#those are my main takeaways

[pleasantmsp]

Initial Thoughts on Downfall

I think it's fair to assume the following so far: Trist = Sarenrae. Ayden = Pelor. Emhira = Raven Queen. Asha = Melora. S.I.L.A.H.A. = Corellon. The Emissary = Erathis (except not exactly like the others)

The gods literally putting themselves (or parts of themselves) into mortal bodies so they could infiltrate Aeor is so incredibly interesting. I love their art and I love the binary code that clued us all in to each of their true identities.

Erathis not actually showing up is sooooo interesting. Tal is playing a yearning gay so well too. We love the gay drama of it all.

Literally posted on Twitter how I was hoping and begging for a mention, a crumb of Ioun and then literally 10 mins later, we got Arcadia AKA Ioun, goddess of knowledge, my beloved. I love a goddess of knowledge and I love Ioun so much! I could go on and on about Ioun but I'll save it. I'll just say that Brennan is playing Ioun exactly how I'd want, how I'd imagine she would be in this situation. Being so knowledgeable, wanting the knowledge she doesn't have, being a voice of reason. I love it so much!

Laura is playing the Raven Queen so fucking well holy shit. She is literally a child of this era and her knowledge of Aeor and the mages of this time is like no other god's. All the times she's mentioned knowing about the mortals here, every time she talks about death, man it is exactly how I'd think the Raven Queen would be here and I'm living for it.

I have one more thing but I decided to give it its own post. It's about Tal's portrayal of Melora. I have Thoughts™

[kotonni]

I find it interesting how the general concensus is that Viktor and Jayce broke up in act one.

I truly believe they never had an actual falling out, Jayce did something unforgivable to Viktor as the ultimate act of love, Viktor now fully possesed by the hexcore goes to Zaun to start converting people. Jayce thinks Viktor needs some time and fully expects him to come back to the lab at some point. Jayce spends the rest of the show clawing his way back to Viktor while Viktor's indentity is completely erased by the hexcore (which also tries to replace Jayce's memory with Sky).

These mfs never broke up, as soon as they got separated for the first time in the show they were constantly seeking one another and they kinda burnt the world to the ground making it happen.

[bardic-irritation]

maybe unpopular opinion but I'm kinda loving Elias so far? like as a Person I would hate him but as a Character? kicking my feet and giggling everytime he makes a stupid joke or menaces someone. slayyyy old man. terrorizing your employees is so good for the Plot.

[handthattakes]

Arctober day 8: BLUEEEEEEEEEEE

[lilacerull0]

i haven't even seen the episode yet, but learning about the fact that they didn't include such an essential aspect of the story is making me feel so irrationally sad

[technicallyannoyingtaco]

OBX S4 P2 Spoilers

Sarah and John B’s baby (if it lives) is probably gonna be named JJ and I love that. But also I think Cameron as the first name would work so well. Cause Sarah goes by Routledge right???

Anyways, in Season 5, if we don’t see the toll of the pregnancy on her from all the stuff they are doing I’ll be pissed. Cause why would you have her pregnant if it doesn’t impact her character.

Also great character redemption moment for Rafe would be to have him protect his niece/nephew in some way when Sarah and John B can’t.

[mummer]

tng finale ripped so fucking hard are you actually kidding me. Omg

[empty-blog-for-lurking]

I recently finished Love Sickness series by Junji Ito and it's like- look i completely understand where Ryuusuke is coming from, hell if something like that happened to me as a kid, i would be wrecked with guilt too, i do not blame him! but it's also like

why is a grown ass adult woman trauma dumping and asking advice from a bloody 8 year old??? Girl be serious

[trevination]

part of me is sad that when i saw trevi live i was like. so enamored by his performance i forgot to remember anything else abt the show lmao

[old-long-john]

Hi Leo! Only if you welcome the opportunity to gush, but what did you love about Conclave?

Hi! I'm not sure I have anything wildly insightful or original to say about Conclave (I really need to watch it again for that), but it was just really fucking good! It was one of those films that completely drew me in and didn't lose my attention for a single second.

The performances were all so perfectly understated and I love when films or tv shows aren't afraid to sit with silences or ambiguities and just let them take up space. It felt like we as the audience were often either uncomfortably close to characters, or frustratingly removed from them, and that made us participants in this cliquey, claustrophobic political game where we couldn't see all the moving parts or inner machinations any more than Ralph Fiennes' character could.

Something else I loved about the characters was that they all felt so real. Flawed people with sympathies and egos, some bigger than others, all vying for the power to influence based on their own personal certainties. Ralph Fiennes' character was one of the most sympathetic, but also one of the most naive, and there's always something fascinating to me about naivety in characters being both a blessing and a curse.

