#which is interesting considering how significant this theme is at this point in the show (woodes's book is a whole Thing this season too)

[neptunes-sol-angel]

"I'm finna get this sh*t off my chest and lay it to rest". Pick the gif(s) that you're drawn to the most, then scroll for its corresponding message of me dissing your haters! 🐍🤭

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Pile One

Your haters are definitely people that are from your past which could consist of those who you’ve shared a close connection with and a group of individuals that were prominent in your childhood. These people made you discover both the positives and negatives that come with the feeling of being passionate, meaning at some point they made you feel really high about yourself and could have been the reason for one of your moments where you felt really low. You could have had an explosive argument with them or have experienced mounds of anger because they’ve betrayed you in a way that involves using your sensitivities as a way to manipulate you and degrade you. Just a lot of bullying energy here, maybe their goal was to make you feel less significant or capable and alone because of your interests that are considered taboo. They could be dark empaths or people pleasers who aren’t equipped enough to handle conflict without throwing someone, regardless of how close you are with them or how long you’ve known them for, under the bus and could also struggle with finding their own independence and confidence to stand up for those that they were supposed to love or what makes them authentic. I feel like your haters are just sore losers, they don’t know how to accept when they’ve lost. What’s pathetic is that they’ve spent so much time trying to get rid of you because they assumed it would make them superior or elevate them in a social circle. Your haters could show a lot of cowardice in a way that blocks them from being creative or gaining in their career, social network, or reputation.You and your haters could have similar backgrounds but cope very differently. They’re very impatient and could make impulsive and destructive choices for fast rewards that may feel beneficial when they gain them but turn ineffective as fast as when they received it. They’re great at conducting illusions though. At one point you could have seen them as crafty, but they’re a one trick pony. Their method in tearing someone down includes repetitively bringing up the same insults to cover up the fact that they can’t roast or really say anything truly jarring about you so they cling to that one thing to see if it will stick. I don’t even think your words are something that hurts you, it’s the fact that they intend to  stoop low is what hurts you. I see several themes of them trying to utilize shame. Shaming you for your quirks is the most obvious but I see a lot of sexual themes too. Your haters could have tried to make you feel as if you were less of the gender that you identify with or they’ve used slut shaming tactics with you which could have been severely traumatizing if you were really young and in school. They’re the type to not have anything else on you so they start making up stuff to again, see it sticks. I feel like you clapback at this by being who they’re not, which is someone that doesn’t care about what others have to say about them. You don’t answer to gossip or let someone convince you that your likes are what will keep you behind, you acknowledge that your likes are what makes you the shit and it shows in how people are positively drawn to you and want to see and hear more from you without you having to wear a mask for people to “like” you. Your haters can’t relate and that’s why they’re upset. You make them even more mad when you’re empowering and accepting yourself while they’re trying to expose you, even if they do it through lies, you’re like “Ok. This is who I am. Now what?” and this is how the tables turn.

What they did to you was a displacement of their own anger towards people they feel lower than which is a lot of people, including you. They got buck with you because they saw your kindness as a weakness and that was their mistake. What makes this pathetic is that they spent so much energy trying to get rid of you just to come back to see if they can have a seat at your table because they see you’re doing big things, that you’re happier without them, and that it’s no fun throwing away genuine people to impress people who don’t care at all about them. As much as they tried to make it seem like you’re invisible, you’re now in their minds rent free. What your haters don’t see coming, is how they’re about to recognize how extremely wrong in not just their actions towards you, but their judgment in how you weren’t going to be supported. It’s going to be very apparent for people in this pile on how much you guys are actually loved. You’re going to realize that the things that you felt like you missed out on in the past, actually never really mattered. Like for an example, you could have desired to “be like the cool kids” or just “normal,” because of the people that made you feel bad, but you’ll learn that your haters are the type to peak in high school or something that doesn’t really amount to anything in life compared to what you’ve been patiently building for yourself. Maybe you don’t see yourself as patient because you get frustrated, however, I see that it’s because you’ve actually always seen the value in yourself but you’ve dealt with people misunderstanding you which is something you’ve learned is out of your control but your anger is geared towards people who react so negatively to what they can’t be patient on or understand. I’m seeing changes with this that can look like reconciliation with family members who correct their behavior towards you instead of trying to control what you want to do with your life or enabling abusive behavior towards you or you could successfully build a community or a name for yourself where people look up to you or find inspiration from you to instill more confidence and self-love towards yourself but also some form of justice that they’re looking for.

