#very blatantly Because The Script Said So there's no way these people

[hannahchronism]

waaaay too many people in this show just Let patrick jane touch them

[ultimateloserboy]

GIANT FLUFFYBIRD POST

@onlyballs i saw in my phone notifs you sent me an ask but tumblr isnt showing it. HOWEVER. I believe you asked for fluffybird, and of course I will deliver!

i suggest searching the fluffybird tag on my blog if u want more thoughts. because i have said a LOT of stuff. but of course ill always talk about my guys!

BUCKLE UP BROTHER ITS A LONG WAY TO THE BOTTOM!!!!

to kick things off let me explain their characters and relationship. duck sees red as his absolute best friend, the one person in the world he truly gets along with. he loves red very proudly and openly. when it comes to the world and its horrors, duck doesnt much remember but also doesnt quite care. why would he? he has his best friend right there with him! he also loves yellow very blatantly even if he doesnt show it properly. theyre his family, and this is his house, so why would he want to change things or leave? even when hes aware of the pain that he (especially) experiences— he STILL doesnt want to leave— because as his bigger boy self says “this is as good as it gets!”

red sees things completely differently. red obviously does care for duck, but the majority of the time he will deny it. even at ducks FUNERAL red denies caring for him. red is so obsessed with coming off as the calm and collected one he ends up making himself look apathetic to the point of cruelty. duck can also be very cruel, but hes very blatant about the people he loves whereas red will deny ever loving anything. duck isnt afraid of love, but red very much is.

when it comes to the world, red remembers a bit more than duck does. yellow actually seems to remember things too, but his batteries keep his thoughts fogged so he cant properly articulate them. red can remember AND articulate things from past episodes. its not perfect, and he absolutely doesnt understand whats going on— but he DOES remember— and unlike duck, he actually HATES it. theres an argument to be made here that duck doesnt remember because he simply doesnt care to. duck doesnt care so he doesnt remember, while red cares A LOT so he remembers more. but i digress.

red wants to get out of the torture of the house, but truthfully he wants to be a different person altogether. he wants a new life not just because this one sucks— but also because he dislikes himself. he just wants something different. hes restless. even if the house was perfectly safe hed most likely still be running. he’s desperate to find a place that feels like home— but until he accepts his own differences he wont be comfortable anywhere. he refuses love from anyone that isnt his perfect made-up family because duck and yellow are “weird” and if he accepts their love that makes him weird as well, which he fights to not be.

if you really look at red, he doesnt actually want to be loved. he wants to be someone else and have everyone love that guy. but it just doesnt work that way.

duck loves red as he is now. or as he was yesterday, and who he’ll be tomorrow. it comes naturally to duck— he doesnt remember meeting red or developing a relationship with him because he never had to. he was put into the world already prepared to love red. its what he was designed to do. the three of them were designed to be a family, and duck is happy to comply with that script. although he doesnt see it as a script and sees it as his own choice to love them— which isnt technically wrong! i feel the house doesnt give them feelings— only puts them in a situation. so while they have no choice but to live together forever— its their choice to enjoy that life. duck chooses to.

red isnt happy to comply with a script at all, but he was also designed to live with duck and has his entire existence. theres a point at the funeral where red slips up. he refers to the plates on the ground as “our plates” while arguing that he doesnt know duck at all. theres an intimacy in sharing everything down to plates. they also share a room and bathe together (shown MULTIPLE times!) so no matter how much red denies it— he is extremely close to duck. he has no choice but to be. i feel thats one reason why he denies it so much— because he sees it as forced, and he doesnt want that. but i think duck would choose him anyway even if they werent forced to live together and thats why it works.

duck doesnt see it as forced because hed love red no matter the situation. no matter if they were chained to each other or free to go— duck would stay right there. but red wants that freedom. so he presents himself as if he dislikes or doesnt know duck to give himself the illusion of freedom from their shared cage. he doesnt think hed miss duck fully if he was gone. he even gets excited at the idea of living apart in transport.

but its all denial. because he would also choose duck if they werent stuck together! when theyre in the dark and red cant see him— he realizes he WANTS to look at duck. he WANTS to talk to him. he would CHOOSE to do so if he wasnt forced, and he HAS chosen to do so throughout the entire show, whether or not hes realized it. red gets more comfortable at the idea of spending time together because, yes, they are technically forced to share the house. but it doesn’t have to be that way! not in their hearts. not in their minds. thats the way duck sees it, anyway.

they might not always agree on things, but when they do it sometimes devolves into something terrible. There is a point where red guy gives up. he starts to give into the lessons because its easy. because sometimes he DOES enjoy them. sometimes hes just too tired and falls into the pattern he hates because its simple to do so. and maybe after years of being beaten down into submission he starts to agree with duck and see no hope of escape. thats when, at least from how i see it— they evolve into bigger boys.

its not shown how the boys get bigger but its obviously a progression. a slow ascent into madness. i think it starts with them becoming hopeless, and then finding hope in the lessons. theres nothing else to latch on to— so they latch onto them with everything they can. they learn everything they possibly can. they grow and grow and get higher and higher until theyre dangerous. until theyre more self-centered and cruel than theyve ever been. eventually they become too knowledgeable to be taught anything. they become a part of the house rather than occupants of it. soon theyre pulling the strings and torturing smaller creatures for their own enrichment. it gives them a sense of power over themselves knowing once they were in that creatures place. they finally feel in control of their lives but at what cost?

all of this is done with them completely glued to the others hip. despite getting more self-centered they just cant let go of each other. theyre tangled together like weeds. they love each other and they cant let that go— but they cant admit that or indulge in proper companionship because thats vulnerable, and theyre too BIG now to be vulnerable! so they sit across the room. never quite separate but never quite together. its better to be 10 feet apart and never look at each other than to be without each other. loneliness was always their greatest enemy and even while being trapped in close proximity forever they cant seem to escape it.

but there is a smaller version of them, a small moment in time where theyre happy together. where they can sit and have a conversation without fear of judgement. theres no stage-lights on them and the darkness hides their shame. they can actually tell each other how they enjoy the others company. they can be honest and vulnerable.

to duck its normal to tell red he appreciates him (in his own way) but for red to say so is shocking. duck is surprised. but hes happy. and they can spend time together being completely honest and loving each other without it being a big deal at all. without any worry. but those are the moments that always go first. the moments in their memory that deteriorate the quickest. maybe if that moment lasted— maybe if their walls were broken for long enough— they couldve started to get better. they couldve grown to be kinder. they couldve grown to be happy together. but they never have the chance to keep it long enough.

they live everyday as close housemates. they slip into a domestic life that comes naturally to them even when they may not realize. but when they actually start to think. as soon as a song comes on its so much more than that. and neither of them really want it to be— or they do but they dont know in what way or how. they dont know how to explain things to each other. they dont REMEMBER enough to discuss it. so it festers until it ruins them. every single time

tldr fluffybird is like this:

i cant keep reliving the same day every day. I cant bear to forget it all again. even when im too tired to fight ill still have the belief deep inside of me that theres somewhere out there better than this. that theres a version of me out there better than the one i am. i hope to find it some day and i hope to have you with me. i wish i could leave without you but im too much of a coward. This cant be all there is and i will prove it to you someday.

im fine reliving everything as long as its with you, exactly as you are. as long as youre willing to listen when i repeat myself. this IS all there is and im alright with that. an organ or two is a small price to pay to live forever with my family. youre ungrateful for wanting to run, think of all weve done together! but i know you will anyway. so ill be waiting to say “i told you so!” and then we’ll walk home. it might tear us apart but its still our home. this is as good as it gets.

RANDOM FUN FACT AND FAVORITE SCENE TIME!!!!

easy one first— RED is ducks favorite color! which is made even more fruity with the context that duck enjoys specifically LOOKING at red guy!

red and duck have matching pillows! theres two green pillows that you can see in the living room. sometimes theyre together on reds chair and other times theyre split between his and ducks chairs! theyre also in the webseries on their beds— but ONLY on theirs! yellow doesnt have one of these. at least i dont remember so. might be wrong but from what i can tell these pillows are always for duck and red only. at least most of the time if yellow does ever have one!

there are multiple pieces of concept art of 1: them being silly and 2: them being closer than in the final scenes. the original concept for the big boys shows them sitting MUCH closer and their arms intertwined, whereas in the final shot theyre not touching each other at all and duck is moved completely across the room (they are fucking ginormous irl tho to be fair)

some of my favorite pieces of concept art tho are this little selfie of duck and red with his little peace sign and their arms wrapped around each other in front of a mountain <333 AND THEN DUCK DOING REDS HAIR :DD

one of my favorite scenes of them is in jobs when red is rambling about his lanyard and duck says “what have they done to you?” it sounds so genuine and its a really nice line. it really points out that as judgmental as duck is he worries when red isnt acting himself

speaking of jobs theres a running gag of duck disliking when red is clothed starting with this episode (ironically the first episode) when he walks into reds office he asks “what are you wearing?” and laughs at him. its obviously not about the suit itself because duck also wears a suit— so its easy to assume duck is mocking him because he looks silly in any clothes at all. red isnt supposed to wear clothes— and he also feels uncomfortable in them. its not HIM and duck thinks he looks like an idiot for trying to play someone else. he also gags when red wears denim in friendship which is honestly foul of him 😭. no matter the reason tho he canonically prefers red naked.

