#this is. technically a spoiler. but it doesn't have context so i think it's fine

[mysteryshack-hrt-liveblog]

"You think you have the luxury to stop?"

gravity falls nier replicant au. because fuck you, that's why. heart emoji

reblogs appreciated‼️

[once-a-traya]

i've been thinking a lot about the way kingdom come: deliverance ii structures its romances. it's interesting, in the sense that they all feel bespoke - short fling or long term or in-between, there's no hard and fast system that applies to all characters. most games with romances stick to a rhythm: you have the initial flirtation options, then there's a companion quest (or multiple companion quests), then you are 'locked in', and finally you get a scene at the end.

anyway, spoilers under the cut.

the romance with katherine is the closest to that model. which makes sense! she's a traumatized person who needs to be convinced henry is reliable, and she also doesn't know him, so the flirting is apt. it stretches across the entire game, because trust-building takes time and action (sidequests), and much like the romance with hans, a lot of the 'romance' moments hinge on non-romance moments you have with her throughout the story. romance in this game is part of a continuum of human interactions; it's something you can lean into if you want, not a reward toggle.

rosa's romance lasts while rosa is plot-relevant, and is contingent on you flirting with her and giving her the feeling that she and her capabilities are respected. you have to spend time with her and back her up, basically. then there's the various flings, which are all context-dependent. and theresa, which is technically a full-blown romance even if she's only on-screen for five seconds, because henry makes it a romance by bringing her up and speaking of their time together - in that version of the story, she's often on his mind. (but, like the other romances, you have to actively bring her up in the epilogue yourself; the game doesn't hand you "here's your reward romance content")

which leaves us with some interesting implications re: hans and henry. there are, as far as i've been able to find, five heart-icon dialogue interactions between them in the game, one of which is The Big Scene. none of the four romance dialogue options before that are flirty. the flirting happens outside of that, in all the non-romance sections, in ways that can be brushed off as bros-being-bros if you're into that. in fact i'd say most of the development that makes the romance possible happens in the non-romance sections.

the romance choices just let you lean in a little further.

the first romance dialogue comes at the midway point; it's hans apologizing for being a dick and henry can then respond to say it's fine, hans can always rely on him no matter how he behaves, he's the closest friend henry has. the second comes at maleshov, right after henry has staged an elaborate rescue for hans, and it's about henry reassuring a panicking hans that he will always be there for him and they can handle any situation together. the third romance dialogue comes halfway through the italian job and is missable - it's henry telling hans he's missed spending time with him, and repeating that when hans tries to joke it off as a 'yes we should go wenching again soon' kind of deal. finally, the fourth is shortly afterward, with henry worried about hans's claustrophobia, and stating, 'I care about you. maybe more than you know.'

hans brushes all of these things off, it seems like, but then by the Big Scene it's obvious he's been thinking about them a lot. and then hans is the one who makes a move, not henry (though you have to pick the option to trigger it). notably, even if you end the romance scene early by leaving or fumbling the moment, hans makes it clear he thought henry had feelings for him.

so if the difference between non-romanced and romanced katherine is flirting + her feeling she can trust and rely on henry, and the difference between non-romanced and romanced rosa is flirting + her feeling respected by henry, what's the difference between non-romanced and romanced hans? well. it's henry being earnest about his feelings, and going out of his way to make it clear that he cares about and values hans above everything else.

and that, maybe, in this time of extreme trial, he's safe to make this move on.

the extended implication of that is that hans had romantic feelings for henry all along, of some sort or another. he just doesn't address them in a non-romanced path because he doesn't feel confident to abandon plausible deniability and leave the safe, charged ambiguity between him and henry. not outwardly. possibly also not inwardly.

anyway, it's interesting. it also means that the entire game is technically the hans/henry romance arc. and i think that's neat.

[mimpinightmare]

Fandom question aaaaa:

What moment in Supa Strikas & Rookie Season made you fangirl the hardest?

OH??? A Supa Strikas Fandom Question???

FOR MEEEEE????~~~

(Thank you @alsoamalthia for the fandom question! You're like... the first person to ask me, in my 'Ask Me Anything Box'-)

"What moment in Supa Strikas & Rookie Season made you fangirl the hardest?"

OH GOD! WHERE DO I EVEN BEGIN TO EXPLAIN MYSELF FOR THIS FRANCHISE?? BECAUSE THERE SO MANY- (So I hope me having multiple answers is fine-)

(Tad bit' Spoilers for Rookie Season in some of the Questions- Nothing grand or anything for the plot, just things mention in Rookie Season)

Well, for starters, one of the things that make FANGIRL, REAL HARD is just seeing the Supa Strikas boys, or any of the Super League team players having tender moments, like just hanging out or having a bro moment together. Multiple times in show makes me 'heart warmed' by just seeing Supa Strikas just being there for each other.

Like, in "Own Ghoul S3E3", where Big Bo was bothered by his past and terrified to tell the guys what went down between him and Spike Dawson, but Dancing Rasta and the others ensured him they're be there for him. Or something like in "Man in the Iron Tank Mask S5E2", where Klaus was insecure being in the roll of a Supa Strikas player, that he thinks he needs to become a Superhero to prove himself to be someone. And the guys were REALLY SUPPORTIVE in that moment! Dancing Rasta saying Klaus is always a hero every time he plays soccer with them, and North making a point that Iron Tank is TERRIFIED of Klaus' skills, that they need to think of a plan to stop him. (When I watched this episode, I was REALLY WORRIED how will it end, because Klaus mostly is the center of the joke in most episodes and I was scared the others might blame his ego or self-doubt for his actions, which Klaus is the episode CLEARLY needs some words of affirmation and support from the guys. I'm glad they Validated him in the end! :D ) And in "The Perfect Match S7E8" when Shakes got dogpiled from the guys and Dancing Rasta says "Teammates are closest of all!". Like, THAT'S CUTE! YOU CAN'T TELL ME THAT DOESN'T MAKE YOU AT LEAST SMILE!!! Sure, the guys sometimes bicker and fight, I'm not denying that, but when they do have a moment, IT'S THE SWEETEST THING!! I SQUEALED INTERNALLY AT THEM BEING BROS!!

There's not alot of 'Bro Moments' when it comes to the other teams (Is mostly either Technicalli or Iron Tank, although Iron Tank's 'Bro Moments' are mostly insulting each other-) But when it happens, it makes me happy. :) Like, pick ANY Technicalli episode around 'Season 3' to 'Rookie Season', there's chances of the guys are supporting each other, despite Toni Vern's treatment towards them. There's also this really short moment in "Dooma's Day S3E13" I really like, where Skarra scored for the team and Automatic, Dingaan and Dooma was celebrating with him. And you can clearly see Skarra wasn't sure how to feel at the moment, by he gives in and joins with them. I know it's short and in the end of the episode, there's havoc ensuing. But when I rewatched the episode, that's the few moments I saw from Skarra actually seems like he feels loved and fits in (without being a 'Bad Boy'). Especially knowing more of the context from 'Rookie Season', he probably never had something endearment in a long time since 'Rookie Season'... It's not much, but I take moments like these to HEART! ✨💜💛💜💛💜💛💜✨

Other than that, I get REALLY excited when there's little scene where you can miss them if you weren't paying close enough intention. And sometimes it cause me to speculate VERY DAMN SCENE IN THE SHOW- (But it's fun! Never regret this mind of mine~)

Like... DID YOU KNOW, in "How To Get a Header, In the Super League S3E8", there's a brief moment where North Shaw has a Barka FC jersey WITH HIM???? When I first notice that back in 2021, I thought to myself:

"BRO, WHO GAVE YOU THAT JERSEY?! WHICH BARKA FC PLAYER GIVE YOU THAT??!! I NEED TO KNOW!"

Like I was feuding with that particular scene in general- 😭😭

Or that short scene in "Broken Record S6E7" where LIQUIDO IS SHAKING SHAKES' HAND???? LIQUIDO IS SHOWING GOOD SPORTSMANSHIP?!?!?! I JUST KNEW THIS LIKE 2 WEEKS AGO?!?!?!?!!?

And this little scene in "Live and Kicking S4E3" where you can briefly see 'Rock Rockin' Howar' (not sure how to spell his name-) the Motivational Trainer back in "Dribbler on the Roof S3E10" where he works for Sheik. Now he's working FOR MS. ALTIVO??!!??!! I guess he's meant to work with powerful people-

Speaking of Speculating, I've been analyzing non-stop with this show- I love just thinking of ideas that would fit into the context it was given to the audience and I just analyze it, piece by piece, like not a sane person-

Like in "Hypno-Test S2E10", where Rasta claims him and 'Old Chuck T. Chipperson go WAY back!' And I NEVER BROUGHT UP AGAIN??!??! So, were they teammates before they join the Super League?? Were they Colleagues??? (YOU CAN'T PUT THAT IN THERE AND NOT TELL US, WRITERS!!! 😭) I've been fixated by that piece of dialogue for AWHILE-

Also, in "Score To Settle RS E6" where it shows Thor being all emotional, singing about his feelings and got angry when he caught off side- So, it's canon then? Thor has been struggling with, not only his anger issues, but also his masculinity. I've always thought that Thor is the softest one out of the buff guys, and was struggling with his gentler side because of the hyper-masculinity environment in Iron Tank. (Hope in the future, if there will be more seasons being made, I like to see Thor embracing his soft side, like the CHAD HE IS! >:D )

And in "Total Replay S5E12" where when Shakes (and then Supa Strikas as a team) was playing against Legendary Football Players in the simulation, every football team (even Colossus FC) have a player to represent them... EXCEPT FOR 'INVINCIBLE UNTED'.

