#track by track review

[noahreids]

2024 Tumblr Year in Review + RED, WHITE & ROYAL BLUE (in/sp)

[notyourmusebby]

in the sense that..

[ratboysims]

apartment for dustin broke and dirk dreamer, sponsored by my traumatic reasearch deep in r/malelivingspace

[animentality]

I say the like most basic of coding shit to my work uncle and he's like I DONT KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT COMPUTERS.

And it's like my dude, my guy... I majored in anthropology.

Believe me. I dont know shit either.

I just know the bare basics now, because I work with software engineers all the time. It's like living in a foreign country for a year.

you learn the local language.

[thereadingchallengechallenge]

Review: Whalefall by Daniel Kraus Rating: 5/5

This was incredible! I picked it up solely because it was about a guy getting eaten by a whale but Kraus went the whole nine yards with it.

Part adventure story about said guy getting eaten by said whale, part devastating emotional drama about a guy trying to reconcile his tense relationship with his father. By getting eaten by a whale. Amazing.

There were definitely some bits that made me squeamish but the pace moves quickly and the gross bits being interspersed with the family drama and some truly charming observations about marine life made it much more palatable.

I thoroughly enjoyed this. If you love survival stories like The Martian or Our Wives Under the Sea, I think you'll enjoy Whalefall.

[dinerfries]

yay ^_^

[puckpocketed]

me when i admit to being normal about my new captain

[kvothbloodless]

A incredibly weird problem I see in a good portion of fantasy stories these days is something Ive been calling "Inferna delenda est", and which my less pretentious friends (all of them) call "the hell problem". Its sort of something that, because its a genre convention, is almost always ignored, but once you see it, it cant be unseen.

I admittedly only started seeing this after reading UNSONG, which is literally About this problem. But now that its been pointed out, I cant unsee it elsewhere, and any media which runs into it but doesnt address it becomes almost entirely ruined for me.

The issue of Inferna delenda est is present in any setting which 1. Has real, proven afterlifes where most people literally go when they die and 2. Has one of those afterlifes be at all comparable to Hell, i.e. any place where a significant number of sapient creatures are tortured for all eternity.

If those two criteria are met, almost any plot becomes pointless and trivial. What does it matter that a hero saves a city from destruction when beneath their feet millions of people are burning, and many of those saved will join them? Who cares whether the ruler of a country is corrupt or not? The evil that would be stopped by replacing them with even a perfectly competent and benevolent ruler is staggeringly inconsequential compared to that of an eternity of torment.

Like, im not being vague or making an analogy here. Im just saying that its incredibly difficult to care about a plot to stop a war or kill an evil wizard when the story offhandedly mentions the fact that millions of people are 100% being tortured for eternity in a real place and no one is doing anything about it.

And even further, it makes it Really hard to view the heroes as...actual heroes. The degree of callousness required to keep the existance of hell in the background (from an in-universe perspective) is just ridiculous. Like, if youve got your high fantasy hero saving an entire continent from an evil demigod or whatever, the fact that theyre Not constantly thinking about hell is just... if you have that kinda power, and you literally know for a fact that Hell is a place, then you should be fucked up about it!

Like I can understand that growing up in that setting youd be resigned to it, not much a random soldier or whatever can do about it. But once they become super powerful? And they never even Mention Hell? That much callousness automatically moves you down a few notches from hero.

Obviously in a lot of settings hell just sorta Exists, and soul sorting is vague, but even then like. Break into Hell! Rescue people or at least relieve their pain! Its just so insane that the worst thing literally imaginable as a physical place (maximum pain that lasts literally forever with no hope of relief) is a staple of lots of fantasy settings and so many authors just do not in any way address that.

And like I said, its not that theyre writing Poorly because of this. Its a genre staple, and if you dont give it too much thought it doesnt seem to be an issue, especially given [gestures vaguely in the direction of christianity and its popularization of the concept of hell]. But god now that its been pointed out it drives me Nuts.

Anyways idk where i was going with this. Read unsong, i guess?

[loz-furbies]

Spirit Tracks Zelda

We've reached the surprise S-tier Zelda!

Design

Her princess look is the usual reused Toon design again, and this time it bothers me extra much since the game goes out of its way to namedrop Tetra as her ancestor. If you actively want me to think of multiple Zeldas in one game, you should give them different looks!

The Phantom design isn't really what I'm usually into, but it is cute when she retains her princess personality even when using a hulking suit of armour, and the Phantom isn't made any girlier (other than a slight pinkish purple colour scheme) just because a girl is controlling it. Though I wonder how much that is affected by the risk that little boys wouldn't want to play the game if the cover art had a girly suit of armour on it.

Character

The Sprit Tracks Zelda probably has more screen presence than the other Zeldas put together, and the extensive screen time is also luckily used to make her a more interesting character.

