Alien Romulus

Starting with the callbacks and references to other movies, I have to say: I don’t tend to enjoy that, personally. It makes it feel like the movie wasn’t confident in itself enough to be able to stand on its own and the references often come across as a crutch. That said, the only reference in Romulus that felt gratuitous to me was when Andy saved Rain and said “stay away from her, you bitch”, but that moment was cool enough, and I liked Andy enough, that I just enjoyed it. Plus it’s a cool line and David Jonsson’s delivery was perfectly in character so it came off more fun than insecure.

The set design was very visually similar to Alien and Alien: Isolation and the opening scene with the ship coming online was, if not a shot-for-shot recreation, a clear reference to the opening of Alien. This could’ve felt like a bad way to start the movie – being too similar to something else runs the risk of failing to establish its own identity – but frankly, it was so nice to see the same chunky tech tying everything together, and it utilised the atmosphere super well to set up that creeping, slow terror, especially with the combination of close-up shots on the computer screen and the wide, empty shots of space – it perfectly juxtaposed the two scariest parts of the Alien franchise: the claustrophobic interiors where anything can be hiding, and the vast uncaring space outside. A lot of the shots inside the Romulus station were clearly inspired by the game Isolation, too, but not to the movie’s detriment. Isolation was fucking terrifying  and the movie capitalised on that nicely. There was a shot looking down an escalator that launched me back to playing Isolation and the fear of not knowing what was around the corner, or up the hallway, or in the next room and the movie used these hallway shots to the same effect.

Ian Holm’s cameo was fun. The special effects and CGI were not. Obviously they couldn’t get him back (rest in peace), and they wanted to use the same android model for effect, and it worked! But yeah, yikes, the CGI was bad, especially at first. You can say the slippery way his face looked like his skin was sliding around was an artistic choice to show how damaged the android’s body was but I don’t believe that for a second. What I will say is that they used this new android, Rook, really well. His explanation for what happened to the xenomorph they found (and I have no idea how that xenomorph was within the wreckage of the Nostromo when Ripley ejected it from the Narcissus pretty far away from the Nostromo and also after it had self-destructed but whatever) and, importantly, WHY THEY WANTED IT. Oh my god, the vague “they want it for the military uses” is super annoying and that was the only logic we’ve ever gotten about why Weyland-Yutani was so interested in the alien in like forty years. But the set-up and pay-off of this reveal was beautiful. We saw in the opening scenes of the movie that life on other worlds was hard and dangerous and thousands die and people are exploited and it’s horrible. And then giving Weyland-Yutani this “we actually want to help people adapt to harsher environments” as a perfectly noble goal that got twisted by capitalism, but this movie is set like… in the in-between. Before the capitalist dogs ruin the science. This movie is the beat before the fall and that’s… so great. So different.

This reveal did two things very nicely: it tied together the stupid and ridiculous genealogy crap from Prometheus and Covenant (I don’t like those movies and I won’t pretend to) with the other, better movies. If we disregard David’s attempts at playing god (and believe me, I do my best at this every day) then this whole ordeal with the alien was simply that they are highly adaptive due to the black goo (chemical [stupid designation here] – 15) and the company wants to use that to help humanity (be easier to exploit) survive in space. Makes sense! Alien mutations are a nasty by-product, unfortunately, just need to perfect the science.