It also looked beautiful. The cinematography was stunning and it added so much to the storytelling and world building. That's part of what I mean about the film not being afraid to sit in silences and let them take up space, because those long establishing shots or framing choices often said more than a few lines of clunky expositional dialogue ever could. And I could see the temptation in a relatively sedate story like that to want to speed things up in the edit to add some artificial energy and make sure you're not losing your audience's focus, but they didn't do that. They respected the type of story they were telling and the audience's willingness to go along with them.

The whole thing was just well made from top to bottom and it felt like everyone involved in it understood what they were doing, individually and collectively, and so the final result was more than the sum of its parts. Poetic cinema, I guess!

[illithilit]

The array I've got here is so fucking wild, I swear to the gods. I get whiplash going from some muses who will smite you if you even look at them wrong -- and then there's other muses that fuck all the goddamn time with varying levels of needing to be invested in someone before they get nasty

And sometimes I have to fill out little sticker charts for when they go thirty minutes without having sex with their partner. 😐

[moist-von-lipwig]

hey i read going postal. moist is so bitchy lol he's cute. why are we older than him.

Help I swear I answered this but. Perhaps not. Anyway yeah GOD the idea of him being younger than us. FRIGHTENING... it's one thing to overtake YA characters but now it's the adult ones too...... mad ness luv x... lich rally mad ness !

He's so fun I love Going Postal and I LOVE Making Money too, would definitely recommend that if you enjoyed Moist. For some reason (probably just whichever happened to be in the library at the time tbh) back in the day I read Making Money first so I have a special place for it in my heart in some ways I think. Anyway. Love Moist. One of the guys of all time to me for SURE.

[wild-at-mind]

Had a really weird weekend and now I am ill which always makes me depressed so if any depressed posts happen later I apologise in advance.

[alexturner2005]

lolololol the taylor tattoo is still there

[heloflor]

Ranking the 10 Showtime transformations because why not

Note that this is based on gameplay. If it was based on design, this list would be widely different. Mild spoilers as I mention the number of levels + a few elements in some of them.

(1.5k words below)

10. Swordfighter Peach: The more trailers I saw the more I expected this one to be rather dull and repetitive, and yeah it was. All you do is run and press a button, sometimes having to wait before pressing it. It probably doesn’t help that I’m not into beat 'em ups. The design and aesthetic are really cool, but the gameplay really gets dull.

9. Mermaid Peach: Ok so while I absolutely adore this game and would buy a sequel/DLC in a heartbeat if Nintendo released one tomorrow, there are two big issues I have with it. You can’t skip the in-level cutscenes and dialogues (which makes going back to collect everything very tedious) and the game is way too short.

Tbh I would’ve loved to have at least eight levels per transformations, but regardless I do think we should have had at least five, that way not only would the game be longer but we could also have had more game mechanics for each transformation, as there was a lot of potential here and it feels like the game only scratched the surface of what could be done with them (ngl I’m very curious about the scrapped content of this game).

The way I see it, the first and second levels stay the same, third you start in the transformation and it introduces a new mechanic, fourth is the Sparklas rescue level, and fifth is a play done fully with the Sparkla by your side, as I feel like having one long/full level with each Sparkla would have made one specific cutscene more effective since we would’ve seen more of them as a result.

Going back to the topic of Mermaid Peach, thing is, while each transformation had more potential, I’m still very satisfied with what we ended up having for all of them, including Swordfighter. Mermaid is the exception tho, as unlike the others it feels like an actual waste of potential, not helped by the first level being a complete slug in its first half and the Sparkla level being ridiculously short.

Like that transformation is just a whole lot of nothing. You either move some fishes or do a not-actually-a-rhythm-game concert, both of which aren’t the most interesting thing. Tbh I should probably put it below Swordfighter but I do like controlling the fishes, especially in the second level, so it gets some points for that. But it’s still a very “nothing” transformation.

I think the issue is that they didn’t fully commit to their ideas for it. Like we get a few puzzles but they’re way too short and easy, same with the concert that isn’t much of a minigame. I feel like had they pushed for longer or more complex puzzles and done something different for the concert, it would have been a better transformation. Or at least make the puzzles of the first level better, as I do like the way they handled the second level’s fight-oriented section.

And unrelated but huge props to whoever did the opera singing bc some of the notes they hit are high!

8. Mighty Peach: It’s basically the same issue as Swordfighter. You run around and attack, rinse and repeat. But this time it’s more satisfying and there’s more gameplay variety. Also the boss of the second stage had so much effort put into them and I can’t help but love it for it. Still all about running and punching, but it’s more fun.

7. Kung-Fu Peach: Same deal as Swordfighter and Mighty. Now I’m putting it above the other two bc they do try to give you different ways of fighting on top of some platforming, and going down the polls is very satisfying when there are tons of enemies. I also find the bosses to be better than Swordfighter, even if in both cases it’s just “press the attack button at the right time”. I think it’s the animations, it’s just more fun. The boss for the Sparkla rescue is especially enjoyable. But yeah ultimately it’s still a lot of running and punching.

