#this is important commentary!

[antiadvil]

another fun fact about the fic i just posted is that apparently my computer doesn't recognize the british spelling (adaptor) but that red squiggle did save me from spelling it differently in two different places in the fic. oops

[lilybug-02]

Humans are terrifying to any and all that are not them.

Bug Fact: An estimated 25% of the general population actively fear spiders and insects. This fear response may not be completely due to their threat levels, but related to the human feelings of disgust when seeing an insect.

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Masterpost

[thatswhatsushesaid]

“um, you are actually supposed to hate this character with your whole chest, the text is EXTREMELY clear that he is terrible and you should not like him”

well i like him anyway. what are you going to do about it, tell my mom?

[quicksilversnails]

Took some notes from the Wild Life retrospective episode of the Imp & Skizz podcast featuring Grian because I thought the behind the scenes info was really interesting!

(3:15) The wild cards were all kept totally secret from the players (apart from Grian), with the exception of the superpowers and finale (as they required the players to set keybinds)

(3:45) The players were given files containing the required mods each week, which were named things like "creeper rain" to throw them off

(4:12) Wild cards were a combination of data packs and mods

(4:38) Grian told them not to read the folder name to avoid spoilers (which is kind of impossible), so everyone fully believed there would be creeper rain lol. Grian was saying it in jest but everyone took it seriously and were apologetic about having seen it, to which Grian told them not to worry

(6:58) Grian originally contacted a data pack dev called Brace for help with programming the wild cards. Some, like the shrinking/growing could be achieved with minecraft attributes, but the snails were too janky and unusable. Grian still liked the idea though, so he reached out to mod developers Henkelmax and Breadloaf, who designed the pathfinding/behaviour from scratch

(8:49) They had a debugging mode used to test the pathfinding of the snails, shown in the podcast and in Grian's credits

(10:09) Grian wants most of the credit to go to the development team and artists, as he was mostly in charge of ideas & organization!

(10:39) Grian's only regret with the snails was that they were too fast in session 3, leading to unexpectedly many deaths. They were apparently not so difficult to get away from during testing, but perhaps the testers were more used to them than the players were

(11:44) Grian: "We did develop to the lowest common denominator" ie. prioritizing how players would struggle over how worrying about if players would do too well

(12:56) Oli's voice for the snails was iconic. It cost Impulse a life because he intentionally stayed closer to it to hear the voice lol

(13:42) Danny was in charge of the snail models and animations

(14:11) During testing, the snails just sounded like Oli, which made it feel weird. They pitched up his voice so that it'd be less immediately recognizable

(15:18) The snails' jumping attack was meant to be clearly telegraphed: they would stop, wiggle, make a "ooeee" sound before jumping. Many players had their friendly creatures volume turned very low/off (as cows and other mobs are loud), which made this attack much less obvious for them

(16:57) The growing/shrinking had the least testing done for it, as it was the simplest conceptually and to program. This meant that the falling off of blocks due to the shrinking hitboxes wasn't anticipated

(17:55) Before the 1st session, Grian told them that he didn't think anyone would die to the wild card. Pearl's death made Grian pretty nervous, as he didn't want everyone dying too early in the season

(19:29) 6 lives were given, knowing that many of the death to the wild cards were unexpected/unfair. The intent was for ~3 lives to be allocated for wild cards, and ~3 for PvP.

(21:13) The developers were all fans of the Life Series!

(22:43) The shrinking/growing was intentionally pretty simple to ease players/viewers into the concept and build up toward more dramatic wild cards like the snails

(25:38) In the hunger episode, Grian didn't know which foods would be good

(25:58) Grian thinks that "it's unfair that Grian already knows everything" is valid criticism, but that it's important for him to be involved with the ideas. Having someone else do that is like having someone else record his videos: Life Series is his brainchild

(26:35) Well before the season began, while they were still developing the concept, Grian asked the other players for wild card ideas that would meet a few criteria. All of them ended up being unused for one reason or another. Impulse thinks his ideas were very "inside the box" because he was viewing things through what was possible in vanilla Minecraft. His idea was to have a scavenger hunt where the players would search to find a relic. The first person to find it would get a buff. Skizz's idea was for every player to turn into a random passive mob for every given interval of time. They would have to find every other player of the same mob type as them or else the whole group loses a life.