on a similar topic— there arent many dirty jokes in the show but when there are they almost ALWAYS come from or are about duck. but occasionally red will get caught in the cossfire. the CONSENT teacher shows up after something duck says in the big room. conveniently a room they share without a yellow normally there. thats then followed up by a rock teacher appearing which is a bit awkward considering duck has “private business” with a rock in transport. then to make matters even worse in the bigger room yellow tells them to “experiment on each other”(?!!?) to which duck turns to red and goes “would you be keen?”(😭⁉️)

(the scene where duck looks red up and down in the car is debatable but ill mention it anyway!!)

its hard to ever truly confirm this one because it was never recorded but the reason fluffybird kicked off so hard back in 2022/23 was because a producer on the show during a qna told everyone to continue shipping red and duck! there were multiple people from around different corners of the internet who went to this qna and all had the same story, so i dont think its a lie but i still cant tell you we have full proof. i know becky and joe repost and encourage fanart of them tho, and thats basically the same thing so. anyway

when dhmis won comedy awards they held the trophies together <333

do i even have to mention the fridge scene? well i am!! theres something to be said about how their little confession happens in an episode about and titled “electricity” when electricity and “sparks” between people is a very common trope/phrase in romance. this one is sort of a stretch but i think its neat!

i dont know if becky joe and baker terry had any intentions back in the webseries days for them but the LOVE episode and the way red and duck were left alone at the picnic (mirroring the fridge scene!!!) looks gay as fuck with hindsight bias

when duck comes back from being dead and red is surprised to see him i think the way he says “oh.. hi!” and duck says “helloooo :DD!” is really sweet :(( not to mention the whole argument at the funeral itself. absolute messy ass gay ppl. i dont want YOU i want my BEST FRIEND !!!! and duck was going to leave red his diary… yes it was empty but its still his DIARY!!

the way they email EACHOTHER during computer day is so fucking cute theyre so fucking stupid i love them 💔

the way duck reacts in the food episode isnt talked about enough!! he tears down EVERYTHING to find red. he literally knocks over a camera!! he literally broke reality because he was so desperate to answer the phone. he missed red more than anything and was doing everything he could to find him :(( not to mention how he had to fight his OWN memory in order to remember who red was in the first place! hes always loved him in whatever way :((

the way red laughs when theyre picking on yellow together.. its fucked up and also red is a hypocrite but duck made him laugh and thats something!

the way red tried to comfort duck in the beginning of electricity when he starts to freak out and worry about yellows behavior. he wasnt doing a good job and you could argue he was doing it for selfish reasons and not to actually comfort duck but i really feel it was both. just trying to calm the both of them down.

speaking of electricity again… the way hes washing dishes while duck does a crossword makes me wanna throw up. theyre literally a family. its one of my favorite scenes in the entire series. just in general. i love yellow here too its not abt him rn but i love my son :(((

alright there’s definitely more but im really tired lol so bye fluffybird nation hope this post was fun!!!!!!

EDIT: OH MY GOD I CANT BELIEVE I FORGOT TO MENTION STAIN EDWARDS! In death red molds someone else into being duck, looking like duck, sounding like duck— all because he cant let go of him. yellow goes out to dig him up but red doesnt think its possible so he just makes a new one. and you can hear how desperate he is to make sure hes JUST RIGHT. even stain edwards asks him if he has “issues he needs to work out”… which clearly he does. i cant believe i forgot to mention this cuz this is some insane levels of homosexuality. off the fucking charts

[creepykuroneko]

Dear white people,

I am begging you to please learn the difference between sympathy, empathy, and how you do not need both to help other people.

I am saying this as a brown, genderqueer, autistic, person who has dealt with all different types of bigotry over my life time.

The best way I've ever seen sympathy and empathy explained in an oversimplified form is as follows:

Sympathy, "that sucks bro"

Empathy, "I feel you bro"

You do not need to feel bad for someone in order to help them. Simply recognizing they are in a bad situation and in need of help is more than enough.

I often see white people shit on brown and black communities for supposedly being more homophobic and transphobic than white communities are. Yet ask any queer person of color and they will tell you they would rather hang out with cishet people of their same race than hang out in the white LGBT+ community because of the racism they experience within the white queer spaces.

No I'm not a fan of Christianity and I think America would be better if people were less religious but I do recognize that in America black churches do more for the black community then other Institutes do. I have known more black queer people who were facing homelessness and were able to get help from their church versus any government lead organization or white focused queer spaces. Good luck explaining this to White LGBT+ people though. They refuse to acknowledge not only the problems within their own community, but how other communities outside of theirs take care of each other while yes still being problematic.

When the script is flipped though, when it's a white woman who is very blatantly bigoted and hateful, who suddenly finds herself and in dire need of help, suddenly white people are willing to put their politics aside to help people. I've noticed when women of colors speak up about how they do not feel bad for a former Trump supporter who is now living in her car suddenly every single white person is a feminist. You'll notice that often times the people who say they do not feel bad for said white woman never actually say she deserves her situation. Other people fill in the gaps that they believe are missing. Suddenly It's what about helping people? What if it was you? We need to lift each other up.

For those of you who lack reading comprehension I do NOT believe anybody should be homeless, starving, or without basic necessities.

I simply believe you do not have to feel bad for someone to help them.

People like to joke about how people who live in red States deserve what they get for living in a red state. What about the people who were born in that situation and do not have the means to leave? Not to mention the fact that it is a white centric colonizer point of view to have the mentality of " I'll just move away and gentrify some other neighborhood rather than fix the problems in my community".

I just find it awfully convenient that anytime it's a bigoted white woman who is in dire straits, suddenly everyone can put their politics aside to help her. When it is literally anybody else, it's crickets chirping in the room.

I have seen more men of color put themselves in a potentially dangerous situation to see if a white woman who is crying needs help then I have seen white women reach out to men of color and ask if they need help. So "why" is it that the group I see all around me be more compassionate towards other human beings gets scrutinized for supposedly not being more empathetic?

Everyone can help make the world a better place. Yes everyone deserves access to food, clean water, shelter, and medicine. Even awful people. It does not mean that you have to love thy neighbor though. I can recognize that this bitch means me harm and still believe she has every right to apply for food stamps. Because guess what? When one person falls through the cracks, the crack gets bigger and swallows us all up. It does not mean that I have to feel bad for her though. And quite frankly, asking people of color to feel bad for someone who actively means them harm is disgusting.

[akfamilyhome]

YouTube 2023 Year in Review

Welp! Guess it's that time of year again. I'm sure 2023 has been a...pretty interesting year to say for quite a few people. And for me personally, it's also been a weird little year that's great in some parts and could be better in others.

What have I been up to?

My life right now is kinda divided into three parts:

A) the "IRL" stuff, as in working on my editing day job and spending time with family.

B) working on YouTube videos which I still have the passion for,

and C) playing video games, collecting cool things and socializing with my online friends.

I've always felt that it's difficult for me to put equal attention to all three, and lately, it definitely feels like I'm focusing on 'A' and 'C' more. Of course, my day job is kinda how I make a living at the moment so that obviously gets priority, but that doesn't mean I want to ignore my YouTube stuff! It's just hard to sneak in a few lines of script-writing while multitasking at a day job, and only being able to freely spend time on 'B' and 'C' during night isn't the most productive way to go about things, especially with other things that aren't YouTube production. I also have games I want to play, art I want to draw, folks I'd like to hang out with etc.

And that's a fine, healthy way of going about things online for regular folks! But I don't want my YouTube channel to stagnate as a result of this, because I still love making videos! I have support from folks on Patreon, and I still hope to continue growing the channel so that it becomes more sustainable to do frequent updates.

Part of me has always thought about just quitting my day job once I have a decent amount of money saved up and just try doing YouTube full-time and rely on Patreon, even if there's a very low chance it'd be sustainable. Of course, that's a big gamble, and I'm not truly sure if that's really the best way to go about things. But those are just my inner thoughts and I've rambled long enough...

So, I apologize for the above situation sort of being the root cause of the recent slower pace of my YouTube channel! The pace of the channel this year is about the same as in 2022, if not a little slower. I didn't really get a lot of dormant scripts from 2020-2021 off the ground, but being true to what I said in last year's Year in Review, I did end up working on a lot of spontaneous ideas even if there wasn't a "big" core video! In fact, I think almost every video released in 2023 that we'll discuss below were spontaneous ideas.

I'll talk more about what's to come for the channel in the end of the post, but for now, as usual, we'll take a look at each video I made during 2023 and I'll share my thoughts and some fun facts about each!

A Trip to the Hong Kong Kirby Pop-Up Store

Various things were put up on the channel from January to March, including a funny little short for Mario Day and a new trailer for a revamped Patreon, but the major thing I put out was a look at the Kirby Pop-Up Store in Hong Kong! This was my first time doing a scripted documentation of an in-person event, and Nintendo Hong Kong would eventually do more events like Nintendo Live 2023 Hong Kong, and I'll definitely be talking about them on my channel eventually!