The problem with your haters is they’re lost when it comes to finding their own personality and instead of working on that, they’d rather cling onto other people by shadowing them in some way but they still expect to outshine the source which isn’t at all how it works. They could be grifters or have the tendency to copy others or go after your “hand me downs” so that they can feel like they’re on your level. They’re the type to talk down on what you have but in private try to figure out how they can emulate you. Your name is still on their tongue and embedded in their brains long after you parted ways with them because it’s the only way that they can have relevancy. They’re like salt hating on all the other spices. If they spent more time working on their own flavor instead of trying to tear you down for what makes you stand out, then they would finally find themselves instead of making their bland nature everyone else’s problem. They lack seasoning and it shows in how they treat people. Unfortunately you can’t save them from that, so always remember that you don’t have to get even with them, their misery is already turning them every which way but loose. 

Pile Two

A wise woman named Beauteuss once said “How do you expect me to chase you? Baby, I’m so coquette cunt”. I feel like this is your energy and why you have your haters UPSET with you. You have a superpower that most people are afraid to step into or fail to acquire and control which is to stand on business. This comes so naturally to you that the bare minimum doesn’t even cross your mind when you interact with people. You could have a strong balance of venusian and martian energy, you’re charming and know how to have your way with others without seeming manipulative because you’re an open book. What you see is what you get, you mean what you say, you’re very honest with how you feel about others, and you’re bravely upfront about what you want. People could envy your love life or the attention that you get. They want to know your secret with how you have people wrapped around your finger. They want to know how you’re able to be in situations where you’re taken care of by people while still having authoritative people in a chokehold. In your haters’ mind, they see their connection with you as a wrestling match that they cannot win. Your haters tend to be people who are in your career field or environments both physical or virtual where there’s a competitive atmosphere. They have big personalities that are threatened by your resistance or nonchalant attitude to submit to anyone. It just seems like what you have when it comes to magnetism or magisterial prestige is the real deal that people around you can’t help but respect it even if they initially tried to overpower you. Their dominance is more of a defense mechanism, or like the equivalent of how animals exaggerate their features to scare away bigger predators. They have to create a facade in order to control the situation or others. They aren’t really secure with their accomplishments or faith in themselves because they can’t handle coexisting with people who have strong personalities.

Regardless of your gender, men see you as a threat because they feel like you’re better than them or that you should know your place. You do know your place and that’s the problem. You don’t allow romance to trick you out of your independence or stay in situations that don’t give you what you deserve or what you seek. You are a vibrant seducer, people tend to be engulfed by how you stimulate their self esteem and sexual desires but they mess up by thinking that you’re something to be possessed. Your lovers can turn into your enemies when they realize that they can’t control you or take you away from you wanting your own things. You could have been in multiple jobs where your boss had this mysterious hostility towards you even if you’re doing what you’re supposed to do and don’t really talk as much. It’s because they see that it’s destined for you to be your own boss and outgrow them in terms of professionalism. For people who think that they can’t relate to this energy because it seems exaggerated, it’s because the main thing that your haters fear about you is your potential which is why you attract people in one-sided competitions with you. You destroy your haters by seeing what they see in you. Some things for people are written in the stars, your haters see you as the kind of person who’s able to manifest luck, success, and specific luxuries based on how confident and appealing you are to others and how well life responds to your beliefs. They could be jealous of how what could be delusional or unrealistic for them comes into fruition in your life. They could actually try to believe that you have a big head until they see for themselves that you have physical evidence that back up your confidence and influence on others. Your haters just see you as a reflection of how feeble they are with wanting more for themselves. Your haters could be older people of the same sex as you because you remind them of what they don’t have anymore or regrets over things that they should have pursued in their youth. They could also be jealous of how sensually desirable you are to people both your age and older. They feel like other people see you as someone who can do no wrong. They want your grit, your ability to get things from others, your beauty, your canniness to destroy anyone who does you wrongly, your assertiveness to stand up for yourself, and your reluctance to settle for anything less. What riles your haters is how you don’t have to beg.