(29:44) The food qualities were weighted by the rarity of the item, so very common blocks like dirt and cobblestone would never give anything good. The other items were randomly selected

(30:23) Regular blocks/items cannot be made edible normally, so they had to circumvent that and custom code a fix for items not stacking correctly

(32:41) While a lot of players do want to win, the main priority is creating entertainment, which prioritizes playing recklessly

(33:20) The food wild card wasn't included in the finale because it would've felt like "too much". There was a higher risk of technical issues since it changed the data values of items, and Grian didn't want someone's last death to be because they ate their sword. In his mind, it was a good and fun wild card, but didn't need to be repeated in the finale. Impulse points out that they all would have collected more rare items by that point, removing the incentive to search for blocks to eat

(33:46) The wild cards in the finale were nerfed from their original sessions. The shrinking/growing had a smaller height range, the snails moved slower, etc.

(36:21) The personalized snail skins were a late addition by Danny, who made 18 skins very quickly

(36:49) Grian did not anticipate the snails becoming as popular with fans as they were. After the session released, they had the idea to release the snail merchandise, which directly funded the rest of the season

(39:20) Grian spent what "felt like every day" testing with the developers. They'd record the sessions on Tuesdays, meet up with the dev team, talk about what need to be done, testing, bugs, etc, edit and upload on Saturday, and would get a few days grace before starting again

(40:01) After the snail session, Grian was worried that the season would be very short due to all the deaths. They were considering toning down the later wild cards but ultimately didn't change them too much

(40:36) The time wild card was carefully balanced. If it had gone even a little faster, many players likely would have died because they wouldn't have time to react to threats like baby zombies or creepers.

(40:57) While sessions normally run for a variable amount of time, session 4 was hardcoded at 2 hours. Grian ended the session ~10 minutes early, just after they hit max speed, because he felt like things were getting dicey

(42:46) When the wild card first activates, it looks a lot like the server had frozen or crashed. Grian told the players before the session started that it would look like the game was broken, but that it isn't broken. Skizz tabbed out anyway and missed the beginning 😔

(43:30) Having the rain start just as the wild card began was a good visual indicator of time slowing down. This was a suggestion from the dev team (probably Brace)

(44:41) Impulse and Grian "cheesed" the end of the session by going branch mining. Grian wanted players to take advantage of the wild cards (eg. mining quickly, helping to kill someone), and not have them just be an annoyance.

(45:30) Keeping the client and server-side time stay in sync was challenging. The sky's motion was changed to be smoother on client-side. The players were also not as fast as the server (around 2x faster), the server was going faster than that, and the time of day was even faster

(46:56) The sounds were pitched up/down based on the speed to add to the effect

(27:46) In testing, if the players were made 7x faster, it would be basically unplayable, which was why it was capped at 2x speed. This made mobs very dangerous, as they were now faster than players and could catch up to you and kill you easily

(49:01) On several occasions, they had to extend the fuse duration of creepers to make them more fair. In the time session, their speed was only increased by ~10%

(49:39) Usually, Grian was the one to test the wild cards and notice when things like creeper speed would be an issue, since he was the one with experience making videos

(50:50) A challenge with balancing wild cards is accounting for the playstyles of so many players: reckless players like Scar and Skizz, "kind and gentle" players like Bigb who would stay off to the sides, and "the sweat squad" (Scott, Impulse) who play very cautiously

(52:48) Trivia Bot was the only wild card that was not planned in advance. Grian was struggling to come up with a wild card for that episode, and wanted to have a wild card available that could give people lives in case many people died to early wild cards without it feeling cheap.

(53:33) Trivia seemed a little boring on its face, so presentation was essential

(54:34) This one made Grian the most stressed due to all the moving parts involved in making it (coding and pathfinding mostly by Henkelmax, visuals by Hoffen, audio/music, questions)

(55:08) Trivia Bot's design was based on Grumbot and Mettaton from Undertale. Hoffen drew concept art shown in the video

(58:32) They show Trivia Bot's custom animation for becoming a snail and it's really cool

(59:12) The music was the most stressful part of the project. Grian spent 2-3 days looking through Epidemic Sounds for a Trivia Bot theme song and couldn't find anything good. He commissioned Zera @hopepetal for a theme song, which is played in the podcast. However, Grian realized he needed a full audio package, so he commissioned Oli late in development, who created the final soundtrack and many audio variations