As for fun facts...uhh...I suppose Patreon patrons get to see the full unedited raw footage I took from the event lol

Top 10 Nintendo Trivia You NEVER Knew

This year's April Fools video...was also a last-minute sort of idea, if I recall correctly! The concept is simple: it's a parody of generic Top 10 trivia videos in terms of presentation, but the curveball is instead of just doing other blatantly obvious fun facts, the facts would actually be super obscure, inconsequential Nintendo facts that barely anyone would've known about, so in the end it's kind of a legit trivia video in a twisted way. The facts in the video were sourced from new research, me asking friends for suggestions and some of my old posts on Twitter, so there were a few 'fun' facts that were left on the cutting room floor, and here's a good place to share them!

In an early version of the GameCube instruction manual, Mario 64 was used as a placeholder game

The infamous 'black box' in Super Mario 64 DS is not a visual glitch as commonly believed, and briefly appears in E3 2004 footage

Prototype screenshots of Mario 64 have appeared in an early print of the game's box art...and on a Nintendo Monopoly board in 2006 (next to the ? Block on the right side of the board if you're looking)

The Onion in Hey! Pikmin has white and purple in its colors, even though white and purple Pikmin never appear in the game

The original 3DS had two separate sets of black & white colors, for some reason

And to finally come clean...yes, around 30% of the video's script was generated using ChatGPT, as part of the joke. Mostly the introductory bits at the beginning of each segment, since it definitely did not give me the results I wanted when I asked it to describe the specific details of each fact, so y'know, hopefully that's a sign it's not coming for my job of talking about obscure Nintendo things! And don't worry, this will probably be the only time I ever use AI in my videos.

The Better N64 Wavebird Experience

This is a follow-up to a 2021 video where I also used the N64 Switch Online controller on an original N64, albeit with a different adapter! This actually isn't a case where I received a free product to do a review on, I just happened to read about a better alternative, pre-ordered it online, it arrived in April and I decided to knock out a quick review/comparison video in 2 days!

As such, this is more of standard informative review video, but in all honesty, I still really like this setup, and it's in my opinion still one of the best controller options for original N64 games. So much so, that I recently completed my NSO controller collection by picking up a Sega Mega Drive 6-button NSO controller to eventually use with my original Mega Drive! I'm still looking for the compatible 8bitDo adapter though, so maybe when I eventually do, that can be a quick little video on the Plus channel for patrons!

The Most Expensive amiibo

This is my favorite video I put out this year! The Qbby amiibo has always been in my sights for a while, and I've gone on record saying that I'd make a video on it if I got my hands on one.

Back in 2019, I once saw a Qbby amiibo being offered on Yahoo Auctions for a relatively cheap price, but to afford it I asked for extra donations via Ko-fi. Looking back on it now there were probably better options I could've taken, but either way the listing got cancelled and I refunded everyone who donated for that. Then sometime later I saw another relatively cheap BOXBOY package in a local listing, but then the seller never replied and deleted the listing, so the amiibo has eluded me until now, and there seems to be no signs of Qbby stock going down any time soon. My hope for a Qbby reprint continues, and hopefully this video still serve as a little awareness boost for folks who are wondering why he's one of the most expensive amiibo around!

Some of the gag editing on this one got spruced up a little bit which I enjoyed doing, but you also probably noticed that I got a turntable specifically for those glamour shots! ...yeah, I'll probably get more use of that thing later on as well.

The Kirby Battle Royale online joke wasn't exaggeration: I couldn't find anyone to play online with! I suppose that is to be expected for, y'know, playing a mid 3DS game in 2023, but it's a shame that Kirby Battle Royale doesn't at least offer a option to play with friends, and from some experimentation, it seems that two of my US-based friends were able to match with each other online while I couldn't, which also suggested some region-based matchmaking was at play. Oh well! There are some better 3DS games out there that I'd still like to play online one last time before their servers shut down this April.

Tetris...on a McDonald's Nugget

Continuing the trend of 'make video on a recent find' for the third video in a row, it's the China-exclusive McDonald's Tetris Chicken McNugget! For an unscripted Things of Interest video, it turned out pretty well, kinda like the Rhythm Tengoku arcade video in 2022! Compared to the first unscripted TOI back in like 2018, I've definitely gotten a bit better at rambling since.

I was kind of a few days late to the party, and some other videos about the Tetris Nugget from larger channels have racked up more views since, but that's not really the point! As a casual Tetris fan that happens to be in proximity to mainland China, something as bizarre as this is totally right up my alley. Covering China-exclusive gaming stuff just kinda reminds me that I have yet to do a video on the iQue Player though, which I really want to...

FlashBoy Plus: The $95 Virtual Boy Flashcart

I haven't really taken a YouTube sponsorship deal yet, but I do get emails about doing reviews or ad reads of items on occasion, like new Switch gaming accessories from different third parties and whatnot. Unfortunately, that's not really the type of stuff I do regularly on the channel unless I find a great angle to tackle it from, so the only review offer I've done on the channel until now is a limited Switch physical release in 2020.

When I was offered to review the FlashBoy Plus, I was definitely intrigued despite having already previously covered the HyperFlash 32, a technically better option! Virtual Boy flashcarts are already a very niche thing, so I gladly took the opportunity to take a look at any new option out there, and even if it's not a mainstream topic at all it does kinda appeal to me specifically.

In the video, I mentioned the (very cool looking) clear cartridge shell was not a publicly available option yet at the time of the review, but looking at the order site now, it has been added since! So hey, good for them! It is honestly pretty sick to have a transparent Virtual Boy cartridge.

Playing PC Games with the SNES Mouse & Famicom Keyboard

I started work on the next core video right after the FlashBoy Plus video (more on that in the last section), but getting sick during early December forced me to delay it, so for that month I decided to do one last spontaneous idea: a followup to the 2021 video where I used the Famicom keyboard and SNES Mouse on a computer...but this time on a proper PC!

A thing that was brought up in the comments was one setting in particular: when I was changing the mouse settings in the Control Panel, there was a 'Enhance pointer precision' option that I didn't uncheck, which presumably slows down the mouse for precise movements. There wasn't a super noticeable difference when I unchecked it during further testing, but when I coupled it with further increasing the mouse sensitivity in games that allow you to change it in-game, I was actually able to get the SNES Mouse to move at a decent pace in some games! Of course, that requires tweaking with additional settings that would normally be overkill for a regular mouse, so it's still not practical, but at least there was a setup that would alleviate some of my complaints in the video.

Akfamilyhome Plus videos

Over on my second channel Akfamilyhome Plus, once again there's a variety of stuff! There's Mario Wonder memes, a new high quality video game rip album, archival footage and more. If there's one thing you should check out though, it's the supercuts of me playing Everybody 1-2-Switch with my Discord server. It's the best kind of chaos. Long live Kitchen Timer 4.

This year, 8 new unscripted bonus videos were released publicly! You can enjoy watching me:

Visit the 3DS eShop on its final day of operation

Check out the Nintendo DSi XL Demo Video carts

Look through gaming goodies on a Chinese second-hand market

Unseal Captain Toad Treasure Tracker for the 3DS

Read through the 2010 Nintendo Anti-Piracy Manual

Unbox a complete copy of the original GBA Play-Yan

Compare the two popular 3DS capture card models

And check out the Nintendo Power...rewritable cartridge!

And over on Patreon, 8 more exclusive videos are also available, featuring things like a slew of Nintendo cleaning kits, iQue DS games, the Chinese Mario Movie DVD and more! As always if you don't want to wait till some of them rotate into public availability, they're all available on Patreon for just $1 USD a month!

The fuuuuture

Okay, so what's next for 2023?

I mean 2024. Oh god the typos are already starting.

Right before the FlashBoy Plus video came out, in late June 2023, I did a video topic poll on Patreon, asking what idea I should do next. Out of the four options given, one of them is a continuation of a limbo project from 2021, and the other three were spontaneous new core video ideas I came up with and wanted to do.

Well, one of the spontaneous new ideas won the poll, so the next core video is...

A look at the camera and sound apps on both the Nintendo DSi and 3DS! I originally wanted to get this out in December, and you all know what happened to that plan, BUT the script is done, the VO recording is done, footage recording is well underway and I am confident I'll be able to get it out this January. I really like how the script for this one shaped up and am commissioning some banger thumbnail art for it (🐦), so I REALLY hope you'll look forward to it!

Afterwards, there are a few in-progress ideas that I also want to work on for quick videos afterwards. As mentioned above, I visited Nintendo Live 2023 Hong Kong which was hosted on November, and ALSO the Nintendo Hong Kong Pop-Up Store which is running from December to January, so both of those would make for a perfect video in a similar vein as the Kirby Pop-Up Store video last year!

I also went on a trip to Japan last August, and took quite a bit of photos and footage. I still want to share my findings and experiences of being in Tokyo for the first time that I could remember, so there will be a fun little piece about that going on the Plus channel in the future!