You don’t require anyone else’s permission on when and how you can take time for self care. Your colleagues wish they could be like you when it comes to prioritizing yourself or how you think and act like the job needs you more than you need it. You could have a talent for having multiple streams of income. I’m picking up a lot about platforms on social media or you being in an industry where people who may have more than you secretly admire what you bring to the table, but instead of seeing your gifts as something beneficial, they try to hide you or ignore you as a way to stagnate your growth. But I see that it never works because if you’re in a space where people don’t want to give you any credit, you don’t cry over it or invest more of your labor thinking that things will change, you move onto somewhere else and end up still living up to the purpose that people tried to keep you from reaching. This mindset translates itself to many different areas in your life, especially in love. You don’t chase after people withholding their respect for you and it shows your haters that they have a lot of growing to do and evaluation for toying with power dynamics is not serving them in the way that they think it is. You make your haters question if they truly have any finesse or not by making them overthink their position and credibility in life. You make them consider how they’ve been denying themselves from their inner prowess and how they’ve allowed their past failures to consume their competence for optimism and compassion. 

Pile Three

Your haters are obsessed with the fact that you don’t want anything to do with them. These are people who are used to playing back and forth games with other people. They’re so used to always being in drama and chaos or someone chasing after them to continue these same old messy cycles that it completely baffles them when you don’t engage with their toxicity. I’m seeing that you could be really patient with people who keep poking to get a reaction out of you until they go too far. You might cuss them out, but that’s about it. You say what you need to say and feel about this person and then you cut them off and move on with your life. The closure that you give to others is very brief or sharp, people may even consider it as foul, but you don’t do it for anyone’s liking or entertainment, you do it for yourself to release the stress that you’ve been carrying so that it can bring you to a start in your healing journey away from that conflict. Your haters are very lost when it comes to reality and their ego. I see this vision of two people playing a game, one person is constantly cheating throughout it, and when the other person finally decides to walk away, the cheater thinks that they’ve won. They’re proud of themselves until it settles in that they didn’t really win anything, you don’t care anymore, and you’re not coming back to play that game with them any longer and they’re dumbfounded yelling out to you “that’s it? You’re not playing anymore? Wait come back!” and you’re like no thanks, I’m good. I’m actually going to hold your hater’s hand and tell them in the nicest way possible that they need to find a life and that no one is concerned with them since they’ve driven out every single person that’s close to them from their life by being delusional and childish. They want to be the it person so bad by actually thinking that they have haters and that people are obsessed with them when no one cares enough to be. They rely on playing mind games with people to make it seem like they have influence on others and to boost their ego but they have no idea that it’s not the kind that they think. It’s getting to the point where if they’re into spirituality and feel like they’re being evil eyed, then it’s probably 100% true but not because they’re an icon or anything like that. People are wishing for their downfall because this hater does not know when to stop provoking others and will eventually get clocked if they don’t stop.

The universe is special with its timing but humans are faster when they want consequences to be dished out. But this person has a particular obsession with you because you got away unscathed the most from them. Things don’t have to be taken away from them or done to them for them to suffer. The punishment for them that’s going to hurt the most, is them seeing you live your best life, genuinely finding peace and healing away from the hurt that they were going to heavily imprint on your life. They’re going to have to witness you step by step, moving on and finding your groove back with yourself and newer connections with people who will treat you better. This is a teaching moment for them to understand that being toxic is not cute. They will meet their match and it won’t come from a person willing to stoop that low with them. They were mistaken to try their luck with you and now they’ll have no choice but to be haunted with this lingering feeling of you looking down on them forever even when you’re actually looking away (out of sight and out of mind). 