Huh, I WONDER 'WHY'???~

(There's seen Invincible United' flags from the audience in the simulation, but I double checked that there's indeed, no 'Invincible United player' there.)

("COACH! VINCE! You have some EXPLAING to do!")

(This is just an excuse to tell you my thought process~ :)))) )

(OKAY, THIS IS THE LAST ONE, AND I'M DONE RAMBLING-) Other things that make me Fangirl HARDDDD, is Dingaan. Short answer-

LONG ANSWER is that I just LOVE THIS MAN WITH ALL MY HEART!!! When I came back to the fandom this May this year, I really thought Klaus would be my favorite (HE STILL IS, JUST NEXT TO DINGAAN-). But, MAN! That guy grab my attention. I've always have a soft spot for him back in 2021, BUT I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT CAME OVER ME TO HAVE SUCH A FIXIATION OVER HIM NOW-

Maybe is the silliness he brings when he shows up on screen? Maybe is because deep down his a 'Heart of Gold' Guy, who so happens to be in a very antagonistic team.

Or maybe I relate to him in a personal level, where he shows signs of neurodivergence and people around him would take advantage of that and his kindness. And when they're finished with him, they will think he's stupid for following their plans and use his loyalty to gain more benefits for themselves. And will underestimate him because of his "stupidity", when actuality he's more capable than people would realize. And also gets ridiculed for being himself and his interests because they think is "stupid" or "silly". And deep down he is actual a sweet guy and wouldn't hurt a fly, but unfortunately under circumstances, he could only obey under the abusive hierarchy in the system he is in. And the only thing he can show to people is his 'Aggressiveness", that is also been taught to him, under that hierarchy, and is semi-rewards him if he follows it accordingly, next to 'Doing your job Right'. But they won't award his achievements, because the system is meant to make you inferior than the HigherUps. And Dingaan is trap, probably not knowing, he himself is not going to be seen as equal to them because of his status and neurodivergence, and will punish him if he slips once. And when he shows him being himself, he will get punish, because being his neurodivergent self is not the standard in the system and they will "correct" him, like they want him to be.

.... No idea why I like him so much, but HE'S MY BEAUTIFUL BOY, AND I WOULD PROTECT AND DEFEND HIM IN MY HONOUR! (I will one day make a Analysis Post dedicated to Dingaan. YOU'LL SEE!!)

I know I don't talk about him much here, and only show drawings of him here, like 3 times. But behind the scenes, he's the few things when it comes to Supa Strikas is on my mind. And I've grown appreciation for Dingaan as days goes by. He's on my mind SO MUCH, I rewatch episodes of Supa Strikas he's BARELY IN- (NO, LITERALLY!! I rewatched "On Klaus Inspection S6E8" so many times, JUST TO SEE DINGAAN AT THE END- AND IT'S A KLAUS FOCUS EPISODE😭😭😭) (I still see the episode for Klaus, but is MOSTLY for Dingaan- 🏃‍♂️🏃‍♀️🏃‍♂️🏃‍♀️)

(EDIT, BEFORE I FORGET-) Credit:

(I think I should credit where I got Dingaan's Full name from and the reason I'm full of happiness to know his full name now-)

Credit to @strika-archyvez for finding it out and sharing Dingaan's full name to the world!

As well as @yanxioustrikas for making a dedicated 'Invincible United Headcanon' Post of it, sharing canon names of the players and her Headcanons of them as well. Please CHECKOUT Part 2 of her 'Invincible United Headcanon' Post. As well checkout her other parts of the series! :)

⁓⁑⁓⁑⁓⁑⁓⁑⁓⁑⁓⁑⁓⁑⁓⁑⁓⁑⁓⁑⁓⁑⁓⁑⁓⁑⁓⁑⁓⁑⁓⁑⁓⁑⁓⁑⁓⁑⁓⁑⁓⁑⁓⁑⁓⁑⁓⁑⁓⁑⁓⁑⁓⁑⁓⁑⁓⁑⁓⁑⁓⁑⁓⁑⁓⁑⁓⁑⁓⁑⁓⁑⁓⁑⁓⁑⁓⁑⁓⁑⁓⁑⁓⁑⁓⁑⁓⁑⁓⁑⁓⁑⁓⁑⁓⁑

AND I'M DONE- DEAR GOD, This took 3 hours- Thank you again to @alsoamalthia for the fandom question! It was really FUN writing this!! (AND I'M SOOOO SORRY FOR NOT ANSWERING SOONER FOR 2 WEEKS- 😭😭 I was busy at the time and was working on another Supa Strikas related work that I'm also writing. Was burned out from the writing that I need to find my groove again-)

If you finished reading this far, thank you for the patience to read this LONG post. Maybe, I got ALITTLE carried away with the answers, when it's just a simple question- Regardless, hope you had fun reading this, and hope you have a great day and tomorrow!!

Thank you again for reading!!!

(EDIT: I think I misread the question.... DAMN MY UNDIAGNOSED NEURODIVERGENCE!!!)

- MimpiNightmare

[asinglemagpie]

The Golden Raven: Here Be Spoilers 10 (Once More With Feeling)(Chapter 22)

Oof those were some heavy chapters... Now I'm well rested, let's dive into more!

Why didn't they flop on anyone's couches? Rhemann would have taken them in, surely!

Can we start a fund to order some takeout from a very specific restaurant? Neil knows the one.

When your therapist helps get access to money... you gotta admit sometime that you're in so shitty a situation that they would risk their career to help you even the smallest bit.

Okay look. Thea is a touchy subject from what I've seen, especially regarding Kevin, so I'll be brief. She and Kevin should not have happened - she was far too old and he far too young. But. We have to remember that the Nest ran on its own twisted set of rules and morality, and nothing they did was outside of the lines that they had been bullied and tortured into. I do not think they are good for each other. Kevin needs someone to be more than exy with. Someone who can knock him down a few pegs and then hold his hand as they rebuild him into something better. Thea is what he needed, but now she holds him rigidly in place when he should be blossoming.

That said, she sounds hot AF and I'd stick around too so...

The fact that Kevin is letting himself be annoyed with a camera in his face? The interview either broke him from being "I must have a perfect public persona", or shit going on that we're not privvy to yet has gnawed through him and this is what he's got left.

AARON DRIVING THE MAS MEANS MORE TO ME THAN I CAN EXPRESS OKAY?! 😭

It never gets old calling Kevin "Queen" (always capitalised).

Andrew showing signs of taking to heart what Jean said is also INSANE. Like... He's forgoing one of the significantly few things he finds comfort and calm in because he won't risk being too slow to save Neil? I... I just... 😭

How does their relationship even work anyway? They never see each other, I doubt they call each other because they don't seem the type. Just... ???

Thea's harsh AF but totally correct statement. Honestly she has to be scary as fuck and again I'm not entirely against that...

Kevin and the moment of "well I can't fix that".

Spader also being incredibly correct. Sadly the Ravens do NOT have access to adequate mental healthcare.

The fact that the FBI know who started the fire, but Laila's family doesn't sits weirdly with me. I can't decide if I'm misunderstanding, or if Nora is frantically waving a red flag.

William is still one of my favourites.

Warren however can choke on a whole bag of thorny dicks.

In a just universe, a recording of that conversation would have fucking ruined the Wilshires. Alas there is no just universe and skinbags of anal leakage like this cunt get away with this shit.

Jean getting to truly own something of his own choosing 😍

Honestly I'm 50/50 on the "are they suicides or murders?" purely because Ichirou wouldn't draw eyes onto the Ravens, and by extension the Moriyama name, by just bumping them off. There would have been a couple of tragic accidents, people got rattled and performed badly, pushing some to that point, but it would be so much... Less. Than how it's going down. BUT those three going in such quick succession - when there's been days for what Thea said to sink in - just seems... Too coincidental. Hella fucking sloppy though. Like suspiciously sloppy. Are we sure it's Ichirou we should be looking at? Or any Moriyama at all?

Laila taking her life in her hands riding pillion 😂

Jean quietly absorbing everything he can about a Jeremy he doesn't know.

Jean openly choosing a path where there are no Ravens is just... Everything.

Kevin isn't a Raven. He's fine on a technicality.

Jeremy thinking he's taking it out of context when he's very much in the right context lol.

[goodluckclove]

A Very Very Muppet Christmas Movie Deserves All the Hate it Gets, and Maybe More Actually

Okay so someone said I can talk about this so I'm going to talk about it. Spoilers I guess? For a shitty Muppets movie?

This got long. Fuck.

I have seen, at this point, every Muppets movie aside from Muppets Oz. I couldn't really rate them in order of best to worst like other online sites do. I like The Muppets. Even the movies that didn't touch my heart like Muppets Treasure Island I still found fun and enjoyable. My favorite will always be the original movie from 1979, but I found all of them to be comforting and enjoyable.

Until this one. This one is bad. A Very Very Muppets Christmas Movie was so immediately bad on every level. It is the first movie I've seen in some time that actually made me angry.

A little context for those who haven't seen the movies. Muppets movies fall into two categories that I'll call Muppets Lore and Muppets Theatre. In Muppets Theatre you get a loose retelling of some classic story where the cast is primarily Weird Felt Perverts - think Christmas Carol, Treasure Island, Wizard of Oz. The Great Muppets Caper isn't technically based on source material but I'd put it in this category since they're playing characters.

On the other hand, the Muppets Lore movies focus on the origins/misadventures of the Muppets as an ensemble. Think the original movie, as well as Muppets Take Manhattan, Muppets in Space, and the two reboot films.

Muppets Haunted Mansion is technically both a Muppets Lore and Muppets Theatre film. It's also. I wouldn't say bad, but it - it's weird to talk about. It does canonize that Gonzo's worst fear is dying alone - which, like, yeah. That tracks.