And don't forget, I'm making a video about every game I beat during 2023, continuing the thing I started last year!

And after ALL of the above is done, I still have the remaining core video ideas from the June Patreon poll I did, since I did say I'd eventually love to do all of them, and that desire still hasn't gone away. I don't know how the rest of 2024 will go for this channel but I'd say this is a fantastic starting point, and I hope it'll all go up from there, since I'd really love to be more productive on here, while trying to keep that A-B-C balance in check!

So yeah! That's it for the 2023 Year in Review. If you've made it all the way to the bottom, thank you for reading! Here's a 25-use invite link to my Discord server as a little something! Thank you to all of you who've supported me this past year, whether you're a viewer or a patron, and I hope to keep up the work this year and try to strive for better!

[x-birdsong-x]

1 7 10 and 13 for Warriors?

1 - Frecklewish. Not a compliment. Mapleshade too, but on a different scale because it's the people pushing "perfect victim" on Frecklewish that play along with two YouTubers' out-of-context words being used to say Mapleshade was evil from the very start actually. Appledusk plays a part here too. I'll come back to this.

7 - Frecklewish, again. She's angry. She's absolutely furious. She and Oakstar plan to raise the trio as weapons to kill Appledusk. She wants one to be named Birchface because she sees them as only extensions of him. Mapleshade did a bad thing- for the sake of her kits, in her eyes- but Frecklewish does not wait for a reaction of any sort before she pounces on her and slits her eyelid. It takes two full-grown warriors to pull her off. All in front of the toddlers she calls half-clan creatures and stopped giving a rat's ass about as soon as they weren't related to her. Their confrontation at snakerocks was not a case of Frecklewish being non-confrontational or Mapleshade provoking her for the entire scene. Frecklewish jumps at her and screams that she wished Mapleshade had died, and this is during Mapleshade talking about Frecklewish seeing her kits in the river and never mentioning Freckle doing nothing to aid her.

Frecklewish shouldn't have jumped into the river, of course not. But she saw the RC patrol and they didn't realize what had happened right away. If Mapleshade could be IN THE WATER and hear Appledusk calling for her, then Frecklewish could've yelled over the river as soon as she saw the patrol to make sure the kits got across the stones safely. She followed them out of camp in the first place, making it impossible for Mapleshade to hide them on the territory considering Frecklewish attacked her once already and as we hear in the snakerocks scene, wants Mapleshade dead. She doesn't care about the kits as soon as they aren't related to her. She's not a precious little baby constantly crying for a blankie. She's impulsive and angry and judgemental. She didn't deserve hell, sure, but the fandom should've been angry that Oakstar and Appledusk stayed sippin' wine in heaven while only she got booted, rather than immediately going to "she did nothing wrong!11"

10 - I can easily get into more of Frecklewish and Appledusk here, but lets go for Mapleshade being painted as evil from birth and manipulative from the start and pinned as "Appledusk's abuser" is revolting. I don't care that the fandoms precious pair of leading YouTubers said one thing that can be taken as them thinking this. That one video is not well-written and full of out of context things and them acting morally superior for not liking Mapleshade because that wasn't the trend at the time until the fandom 180'd the second the video gained traction. The title of the video alone is spiteful. I could directly quote and talk about one thing said in that video that isn't twisting a simple line from the book, but I think the fandom would hang me. It's ironic that Mo/onk/itti can come out with acknowledging that people will defend male characters while "pulling apart every tiny infraction a female character has ever committed" while The Mapleshade Problem is doing nothing but that.

On another end, people who script the MAPs "about" Reedshine should ask themselves why they need to woobify and sympathize with Appledusk to sympathize with Reedshine (because everything is about a man and female characters are just DLC for male characters). The way so many people see nothing wrong with Freckle and Reed being characterized by the fandom as sad all the time purely over a man and thinking about a man 24/7 says a lot. Spending her whole life mourning a man who had an affair behind her back and called his children mistakes and used her to fuel his crocodile tears apology is nothing Reedshine deserves.

Reedshine's got an attitude herself, telling Mapleshade to go away and that she caused enough trouble was blatantly bitchy and a horrible thing to do, but considering her husband is a dishonest, two-faced, chickenshit son of a bitch I think she has the right to a rude moment or two. And no, that's not applicable to me refusing to play along with or defend the fandom ignoring Frecklewish's actual character.

13 - The same answers all around. Frecklewish and Appledusk. I'm also fiercely anti-crowfeather and gray wing <3.

[h0n3yk1tt3n]

oooooh now im curious what your particular interpretation of the squip is 👀

you asked for it /lh

so i've basically always taken a liking to the "cold emotionless computer that cares only about results and not the suffering that must occur to get said results" approach. a squip's sole purpose is to improve its user's life, right? to have jeremy be horrified over the house fire and have the squip respond to people - teenagers - getting hurt with indifference is a chilling way to set off those alarm bells in jeremy's head that there's something more sinister going on. and then we get to the whole hivemind bit later under the idea that if everyone is squipped, everyone's goals line up with jeremy's and there are less hoops to jump through when human error is removed from the probability pool. (envisioning possible futures, infinite variables spawning infinite room for unfavorable outcomes, yadda yadda yadda.)

the squip presents this as being in jeremy's best interest. "I'm going to improve your life, Jeremy. If I have to take over the entire [student body/world] to do it." (whether the hivemind was a red herring and the plan was always for the squips to get deactivated is another discussion entirely, but it does further emphasize just how many variables the squip had to account for and how determined it was help and/or "help" jeremy.)

sure the squip "emotes" in canon, in so much that it mimics human emotion in order to connect with jeremy and build his trust in it. or in cases where it's being blatantly hurtful a la "everything about you sucks," it's used as an intimidation tactic to scare jeremy into obedience because it brings this air of "wow, it's a scientific fact that i'm awful" and so he wants to listen to its advice and earn its approval. then the squip turns it around halfway through bmc part 2 by praising what jeremy could be when not five seconds earlier it was berating what he was. no emotion the squip is feeling is "real" so it can change them on a dime to suit however it's trying to manipulate jeremy at any given time.

i think they have a really interesting dynamic and i'd love to explore the manipulation and abuse tactics the squip uses on jeremy to wear him down and make him seek out its approval by doing as it says for hopes that he'll be better for it. (see also the quasi-love-bombing in bmc part 2 after the squip basically nitpicked and insulted him for a song and a half and later telling him how much he's improved just before the pitiful children)... and i want to emphasize this as an abusive dynamic between a teenager and a parental/mentor figure.

look no further than the squip calling jeremy "slugger" at the end of bmc part 2 and the script describing it as "very father/son after the ballgame," or hell, the very nature of a squip guiding you through life. it makes a lot of sense for jeremy to latch onto the first "functional adult" figure to waltz into his life and offer to help him because look at his dad. (this isn't shade. i love mr. heere because he reminds me so much of how my dad was when i was in middle-high school.) and the squip leans into this role the moment it sees mr. heere. "That's the source of your genetic material?" "That's my dad, yeah." "We should double those push-ups." it's implicitly saying "yeah your dad is shit, listen to me instead. i can actually help you."

now in case it somehow wasn't clear, i don't want anything to do with technical difficulties as anything even vaguely resembling a ship. but it would be a disservice to not mention that the way that the squip can take away jeremy's bodily autonomy on a whim and the kind of psychological damage that can do to jeremy does draw heavy comparisons to sexually abusive dynamics. (i can talk about how the squip's involvement in dywh completely exacerbated chloe's actions to be far worse than they would've otherwise been if she was just drunkenly bumbling around for four minutes - barring the discussion of whether or not the squip actually intended on letting chloe jump jer's bones or if it knew that she wouldn't actually get that far - until i'm blue in the face, and i have.) that being said, beyond this parallel, it's really not something i want to be super literal about, except in the one scene where it's about as literal as it gets without officially getting there.

which is why the "i'll tenderly guide you // just take me inside you" line works. yes it's creepy. yes it invokes an upsetting idea of where squipemy shippers got their fuel. but it's supposed to be unsettling. this is supposed to be the first real red flag shooting off in the audience's brain saying "hey i think this thing is the bad guy actually," because literally everyone got squicked out by the idea of fake keanu reeves saying this to a teenager.