[readingsfrommars]

About T Corp Don

Well folks, we've got a new ID, and a new perspective on Don Quixote, so here I am! T-corp Don is an interesting one because not only is this yet another identity where she is still sane, it's also the closest we've seen to her ideal.

I'll warn you now, this one is long.

Unlike Cinq Association, Don is not acting a mercenary, but a time collector, meaning that her allegiance is not dependent on the highest bid. This means she is able to punish the rich just as much as the poor, which is a significant improvement compared to her other IDs.

Sure, this might sound a bit superficial. Sure, while there is the possibility that a rich tax evader will get caught and punished, the much more likely that the target of her collection will be someone too poor to pay the time debt. Any good intention is drowned out by the reality of The City, right? And normally, I would agree with this.

But that's where our beloved hero Don Quixote comes in. While her work may not be as noble as we'd like, it's in the way she treats her work that we can see how much of a difference it makes.

This might not seem significant to everyone, but T-Corp Don's dreams of heroism are still intact. In her ID story, there is a vital detail that we get to see about Don and the way she treats her work.

Don shows a clear disdain towards taking from the poor, despite the fact that, according to T-Corp, they have broken the law and must be punished. This is interesting for a few reasons, and I'll try to show this through Don's other IDs.

Like I mentioned in my examination of Cinq Association Don, most of her IDs involve two themes.

Don is indoctrinated by the group she is with. This can be seen with N Corp and W Corp (initially), but is present in most of her identities.

Either Don's dream breaks, or her mind does. Again, N Corp and W Corp are both fantastic examples of this. (A subtle but nevertheless notable example of this is Blade Lineage Don. It is never explicitly stated what has happened to her, but the simple fact that she no longer wields her blade for others speaks volumes as to how her dream is long gone.)

However, with T Corp, we see Don actively trying to avoid performing her duty as a collector when it comes into conflict with her ideals. This tells us that she has not only managed to avoid being indoctrinated by T Corp, she has managed to keep her dream and mind intact.

Like Cinq Association, she has found a way to pursue justice in her own way, albeit with a few compromises. And, in my personal opinion, she seems more fulfilled by her work for T Corp.

As stated before, she spares no expense in her pursuit and punishment of the rich tax evaders, who exploit the poor and vulnerable. In her ID story, it shows her risking going past her allotted work hours to expense justice.

Meanwhile with the poor, she will try to delay their punishment as much as possible. Delaying anything in T Corp, where time is everything, is something that should not be taken lightly.

Compared to her earlier IDs, this is a huge improvement. For Don, who in most IDs would fulfill her duty without question, to show clear resistance towards doing work (which according to T Corp involves punishing wrongdoers) demonstrates that she has managed to keep her ideals of heroism far more than ever before, to the point of her own personal code clashing with the law.

In my opinion, this is something to celebrate. Within the grim reality of The City, being able to maintain noble ideals is laughable, even for those strong enough to defend them.

T Corp Don keeping hold of her desire to fight for justice sounds too good to be true, considering all of the other ways we've seen her story go very, very wrong.

And if you did think it was too good to be true...

You'd be right.

Just like in Cinq Association, T Corp Don represents a failure to achieve her dream. And in this case, it's built into the very foundations of this ID. The very fact that she is working for T Corp is proof that she has, perhaps without knowing it, given up on her idea of justice.

Oh, and when I said Don wasn't indoctrinised? I lied.

T Corp is one of the most extreme places in terms of inequality between the rich and poor. When time is literally money, you'll be lucky to get ten hours in a day, while your employer likely has upward of 50 hours a day. If you don't understand what I'm saying by this, you'll get it if you complete Canto 6.5.

T Corp would already be an awful place - even to the standard of The City - if that was the only thing the poor were robbed of, but anyone who has played Limbus Company knows that I have missed out a very important detail about the place.

In T Corp, colour is a luxury. I'm not talking colourful clothes or furniture, I mean you are literally monochrome unless you pay for it. If you are poor, not only do you have less time between grueling work shifts, your world has no colour. Every day is mind-destroying work, eating, and sleeping. Nothing changes. Everything you look at is some shade of brown, and there is nothing you can say you truly own.