Anyways, A Very Muppet Christmas (I refuse to keep using the full title), though it does heavily draw from It's a Wonderful Life (but badly), is primarily a Muppets Lore movie. The basic plot is that the Muppets, who by now are well-known for producing shows out of their own Muppet Theater, lose their venue. This devastates Kermit, driving him to believe that the lives of his friends would be better if he was never born. He gets to see this alternate reality, realizes it's apparently way worse, and begs to go back. He does, the theater is saved through randomly being declared a historical site, and everyone's happy forever.

I don't know where to start with this. Let me break it up.

They Had The Same Message For a Like 30 Years At This Point How Did You Fuck it Up This Badly

So a majority of the Muppets Lore movie focuses on the central theme of chasing your dreams. The main cast are all performers (barring Scooter, who seems to be the entirety of their tech crew. Kermit also directs and writes. I think Doctor Honeydew is a war criminal but no one talks about that.) with aspirations of making a living doing what they love. They make mentions of fame but are pretty loose with what that means. Miss Piggy is the only cast member who explicitly wants mass amounts of stardom.

The rest appear content with being career artists. Rowlf is chill wherever there's a piano. The Electric Mayhem prefer their jam rock but seem fine playing any gig with an audience and also probably a plug for hard drugs. In a lot of Gonzo origin appearances he's actually working a separate day job and just shoots himself out of cannon as a hobby. The major draw in the original depiction of their dreams (for me at least) is that it really does paint them all as people who would be doing their art anyway regardless of whether or not they Hit it Big. They push for fame, they try again and again to find an audience that appreciates them even when most of them don't, and it works out in the end. They get rewarded for the effort their dreams push them commit to - what Real Life, Non-Muppet Artist wouldn't at least acknowledge how that's cool to see?

I think this is why a Lore Muppet movie doesn't really work when it depicts The Muppets already being successful. The reboot worked for me because it took place when they were all major celebrity figures past their prime and mostly forgotten (except for Rowlf who I think was on so much Oxy that he didn't realize they were famous). When the movie focuses on their career the fame is a better goal than a starting point.

It really does make A Muppet Christmas fall apart immediately. They run the risk of losing their theater if they don't make the money to pay rent? They're famous. They're on talk shows. There's a statue dedicated to the joy Kermit brings to the world. I do not accept this to be a universe where they can't get another venue immediately. I wouldn't be able to accept this as a universe where they're both successful performers who sell out every show and also almost broke, if not for the fact that I can think of like four Muppets off the top of my head who probably generate a new court case against them every year. Legal fees.

They had one scene where Kermit calls a bunch of mid 2000s celebrities and none of them want to guest for the Christmas show. That works in the reboot where Kermit does the same thing only to find that most of his old contacts are either retired or dead. In this one? It's nonsense.

No, Really, You Fucked it So Bad

In every Muppet movie that focuses on following your dreams, that message is paired with maddening levels of determination. The Muppets, mainly Kermit, do not give up. All his friends ditch him while he's trying to get their musical produced on stage? He's gonna work a minimum wage job and keep looking for producers so he can get that venue and perform with his friends. His career is kind of over but he runs the risk of losing the studio that served as a landmark for the legacy he made with the people he loves? Fuck it, cross-country road trip to get the band back together.

He's trying to make a name for himself but there's a entrepreneur who runs a frog legs restaurant and, after being unable to hire him as a spokesperson, sends a paid assassin to kill him? That's less important than making the Big Audition in Hollywood!

So when being faced with losing the Muppet Theater in A Muppet Christmas, Kermit stays true to his character by giving up immediately and abandoning his friends to die alone in the snow.

Like I get it, you're doing the It's A Wonderful Life thing but you can't make Kermit do an explicit suicide attempt. But the film establishes he is fully frozen and unresponsive when his Religiously Unspecified Celestial Guardian finds him, and that is WAY more disturbing than having him jump off a bridge in my mind. It's just so bleak holy fuck. And this happens immediately. First fifteen minutes of a movie that inexplicably starts in the middle and Kermit slinks off to die.

It's not earned at all. He didn't fuck up to the extent for this to make sense. We find out later that the money was lost because he gave it to Fozzie to give to the bank and Fozzie loses it. Kermit then becomes convinced that he ruined all of his friends lives because of this.

Like it's a common thread to depict Kermit being the lynchpin that moves the ensemble forward. He's the guy with the plan, so it makes sense story wise to take that character and get him to a point where he's out of ideas. Only we never see him really try anything? He makes no attempts that fail before he falls into despair. He sits on the sideline and when things don't go well he's like "I fucked it" and loses his will to live. When people say Kermit is a boring buzz kill this is the Kermit they must be imagining.

All the Characters are Bad Here

The major crux of the film is seeing how the ensemble would live without Kermit, who inexplicably thinks he ruined their lives in a way I still don't understand (Did he take out a bunch of loans in their name? What happened???). The intention is to show that their lives are better for having him in them. This, for some reason, looks like the following:

Gonzo: talented street singer/musician, maybe implied to be homeless?

Fozzie: pickpocket, apparently. Why? Bullshit

The Electric Mayhem: Irish step dancers I guess

Scooter: go go dancer. Living his best life.

Sam the Eagle: nightclub enthusiast. Seems fine.

Statler and Waldorf: I could be wrong but it did really look like they were depicted as a gay couple

Rizzo: I - actual rat? Rat actor? Non-sentient rat? I don't really understand what was happening there.

Miss Piggy: I thought they were going the path of having her give up on acting and become a crazy cat lady (not good but fits the era) but apparently she's a phone psychic who uses a Jamaican accent and wig. I guess Kermit is the only person keeping her from race baiting - which I can believe.

So my issue with this is that it's fully inconsistent to all of their characters. If you wanted to show how their lives would be worse without Kermit, it's very easy to do so using the aspects of their personality depicted in like 40 years of media. I think the issue comes in the fact that the obvious downfalls aren't really fitting for a kids movie, which is probably why Jim Henson didn't go there. But I will right now! Here is my take:

Fozzie: super bigoted comedian. He doesn't realize his audience are racists and he doesn't really get the jokes but he's happy people are finally laughing

Gonzo: drug mule

Miss Piggy: probably got famous but not though acting and she's trying to pretend like that's just as good

Rizzo: pays Gonzo be his drug mule

The Electric Mayhem: long dead. Either OD or murder-suicide. Maybe Animal lived but he's absolutely in prison.

Statler and Waldorf: divorced because they never got to bond over their mutual hatred of live theater

Scooter: still in technical theater but he gets treated like shit and probably has a drinking problem

Sam the Eagle: full-on Nazi. Obviously.

There's a plot there in showing what the muppet ensemble would be like without their director and biggest cheerleader. It's just that the depiction in the movie we got was so far removed from what they were like in the present reality that it didn't - like, without Kermit, Gonzo would've learned how to play the guitar? Huh? The only thing that's keeping Fozzie Bear from doing petty crime is making vaudeville theater? Fucking how? Based on what?

It doesn't work as a Muppets story and it doesn't work as a Wonderful Life reference because there's really not anything real that proves that Kermit is the thing that kept this from happening. Except for Piggy doing phone blackface. I can see him having to have that conversation with her a lot.

Anyways, it sucks. The framing is bad, the guest stars are weird (Joe Rogan and Matthew Lillard?), and the one song for the film is awful. Kermit's emotional arc is nonsense and the film fails to see that the point of the ensemble is that they're better and happier together, not that they're all useless and miserable without their leader.

Brian Henson did an important thing taking over for The Muppets after his dad died. He did a lot for the way the movies he wasn't involved in production wise - he worked on the rig that allowed Muppets to appear to ride bikes. This is his life and his dads legacy and it's clear - at least at one point - he valued continuing it.

But yeah this movie was awful. Near incoherent. It's like fanfic from someone who's only research was doing a Google image search of The Muppets. Christ.

[patchesofuniverse]

Having seen all of S2 now, I really think the WoT writers jumped the gun with Lan's declaration in S1. I was settling in for Lanaeve to be a nice slow burn, but the scene was emotional and brilliant enough that I was OK with it. He's gonna go die, he declares himself, we all cried, it's fine.

Now I feel like their conversation on the balcony undermined some of the emotional chords of S2. It was too much of a promise, and now Lan especially has seemingly gone back on that promise. His S2 plotline revolves around his bond and relationship with Moiraine. There's one moment when Moiraine leaves him behind, and Alanna mentions Nynaeve needing a warder. It has the air of a consolation prize, though, and he doesn't even seem to consider it. Lan's cathartic moment in the finale is all around his renewed bond with Moiraine, as it should have been. It just doesn't make total sense in light of the depth of his declaration for Nynaeve a season ago.

Nynaeve's storyline in S2 didn't require the balcony scene to make sense. Just from their conversation in the middle of the night, we know she's fallen hard for Lan, and feels jealous of his bond with Moiraine. Her experience in the third arch still makes sense with just that context: Nynaeve wants Lan, so her ideal future is one where he leaves Moiraine and settles down with her. Her awkward response to the warder-in-training also tells us enough about her conflict and continued feelings for Lan.

The discordance between Lan's declaration on the balcony and his renewed bond with Moiraine is also going to make for a hella confusing reunion when S3 comes back around. I realize he was saying that he really likes her but he's sad that he can't be with her, and technically that's still going to be true. But I still feel like his actions in S2 cheapen that depth of emotion he expressed, and I think they should have let the tension go on longer before he even manages to give Nynaeve that much. (Or until he can finally break away from Moiraine completely)

(PS - I haven't read the books, so please no spoilers or start your own post and add #wot book spoilers if needed. Thanks!)