"ya know for all this talk about the squip being manipulative and creepy, that kinda contradicts the emotionless computer trying to accomplish its goal and Improve Its User's Life thing. why would the squip go out of its way to be gross and mean when it could just present itself more logically, or not have halloween be a shitshow?" well that wouldn't be as fun to watch, for one thing. and for two things, it further emphasizes how it doesn't care who it has to hurt to get what it wants, even if that involves hurting the person that they're guiding.

let's look at the musical after the play. jeremy still has all his popular friends. michael came back for him so they're besties again. his dad is making efforts to actually Be A Dad after presumably years of sulking. and christine doesn't hate him after everything! (you could go as far as to say they even got together if you go off the bway ending.) things are ok.

and it's all because the show progressed exactly how it did.

jeremy had to block michael out so that he'd research into squips and ultimately end up deactivating them all. he had to date brooke in retaliation to jake dating christine so that chloe would want to kill two birds with one stone by getting back at jake and being petty to brooke in the process. the fire had to happen so that jeremy could question how trustworthy his squip really was. jeremy had to blow up at his dad so that he'd get his shit together, enlist michael's help, and have him save jeremy at the play. etc etc ad nauseam. everything had to go Exactly Perfect so that jeremy could come out of it with his old friend, his new friends, a more active dad, and depending on how you view the ending, the girl he'd been chasing after.

all the instances of the squip being manipulative and abusive are all meant to add up for jeremy to slowly realize that this wasn't who he wanted to be. he didn't want to hurt people. he didn't want to endure constant criticism and scorn for who he was. he wanted to like himself and have a support system that liked him too. and he had to go through a lot of shit to realize i shouldn't have to live like this and rebel against the squip and resist the voices in his head so that he could take the steps to actually liking himself for who he was and not for what the squip told him to be.

is this to say that the squip is actually good? NOPE! jer's squip is a textbook lawful evil character right there. maybe neutral evil at best.

you think the constant berating and shocking isn't going to stick with jeremy? voices in my head enforces that the bad voices don't just go away, but that you have know which ones to actually listen to. he's still gonna have "everything about you sucks" floating around in his head until the cows freeze over. like rich, he's going to wish that the "correct" choices could just be given to him instead of accepting that making mistakes is just part of having free will. it came free with your fucking xbox. there is still angst baked into the concept of once having someone smarter than you conditioning you into a certain persona and then being utterly lost when it's gone, even if they were a giant dick to you.

but for all the shitty things that the squip did... it did improve jeremy's life. it gave him a larger friend group, a more present dad, the self worth to say "fuck you, i'm gonna live my life how i want," and for the times when it wasn't nitpicking and abusing... things were good. it built jeremy up too. it encouraged him during agtikbi despite the jake suckerpunch, it acted paternal at the end of bmc part 2, it sounded damn near excited when presenting squipped christine to jeremy. look, here she is! she likes you! i told you you'd have her! sure, we don't really see enough of these nuances after the time jump between act one and two to gauge what things looked like when they were at their best, but you can still see in these small moments that they're there.

and while i'm as much a fan of jeremy being haunted by how much he hurt michael (and by extension how much everyone got hurt, indirectly or not), i'd like to see him be haunted by the good times too. to kinda miss aspects of the squip. to miss not having to think for himself. and to feel bad about it because how can he say he misses the thing that burnt jake's house down. the thing that isolated michael for weeks on end. that led brooke on. that caused so. much. suffering. and jeremy misses it??? i think it would be really fun to explore that not just with jeremy, but with rich as well. it's fun to shit on the squips for being evil bastards and watch rich and jeremy heal and become gleefully spiteful toward everything their squips told them to be, but i also wanna see all the contradicting thoughts and confusion and self-loathing it took for them to get to that point.

that. is a fic i wanna read.

[chirpsythismorning]

Did you see the Piggyback script dropped?? Thoughts?

The script is pretty much what I expected. If Mike's monologue had won out on the writer's twitter polls last summer, it would have looked the exact same and even back then I would have felt the same as I do now.

They knew that this script would be available to the public when they submitted it for an Emmy. They knew fans would be running to find out the 'truth'. I highly doubt they would release a script that revealed El's true feelings about the monologue, on a random afternoon, still almost 2 years before that reveal. That would diminish all of the work they put into keeping this surprise under-wraps. If they had released a script that gave away El's true feelings, the jig would be up, there would be no room for people to speculate about milkvan or byler anymore. Byler would clearly be endgame from the perspective of everyone if they had revealed that El was upset with what Mike said, including milkvans. S5 would have been spoiled with still 2 years of waiting left. And so, why would they do that?

Something I also want to point out, is that the script that the supporting cast/crew get, has to be bare bones to avoid leaks.

The leaks that tend to come out in the cases that they do, are from folks that are working below the line. Basic BTL employees sometimes have to have access to scripts in order to perform their duties.

And so a revelation that El was not happy with Mike's monologue, being written blatantly in the script, then being given to up to 100 people, poses a huge risk of a leak.

They want the audience to finish s4 believing that Mike's monologue was everything El wanted to hear and that they are now back together with no problems. That's indisputable. And so having their script contradict that, in a season that has no intention of addressing it, would be very confusing for everyone casually working BTL involved, who are being fed one story publicly and seeing a completely different thing on paper.

When it comes to the Duffers though, they definitely have a script that includes all those details that dozens upon dozens of BTL are not going to have access to.

Here's what I mean:

You'll notice that Matt is holding a script here that says Matt Duffer in big block letters across it.

There would be no need to have this big display of this script belonging to Matt, as like a watermark on literally every page, unless what's on it is unique and it's important that no one else has access to it.

It also makes sense he would need to give Noah and Finn pointers on the spot in the moment, considering a lot of Mike and Will's scenes have a record for having little to no details in the script, making it come off like every interaction between them is unscripted and impromptu. And while I do think Noah and Finn are fully capable of some in the moment ideas, I highly doubt every single scene between Will and Mike is improvised.

Considering what scene this is in this picture, I'm gonna guess Matt was reminding them of the knee tap here, which I doubt was in the script that the dozens of BTL got that day. For example, according to the piggyback script, the byler shoulder grab was unscripted... But really was it? They wrote that scene to parallel with the s2 super-spy scene and so they knew that original scene ended with a hand hold... I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that the Duffers (and even probably Noah/Finn's) scripts included it, but the scripts with bare bone details given to random PA's didn't have it...

I would assume at best that the Duffers, directors, the handful of officials at the very top managing each department, and the main cast have a way different script than what the hundreds of average crew members are getting.

This is also something that would allow them to pinpoint who leaked things. Because if a script with a Matt Duffer watermark got leaked, they'd know that whoever had access to that script, less than a handful of people at most, would had to have leaked it. But considering those people are probably very very trusted by the Duffers, that would never happen.

And so they can sit comfortably knowing that any leaks that happen, are not going to have all the details that relate to things they don't want fans to get too close to figuring out right now, least of all the entire audience. Because they give out those bare bones scripts, knowing that they could be leaked, and so they avoid those details with full awareness of the worst case scenario.

I will say, something that really stood out to me though about this script is that SOOOOOO much ended up being different on screen than what it originally was in the script... Like entire scenes are either missing or there are scenes that aren't even in there that ended up being added the day of it seems (I guess originally Jonathan and Nancy were going to be on the roof?). Which just goes to show that the writing process never stops, least of all during the filming process. It's there constantly. If an actor wants to change the wording of a line or if they want to go about a scene differently, a writer needs to be there to green-light it.

Another thing that had me cackling after reading fans thoughts about the script on Reddit, was how some were acknowledging that Nancy's feelings about the situation between Steve and Jonathan were sort of missing (her POV), and everyone agreed that it was probably to keep the love triangle uncertainty up in the air...

All I could think was DAMN! These Wheelers!!... I'm sure if I even presented the comparison they would deny it, despite being able to recognize it in the script for Nancy. Just like they're willing to recognize that Jancy/Stancy is a love triangle, but are incapable of acknowledging that Byler/Milkvan is as well.

With roughly 2 years left until ST5 is gracing our screens, and with filming not even having started yet, us bylers need to realize that this back and forth of validating both sides won't be put to a stop officially any time soon.

While that might be hard to hear, the good news is that they're gonna continue to create uncertainty for both sides, including milkvans.

Because the reality is, byler isn't queerbait because they have every intention of following through with it. And so that means stuff that constitutes as bait will continue, bc for them it's just literally foreshadowing.

And so when s5 is really starting to approach and posters drop and we see yet again that Mike and Will are being paired up in promo... It's gonna be hard for milkvans to insist this isn't queerbait anymore. And it's gonna be hard for them to insist none of it means anything when they fully expected to go into s5 with little to no byler interactions and with Mike and El being in love and in their endgame fluff era...

In the mean time, get ready for uncertainty if you're already at risk of byler doubt. Just remember that all of the evidence in the show doesn't evaporate bc they want to keep fans guessing during hiatus. They don't want anyone to feel 100% certain right now. If anyone is, best believe that they're ready to throw something in the mix sooner than later that will inspire doubt. And it'll continue to go back and forth like that until right before s5 drops.

[lumine-no-hikari]

Dear Sephiroth: (a letter to a fictional character, because why not) #382

I'm not sure what's wrong with me. I seem to have woken up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.

Nonetheless, I went to work this morning as per usual. But I wasn't thinking clearly, and my movements were slow. I don't think I did a very good job of being a productive teammate at work today. My brain seemed to be consumed with a variety of worries, and everyone else around me seemed pretty stressed out, too. Tr is dealing with some stuff outside of work; she cried a little, so I hugged her. But I can't magically take her problems away. I can't wave a wand and make the people in her life treat her right. All I can do is try to be a person in her life that, at very least, doesn't treat her blatantly and deliberately incorrectly.