The main thing that bothered me with this movie was the… white man alien at the end. It was very inspired by the Newborn in Resurrection which I also did not like. (I enjoyed the CONCEPT of the Newborn, but the visuals were just… not great to my mind, not even in the satisfying body horror kind of way, either, just… kind of ugh and meh and wtf did you do to his nose?) This was the same but reversed: a human gives birth to a part-xeno-part-human child and faces the consequences. (And why did Kay even inject herself anyway, she was going into cryo she didn’t need it, she’s just fucking stupid.) Given what happened to the rat in that box, I was expecting (and hoping) Kay would have some sort of horrendous lumpy mutation burst out of her skin and ruin her but leave her alive in this Scorn kind of way (trapped in a fleshy and dysfunctional body, aware but unable to do anything, knowing you did this to yourself and also that you have no way to revert it, perhaps even hurting those close to you and having to watch that happen, helpless to stop it). But no. Birthing an acidic vag-pod was… fun and distressing, obviously, but I didn’t find the slenderman looking white-boy very scary at all. It landed squarely in the uncanny valley, for sure, but idk the design just didn’t do it for me. And I understand the fun part of this: the horror of childbirth (Kay had a lot of that going on, after watching Navarro give birth from her chest and DIE, she was not having a very nice pre-childbirth experience), the visceral rejection she felt, the child eating the mother, that was all very nice, very intense, loved it. (I’m one of those weirdoes who thinks that the predalien turning that lady’s pregnancy into alien: quintuplets was extremely fun and I’ve always wanted to see that expanded upon.) But Kay herself didn’t seem to have any adverse reaction to being injected with the goo, only her baby. I wanted her to have a negative reaction, I wanted Rain to have to face her down, I wanted a little of that ‘Romulus killed his brother to found Rome’ energy here. (And it would’ve tied in nicely with what Rook said about humans having too many emotions and not wanting to believe the best choice is to kill someone. Make Rain face that herself!!)

Otherwise this movie was a fucking masterclass and I enjoyed every second. The visuals, the sound design, the practical effects, the – and I cannot stress this enough – the CAMERWORK. The slow rolls of the camera to mimic the zero gravity? The close-ups on the horribleness so we definitely don’t miss a second of what’s going on? Outstanding. The grungy, drippy, dampness of everything was 10/10, the alien having a vaginal-themed chrysalis (thank you, I’ve waited years for this moment), the cattle prod going into it and coming out melted? Yes, oh my god, yes. The tail spine emerging slowly? And piercing back? OH MY GOD, YES!

The inherent horror of watching your brother become a monster and having to save him from himself? Andy’s part in this movie was so fucking stellar I’m in love with it. David Jonsson absolutely stole the show for me. The symbolism of it all; if you drink from the capitalist wellspring, you become a monster who doesn’t care about anyone, not even those who you counted as family. The moment when he clapped his hand over his ear to stop Rain from removing the chip? How many people have to deal with family members who have drunk the Kool-Aid and won’t hear different? This was that on screen.

And I have to say, this was the best cast of characters an Alien movie has had in… idk a while. They actually felt like distinct people with some personality which was refreshing considering Covenant had a bland bunch of faceless people I couldn’t tell apart and didn’t care about anyway. This movie knocked that one out of the water, it’s really a night-and-day comparison. Even though none of the characters in Romulus had super-fleshed out backstories, they were all going through something and had distinct arcs: Rain and Andy struggling to get off-world and not end up like their parents, Kay’s pregnancy being a secret, Bjorn losing his mum to Android Logic™, Tyler feeling like he has the burden of keeping them all alive and together and failing. Navarro died first, she had the least characterisation, and I don’t mind that, but she at least had on-screen presence and was memorable for what happened. Her last words “don’t let me die” whispered in such a pitiful way because she knows she’s going to die but that’s not really what she’s asking, she doesn’t want to be forgotten. Like. That’s heartbreaking. And she WAS memorable because of it, not just as the pilot or the one who did the cool thing with the xray light.

The zero-grav scene where Rain shot all the xenos in the hallway was extremely fun and novel and NEW, having to navigate through a maze of acid blood wasn’t just a cool visual, it tied nicely into the themes: they were navigating the metaphorical acid maze that Weyland-Yutani left behind. And oh, the continual conflict of going back for someone versus saving yourself? That was good. Bjorn leaving everyone else behind to save Navarro, Tyler watching Kay get alien-napped and then going back for her later, Rain going back for Andy directly into the alien nest. Bravo.  

Overall, I had a blast with this movie, it was really good. Definitely the best Alien movie in a long time. I felt it missed a few opportunities, especially at the end, I appreciate the effect they were going for with the Offspring creature but it felt like a miss to me when they could’ve done something fun with turning Kay into a monster and continuing the thread about humans trying to save each other. Maybe the Offspring will grow on me with a rewatch, like how the Newborn did, but eh. Was a good movie regardless.