[hiddentrails7]

Evan rates the FFVII party on how good of drivers I think they are: because he is bored.

Rankings will be out of ten, only light spoilers at the very most.

Cloud - 9

One of the best drivers of the party. He can canonically slay on motorbikes (figuratively and literally), HAS to be at least decently good at chocobo racing in canon because that's how they get out of Corel Prison, and knows how to drive the buggy. However, he gets a point taken off because he's a reckless driver.

Barret - 6

It depends on whose in the vehicle with him. If Marlene is in the vehicle? Most careful driver on the planet.

However, he's a pretty crazy driver in like, every other situation. He also probably road rages, occasionally. Not the worst option, though. At least he CAN drive.

Tifa - 8

Another good driver! She drove that truck pretty good during the first Shinra escape. Not stunning, and I think she's an anxious driver for sure, but pretty good!

Aerith - 4

Let's be real, Aerith can't drive. She can ride a chocobo, she learned how to do that just fine, but don't trust her behind a steering wheel. Vehicles mean little to her.

Red XIII/Nanaki - 1

Literally has paws. Technically a teenager, in the context of his species' lifespan. However, he gets a singular point for being one of the calmer members of the party.

Yuffie- 2

I'm scared to put her behind the wheel. Chocobos are great for her, but she's probably getting sick even if she's the one driving. That, and she takes me as an impatient driver. The type to say "I can make that turn" while she's mere inches from the other car.

Cait Sith Reeve - 8

Good driver all around, if not a little careful. However, there's a reason he's so careful– not only does he just not trust other people while driving, but he has a habit of occasionally spacing out. He also cries in his car so—

Vincent - 7

Unphased while driving, but also a little distant-minded. Though Turk training nailed driving into him pretty well. I think he gets points taken off because he doesn't have self-preservation and while he drives on land well, he never got a full grasp on helicopter piloting. It is merely acceptional.

Cid - 10

Best driver. Especially because he'd actually somewhat care about the thing he's driving more often than not. He's a LITTLE reckless, but not as bad as Cloud.

His road rage has him on thin ice, though.

[ultraviolet-cello]

Alright since the @tristampparty is Well under way now I'm gonna do a little day by day analysis or details I like about the episode of the day, along with my usual art hustle :3!

Because this is going to end up being Super long we'll put this under a cut! [Spoiler warning for All of Trigun, primarily Tristamp and Trimax]

Tl;dr? I'm normal about how Knives is in Tristamp

So I'll be going point by point in chronological notes that I kept while writing abt this episode :] thank u to Mal for putting up with my rambles hehehe.

So the Seeds ships specifically are reminiscent, to me at least, of the Angel Arm (probably moreso the tristamp version which, can you believe, is incredibly difficult to get a screenshot of lmao)

That's interesting to me because it could be just a design choice but if it is an in-universe thing, it does,... imply some things about Plants. Granted, Independents probably weren't known abt when the Seeds ships launched, but is there another aspect of Plants that takes that form? And is that impactful enough for a human fleet to design their ships after that? Much to think about for something that's probably just symbolic lmao

Now for Knives! So a little bit of context that I will elaborate on as we watch, but I think the narrative is heavily biased against Knives when he was a child, and that we will get some recontextualization next season that's more in line with how we know him in Trimax.

In particular, I think the beginning flashback is possibly theeee most unbiased depiction of events because all the rest are specifically memories being told to others by Vash or Knives, or the whole memory thing in July. Granted it's still very Vash-focused but it gives us two major things.

Knives seemingly wanting to take Rem along with him. In Trimax, it's semi-implied that Knives would have initially wanted Rem to live and spirals very hard into telling Vash he hates Rem as a coping mechanism (which I will elaborate on if anyone's interested in my reading of those scenes), and it seems to be even more overt here.

He doesn't stop reaching out either until Rem shuts the escape pod/pulls the lever (Unclear on when that is)

2. From that scene, the only time we see Knives' face/expression again is when the escape pod is being like. Slung out of the ship. The rest of it always blocks his face and expression in favour of seeing Vash's far louder and emotional reactions.

and we just straight up do not see knives again until his big maniacal speech thing and that's,,, well we just don't know how long it's been since they crashed. could be minutes. could be hours. could be enough for knives to have had a breakdown and start laughing at the sky because he just doesn't know what else to do

i think (hope) season 2 might end up having a lot of the same flashbacks from knives' pov/an unbiased pov :]

Moving on with the episode: Roberto! I love Roberto a lot actually, he definitely grows on you. Something I did notice is that throughout this ep he says that Meryl and Vash would not last long on this planet which. That's interesting, considering he doesn't say that to Wolfwood, and yet Wolfwood and Roberto are the ones doomed by the (sometimes meta) narrative.

So when Vash is found he's been strung up by the Bad Lads gang (who have far more presence in episode one than I originally thought lmao), and he looks... a little dehydrated maybe, but overall fine.

The guys next to him, though? not doing remotely as well. Now while there is the possibility that he just got tied up later there's also the possibility that. While he does need to eat he doesn't need to eat as much as the average human. Which. is a lovely thought for the two dead guys. [Also a possibility that if Vash does need to consume less than a human, it could be another justification to himself for his eating issues]

The bounty! So it's technically Knives' bounty but whatever. [Sidenote: the idea that Vash and Knives look very similar is hilarious to me because they do not and never have to me] The particular notes are that Knives definitely had a hand in this - Vash is the only person specified alive, the bounty is obscenely high (compared to the other wanted posters), and it's specifically stamped with July Military, which. Well Knives and Conrad operate in July, and Conrad (by extension Knives) very clearly has a Lot of power in that City because he has the tower, that massive lab, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if they were the ones who initially created the bounty/wanted poster.

This Thomas carrying co... coffins? Are they coffins??

Background wanted posters for B.D.N, Marilyn Nebraska, Rai-Dei, and some other characters from trimax/98. And also for Nightow. for 30 $$ you can bring in Nightow the Comix Artist dead or alive! Wanted for Couch Crimes

Roberto kinda fascinates me as a character, especially when he sticks up for Vash and suggests a duel. My friend Mal describes him as a tsundere for friendship and. yeah okay that works lmao. for all his,,, roberto-isms, roberto has a a bit of a moral streak (he gets maddddd when he learns that children have been experimented on, hesitates in defending himself against Elendira, and lies to the police to get information out of them). He's just a Lot jaded, and we're already primed to like Meryl because, well she's Meryl, but he tends to be right when it comes to Meryl's inexperience. i like him. It's also, come to think of it, possibly because Vash fascinates Roberto a little bit. Roberto really saw Vash and went "I gotta study this guy" lmao

Vash having absolutely Perfect trigger discipline lmao

OKAY SO THIS PART IS MY FAVOURITE. For reference I am a black belt in a couple different martial arts, and working to become a sensei in Goju Ryu Karate, so this sequence is delightful! Let's break it down :] The initial block is one we use to open up a person's body - if that arm is clear out of the way you can keep control of the gun arm in this case by just pushing outwards (And with Vash's additional strength in his prosthetic that's Pretty Dang Effective, especially because in gun situations you want to keep the gun barrel away from you, so you're taught to use two arms - Vash doesn't need to do that)

From there, he goes and grabs the guy's shoulder to pull him forward unexpectedly - this throws him off balance and shifts his weight onto Vash's, so Vash is taking all that bodyweight. From there, all Vash has to do is maintain his grip on the gun arm's wrist (keeping the gun away from both parties in case he accidentally fires or there's a misfire), then turn sharply and let the body follow through!

From there he keeps the grip on the wrist and twists, which sends the gun out of the guy's grip and out of danger. At the same time, he spins his own gun's grip and hits the back of the head with the barrel - Notably he lets go of the wrist, which, if he'd kept holding it, would break the arm. I'm not entirely sure which martial arts were referenced for Vash's style, but this is exactly the type of thing I teach! [For anyone interested, I practice Goju Ryu karate, aiki jiu jitsu, iado (sword), self defense, and general okinawan kobudo (weapons like the bo staff, sais, and nunchaku)]

okay i blacked out and am no longer in teaching mode. Vash's arm, when he picks up that rock, glows very very green

what does that mean? I have 0 idea, it could be that it's overstrained, or using more power than usual. I mean, he did rip a rock out of the ground.

Zaziecam birdworm heading to July from Jeneora Rock! Probably how Knives got word of where Vash was

This fucking scene. man y'all this scene HAUNTS me.

It's so. unreliable at best. this scene goes adult vash saying he has a brother into this flashback. knives says, in order, that "he finally did it", not to worry because the plants are fine, he got rem killed, and tells vash not to get mad because he's already his accomplice, and nothing else. now we Know that that's not the case because Knives directly adds in information in future renditions of this flashback (That Vash gave him the launch codes). Which. What else don't we know about this scene. Clearly it's been a little while, the fire is burning, and Knives had all this time to climb the tower while Vash was (unconscious?). I want to see it from Knives' pov.

Knives keeping a bunch of last run plant corpses as statues to.. remind himself of his goal I guess. I read Tristamp Knives as Trimax Knives taken to the extreme (will elaborate in one of the flashback episodes), so I think he's a touch uh. Extremely unhealthy.

And that's it for episode one! I hope if you read this you had fun and it wasn't too much of a slog to read lmao i'm just rambling. I hope you had fun if you made it this far :]

[somerandomcryptid]

A new challenger approaches! Sapnap is here now, and he is very confused.

I was going to do panels and shit for the first page but I decided to give myself mercy

This gets the point and vibe across without me killing myself over backrounds :)

This is my favorite face I've drawn, ever

Look at him! He's just a little guy!