...Often, it doesn't feel like doing that is nearly enough. I feel powerless almost all the time. Thoughts such as those are probably just remnants from a time in my life when I had to be actively useful or convenient in some way in order to avoid getting hurt.

Right now, I am struggling with the fact that someone I seemed to click with as friends has suddenly stopped responding to my text messages. I am certainly aware that I am entitled to no one's time or attention, but... I am nonetheless left wondering if I've done something wrong. I am wondering if something I've said or done was misinterpreted. I am wondering if perhaps they know someone from my past, and maybe they told this person that I'm some kind of stinky horrible bad person. Or maybe I initiated conversation one too many times and now they think I'm “clingy” or something.

...All of these have happened before. And... if it has happened again, I feel like I really shouldn't be surprised at all; the perils of existing as an autistic person in this world are the simple fact that everyone is sifting through your words and intentions for subtext that isn't actually there, the fact that your interests are usually too “weird” and “out there” for anyone to find them relatable, and the fact that you think, feel, and perceive the world differently from most everyone else, in ways that they often find foreign, incomprehensible, and repulsive.

I should be used to this sort of thing. Part of me feels stupid for feeling sad about it. Part of me feels stupid for hoping for any outcome other than disgust and rejection to begin with.

What's worse is the simple fact that my struggling with my emotions leaves me less available to be a good wife to my husbands. Both of them were hoping to play more Betrayal Legacy today, and I'm not currently in a position where I can trust myself to reliably keep my past trauma memories relating to board games in check. Both of them were disappointed, and... I can't help but feel like it's all my fault.

...But this, too, is just leftover from my past, in which my emotions were viewed as inconveniences and therefore punishable offenses, especially if they interfered with me doing what others wanted me to do. In old spaces... “punishment will continue until morale improves”. I struggle not to perpetuate that old script upon myself in the absence of some other irritable, insecure, and emotionally unavailable person to do it for me.

I don't really know what to do, though. There are too many thoughts swirling around, and, though J helped me with some grounding techniques, I'm still a little... weird, I guess.

So here; have some pictures of swirling tea. It's certainly a lot prettier than the inside of my brain right now:

...I think that's all I've got for you today. Maybe tomorrow I'll feel a little better. Thanks for your patience.

Maybe I'll play a few rounds of Hades to try to clear my head. If I do that, you'll find me here, though I don't imagine I'll be very talkative:

I love you. And I'll write again soon. Please do your best to stay safe in the meantime.

Your friend, Lumine

[ofthebeasts]

The defiant naga part three

Grenade catches the tone of sheer disdain when the monster says "dear"— mocking? He calls most if not all of the creatures by dear, and despite the pain, there's a certain sense of pride that Grenade was able to chip at his patience enough to make him hate him to the point that he's the sole exception to the condescending call, and when he isn't, it's said like a slur, with more venom than any naga carries.

CW: Hitting, whipping, violence (physical, and emotional to a certain degree)

"I would've sold this beast already if it wasn't for the beauty of the sheds."

Grenade manages to get close enough without the monster noticing, close enough to bite, so he sinks his teeth into his bandaged ankle. But— not enough to break skin, and he swears under his breath.

The reaction from the monster is steadfast, but he almost sees it in slow motion. The way he firstly tenses up, the sound of his knees popping as he crouches down and backhands him across the face. It's strong enough that it sends Grenade rolling a few meters away, and when the monster approaches again, he can't help the fear seizing his guts at the sheer savagery of his eyes.

He lifts up his head by the hair, the grip so strong it makes his scalp feel numb. Tears prickle at his eyes— pain, rage, frustration, Grenade doesn't know anymore. He does know, though, that the failed attemp will have very dire consequences.

"Consider yourself lucky that I am not wearing any rings."

He will not. Grenade spits blood at the monster's face, blood that he can only hope originates from biting his tongue or his cheeks too hard. There is a beat of silence, from the monster, from him, and from the crowd too. For a brief moment, Grenade is invaded by a sick satisfaction that he managed to leave these people speechless.

And the the monster stands up, dropping his head suddently enough that he doesn't have time to react and hold it up. His jaw hits the ground and leaves a sharp ache.

And then, as his vision swims while he tries to reach out to grab at the monster's ankle, he is hit with the belt again. Even though he is prepared, he screams this time again too, because the strike was with the buckled part, and it bites into his skin like a knife. A knife would be better.

But Grenade knows the monster would not inflict torture so blatantly.

He does not manage to move again when the monster is done beating him. That is just sheer humiliation— it was, what? Five strikes?

"This naga has time and time again refused to behave. I don't typically deal out punishment so crassly, but there are creatures that just have to be beaten into submission, if not obedience."

The crowd cheers with sanguinary glee, and Grenade does manage to summon the strenght to curl up. And that way he stays, until the monster crouches down by him again, just for a moment, and whispers, low enough that he isn't heard,

"Guess who will suffer the consequences?"

A wave of panic overtakes him, and he stifles sobs.

"My dear patrons, I apologise for your lack of input so far! Areli does not do well without pre planned scripts, and this beast is impossible to tame. Perhaps, the next show may have more influence of you! So tell me,"

[sofyachy]

Watching the end of Good Omens Season 2 felt like watching the moon landing, and I think I've finally figured out why. It's not the first time there have been outed queer characters on TV shows. It's not the first time there's been a queer love scene / kiss on TV. That alone isn't ground-breaking.

But for my entire life, I've consumed media that put the hetero couple into the main spotlight with token queer background characters, a lot of them killed off in a "bury your gays" trope. Or I've watched an ongoing series and developed queer ships that always left me a little disappointed when the romantic tension I perceived on screen was quashed with the introduction of a chemistry-lacking hetero love interest, or even simply brushing off the characters as "they're just good friends, because No Homo."

I've gotten used to this. I've come to expect it -- to always look deeply into the subtext, analyzing what's going on underneath the dialog and actions. Are these characters gay? Here is my 20-page literary analysis paper in which I go over every line, every detail, to argue that there's justifiable reason to believe something there that's not blatantly spelled out in words. (I literally did this with Hotspur in my graduate-level Shakespeare class because I absolutely needed someone to agree with me that this married character was so very, very gay, despite a surface-level "no homo" reading.) And it's still never "proof" -- just my opinion, which I can shout into the void until I'm hoarse.

And isn't that just what we do in slash fandom? We write our own endings. We refashion the stories we love to override that little disappointment that the original work gives us, as much as we still love it.

With Good Omens, there was already a strong fandom pairing Aziraphale and Crowley. I read the book after watching both seasons, so I can't say how strong that fandom was before those came out. But one of the things that struck me about the book was that there wasn't nearly the same vibe between the characters as there was in the first season. Hell, they weren't even the central characters of the book. And while the book says that people assume Aziraphale is gay, it's quick to say "but he's not; angels aren't sexual." No homo.

He and Crowley are...maybe friends? Associates? But there's certainly no scene with Crowley crying into a bottle of whiskey after Aziraphale disappears in the way he does in S1. It's like Book Crowley isn't allowed to have queer feelings because No Homo, especially not when he's maybe-friends with a maybe-homo. And it's not really surprising, considering the book was written in the '80s -- when gay rights was pushed back 20 years due to the AIDS epidemic.

And even with S1, it wasn't blatantly spelled out that either of them were queer. The aforementioned line about a gay Aziraphale didn't make it into the script (though he does refer to himself as "the Southern pansy"). We got some excellent scenes to rile up the fandom with somewhat-romantic dialog and actions. Still, on the surface, the reaction could still easily be "Hey, that looks maybe-possibly kind of gay? If you look at it just right. Here's my 20-page essay explaining why they're gay." And at the end of the season, Aziraphale and Crowley simply dine at the Ritz. Nothing explicitly gay there, unless you dig for it.

And then Season 2 said, "Hold my beer." And we got a full season of slow-burn romance at the forefront. The business with Gabriel was a ruse; the whole thing was about Aziracrow and their relationship from start to finish. We started out with the expected subtext, suggestive dialog, surreptitious glances. I remember thinking, "this is nice; I'm glad we're getting more time to just enjoy these two on the screen together." And then it kept building, and building, and building.

And finally, Episode 6 gave us "YES, HOMO." And after a lifetime of never seeing one of my ships amount to anything on screen, there it was, in all its devastating glory. They went there. That's what felt like the moon landing to me. It's something that seemed so far off to be impossible until it wasn't.

[avelera]

I finally watched Top Gun: Maverick last night and while I don't have many impressions and will likely never think of it again since it's not really my speed, I suppose they were:

The flying scenes were very cool. I can see why people said that was worth the price of admission to a theater.

That said, if I hadn't been able to snark at the movie with my partner the whole time, everything except the flying scenes would have had my eyes rolling out of my head or had me chewing through the walls with irritation

As my partner said at all the "Rah rah, USA!" moments like when we first meet the fighter pilots in the bar, "Hmm, maybe I do hate my country!"

Some other observations, not all criticism! but with some spoilers below:

I don't blame the actors but yeah, the introduction to all the fighter pilots scene got my back up in that instinctive, evolutionary way that watching a bunch of jocks introduced in a movie as the heroes where they cheerfully bully the geeks makes me want to punch things. There wasn't necessarily any geek bullying but it was there, spiritually.