6. Figure Skater Peach: This one was weird to rank bc I do really like the gameplay, they did a really good job at mixing up minigame with fighting, plus the boss is fun. But at the same time the levels themselves aren’t all that good imo.

I think this transformation might suffer the most from only having three levels. Like I wish we had more exploring/"platforming" the likes of the first level (the section after the performance but before the boss), but at the same time I like the parade float idea of the second level. The first level also has a fairly long “tutorial” (the performance section) but at the same time I get why it’s there. So yeah, I guess the issue is moreso how little levels they are, making the flaws of what we have stand out more.

On that note, I found the controls to be a bit janky at times, especially when it comes to turning around, but I’m willing to forgive some of it since it’s ice physics + gives some more difficulty (even though I’m not the biggest fan of when the difficulty comes from jankiness rather than lack of skill)

The sparkla level is amazing tho!

5. Patissiere Peach: The transformation I expected the least of and ended up genuinely surprised by how enjoyable it is. You don’t even do that much, there’s only two minigames that are played out three times, but for some reason I still love it. And I like how tight the timing on the cookies is on the second level, in general they don’t leave you much room to mess it up which I like.

4. Cowgirl Peach: It’s basically the opposite of Figure Skater. I don’t find the gameplay itself all that interesting but the levels are so good and manage to use said gameplay very well, which really makes up for it! The second and Sparkla level in particular are really good, I really enjoyed them!

3. Dashing Thief Peach: Look I grew up playing Mario games, of course I’m going to enjoy the 2D platforming levels. But yeah those are really fun! Love the vibes, cool levels, and I especially like the Sparkla one as it really feels like they’re testing you on every ability with the four different rooms + the escape. Really enjoyable transformation!

2. Detective Peach: I had no idea what to expect of this one and am still surprised by how much I love it. I don’t know if this is the mystery angle, the fact you can skip dialogues and even go straight to the answer if you want to without needing any clue (which makes replaying the levels way less tedious), the Junior detective that I can’t help but love, the fact you can check on everything which makes my monkey brain happy, Peach’s “I’m smarter than everyone else” face when getting the answer that I find hilarious, or level 2 as a whole (especially the very beginning and “cutscene” at the end), but yeah I adore this one!

The only negative I can say is that there’s little replayability once you know the answer, which I’m assuming is an issue with the genre in general so it’s not like the game could have done this differently, and the Sparkla level which is way too short and easy. Other than that, love it!

1. Ninja Peach: Like I said for Dashing Thief, I’m a big fan of platforming. And this level is all platforming on top of really fun infiltration. They also somehow managed to make auto-scrolling sections fun, which I really like (I think it’s the speed that makes them enjoyable).

Speaking of infiltration I’m also a big fan of all the silly animations Peach has when sneaking around (the two branches clearly not made of grass, the wall disguise that doesn’t hide her hair, the bamboo, the shoes when walking on water, the log with hair when spotted, trying to walk sneakily in that one section from the second level), you can tell the people working on the game had fun with those!

Also the “scroll usage” sections are incredibly satisfying, especially the one from the second level. The Sparkla level is also very fun, tho not my favorite. But yeah, it’s just a very fun and satisfying transformation!

(Note that I’m aware of how dumb it is to complain about some transformations “not having much going on gameplay wise” or “only being two buttons to push” when literally every single one of them is just pushing two buttons, but the difference lies in how much variety they were able to get out of each transformation on top of the genre for each, both of which make for a more or less enjoyable experience depending on the transformation.

For example, both Swordfighter and Dashing Thief only have two buttons you can push, but Swordfighter ends up being exclusively about fighting enemies, while Dashing Thief has a few puzzles, some quick action moments, a gliding section and some “rail sliding” (no idea what else to call it). It’s still just pushing two buttons, but they got more variety out of it, hence being more interesting.)

[diltonsstrangescience]

Me, reading the first thirty words of this post: Yes. Mm hmm. Exactly.

Me, reading everything after that: HWHAT WHAT WH HAT WHAT W

WHAT IS HAPPENING ON THAT SHOW????? THIS IS INSANEEEEE

It’s so frustrating that so many people don’t know or realise that Jughead Jones is actually weird, he is a weirdo, and it’s not just because of that stupid hat - it’s because of the way he mines the real life tragedies of his friends and loved ones for his own personal gain, the fact that he’s died at least 4 times, that there is at minimum 3 of him and you could make an argument for there being 6, that only like 4 of the people he’s ever met have liked him and those 4 people do not include his parents, that he trapped his friends in a perpetual cycle of being 17 because he can’t move on or get over anything, that he was asked to film his high school’s production of Carrie and ended up filming a true crime documentary and that isn’t even half of the weird but true facts about my friend Jughead