Also, long haired Sapnap propaganda >:)

I will give every man ever long hair /j

Anyway lore drop!:

Bad and Skeppy just kind of adopt Cryptid at the first chance they get, it's not legal technically but like if anyone in the smp was going to be their legal guardian(s) it would be these two, and it basically is

Also they are fully think of themselves as their dads so yeah, in their eyes, this is their new child

In Cryptid's eyes it's a bit more complicated, as I've said before they're extremely resentful (if not too tired to actually get into a screaming match) when they are brought to Skeppy and Bad, and while they warm up to them quick enough, they don't immediately see them as their dads, they're touched by the gesture (and do feel similarly, just not as much) but it feels a bit like they're betraying their original parents if they accept that Bad and Skeppy are essentially also their dads at this point

Anyway that's the context, and that happens over approximately a week or so probably

Then, once Bad sees even a sliver of acceptance for the whole family thing he invites Sapnap over, not telling him what's going on and who he's introducing him to

And... it actually goes fine!

Sapnap and Cryptid actually get along pretty well even though I think they're both a bit embarrassed by their dad

Obviously Sapnap doesn't know shit about Cryptid even knowing Dream, and Cryptid only heard him mentioned probably like once, maybe twice, so it's not like they have any feelings on him particularly

So they have a pretty blank slate!

They aren't exactly sibling material by the time Wren and Dream get to the smp (oops spoilers) but they are definitely friendly, and once Sapnap learns about all the Dream stuff he is immediately more protective of them, like Sam, the situation reminds him too much of Tommy despite it being very very different

(obligatory disclaimer that Dreaming of Death is an au of the Penpal @calamari-minecraft-corner)

[mischief-lies-and-stories]

Loki spin-off ideas

I'm going to preface this by saying, I do not think we will ever get a Loki spin-off. But that doesn't mean I can't think about all the great possibilities there could be. And also I am quickly running out of ideas again.

Spoilers for Loki.

TVA workplace comedy, featuring B-15 Verity, Casey, OB, on occasion Sylvie and Mobius, and introducing new (queer) characters. Casey and OB stumble their way into a relationship, Verity once and for all establishes that she can detect lies, Mobius is sad until in the season finale (with special guest star Tom Hiddleston!) someone figures out how to get him to Loki. And we get Lokius in the last ten seconds, because they pull a Will Shatner and purposely ruin every other take that isn't them making the fuck out.

TVA training shorts, featuring Miss Minutes (ugh), reminiscent of those high school PSAs they made Cap do ("So you got detention," etc.), but animated in the style of the introductory video Loki watched in the first episode. You could also have a second season of them as an updated version following the dissolution of the Sacred Timeline and how the branches are seen as good things now. Maybe the new ones are narrated by members of the Time Revengers, since Miss Minutes is still being rehabilitated. (I'm still deciding if the idea of listening to Mobius tell the story of how the multiversal tree was created would be heartbreaking even if he managed to remain professional and not break down in tears, or if it would be really sweet that he gets assigned that video.)

Lokis in the void, following mainly Kid Loki and (if we retcon it, set this before the show, or he somehow survived) Classic Loki, but also ridiculous schemes of President Loki (yuck, no thank you) that constantly get thwarted. The B-plot is Alligator Loki sneaking off and getting up to some shit in an anti-Perry the Platypus running gag. (Wait, maybe I just want a Phineas and Ferb parody where every character is a Loki and it takes place in the void. That could be so stupid it's hilarious.)

Classic Loki in Valhalla please I need it. Like we start similarly to the events of my fic After, where Classic Loki arrives in Valhalla and reunites at long last with Thor (don't ask me how, I know technically his timeline was reset). Then the show continues with Classic Loki and Thor getting up to hijinks in Valhalla, maybe scheming to break out of Valhalla (a storyline for Loki in various contexts I've played around with a few times). We could have different characters from the Thor movies and comics in Valhalla, but since they're all dead, they're all played by older actors. You could make some easy, low-hanging old jokes (back pain every time they use their weapon, etc.), but they're gods and they're dead, so technically they should be fine. They're just old and dead. (But like, Tony Stark is for sure in Valhalla, too. You could have some frostiron going on. Or Fandral. He's there, too, Ewing.)

Mobius's adventures in the multiverse, just episodes of him traveling through time and experiencing it (I'm realizing now that this is basically just the premise for Doctor Who...). Also going on in this series is obviously Mobius missing Loki and looking for a way to get to him. Of course (because this is my show and I say so), the series would end with them reuniting and confessing and staying together, either in the tree if need be or in the wider multiverse if Loki is able to leave the tree. And there would certainly be episodes throughout the show featuring the other members of our Time Revengers. Maybe the workplace comedy and this show are occurring simultaneously. (Like one episode of TVA someone's like "Where's Verity?" "Oh she's on a mission." And you're like oh the actor has a break or is filming something else, and then later that week the episode of Mobius airs and THERE'S VERITY!)

Sylvie in Broxton. That's it, that's the show. Just Sylvie living her best life in the small town, working at McDonald's, hanging out at Lyle's record store, ignoring 90% of the calls on her TemPad (unless it's Mobius, because in spite of herself, she's a little worried about him).

[thepriceofagift]

Time to go ahead and post all the art included in my AO3 fics here on this blog (with the fic it's from linked in the image, and also here)!

As for the context.. well, you'll have to read to find out! What I will tell you is that the piece's chapter is titled "Beasts", and the chapter's summary is this-

When more people start to enter the picture, Kinich finds himself in a difficult position.

A small disclaimer- Please know that I post for people (who I assume are fans) who have already read my work! If nothing makes sense to you, that is why. Also note, this chapter ("Beasts") is the fourth one- the first three go without art.

Now, time to talk about this art, because AO3 isn't the place for it and I love to talk! The ramble below includes spoilers, by the way.

So, some context: the one in the middle is Kinich, obviously, because Price (which is what I affectionately refer to The Price of Foolishness as) is about him and from his point of view. Ajaw should also be fairly recognizable to anyone aware of these two, as they do go hand-in-hand. Ajaw is gesticulating wildly, and Kinich is in the process of waking up and slowly understanding his situation... and fighting to stifle his dread. His pose isn't realistic, moreso being inspired by the posing of figures in classical art. The whole composition is taking some inspiration from classical art, actually! I think it lends an air of drama to the piece, and I did put a lot of myself into it. It shows, which is why I'm rather proud of how it turned out!

The other people in the piece are three out of the four men who show up in this scene. Are they original? Yes. Are they characters? Undoubtedly. Will I call them original characters? No, because they're shitty rapists and I have standards. And because I have standards, they all die (read: get narratively punished for their wrongdoings). :)

Alonzo is the one who's smiling. He's by far the best of them, but the bar is in hell. I give him an A for effort, and because I do like him, he gets the OC label (Congrats on being the only OC in this story, Al! So sorry about chapter 15 😅)! Why is he smiling? Because he's tipsy and in love with Kinich... and trying very hard to bottle up any and all negative emotions. Because Kinich doesn't know him well yet, we do not see his eyes.

The light-skinned man chugging his wine is referred to as "the pale man", but his name is Gaston and he's from Fontaine. Kinich never learns this before the man dies, which is why this information never appears in the story itself. The wine he's drinking is also from Fontaine, and I think he introduced Fontainian (read: European) style food to the criminal gang, which is why sandwiches appear. Why? Because this guy doesn't really like Natlanese alcohol or Natlanese food, he's just here for the crime (and to prey on others). The name Gaston means "guest" and is also the name of another villain from France, so I thought it fitting for him. Why am I talking so much about this one horrible man, who I don't even like? Because he doesn't appear in any other art (technically false but emotionally true, however, I refuse to talk about him twice).

The large man in the foreground is referred to exclusively as "the muscular man", but his name is Marco. It fits him, being a Hispanic name that traces its roots back to Mars (the Roman god of war and a form of Aries). Why does it fit him? Because he is a very short-tempered, physically violent, imposing recurring antagonist (read: piece of shit). As such, he's depicted as the "scariest" one here, and we see him from behind. We do not know what he is doing nor what he is thinking, and we often fear the unknown. Because he's in the same boat as Gaston, I will talk about him a lot now since I won't get the chance to later (and that's fine with me). Since he sees Kinich repeatedly, Kinich gets acquainted with his sexual preferences. The reason he has those preferences is because he likes to feel powerful, dominating- he gets off on that feeling. This never comes up in the story, which is why I'm talking about it here.

The art for The Price of Foolishness and its sequel (The Gift of Healing) is created with time pressure, because I hold myself to a very fast update schedule. As such, it is simply not as good as the art I could create with unlimited amounts of time. That isn't something I'm sad about! In fact, I'm proud of what I manage to create despite the ridiculous time pressure.

"Why do you subject yourself to ridiculous time pressure? You're not even super popular yet!"

Great question, imaginary asker! I didn't originally intend to hold myself to such crazy standards. I write at a fast pace and would upload once I was done. But as soon as one person mentioned that they loved that I kept such a quick schedule, well, it was over for me.

(I don't write much, if you can believe it; this fic, which I didn't even plan on writing, was the first piece of writing I ever posted online. It got attention, love, and support- way more than I anticipated! To put it bluntly, it feels good and I want more of it. As such, I keep a consistent schedule in order to keep one of the reasons that people love me.)

"I'm from AO3, and you talk so differently in the notes of your work! This feels odd. Why are you talking differently?"