To live in T Corp is to accept the most brutal inequality the human mind can conceive. You don't question the awful working conditions, the way the lower class are exploited and discarded by the rich and powerful, or the fact that a will to live is something that must be bought. You accept all of that because that's life for you. The idea of being treated any better is something that is only possible by getting more wealth, which means you need more hours in the day to work, which you get by working. There is no life for the poor of T Corp. Only Survival, work, and death.

To work for T Corp is to not only accept the way things are, but to assist them. Any semblance of equality in Don's work is illusory, and the truth of the matter is that her work continues to secure the future of that brutal cycle. The game even states as much in her story.

I haven't played Final Fantasy 7's remake, but there's a line from that game that feels very relevant to T Corp Don.

"A good man who serves a great evil is not without sin. He must recognise and accept his complicity."

T Corp Don is potentially the most tragic ID Don has. She has allowed herself to become something that can only be described as evil in order to find the slightest bit of good.

So what does she do? She gives her everything to punishing the people she believes are more evil than her, in order to vent her frustration and validate her path, while at the same time trying in vain to distance herself from the evil she must inevitably commit to maintain the status quo.

But someone who only does good some of the time is not a hero, and deep down Don knows it.

[wobblesthewaffle]

Lilith Doesn't Own Alastor's Soul (Theory)

So I've noticed the majority of the fandom (from what I can tell) theorizes/thinks that Lilith is the one who owns Alastor's soul. However, it doesn't make much sense when you look at other soul contracts.

For example, we can start with the resemblances shared between the parties of a soul deal.

We all know that sinners have some minor resemblances to the person who owns their soul, or part of their soul through contract. One case of this would be Husk and Niffty both having those sharp yellow teeth and a wide grin, just like Alastor.

A more noticeable example would be how those who work for Valentino have a golden tooth and Vox and this worker in episode two.

But then, we take a look at Alastor and Lilith.

They have no likeness in their appearances. Another thing to consider is that Alastor's powers are mainly voodoo/shadow themed. But why would Lilith from the bible give Alastor voodoo magic of all things?

Many will still bring up the fact Lilith and Alastor disappeared for seven years at the same time, but that doesn't necessarily mean she owns him. Lilith's mystery might as well be a red herring covering up whoever will be the main antagonist of the series.

Then we look at designs that Viv has made of other characters and we find a much better candidate.

Alastor's signature parts of his demonic form would probably be the black tendrils and what not. You wanna know what else shares these aspects?

Yep, the Root of all Evil. We've only seen it/them appear once in the show, but it fits well with the look Alastor has when he uses his powers and this entity definitely would be powerful enough to share some with our boy Al for a price.

The next thing I want to look into is Viv's design of Roo from 2019

Ok, so two big points here that relate to Alastor.

The first one is the black tendrils, and maybe even the weird thing with her red hair having black ends like Al's (but I mean, then again, it's hell and at most sinners only have like three shades in their color scheme so it's probably not that significant)

But the main one is the tons of red eyes. Where have we seen eyes like these before recently?

AND THE PLOT THICKENS!

I also saw a few people talking about how Eve could be Roo, which is another interesting take.

Lilith, Alastor and their absence are obviously connected, but not in a soul contract way. Roo will most likely be a final season villain, and that will (hopefully) be when we get the full explanation for everything.