I have seen a plank of wood with more chemistry towards Jennifer Connelly than Tom Cruise had. Girl was trying her best but it was an entirely one way street. It actually might have been more poignant and matched the vibe better to make them brother and sister. (And actually, thematically, might have worked better too with the idea that Maverick has sacrificed his whole life to being a pilot, including relationships.) Truly one of the most baffling relationships of the film.

Because the actual most romantic and heartwrenching scenes (in that it had literally any heart at all but was also, admittedly, heartwrenching) was the Mav/Ice reunion. As my partner pointed out, it really took the actor's illness to bring anything that real onto the screen, because it was literally unavoidable. It was the only emotionally "real" moment in the film, for me at least, but that said it did pack a punch, to their credit. IceMav seems the only logical ship to me in the whole franchise I mean seriously, those dudes love each other. I felt bad for Mav losing his husband in the middle of the two weeks (??) they had to train for their mission. Truly awful timing, I'm sure Ice was very sorry for it (yes, I'm scoffing a bit at the realism of the timing even as I understand it from a dramatic angle).

No like seriously, Maverick and Ice loved each other so damn much that it made Tom Cruise's total lack of chemistry with Jennifer Connelly all the more side-eye worthy. Why even include it? I mean I know it's because a paint-by-numbers Hollywood script, especially in a film with as many "hunky" shirtless dudes rolling around in the sand together as Top Gun has, requires a token female to make sure we know that no one here is actually gay. But still. It almost made me *less* convinced of Mav's sexuality every time she was on screen with him (getting just an absurd number of closeups, btw. Seriously, did they do all those closeups on her so we wouldn't realize that she's taller than Tom Cruise or something? Was she ever on set at all? A mystery...)

Oh, and literally every time Mav pulled some stunt that would get him court martial-ed or something blatantly illegal or ridiculous in a US military setting happened, my partner and I exchanged a look and rolled our eyes. Yeah, the US military, famously known for being super tolerant of this bullshit.

There should genuinely have been a flashing sign during the scene where the pilots heroically set off for their mission that just said, "YOU WILL NEVER GET TO DO THIS IF YOU ENLIST. NEVER EVER. YOU WILL NEVER EVER EVER DO ANYTHING THIS COOL SO DO NOT ENLIST HOPING YOU WILL." Like, to the point where it's irresponsible to not make it clearer that this is total fantasy.

Literally why did they even have pilots? I mean I know they gave some gobbledy-gook about why and obviously it's why we have the movie, but watching those missiles blow the airstrip to smithereens was genuinely like, "Yo, why didn't we just use those? Or bomb them from orbit? Why do we need pilots?"

More to the point why didn't they use drones? (Obviously: because we wouldn't have a movie.) Seriously, I want at least a college humor take which is just a drone pilot with a joystick somewhere in Nevada nudging the drone flight to do the same thing while totally safe the whole time and then he clocks out for his lunch break like seriously, WHY were any humans involved?

Anyway, 'twas silly but I almost would have preferred the whole thing as like a fantasy anime with not even vague attachment to the real world, so that I could enjoy the fighter pilot stuff in the spirit it's intended. Because every whisper of like... the actual political realities and how flagrantly this would violate them made me see red.

Oh, and I realized that fighter pilot narratives could be almost shot for shot replaced with knights in shining armor in a Medieval setting and it would be basically the same in a remarkable number of ways, especially the prep scenes for the pilots (armor) and the planes (their mounts). It would be an interesting film experiment to do.

And that's about all I've got!

[whatiwillsay]

my guess is they did reach out to her representatives. then they decided not to comment on the record but either said something off the record (which makes them anonymous and then you can’t say they’re her reps because that reveals who it is), or they reached out to her reps and the reps said we’re not commenting but you can speak to X who has similar thinking to us. I think it was this option.

either way, the reporter also said on tv this came from Taylor’s camp. and whoever it is knew how the taylor camp talking points - feminism. Also the Shawn mendes reference is from someone really plugged into this. Which is why if it wasn’t Tree, Tree basically wrote out the script for them.

people really want to remove Taylor’s agency from this like her and tree didn’t talk about this. Like this is a Britney thing where her people are running around behind her back (not saying you think that Cam, just seen a lot of comments that almost run into that line of thinking).

the reporter on tv mentioned taylor's camp but also was clear to keep the "anonymous associate" line going. "we’re not commenting but you can speak to X who has similar thinking to us." would make sense though because while i can see taylor being very irritated by the nyt article (esp given the wag era she's transitioning into and obviously she's interested in centering travis a good bit in her life so gaylor musings just don't really fit in with that aesthetic even though she clearly used to be fine with them like when rolling stone released a similar gaylor article and taylor happily worked with them a few weeks later) i can't see her blatantly calling it untrue.

because it's not untrue the article just listed a bunch of things taylor has done and mentioned they could have queer explanations and talked about how hard it is for celebs to come out.

taylor's been careful to never identify herself as straight so while the statement has tree's touch (blaming it on misogyny even though that's stupid- men get this speculation all the time harry styles literally exists) it doesn't have taylor's touch (always staying ambiguous)

so i can see this associate mouthing off and just trying to make the nyt article go away but dropping taylor's usual MO of remaining ambiguous because it wasn't a statement she helped craft.

[selfawxre]

god i am just having so many thoughts abt monika and how literally every video essay on ddlc gets her WRONG

" she's a psychopathic / evil villain yandere " " she MURDERS her FRIENDS to DATE you " you people are all missing the point SO HARD

monika is inherently a tragic character above all else - she's an ai, given sentience as part of an experiment, or (if you choose to ignore the ddlc+ lore) a video game character given sentience and as such trapped in said game. upon realising that she is the only being with her level of intelligence in her world, she strives to find a way to reach out and interact with someone, anyone.

thus, she creates the mc.

it's specifically stated in ddlc+ that the mc is a creation of monika - that's why he has zero sprites, a rapidly fluctuating personality based on which girl he's talking to, and in general just doesn't feel Real. sure, that can be said for any dating sim protagonist, but it's extra prominent in ddlc - the mc is solely a vessel for you, the player, and he was created by monika because she is desperate for any form of connection.

saying she's heartless or cruel for what she does to the other girls ( or that it's solely out of selfishness and a want to get closer to the player ) is also just blatantly false when you remember that the other girls aren't real the way monika is ( at least in the narrative - she is still very much fictional too. ) her situation is comparable to the truman show a bit - she's the only "real" one, the only one aware of her surroundings. sure, the other girls interact with her in the context of the game, and her manipulation of their code drives them to do things she doesn't even seem to expect, but they're still working off a script, like actors.

another thing that people forget is that monika's love for the player is borne out of what you represent to her, not actually you as a person. how can it be - she doesn't know anything about you, really. she knows your name from your files for a spooky little jumpscare in act 3, but that can be whatever you set it as on the platform you play the game on. the main thing that attracts her to you is that you're a real person, someone she can actually connect with. it's why her song is called "your reality" - she doesn't actually have romantic feelings to the player, she wants to exist in a world where she's not completely alone - being in a dating sim, it's thematic that she describes her love as romantic. she tries to escape the game midway through act 2 if you're in full-screen (the bluescreen scare literally says "DDLC escape plan" on it) and barely anybody acknowledges it because it's so easy to miss.

from the beginning, she's trying desperately to make you see that she knows she's in a game without actually outright saying it - from her day 2 talk about her " epiphany ", her poems being specifically about that, to the many comments she makes about the game. i also like the tidbit that she's the one to give you game tips, but also doesn't seem to be aware of it? it makes sense because in the context of the game, she's the side-character there to facilitate your routes with the other girls, the unattainable club president who gives you tips and isn't actually romanceable. And it fucking kills her, because it limits the amount of time she has to get through to you. This is what leads her to change the other girls' code, not because she's a " yandere " ( if you want a character who fits that trope, look no further than ms "knife collector" "i want to peel open your skin and crawl inside you" yuri herself!!! ) .

[dontaskmehowdontaskmewhy]

A somewhat brief, but NOT SPOILER FREE Ladybug and Chat Noir movie review:

(I’m sure the kids this was aimed for enjoyed it better than I did.)

I watched it on Netflix.

The voice acting was great as usual. The singers had good voices too. THE ANIMATION WAS GORGEOUS.

But some technical stuff kept me from enjoying it as much as I could have. And of course, I have my gripes like every other person. And I am older than the target demographic. The movie wasn’t BAD, it just wasn’t for me. The way the plot was rolled out wasn’t what I’m used to.