Another great question, imaginary asker! It's because, as of now, my writing is not on Tumblr (I've seen fics on here, but I'd personally rather keep my work on AO3). I can be sillier in the notes of Price and Gift because my writing is there, and my writing is amazing. Because this blog will advertise my writing, I blog as if I am writing, to get across to everyone on Tumblr that my writing is amazing and they should check it out. If I blog with poor writing on my writer blog, people might assume things about my writing.

(Don't worry, this isn't a second personality! I'm still silly, I'm just in my writer mode. If you miss my silliness, then you like my personality and I'm comfortable being silly with you, but I'm blogging to the whole wide world, so.. no silliness in my posts, at least for the foreseeable future. Sorry, y'all.)

"Why are you answering the imaginary asker's questions instead of letting Tumblr users send you their questions in the form of asks? That's a thing they can do, you know!"

Yet another great question, imaginary asker! You're on a roll with these. Although it's true that Tumblr users with questions can send me asks- even anonymously- not every Tumblr user with a question sends that question as an ask. Unasked questions go unanswered, and unanswered questions can leave room for people to assume their own answers. Due to the delicate nature of my work, I do not want people to assume things about me. Therefore, I use the imaginary asker (a technique used by fanfiction authors at least as long ago as Plato) to answer up to three questions that I anticipate people may have. Why no more than three? Because otherwise, me and my AuDHD will go on and on. These posts can't be infinite!

If you've read all of this, congratulations! You're a juggernaut, I really appreciate it, and chances are that you like my writing. If I'm right about that last part, follow me here (and subscribe to my AO3 account) if you want more of it!

Remember to take care of yourselves and others, eat if you haven't already, and have a wonderful whenever! 💖

[polwigle]

ok so I've been rotating Pikmin 4 in my brain for the last month or so and I think I've figured out something about the post-game! it's essay time :)

(under read-more for both inherent spoilers and length, bc hoooo boy this got out of hand. no spoilers for anything past the early post-game though!)

So the main reason for the post-game happening in the first place is because Oatchi, who for some reason sprouted a leaf on his tail on the way to Hero's Hideaway, gets sick as soon as the Rescue Corps tries to leave the planet. The same thing happened to Moss when Olimar tried to leave earlier. Seems like everyone who got Leafed™ is stuck on PNF-404 unless they can get de-leafed, for reasons unknown to anyone in-universe.

But I think I figured out what's going on, and it's not some nefarious plot to get the Pikmin a permanent leader. (Not the 'can't leave the planet' thing, anyway. I don't claim to know how Oatchi got Leafed™ in the first place.) In this essay I will attempt to prove that plants can't breathe in space.

Let's start by looking at some canon facts:

Lemma 1: Aliens Can't Breathe on Earth

PNF-404 is clearly Earth, at an unspecified point in the future (though I believe it to be relatively recent, as detailed in my last essay[1]).

PNF-404's atmosphere is rich in oxygen. Assuming the planet's atmosphere hasn't changed substantially from the Earth we know, approximately 21% of the air is oxygen[2].

[Data source linked in image: https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/earthfact.html]

Oxygen is known to be poisonous to Hocotatians, as stated numerous times through the series.

While Koppaites technically can breathe some oxygen, PNF-404 has three times as much oxygen in its atmosphere than Koppai does[3], so Koppaites still need spacesuits to survive on PNF-404.

It is unknown how natives of other planets handle oxygen, but Collin describes it as poisonous, so it appears at least Giyans(?) cannot breathe oxygen. (As Koppaites are also distinguishable by their rounded ears, I suspect oxygen may be poisonous to all pointy-eared castaways.)

Leaflings, regardless of their planet of origin and contrary to the Rescue Corps' expectations, can breathe in PNF-404's oxygenated atmosphere just fine without helmets. (There's a tangent here I could write a separate essay on, but that's for later.)

Oatchi does not wear a helmet, and can apparently breathe just fine on PNF-404 even before his spontaneous leafification. (This could also lead into its own essay, but suffice to say, his species' origins are unknown in-universe. He was born on Giya, but presumably did not evolve there.)

So basically, if you are a small alien in this world, unless you are a plant or perhaps a dog, you do not want to be exposed to oxygen. Especially not the high concentrations of oxygen on PNF-404.

With that established, we now need to consider real-world biology for a second. There's one more thing to note that isn't discussed in-universe:

Lemma 2: Plants Can Breathe on Earth

Plants need oxygen to live! Not to "breathe" per se, that's not an accurate word for something that doesn't have lungs, but for "aerobic respiration", which at a cellular level is at least one reason why things with lungs breathe, so, close enough for this context.

Plants make their own oxygen while they're photosynthesizing. But when they don't have the light they need to photosynthesize (at night or in other darkness), they take in oxygen from around them to respire with[2][4][5].

In the context of Pikmin biology, Blue Pikmin in particular are described as "breathing" multiple times, usually in the context of breathing underwater. One log from the US version of Pikmin 3 even has Brittany say they're "extracting oxygen from the water"[6]. The equivalent European localization just says they're breathing, but they do seem to be specifically taking in oxygen in the process.

In summary, though oxygen is lethal to the core cast of castaways, the plant life on PNF-404, Pikmin included, can't live without it!

Thesis: Plants Can't Breathe in Space

We know oxygen is poisonous to both Olimar and most of the Rescue Corps, with the exception of Oatchi. Therefore, they would not want it inside their spaceships! Meaning the air inside the S.S. Shepherd (and S.S. Dolphin) would contain only trace amounts of oxygen, if any at all, during space flight.

Plant life from PNF-404, including Pikmin and adjacent leafy creatures, need oxygen to breathe. They only make their own while photosynthesizing, which requires plenty of light. But space is dark. Most of the light inside the S.S. Shepherd is from distant stars outside and the glowing antennae of helmets. (The cargo hold Moss was in may have been even darker.) That's probably not enough light to photosynthesize…

The leafy space dogs can't leave the planet because every vehicle that tried to take them away from the planet was devoid of oxygen.

He's suffocating!! ;A;

Counterpoint: Can Aliens Breathe in Space?

Of course, one thing doesn't immediately line up with my conclusion… Even while Oatchi is theoretically suffocating aboard the S.S. Shepherd, everyone else is still wearing helmets, implying there's too much oxygen around them to safely remove them.

There's probably still some oxygen in the ship — not enough for Oatchi to breathe, but too much for anyone else to breathe. Filtering air doesn't happen instantaneously! And given the severe state of disrepair the S.S. Shepherd was in at the start of the game, being completely out of power, the air filtration systems would have also been shut down. So oxygenated air from PNF-404 was in the ship when they took off, and was in the process of being filtered out as they flew off.

Oatchi's 'symptoms stabilizing' when the S.S. Shepherd stopped flying away might seem to suggest there's something more specifically binding him to the planet… Or the air filtration process might have paused while the ship is stalled, to conserve precious Sparklium energy.

TL;DR: Leafy space-sickness isn't some nefarious Pikmin plot. Plants just can't breathe in space. It's not a feature, it's a bug.

References:

[1] Continental Drift vs Pikmin Lore (my first tumblr essay): https://polwigle.tumblr.com/post/657518379437064192/polwigle-polwigle-in-light-of-the-release-and [2] Needs of Plants: https://letstalkscience.ca/educational-resources/backgrounders/needs-plants [3] Koppai (cite note 3): https://www.pikminwiki.com/Koppai#cite_note-3 [4] Oxygen For Plants – Can Plants Live Without Oxygen: https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/garden-how-to/info/can-plants-live-without-oxygen.htm (also source of atmosphere pie chart image) [5] Do Plants Need Oxygen? What Oxygen is Used For & Why: https://flourishingplants.com/do-plants-need-oxygen/ (also source of How Plants Use Oxygen image) [6] Pikmin 3 Voyage Log (Blue Pikmin): https://www.pikminwiki.com/Pikmin_3_voyage_log#Blue_Pikmin

[pentition]

I don't know if this is an unpopular opinion in this fandom or what but after seeing some posts and asks surrounding this I sort of wanted to just give my two measly cents.

Be aware, there are Knives Out spoilers from here on out:

I don't think Pen being a romance option is wrong or should have never happened. We know Pen was a late addition as a bachelor and it's okay if the devs haven't wholly figured things out since the game is in early access still. I will say I'm concerned given where we are in the year, with the update and all that with how the romance was handled - especially given the whole full release date stuff.

I don't want this to be (Spoiler for My Time At Portia) another Aadit where things just... end and we have nothing to go off of. With Pen we have more context at least but it's not enough for those of us who romanced him. And the lack of engagement post-reveal of Pen's role is very unsatisfying. I hope that changes, I hope it's just an oversight. I get that it can feel like, "But how can something so big be an oversight" and my answer to that is, I don't know. I just know it's early access so I'm just going to put in trust something better happens. Whether that is just some exchanges to cement Pen's villainous direction and end things - a closure, or we work on getting him back on our side in some manner.

What I want is for the other hearts to unlock with Pen and there be development. What I want is him to be selfish and ditch his loyalty to Duvos at the chance of maybe garnering more attention or what not via helping Sandrock. What I want is Pen and the player to be able to end things or work on them. What I want is whether he's lying or not about what happened that there's well written growth. I don't expect much, because as much as I adore Pathea and they have surprised me with things at times, they also don't always follow through. That's not an insult or meant to be offensive, that's just my opinion and it doesn't change the love I have for this team.

In terms of Pen being romanceable... I think it adds to the narrative well for those that chose him. I think it adds if Pathea decides against returning him to us as a marriage candidate post-Knives Out. I think it adds if they (hopefully) do find a means to return him to us. I don't think him being a romance option is wrong. I think how it was handled was missing important elements needed for the players that romanced him.