(1:01:38) Grian wants to send appreciation for everyone who worked on the project, even if their work ultimately went unused

(1:02:58) Skizz was happy to give back however he could by staying on standby in the final episode as a zombie, as the players were able to "reap all the benefits" of the hard work of the development team

(1:05:21) Grian didn't know any of the trivia questions beforehand, which were done by fans of the series. The goal was for ~50% of the questions to be answered correctly, which was approximately met

(1:07:11) Players couldn't get questions about themselves because it would be too easy. This would encourage players to leave their bot, allowing other players to mess with them

(1:07:57) Grian felt a little left out from the discovery element of the wild cards, and decided to mess with Scar by hiding his bot. He wasn't expecting Scar to die from it, and could tell that he was genuinely a little upset by it. Grian felt bad about it, which led to a genuine in-game alliance between them

(1:12:32) Grian was very close to letting Trivia Bot give lives as rewards, but decided it would feel too cheap

(1:14:38) Mob swap was slightly toned down, with more camels and sniffers spawning

(1:15:07) Evokers didn't drop totems anymore. Instead, there was a minuscule chance a warden or wither would spawn, which would drop a totem if killed. Grian was a little disappointed that the warden got cheesed in the end

(1:17:45) Having the mobs start passive and turn hostile was mostly for the presentation, building anticipation, and so players could predict where mobs would spawn and react accordingly, making things feel less unfair

(1:20:32) There was no superpower made for Skizz (or Mumbo presumably)

(1:20:38) The superpowers were another late addition. There was a large design doc where Grian created all the powers, which were handed over to Henkelmax and completed over 4 days

(1:21:42) Grian avoided superpowers involving strength, that could cause someone to die easily. Most of the powers were social or movement-based, which couldn't be used for offence as easily

(1:22:25) Some powers were randomly assigned, others weren't. Impulse's was random. Cleo's, Bigb's, Lizzie's, Grian's were assigned.

(1:24:25) Grian gave himself the mimic because it could easily backfire (like in Grian's fall damage death), and because it would've been confusing for a player who wasn't aware of the other powers. They likely would've spent the episode just figuring out how everything worked and not actually using the power to its best ability

Lots of discussion about the superpowers and how they interacted in the episode itself, go watch if you're interested :)

(1:33:38) Talk on how the series "standard" rules evolved since 3rd Life. There was no keep inventory, and no restrictions on enchanting levels or potions, which created slow or unbalanced fights

(1:36:23) 3rd Life was designed to be an experimental series, which made Grian eager to improve it. For example, some people just weren't dying in 3L, leading to the boogeyman in LL, and so on

(1:37:17) The goal with the seasons isn't to one-up the previous one, but to create a different experience every time, which keeps things engaging for the creators

(1:38:31) At the end of each session, Grian would ask the group if they had fun and how they felt about the wild cards. According the Skizz, the answer was "a resounding yes"

(1:39:08) Grian had moments throughout the season where he personally felt like things didn't go well for him, and was anxious for the rest of the group's episodes. Things worked out while editing the raw footage, though. His issues were never with the wild cards themselves, but his own actions (traps not working, spending too long branch mining), but would always find funny moments in his footage

(1:43:41) Everyone in the Life Series cast genuinely likes and genuinely respects everybody else in the group. This allows them to make the show and get mad at each other, because they know it's all just in-character

(1:44:50) It'd be hard to top Wild Life in spectacle, and Grian doesn't want to start an arms race with himself. The next season could potentially be closer to 3rd Life, but Grian's not sure yet. For Grian, Wild Life was the most enjoyable

(1:45:20) Grian: "As long as people keep enjoying [the Life Series] then I'd love to keep doing it"

(1:49:35) With the finale, Grian knew how the wild cards played out the previous sessions and was able to adjust them

(1:49:56) Grian's goal was to create safe chaos where everyone knew what was happening and wouldn't die to them, which didn't go entirely to plan. The snails were 60% of their original speed and people still died

(1:51:03) Grian made a precise timeline of when each wild card would start/stop, it wasn't randomized.