She starts out already as a mature and responsible ruler of her people (there's no king in this game), which I think is a bit of a missed opportunity, as you could give her more character development if she wasn't already so competent at her job. Regardless, the plot starts to happen and the bad guys steal her body to use it as a vessel for the resident big bad, and her now disembodied spirit gets to show quite the range of emotions and participate in comedic scenes as well. Like her horror at having her body kidnapped for end boss resurrection is played for laughs, because her first thought is just that the whole idea is gross.

Once her body is stolen, she gets both incredibly motivated to get it back, and starts bossing other characters around while she just sits back. One of the funniest scenes in the story is when she gets closer and closer to Link's face with each sentence as she pushes him to take the job. When the mentor character Anjean says that Link needs a companion, Zelda first goes through every NPC she knows, and Anjean has to be the one to suggest that Zelda go herself.

The way she is depicted about this changes more sympathetic once she starts to look just really helpless about the situation and that her not taking more action was more about that she didn't think there was anything she could do than just selfishly demanding others to do all the work. When it's eventually settled that she'll be the one to join Link, we end the scene with Link's exasperated sigh, which does give the whole thing a somewhat "great, now we need to drag this useless annoying girl along" vibe.

For the most of the game, Zelda has a friendly and cheerful personality, and feels more energetic than many of the other Zeldas. The opening credits where she flies alongside Link's train are so cute! One of her lines when boarding the train is an excited "Aaall aboooard!" too, which I was always happy to see.

She keeps her personality in her Phantom form too, so we get to see the Phantom do a giddy pose and say lines like "eeek!" and "hee hee". And while she initially complains how unpleasant being inside hot scrap metal is, she quickly becomes excited at her new power, and starts the Phantom gameplay sections confident that together they'll be able to get through. Once she takes part in a mini boss battle she even gets a little cocky and comments how good it was that she was there to help, but this doesn't lead to any plot line about her being overconfident or anything like that.

At first Zelda appears more concerned about getting her body back than preventing the end boss from taking over the world. Also after Anjean has done the "you two escape, I'll hold the enemy back" mentor thing, Zelda expresses vague worry. The player then gets to ask if she means Anjean, and Zelda's response is a pretty dismissive "oh right, her too", which felt really weird because this is pretty late in the game and she should have bonded with Anjean more at that point and shows concern for other characters at multiple points. While she is clearly heroic in the grand finale, I wish the plot line about her initially selfish motives (or I mean I think it's pretty fair for her to want her body back but she's portrayed somewhat flippant about it) had gotten a more concrete wrap up.

Another thing that quite didn't hit the mark is the possibility that even if they manage to drive the end boss out of Zelda's body, she might not be able to return to it. Zelda is understandably worried, but all this amounts to is one encouraging line from Link/the player. This does get some payoff when she is actually incapable of entering her body again and only manages to pull it off after a pep talk from a villain-turned-ally, so the plot line isn't completely pointless. But it does feel like it sort of fizzles out.

Other notable characteristics about Zelda are that she's ready to work with the aforementioned villain ally so she appears pretty forgiving, and also shows a dorky side of herself when she starts shadowboxing the air when she claims she'll "have words" with him later. She can also stand her ground and talk back when the situation requires it, and Anjean notes that she's feisty like Tetra.

It's also nice that Zelda gets some lines to just talk about herself, like that she used to visit the ocean world village during summer and hopes to come back again to swim together with Link, or that her grandmother playing the spirit flute used to calm her down as a child, or that she misses the castle and wishes she ate more of her favourite foods while she had the chance. She also hates bugs and tells Link to go to the forest village alone, but changes her mind since she doesn't like the thought of waiting at the forest train station alone with the bugs either.

In addition to her dislike of bugs, she is also scared of mice, which becomes a gameplay mechanic when she can't move if there are mice enemies around. Having your female lead get paralysed by fear from the sight of a mouse is kind of stereotypical and I wish they would have thought of some other way, but at least it's set up first.

Finally my analysis may make her seem more selfish and flippant than she is in the actual game experience; in most of the scenes she's perfectly friendly, shows concern for others and puts in the work herself. It's just that some scenes felt somewhat inconsistent and didn't have a proper payoff. Overall Spirit Tracks Zelda is a really strong character with many sides to her, but I do wish her character development was better defined by giving her a clear moment that references her initial inelegant reaction to losing her body and makes a note that she's different now.

Role in the story

The basis of the plot is the usual fare: Zelda senses that something is up, but gets kidnapped before she can do anything about it, and in the finale she does some big magic stuff to neutralise the end boss. But as we know this is the one mainline Zelda game (before EoW that is) where you get to play as her and she is present through the whole game, which makes a huge difference. Her presence makes it easy to keep in mind what's at stake at all times, and even if many Zeldas make great (and bigger/more dramatic) efforts and sacrifices that are essential to saving the kingdom, the player getting to be an active participant in all that just hits different.

Through the whole game and especially the multi-part final battle I was holding my breath for if Zelda would be damseled after all, but luckily that was not the case and she remains playable for the whole thing. The final scene where Link is pushing the sword into the boss's head and Zelda runs over to help really hammers it home that this was a team effort. A+ for that!