At the moment, there's no acknowledgement, closure or any hint whether he's full on antagonist or whether we'll have the chance to get him back. Personally, that's frustrating. I immersed myself in a character who genuinely enjoyed Pen's antics with no interest in anyone else to romance. Now I don't know if there's a future or not on this playthrough in terms of romance. And I don't want to just examine who could be a next potential candidate because I don't have any information to guide me if I should. It's discouraging to some degree to even think about that when I spent so long on this save figuring out how my character fits into everything and who she favors. Yes, it's just a game but it's also a story and narrative I let my imagination sink a lot of hours into and I think that's not something to overlook with the player audience. Creating any story is going to ignite imagination and therefore not keeping that in mind is doing a disservice to your audience.

I feel there's importance and a place if Pen is a dedicated 'evil' and villain. If that's what the devs want to commit to, that's fine. It's not what I want but it is something I can accept. The romance part certainly adds a fun thing to the betrayal. My beef is in how it was handled, how lack lustered it was. I feel like I'm left standing without foundation beneath my feet. I think that provoking that feeling is good in some parts, but that's only on an emotional basis - not a gameplay/technical one due to having no engagement or choices, nor any acknowledgement to the relationship between the two. I can be fine if the towns people don't acknowledge it, even if that's also meh. But for Pen and the builder to be unable to seems like a punch to the gut and unfair.

Anyways, a moot gave good advice over on their ask here that finally tipped me into writing this post. But I'll also add the link right here to fill out the survey for Knives Out. If you want Pen back or have opinions, it's best to kindly fill that out.

[tusksforhire]

A small analysis on 3 'Can't You See Me?' Characters: Giselle, Six, Mono.

TW: Mentions of alcohol abuse, hospitals/pills y etc, blood?, religion, traumas.

Small context: This is me elaborating a bit on my thought process in a few characters of my Little Nightmares AU. It is on Ao3, with 10 chapters, and you can find it in my pinned post!

> Giselle.

I have yet to make her character sheet — But one thing about Giselle:

She doesn't have a set nationality. The thing about nationalities in CYSM is that they don't exactly interfere on the character's plots, but they help to bring in more depth to their designs through actual real-life cultures that they'd be a part of, or are inspired by, if the countries said cultures are a part of even existed in CYSM.

In a technical level, they do, but not explicitly —A Brazillian-inspired place isn't going to be called Brazil but readers would eventually find out it is basically the in-universe Brazil equivalent ig

So, with Giselle: She doensn't have a set nationality.

Giselle's nationality is a mystery because i personally thought it'd be cool if the girl who worships a alien god from somewhere from outer space, also decided to keep her roots hidden — It makes her more similar to her god and more mysterious in a way.

However, she's highly inspired by vampires and Rosaria from Genshin Impact.

Giselle is a character that's very in line with toxic religion — not a specific one in mind, but just the obsessive faith one might have that they think they're entitled to something just because they believe on a certain god, even if the decisions they make around their faith might harm the people surrounding them, even if they don't hold the same beliefs.

I tend to be as light as possible on topics as these, to be honest — I don't think a Little Nightmares fanfiction is the place to discuss real-life serious issues, though with brevity and creativity, I think Giselle's concept/idea as a character works balances things out quite well — it doesn't go too deep on said topics but it also goes far enough for the storyline to progress while sending a message across.

> Six:

Okay so brace yourselves — Six is kind of a doozy.

Six is... well, she's a mix. I think she encapsulates well the aesthetic appeal of games like Silent Hill — when i think of Six, I think of something like that, believe it or not.

Blood splatters on the snow, cloudy skies on a windy day, open bottle pills — Six's personality and even her concept board(Sorry i can't show it :( Has spoilers) is very intertwined with hospital imagery. It could be because she herself feels ill, even if her own body is seemingly fine. There's a lot to Six, and obviously the themes of lost childhood are very present on her entire characterization in CYSM.

She looks like the kind of girl who'd stitch up creepy teddy bears and plush bunnies, the kind of girl who'd still play with and cherish her dolls even if she's past the age of playing with toys (perhaps once everything's normal again, she could become a collector?), and the kind of girl who enjoys cute and morbid things alike.

I think, if i had to choose a description for her — I'd probably call her a fallen angel or something along these lines. She has a unreal beauty and tragedy to her, and such a specific personality I often find myself having difficulty explaining how much thought went into her characterization with just words. She's much deeper than how I've written her so far.

Here's a small look into her pinterest board:

> Mono:

Mono, or also known as Mauricio — He's brazillian! — Is an artist. He's the definition of the word; a creative young man who isn't afraid to use his talents to change the world, the boy is afraid of life, but presses fowards even if he's terrified of what the future may hold for him. I mean, after nine years of doing nothing, it was about time he'd start exploring the world around him, yes?

And as he explores, he brings messages of hope and kindness for other survivors, through his art! Mono is the kind of relaxed, laid-back artist who enjoys scribbling in his notebook while drinking something, so he can eventually bring those drawings to life by replicating them on the walls everywhere he goes, may it be cities, broken houses, forgotten towns and village or even random rocks he finds in the wilderness — The world is his canvas, his home, and he's determined to try and fix it.

So it's not a surprise, as seen though his entire personality, that Mono is the kind of artist who enjoys making critics about the world they live in — He doesn't consider himself a hero, but he feels pride in sending the messages and criticism he believes the others need to hear.

hes also kind of a drunkard lmfao

(i couldn't find any credits for the art of the wolf on the print below, please tell me if you know so i can properly credit!)

[thothxv]

Computers in Media

Hi! I'm a CS student. I'm going to talk about some things with computers in them. What I think they got wrong, and what I think they got right. This will be shamelessly biased. And we'll be talking about accuracy, but as we'll see, accuracy is not always my priority. I just felt like rambling for a bit.

CSI

Well, you knew it was going to be here, the infamous scene from CSI:NY. And it gets so much wrong in just 15 seconds, and in a single sentence:

"I'll create a GUI interface using Visual Basic, see if I can track an IP address."

This is a bad sentence for multiple reasons. If you are a domain expert, you recognize that this sentence, inasmuch as it means anything, is just an absurd thing to say in 2008. If you're on the middle of a murder investigation, you don't make GUIs for something there are already many standard tools for. In addition, tracking an IP address through technical means in the context described (I read a plot summary for this) would be basically impossible. Getting the IP address would involve pulling log files and then getting the ISP to map that to a customer and location if they can. All of that is a legal process, not a technical one.

But this is also bad for a much worse reason: it's meaningless to a non-technical audience. Most of the people who look at whatever you make aren't pedantic little shits like me. They're people who don't understand the domain. They might have heard the term "IP address" before, but the rest of this is just fancy gobbledygook designed to wow them.

If you don't know what you're talking about, say nothing. "I'll try to track where the posts are coming from" would have been a better phrase to use here. No technical details, but if you know how that would be done, you can fill in the blanks. If you want some more technicals, "I'll try to get the IP address the posts are coming from so we can figure out where they are" is fine. If the audience already knows how IP addresses might be used you can obviously leave off that last part. This all works when computers are on the periphery of your story, of course. If they're central, you might need more detail.

Sneakers

Sneakers is a thriller movie from 1992 with comedy elements. It's about a quirky team of penetration testers (for those who don't know, penetration testers are groups companies pay to try and break their own security) who get hired by the government to go steal a mysterious box from a mathematician. It's a fun movie.

Except for a level of technical accuracy that is just plain weird. Sneakers takes liberties, plenty of them, usually for the purpose of giving the audience more of a show, but everything about its fundamental premise, everything about its macguffin, is just... correct?

The below scene is spoilers for Sneakers:

I love this scene, and I especially love the music, which is just great. As for the technical aspects, I have no idea what a "quadrant" is supposed to be, and the way the team would make the discovery would, in real life, be a lot more boring. But that quick, two-sentence explanation of how all this is happening, that is correct, and I don't think I could have said it better. And as the movie goes on, it becomes increasingly clear that they probably have a specific unsolved mathematical problem in mind that this box solves. At least, I have my suspicions. I don't think it's a coincidence that Leonard Adleman was asked to consult on the film.

But, they don't bother to explain any of that. They clearly did research, despite taking a lot of liberties and implying lie detectors work. But they don't talk about it onscreen, because to the audience, the technical background doesn't matter that much. It's the inverse of that CSI scene.

Funnily enough, the tale of Sneakers' production begins with another movie about hackers. One less interested in reality, but much, much more influential in shaping it.

WarGames

I don't care to rank things, so I won't. But WarGames is the most important movie on this list. Arguably, it's one of the most important movies about computers ever. For better or worse, WarGames shaped public policy, gave the public indelible images of what a hacker looked like and what they could do, and left a permanent imprint on hacker culture. DEFCON (the convention, not the US Armed Forces Defense Readiness Condition) is called DEFCON because of this movie. Wardialing is called wardialing because Matthew Broderick used that technique in this film. This movie had a direct impact on US security policy and on the development US laws around computer hacking. Kevin Mitnick was held in solitary confinement for a year because a prosecutor told a judge that if he got near a phone he could dial up NORAD and launch a nuclear missile, and the court bought it.

WarGames is a story about an AI that has been put in charge of nuclear missile launch control and could be dialed up over the phone. The AI could almost certainly not exist in 1983, and even with the lax security of the era it is extremely unlikely it would be connected to the public telephone network. WarGames doesn't care, because it's much more interested in its narrative and message than being accurate. And rightly so: it's a great movie as a result. But those choices had consequences that the writers probably couldn't have foreseen. it raised awareness and fears about computer security that were honestly kind of justified, but it also lead to the kind of mania and warped public perception of hackers that could lock someone in solitary confinement for nonsense reasons and result in overly harsh laws around computer crime.