(1:54:16) All the superpowers were randomized, with Bdubs' power being removed from circulation because it didn't have much use in a finale setting

(1:56:10) It was important for Grian that in the final moments, the wild cards were removed, so there were no interruptions. The timing worked out well because there were a few people left and it ended within ~10 minutes (this implies that the change wasn't based on # of players alive, as people had speculated based on Gem's death)

(1:58:48) The players all randomly switched to zombie skins throughout the session to mess with people on NameMC. Well-played :)

[bodyfrmabalcony]

do u ever wonder if jason is an organ donor

[stark-lord]

Constantly plagued with thoughts of Edwin now knowing he enjoys being courted and Charles (compulsive charmer) with a whole new arsenal up his sleeve (laser focus on Monty’s whole deal)

“I mean, my smile is prett-y convincing” yeah yeah okay I can see where this is heading. Outlook not so good (for me)

[nenoname]

this is what fiddlestan is to me

[honeyspotpie]

Hey thinking about how in both timelines all Nick ever wanted was to make his father proud. Adapting and modeling his personality after his father, be it Glenn or Jodie. Because the only thing he ever wanted was his father's love. Thinking about how we can assume that Glenn did the same thing to appease Bill. Thinking about the fact that Taylor also wanted his father's love but never changed or remodeled his own personality and interests to receive said love. Thinking about the fact that he realized that his own sense of self is far more important than receiving artificial feelings of pride from a man who didn't even bother to get to know him. He finally broke the cycle. Yeah

[loverrrrrr17]

Can we talk about how America Ferrera delivered this insanely beautiful and impactful monologue about the hardships of being a woman. One of which is the fact that women have to be accountable for men’s actions which she says herself is insane.

And yet.

Here we are. Having to explain to men that the Barbie movie is not anti-men or sexist or meant to make men hate themselves.

We have to, yet again, be accountable for what men feel, and explain that, oh no we don’t hate you! We didn’t mean to upset you! Because the whole point was lost on them.

And now instead of my dash being filled with the magnificence of Barbie and the discoveries she’s made or even just the fact that Ken starts taking control of his life, I am instead somehow subjected to discourse after discourse of people needing to break down the movie so men will stop complaining about it.

I just. Wow. Being a woman. It always comes back to this, doesn’t it. And I hate it. Because we deserve more honestly.

[mozart-the-meerkitten]

Been rewatching the early Marvel movies and apparently this is the time of my life where I just get re-obsessed with characters I love so here's some random thoughts about Loki/Thor the Dark World:

Why. In the world. In the universe. Did Odin not ask Loki ANY questions when Loki was brought before him for judgement in Dark World? Like, at the BAREST MINIMUM he should have asked where Loki got an ARMY, the last time he'd seen Loki was when Loki fell off the Bifrost and then he vanished for a year and showed back up with the glowstick of destiny and an army that Thor says "are not of Asgard or any world known". ODIN. WHY ARE YOU NOT ASKING QUESTIONS ABOUT THIS?!

Like, we are aware that Odin is. partial to giving his kids harsh punishments. He obviously doesn't care about Loki's motives. Like, a good parent would look at their kid who disappeared for a year and then came back insane and be like "hey so what happened to you when you disappeared? you didn't get captured by a super powerful being and tortured into submission did you?" (Thanos tortured Loki I have SOURCES and I WILL cite them upon request) But even a bad parent who was a decent king would wonder how their kid suddenly got an ARMY out of NOWHERE and yet Odin never questions this at all. Even Thor in Avengers at least asks Loki "Who showed you this power? Who controls the would-be king?" (which just shows Thor would honestly be a better king than Odin tbh) but Odin is just like "nah this is not important. imprisoning my son for life and telling him how worthless I think he is is more important in this moment."

I wonder if she'd had more time if maybe Frigga would have been able to get Loki to tell her what happened and if maybe that was part of her goal of visiting him (beyond just, you know, actually being a decent parent who cares about her child and wanting to keep him company) because we know she's clever (she's smarter than Odin good gravy, is there like an age difference between them is he going senile or something) so PERHAPS she thought if she talked to Loki she could puzzle out what had happened to him and find out if there was, you know, a potential universal threat Asgard should be aware of. And like, if she had found out anything what was Odin going to say? He can't actually punish his wife in any meaningful way (lol imagine he tries and she just grabs her two grown sons and leaves, help xD) especially if she found out IMPORTANT INFORMATION that he SHOULD have discovered on his own.