[lemon-natalia]

Nona the Ninth Reaction - John 8:1 🐄

the message now reads: ‘THE/TOWER/HA’ . i’m sticking with the assumption that ‘tower’ is a full word and ‘ha’ is the beginning of the next until proven otherwise

okay and now it’s talking about falling asleep within the dream, which is confusing as all hell. whoever this narrator is, ‘her body was a mystery to her’, which is very reminiscent of the themes throughout of Nona wondering who she is. i really do think that this narrator has to be Alecto somehow or on some level, maybe because of Harrow falling asleep in the Tomb at the end of HtN?

also hammocks made of ‘baby-soft skin’. Ew. 

and an interesting point of reference, John’s eyes are explicitly black w/ white rings on them, so this dream is set after Alecto becomes his cavalier. although it might mean nothing, it’s also very interesting considering just how significant eye colour has been that the torchlight makes the white ring ‘a satiny gold’, given his eyes were originally gold - i wonder if it might have something to do with the type of shared Lyctorhood he and Alecto have going on?

honestly if someone came on the internet showing off that they could control dead bodies or whatever, i would think it was a deepfake or some other trolling as well. i love that apparently there are still Flat Earthers around despite having the tech to have some kind of space station on Mars existing

its ironic people calling him the Antichrist initially, given that he eventually adopts the exact opposite vibe of being a deity. and the whole religious/God/Christ associations aren’t even something that he solely adopted post-Resurrection himself either, even here people, and John’s group of friends, are explicitly comparing him to Jesus and using Christianity as a basis of what to do

and uh yeah, realistically someone broadcasting that they can raise the dead and heal everyone would probably be considered a cultist not just by the government, but by most people honestly 

and we’ve got A— Junior, (presumably) Alfred, joining the team as well, who apparently went from being a hedge fund manager in one life to swordfighting in the next. wild. 

‘she’d adored being a cop’ i like Pyrrha well enough so far, but yikes 

even though John’s still getting to grips with his powers, and can’t do proper resurrections yet, he still seems a lot more powerful than other necromancers later, given he’s able to build an entire wall out of perpetual bone, something which from what I remember Harrow treated as a massive achievement at the end of GtN 

what the actual fuck did those cows and sheep do to you man!!! is this why Canaan House has all that horned skull imagery, as like a weird little tribute to how cow murder contributed to him becoming Emperor. maybe the real cow murder was the friends that we made along the way

‘they treated us like we’d done some kind of huge crime’ MY DUDE.

[yonpote]

as someone who wasnt here at the time (was a fan from about 2011-2013) what exactly defines the "softlaunch era" pre-coming out that i hear you and others refer to?

you've come to the right place cuz this is the era when i truly became a Phannie... "gay softlaunch" is generally considered 2017-18, but to be more specific it was october 31, 2016-june 13, 2019!

before they came out this was also referred to as "post-baking universe" referencing the halloween 2016 monster pops video that had an (at the time) abnormal amount of raunchy humor and just general derangedness. nothing like it is today, but that point felt very significant and dan even brought it up in liveshows like yeah idk what happened there and when phil called a peach an ass in a gaming video dan said "we live in a post-baking universe" (i believe fans coined the term tho).

people have also called it the "glass closet era" which is a divisive name for a lot of people cuz "glass closet" can be seen as kind of a mean term and it implies like, stereotyping or speculating or the "we been knew" behavior dan had talked about in BIG. which i understand that feeling, but i don't think that's what was happening, because the way i see it was queer flagging. ways they could show a little bit who they really were without saying it just yet. they weren't Out out, but they were just like. openly talking about attraction to men and finding men hot and not calling it a Man Crush or anything. dan would bring up queerness more often in liveshows, which hes mentioned queer artists and stuff before but now it was also making jokes about like.. being in a gas leak man porn fantasy in his first livestream of 2017 LMAO. phil would make a lot more innuendos, which hes always done, but now he wasnt pretending like he didnt know what he was saying. dan started wearing a single hoop earring on his right ear. this is an old school form of queer flagging, in The Olden Days (im too lazy to look up when but like my 70-something year old history teacher knew about this) if a man had an earring on his left ear, he's straight, and if he had one on his right, he's gay. that one's pretty subtle if you don't know much about queer history and there were Great Debates over whether or not we should take it to mean he is gay, but personally i saw it as like. he was letting us know without needing to say the G word out loud just yet!