But for all WarGames gets technically wrong, it also gets a lot of things right. Once again, the writing time consulted with all the right people, hackers and other computer experts. Approaches like wardialing were real, as were important computer systems exposed over the phone to anyone who bothered to dial in. The techniques used to crack passwords were and are very real, and can be quite effective.

And then there's the message. The idea that human judgement must be in the loop on major decisions, that trusting a machine alone is not acceptable, especially in the context of the madness of nuclear brinkmanship, where the wrong choice could literally end the world (although WarGames also takes a pretty explicitly negative stance on nuclear brinkmanship as a whole...). Sensors can fail, inputs can be wrong, someone has to actually look at the outputs and say "...really?" And this is exemplified by a scene in WarGames, right near the end, where Professor Falken has to convince the military to call off launching the missiles. He argues that what's on the monitors makes no sense, that the only logical reason for it all is a systems malfunction.

I bring this up because WarGames released on June 3, 1983. Three months later, on September 29, 1983, the world was saved by Stanislav Petrov arriving at the same realization when Soviet nuclear early-warning satellites detected incoming missiles that weren't there. If that's not chilling, I don't know what is.

For all its tangled legacy in popular culture, at least this new fear of random kids dialing into computer systems will mean they'll be made more secure.

...it will mean they'll be made more secure, right?

Why are you looking at me like that?

The Cuckoo's Egg

I keep bringing up this book, because it's great. The Cuckoo's Egg is different from everything else I've discussed, because The Cuckoo's Egg, despite reading like a bit like a zany cold war spy thriller, is non-fiction. This really happened. In 1986, an astronomer-turned-sysadmin at UC Berkeley really did discover and track down a computer hacker trying to break into US military computers to find information to sell to the soviets.

This does mean I don't need to talk about whether or not this book is accurate. It is. What stands out about The Cuckoo's Egg, in its depiction of computers, is its ability to be read by a lay audience. Unlike every other good example I've covered, which are movies that took a basically correct technical idea and ran with it while working hard to get the big stuff right and create a veneer of reality, The Cuckoo's Egg has to get into the nitty-gritty of some relatively technical subjects. The emacs movemail exploit, the differences between BSD and System V, password cracking, other technical subjects are key to the story and need to be explained. And it's very good at this. It explains enough to understand the story, but doesn't fall into the trap of overexplaining. It's very good at picking the right details to cover and the right ones to simplify or not discuss. And you can see the difference between it and the paper that the author wrote discussing the incident for a technical audience.

Jurassic Park

"It's a UNIX system! I know this."

In Jurassic Park we see a quintessential example of the Hollywood Computer UI. Everything is flashy 3D and UIs that make little to no sense in reality as something you'd actully use but look cool and scan easily on the big screen. Nobody in their right mind would use a faux-3D file explorer like this one. It's full of slow, clunky transitions, and that awkward slowness is fantastic for cinematic tension but miserable in real life. With a famously special-effects heavy movie like Jurassic Park, you can imagine that time and budget that went into making this fancy 3D visualization.

That's right, zero time and budget. I think this is more common knowledge now, but that 3D file explorer is a real program. It's called fsn, and it would have come packed in with the SGI graphics workstations that were being used to animate them dinosaurs, as a way of showing off the machines' 3D graphics capabilities. Of course, it's a total toy, just a demo really, and nobody would use it on a daily basis. It's real... but unrealistic.

Mind, I don't care. Film is a visual medium, and it's not a crime to use some visuals or visual metaphors that normally don't appear on real computers. Like I said, accuracy is not my primary concern... so long as it's not jarring or immersion breaking. And while it would never happen as depicted, hunting through the filesystem to try and guess the command to do something is something I've definitely done.

Mr. Robot

Didn't watch it much, but I feel like it would get brought up if I didn't mention it. Mr. Robot was well known for getting technical details correct. From what I've seen, it does in fact do this.

The same is true of all of the following:

Silicon Valley

The technical consultants don't want to be yelled at on Reddit. Apparently some people who work in Silicon Valley have had to take breaks from the show because it got too real for them.

Halt and Catch Fire

I remember a story I heard on a podcast about a programmer who wanted to watch this show with his son, and his son asked if there was normally this much sex in computers (the answer was no), and apparently just seemed bored by all the sex and asked if they could watch something else.

This more or less summarizes my opinion of Halt and Catch Fire. It seems to be pretty accurate from what I saw of it, but I stopped watching because I got tired of all the boring, boring, boring sex and related drama.

Okay, back to things I want to talk about.

Castle

Speaking of notorious hacking sequences:

...What could I possibly have to complain about? This is the best thing ever.

This is really a great example of those terrible nonsense UIs I was talking about. And that random pseudo-rubik's-cube visualization? Why? And don't get me started on "cyber nukes."

Like I said, visualizations are fine, but this is just silly. Even someone who knows nothing about computers would know this is silly. Maybe that's the point but it just... really pulls you right out of the scene. This would have worked way better if they were more vague about the specifics of the "hacking" and focused on the conversation and personal stuff.

In conclusion: Masterpiece. 10/10, no notes.

Tron

In 1982, the academy award for best visual effects went to... E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. The Saturn Award went to E.T. as well, and only the BAFTA Award for Best Visual Special Effects even nominated Tron.

This is because the Academy believed that using computers for visual effects was cheating.

We've talked about real things, realistic things, and stories that don't care about being real but want to feel real. Tron is none of those things. Is it realistic? No! Of course not! It's nonsense! But who cares? Tron basically wants to be a digital Alice in Wonderland. It's just using computers to paint a cool world inspired by videogames. I wouldn't say there's much deeper meaning.

But it just looks cool.

[destinyschaosdreamer]

Although I'm still working on the next two chapters, I've been super excited about what's to come (and scenes I've already written out) so I decided it was time to use this for its actual intentions.

Which means.... It's time for some sneak peeks! Always a risk for spoilers but may also be taken out of context. Today I give you 2 radically different sides of the same ppl....

This time I'm only including material from Insurrection. But I'm likely to just post random scenes from any of my stories and leave everyone guessing very shortly.... feel free to make your guesses and theories! ^_^

"Should probably start by painting this van so it's NOT so obvious."

"Way to get your invitation rescinded."

"So we are totally stealing this..."

"No."

"And if we're gonna paint it that's technically defacing which is..."

"No..."

"VANDALISM!"

"No."

"Which is?"

"A crime?"

"Exactly!"

"This is basically grand theft auto."

"Of private company property."

"No."

"We'll have to change the license plates obviously."

"Of course."

"No, it's not! That's not- It doesn't count. It's not- .....Fine. We're committing grand larceny along with the line of all the other crimes we've committed tonight."

"And you're allowing it?"

"And I'm allowing it."

"More like aiding and abetting...."

"FINE! We're all technically fugitives willingly committing a list of crimes. Is THAT what all you little hoodlums wanted to hear???"

"YES!"

"Jesus frickin Christ. I shoulda just burned down the very first restaurant the day it opened."

"Aww, now where'd be the fun in that?"

"Not you fucking too! Ugh, call the old man. Is it too lot for purgatory?"

"Nope, it's already currently occupied."

"By one William Afton."

"Is it to late to switch? Seriously?"

"Hiya, Gregory, what evil junior mastermind plans you following this time?"

"How the fuck did- ... She told you, didn't she? Ugh, I told them she's going to talk to much!"

"Them?"

"Stay the fuck out of it. And stay away from her!"

"Not happening, kiddo. Besides how am I supposed to be distracted by her if I do?"

"She fucking told you that also?! I KNEW IT!"

"Actually just an educated guess when she wasn't constantly being ordered back downstairs. I'm more observant than ppl take me for, you know. And I'm not stupid. I know your bosses, and probably you as well, have eyes and ears everywhere. So not like anything gets by you all.  Jealous of all that great adventures by the way? You can always join in. All you have to do is ask....and maybe drop the attitude. I get enough of it from Cassidy."

"Everything comes to an end eventually. Enjoy it while you can."

"And we plan to. Why not come along until then? Nothing wrong with having a little fun."

"You can't fool me. I see what you're doing."

"And what's that exactly?"

"In case you haven't  figured it out, genius, I could care less about any of that. I'm not like her."

"Right. You kill for fun because all the cool kids are doing it. And not because you're forced to?"

"She's not who you think she is. She's not like any of you. She has you all fooled more than you know."

"What is she to you anyways? A scapegoat to place the blame on?"

"Like I'm telling you anything."

"I'm good at figuring it out. And if not, Charlie's pretty smart. We'll get there eventually. Ya know, I wonder about how you're the only one with all this hostility towards me, and then I realize. You're the only one among them that doesn't actually know me or anything about my actions. After all they basically studied it or whatever weird shit and she's got the actual memories of everything like she was there. But you? You're trailing blindly trying to keep up. Lemme guess, they're all keeping you in the dark, right? You're just learning as you go?"

"I can't wait until she finally carves you up."

"Ya know, that would definitely be an upgrade from everyone else who's tried."

"What the hell are you doing here anyways? Not exactly saving the world and slaying the demons standing around are you?"

"Nah, I'm not really the heroic type. I keep company with a bunch of murder kids and have my own path I've trailed. Especially for brats like you. Not exactly fitting the standards. Besides just waiting and killing time for whenever your bosses get done with her."

"How..."

"Like I said, I'm observant. Plus, you're right. Vanessa's not like me. I've always made my own moves and choices. Ask Evan about it sometime. Who ever thought Michael Afton was actually some great noble knight in shining armor obviously never knew shit and never met anyone from the actual family.  Because trust me, kid....that Afton temper is a thing. And something you don't EVER want to see..."