During my playthrough I got an unscripted moment where I was running away from an unkillable enemy and Phantom Zelda happened to stand in the way, so she was able to hold the enemy off for a moment while I made my narrow escape. Which was one of the most memorable things to happen in the game for me, moments like that just feel so much more meaningful when they're not in a cutscene. And in the context of the loz franchise it was cute for the roles to be reversed for once since Link spends so much time rescuing Zelda.

Gameplay wise Phantom Zelda is good as well. Or the sections where she is present include a lot of stealth and it's been well documented on this blog how much I hate that, but the puzzle and action parts with two playable characters who have different abilities are pretty fun.

Also a point in Zelda's favour as a companion is that I didn't feel like she was disruptive for the gameplay. Even if an NPC is likable, if they constantly interrupt the player their presence can quickly become a bother, but I thought that Zelda's lines didn't take too much time, and generally she shows up in situations where you would be reading NPC dialogue anyway.

Relationships

This time Link and Zelda aren't already friends, and instead meet for the first time when she officiates his train engineer graduation ceremony, and then requests his help to sneak out of the castle to investigate the Spirit Tower (because you need to go there by train). Which is a pretty logical way to get them working together, like sure she does trust a total stranger pretty fast but whatever.

Their relationship doesn't really get developed during the story, and is mostly just based around the implicit knowledge that going on such an adventure together naturally brings you closer. Zelda does regularly compliment Link for doing well so there's that at least, but I think most of their relationship relies on the player growing to like Zelda through the game and transferring those feelings to Link. They do end the game holding hands, which probably puts them in the top 5 canon Zelink couples, though I'd rather see it just as two friends who have gone through a lot together finally getting some relief; I don't remember anything else in the game that could be seen as romantic. Regardless it's cute that both of them move their hands at the same time so they're clearly on the same wavelength.

As for the other characters, the mentor Anjean feels more of a mentor to Zelda than Link, since she's the one whose emotional state is discussed a lot more. Aside from that one weird comment about being seemingly dismissive about Anjean's fate (or maybe Zelda was sure she was ok and thus didn't even think to be concerned about her safety? That wasn't my reading of the scene though), they care about each other and Anjean ascending to heavens at the end hits Zelda specifically.

The villain's henchman and a former student of Anjean's becomes a somewhat important character to Zelda as well. Once he's betrayed and incapacitated by the end boss (duh) Zelda becomes concerned for his well-being immediately, though it's not really explained why. I guess she's just empathetic? Him being Anjean's former student probably helped. Zelda doesn't directly say that she has forgiven him (not that he apologised), but she does say she has a bone to pick with him after they're done with the end boss in a very non-serious way, so I feel that it's implied. He is presumably moved by this and sacrifices himself in the final battle, and the failure to save him is the big bittersweet moment for the finale. This didn't really do much for me since their relationship wasn't that developed, but I guess it's nice that he got to do something at least.

Zelda's old teacher is also a prominent NPC and the two clearly care for each other, though this doesn't really get explored that much. Zelda does comment that the teacher would have loved one of the puzzles Link solves, and hopes to bring him to see it too. She also has a mutually respectful relationship with Link's engineering teacher and a former soldier.

[hidefdoritos]

Am getting to know a freshman who's the same brain flavor as me, but has been too sheltered to know what ADHD is or basically anything besides "I am irredeemably weird." I got him informally peer-reviewed by myself and two other ADHD friends. Every time we got him talking about a symptom, he told a story that looped unto something else, and then he'd look up and say, "Is that an ADHD symptom too?" to three people who were already nodding.

[hoyotunes]

Honkai World Diva (Movie Ver.) from Review Mika Kobayashi, Sya, Zoe, Gon, HOYO-MiX

[freshthoughts2020]

[iknowwhereyousleepatnight]

should i sleep for a hundred million years or purposefully stop sleeping just to see what happens

[thealogie]

Can I just say, I know next to nothing about theatre but hearing you talk about it is so fun, you’re really good at conveying information. So I end up going “oh Sarah Snook won, good for her!!” despite knowing nothing about her or the Dorian Gray production outside of your account. But your posts paint a really interesting picture about the specifics of each production you talk about, I want to start going out and enjoying plays.

Aw thank you! I have so much to say about Sarah Snook’s performance. She really truly physically and emotionally transformed into so many different characters right there on stage. I’m so glad she was rewarded for it, like she truly changed my mind about the power and possibility of one actor plays (as did the whole production).

[moonlightseranade]

sabrina's album is what you listen to after realizing you were never the problem. he was.

this album is an acceptance of wanting to be dicked down but also putting men in their fuckin place.

i feel like you hear lana or olivia to cry it out but you hear sabrina to be reassured you're that bitch and the sassy men apocalypse is out of hand fr.

tldr: sabrina really said, "you're right, it's not my fault. it's your fault."

thank you ms. carpenter 😌😇🤍

[thatwildwolfart]

Okay year in summary time okay