This does kind of highlight an underlying problem with Odin, where he seems to think that Asgard is invincible and is, well, lazy about defending it. Like, I've seen posts about how Loki letting the Frost Giants into Asgard in the first movie is actually him not just showing that Thor is not ready to be king, but also demonstrating that Asgard has dangerous holes in its defenses. Because yeah, Loki can HIDE HIMSELF FROM HEIMDALL and sneak into Asgard. Heck, he can sneak OTHERS into Asgard while he's not even WITH them. That- that is a security threat, because if anyone BESIDES Loki could do that then Asgard could easily be invaded and- wait a second, that happens in The Dark World! The Dark Elves hide themselves from Heimdall and sneak an invasion force into Asgard! Destroying it's defenses and KILLING ITS QUEEN. Like, my goodness, do you think Loki is the only person with these abilities? Are you even trying Odin? At all?

TLDR; Odin is an idiot for not questioning Loki about the Chitauri/where he was for a year between Thor and Avengers, not to mention an awful father and an incompetent king.

[divorceblogger]

she's so funny

[lord-squiggletits]

It's hilarious to me that someone actually asked/JRO actually confirmed via word of god that Tarn tortured Pharma while he was at Delphi bc like. Fucking yeah??? How else do you think Pharma went from "for most of his life, he was a good doctor" to stark raving mad? What else did people think Tarn, fanatical Decepticon who leads a group of professional murderers, would do to Pharma, Autobot stationed on DJD territory, to make him comply with the deal?

I get that sometimes people just want confirmation from the author for them to go "no yeah your theories are right" but on the other hand I don't understand asking for word of god confirmation on things that are obviously canon if you just think about it for a little bit

[its-the-rules]

this was his immediate reaction to being shown a star wars (max rebo) figure btw

[nenoname]

(probably) All the times the nickname Sixer is used for Ford by Stan and Bill

it came a long way from only being used twice in the actual show

(book of bill count here)

seven times by stan (EDIT: eight actually forgot about the in-character commentary)

EDIT: "Y'know, I suppose Sixer might be able to make some sorta drill that could get me back down to the dinosaur cave with some real attractions." - Land Before Swine Commentary

eight by bill

once by the hand witch

and once by ford himself

[azathothweirdo]

Don't you love it when people make up pointlessly complicated theories because the themes of the story have gone completely over their head 👌

It's just really weird when aoex is not like subtle or secretive about it. I was seeing people unable to comprehend children are sometimes accidents a week ago. It's funny but also a frustrating confusion because it ignores the strong story line of how Shiro became their dad. He didn't need to be related to them biologically, he became their father because he loved them. He wasn't perfect, he failed, but he raised two really good boys who are growing into good men. They both just lost their way a little due to his death, but they'll work out. That is such a much stronger and powerful message than Shiro secretly being their biodad.

[the-nysh]

Oh sweet! Looks like Trimax vol4's when Vash actually starts calling Meryl by name on a regular basis

As before--for context, he'd typically used the more distant, but still respectful 'insurance-san' to refer to the girls, but Trigun vol2 (right before Fifth Moon) was the first time he ever said her name so seriously, which was a very Big Deal to her, and their last exchange for 2 years.

That upon their hospital reunion scene in Trimax vol3, genuinely happy and relieved but still awkwardly not quite knowing what to say to each other after all this time, she bonks him for trying his 'old' way of address--denied! No more of that please; say her name!

So aha, here in Trimax vol4, after Zazie captures Meryl as a 'weakness' to bait him and things get personal...there it is. Now he's quite direct and no-nonsense about it! Surprising Milly and shocking even his opponents (in a 'whoa wtf, he behaves nothing like Knives!' kind of way by jumping out of a window for her) with his immediate 'cut the bullshit; I don't care about your games, I'm only here for Meryl; give her back' >:[ attitude!

(For reference, Milly generally calls Meryl 'sempai' while Wolfwood calls everybody nicknames, referring to the girls by their big/small heights. So Vash asserting a First Name basis for her is pretty significant.)

And just to check if Vash continues using her name, on his Important Mission to find her, even all alone, no matter what (Trimax vol5 spoilers)...

Oh yes he does. (Face to face now.) She's that important to him.