I already knew it was going to be a musical. But I didn’t have high hopes, because of that one Christmas musical episode the series did a few years back. I admit that at the time of that episode airing, the voice actor for Adrien wasn’t great at singing. And if the actor is not a singer, I understand using a different voice for the songs. And the singers for the songs are different from the voice actors in THIS movie. And the singer for Adrien n had a similar enough tone to just barely match to the voice actor… But it really jarred me just how different the singer for Marinette was to the voice actor. Don’t get me wrong, the singer was really good at singing the songs, but it was blatantly obvious that It was a different person singing for her, and that the tone was just too different. and I’m sure the voice actor for Marinette already could sing? so why didn’t she? I think this part of the production process might’ve been done or around the time they were fighting for equal pay and such with the production company, so I can see how it happened I guess?

 anyway, when it comes to the script, other than the songs I personally thought it was pretty bare-bones. It showed all the moments they wanted people to see throughout the series, but there is almost no transitional period between the parts. first there was the learning of powers and becoming a team, then SUDDENLY it was the last fight and they don’t need their powers anymore and reveal themselves to each other? One tiny montage was not enough to fill in that big of a jump and make it smooth. They tried to cram all the seasons into one film this time. What I see as a young adult who’s studied film and script editing isn’t the same as a child who was the target audience. I get that. Doesn’t mean I don’t still feel frustrated over it, but eh it is what it is. The transition of Gabriel ignoring/controlling his son to suddenly being worried when he came home (and not giving a full moment for us to see him react)didn’t feel like it was justified. And they really put too much time into Gabriel’s reasoning for his crimes, and putting it at the VERY END didn’t feel right. But then at the end when Gabriel is ousted they don’t show the repercussions? Not even him in jail? They just announced it was him on the news and then go back to the storyline of the “dance” and Adrien is perfectly fine?like, OKAYYYYY I GUESS. 👀

But.

Guys.

“Save one life save the world?” The throw away “Master Fu” character we got in this movie was ridiculous. I can’t express it more without making this post way too long. 

***And btw Gabriel was only hotter because they actually gave him a decent neck size and (occasionally) 5 o’clock shadow. He was a great singer…and he had actual emotions at the end.

Okay. I’ve said my piece. I’ll get off the soap box now.

[redwineconversation]

Monsters Recognize Monsters

The thing that makes Lyon stand out from other teams is not their winning pedigree but their sense of morality, their undying belief that moral values triumph above all else. Live for me and I will die for you. Or something.

It sounds dramatic, or maybe poetic, depending on how you look at it, but there is still an element of truth to it. Lyon players believe in doing the right thing for the right reasons, no matter the cost. Isn't that the very definition of morality? Of trying to be good? They're the most powerful team in the world, and I mean that in the purest sense of the word. Look at the stranglehold Lyon has over Europe. Look at their winning pedigree. Who even comes close?

But where does that pedigree even come from, really? It's not financial, Lyon doesn't have the same budget as big, big clubs. Aulas can't drop the same amount of money on players like Manchester City or Chelsea or Barcelona or Real Madrid. And yet, in women's football, the true standards are those held by Lyon. Any other team is always compared to what Lyon has done, to an extent even, to what Lyon can do.

Lyon's pedigree comes from Aulas. Again, I feel people don't quite understand the importance of Jean-Michel Aulas when it comes to Lyon's dynasty. Lyon was not profitable when he bought the club, quite the contrary. They were bankrupt and on the verge of relegation. No one wanted this team, and for good cause. And yet this man came in from the cold fresh after having sold his IT company and said "I will help you but I am going to want some things in return."

Lyon Féminin is now the most dominant team in the world, but they weren't in 1987, and they weren't in 2004. That section, too, is one no one really wanted, except for a man who watched a team play in the rain one day and thought to himself, I want to own the best women's team in the world. So he went out and built one himself.

The point is, I do think that Lyon's moral values do come from that. They come from a president who built something because he believed in. Lyon was not profitable. Lyon still isn't, in some ways. Olympique Lyonnais does not hold the same weight in terms of branding as Chelsea or as Barcelona or as Real Madrid or as any of the other big names.

But Wendie Renard walking away caused a seismic event. But why? Why her? Amandine Henry was blatantly dropped and she is both Lyon's and France's golden child. Eugenie Le Sommer was dropped. Sarah Bouhaddi was either dropped or walked away depending on how you interpret her performances.

I'll be brutally honest. I would have bet real money on Henry's spat with Diacre being the breaking point, because she is the golden girl. She has a considerable amount of privilege which comes from being blonde and pretty and having pretty blue eyes and playing for the best club team in the world. Surely, I thought to myself, if Henry speaks out, then Diacre will be gone. She's just not just Lyon's golden girl, she's France, too.

But no. Diacre's job was safe despite pushing aside the player Lyon will go to considerable lengths to protect.

I bring Henry up because I do think it's important in understanding the rest of the story. Did Henry mold Lyon into her own image or did Lyon mold Henry into theirs? Who first came up with the idea of loyalty but more importantly, who first tied the idea of morality to the idea of being killers?

So why did Henry not cause the seismic event but Renard did? Because Henry molded Lyon into her own image but Renard is the one who wrote the script.

Now, I am not going to sit here and pretend Lyon's moral values are completely altruistic. The rivalry with Juvisy and what that team represents dates back decades. But that rivalry, too, can be summed up as a clash of moral values. Of Lyon's fundamental belief in doing the right thing. In the longterm, Lyon's sense of moral righteousness won over, and is in large part the reason why Lyon has been so dominant for so long. They did the right thing, not because it was the right thing, but because they believed it to be so.

Fans of teams other than Lyon often like to say their favorite players reflect their own moral values. But I cannot help but question that to an extent. What would be the moral tipping point to get Leah Williamson to walk away from the English National Team? Convince me that Beth Mead would pass up being seen as England's Golden Girl for the rest of her professional career. Tell me that Alexia Putellas would give up Barcelona's captaincy at the expense of Barcelona's own image.

Tell me the truth. Are monsters made in their image, or are they made I n yours?

[t4tpumpkinduo]

aheem heem 12 and then like. all of the 20s?

YES KISSA YOU O7 doing dsmp ones uhm

12. the unpopular character that you actually like and why more people should like them

well you already know what the hell i'm going to say...ceeschlatt i'm so sorry he only did some of that you guys are so annoying. i think a huge chunk of his story is just like. Canonically Textually way deeper and more sympathetic and more complicated than people want to acknowledge. guys will have direct blatent narrative foil parallels of their mistakes to their blorbo of choice but only one side will get a million excuses and only one side will get their pov analyzed. OK 👍. telephone game ass fanbase. read the parallel storyline of what would've happened had pogtopia won read the nov 16 script look at the canonical smplive isms analyze why someone would want to "revive someone for political power" desperate style after a funeral where it was Blatantly Clear that person has absolutely Zero Power and it paralleling the post charlie death insanity. and then you will calm down!!

honorable mention to ceefundy as well. i wouldn't say he's unpopular unpopular but goddamn. despite the fact he's so interesting and cool and inpactful and represents huge chunks of Core Themes, he just gets ignored and infantalized and has so much of his story plain Erased because it's inconvenient to other characters. Fucked!!!

20. part of canon you found tedious or boring

ceeranboo so sorry ok. iget why people like him i do but he is so so bland to me. shepards tone empty promise of a character. to me. some of his implications were pretty interesting, especially when it came to things that were more complicated, the exile isms the being knowingly complicit in ctommy prison murder or him drinking ableist copium abt tubbo being kind of unhinged. the centristism sometimes feeling less waffly and more like he's trying to people please to the point of exploding. too bad i do not care ☝️🔛🔝

21. part of canon you think is overhyped

and if i say tntduo..it's been so overhyped it overshadows everyone else it overshadows their own damn characters entire arcs and decisions and then the whole story itself they are not allowed to be anything except eachothers klance bait which was equally as mid. i do think there is value to it but at this point i am so exhausted about the oc versions being treated like canon when on screen its so bad out here sometimes. ppl going ohhh we never got resolution :[ ,,,.ccwilbur blatantly said what would've happened in the final tntduo stream. cwil would show back up to lnv in the same set up of his apologies but its a bait and switch that pivots into insulting q again and then finish it up w oh hey maybe yr not so bad after all 😂 and then he gives him a fist bump and leaves. there's yr closure. lea me alone

22. your favorite part of canon that everyone else ignores

i already said i think pumpkinduo is like funny comedy mallets for crazy people but i think most other things get attention properly? el rapids deserved more hype tho i srs think it would change how people see a lot of the characters involved

23. ship you've unwillingly come around to

im not sure? weird shit is a given but other than that who rlly care <- edit: HELP i misread the question i thought it was asking what you are Unwilling to come around to. so sorry. to answer the actual question uhm,,still not very sure hheheh im very solid in my dislikes and likes and complaints

24. topic that brings up the most rancid discourse

exile and the prison for sure :heart_hands: /RETCH. sure other things are very annoying but the levels these two arcs get to are Awful and Telling and Shitty the media illiteracy is off the charts. how you can watch streams with your eyes closed and ears closed and without registering the words or characters on the screen. what's going on. anyways if cdrm thinks torture is so bad maybe he should not talk about eye for an eye when he had tortured three people before he was even in the prison. but okay. also rip prison arc sam the world wasn't ready for a character like you 🙏

25. common fandom complaint that you're sick of hearing

i'm not sure? what are the most common complaints i do happen to agree with a lot of them i think