i think a really important part of this era was even outside of directly discussing queerness, they were both trying to become more authentic online and figuring out how to do that without compromising their own privacy. dan stopped straightening his hair and rebranded and opened up about his mental health. phil's authenticity journey seemed a bit slower and wasn't as overt or seemingly drastic as dan's was, but it was happening! he changed up his hair!!! which yes its kinda silly to talk abt dnp's hair but the emo fringe was Their Brand. phil in particular said that, the emo fringe was a comfort place but he was feeling like he was trapped in having it forever because it was Who He Was, so it was a huge deal for him! he opened up a little bit about his physical health, both of them were a bit more honest about all the stress and anxiety they were dealing with (the mukbang is a pretty good video where they talk about that and an interesting one to watch in retrospect) and their whole 2018 tour was themed around whether they should Give The People What They Want or do what they wanted to do.

god i talk too much ANYWAY then dan disappeared in 2019 and phil was manning the helm for a good five and a half months and then the Big Gay hit! the Hard Launch Era if you will :) and now i would say 2023-present is the Unhinged Era so i have no clue what the hell their next move is gonna be...

[blackautmedia]

Tears of the Kingdom and the use of Hands

It's frustrating how well Tears of the Kingdom incorporates repeat imagery of hands in some form. It has a lot of this great concept with it, but never really capitalizes on it or uses it in any thematically interesting way since the storytelling is so underwhelming.

From the start of the game, Link's separation from Zelda shows him reaching out and trying to grab her hand and failing to make contact, a scene that's mirrored at the end of the game when you have a moment to dive after Zelda and make the catch you failed to do at the start. The game makes sure to have a button prompt section specifically for touching her hand.

Link of course loses his arm and gets...magic emergency surgery (the disability lens of how Link is portrayed in Tears is an entirely separate conversation. Hoo wee...) and from the beginning of the game Rauru and Link are bonded together with Rauru's arm fused to Link's body. My issues with the Zonai as a race aside, this is still another part of the motif.

During multiple conversations between Zelda and Queen Sonia during the memories, they deliberately draw attention to having Sonia reach out and hold or touch Zelda's hands to emphasize the sincerity and love she's expressing. Sonia verbalizes the connection she feels not just as family but even notes how she can sense the similarities in Zelda's powers.

Honestly, for all the issues in how underwhelming Totk's storytelling is, I genuinely love these little moments with Sonia. I think they likely did it to get around possible limitations of creating nuanced facial expressions they couldn't capture easily, but I still found it very effective by helping the player relate to the sense of touch.

The completion of each temple is marked with a show of loyalty with the newly awakened sage and some variation of handshake or hand contact.

All of this makes it more of a wasted opportunity that they had a scene where Mineru is touching her late brother's hand for the first time after being in slumber for ages and they do nothing with it. You could have her tense up, maybe have her run both her hands across the top of Link's hand after getting to experience some form of touch from her brother for the first time.

There's also the fact that Mineru and Link both have the unique experience of altering their bodies and selves in service of being kept in slumber for a long period of time to carry out the responsibility of saving the world. Both of them carry the emotional weight of having to leave behind their friends, family, and the world they knew all in service of this grand plan with Zelda behind it all and yet they never capitalize on any of this. Pretty much nobody else can really relate to this situation and it'd make a great storytelling point to focus on her.

Back to the hands though, we all know the most iconic enemy in Tears of the Kingdom are the gloom spawn, which everyone calls the Gloom Hands.

The end of each shrine you're met with a Statue of Sonia and Rauru greeting you with hands held together as they stand as one.

Hands and the constant element of contact to convey significant moments would be effective in a story about community and the connection and strength that comes from cultivating it and organizing. There's also the obvious connection of unity.

TotK kind of have an aspect and theme of community care or try to lean in on that idea, but it's also messy and undermined when taken with *gestures at everything else*

I dunno. I think the repeat imagery of hands is a really thoughtful choice to convey climactic moments of these scenes. I just wish there was more actual meat to the story to give it some weight.

I've considered doing an addendum video to my Gerudo discussion talking about TotK's storytelling and maybe some of the things that come to mind with the portrayal of Ganon and the Zonai, cuz boy do they have some...implications.

[starrylayle]

Soman’s failed POC and Queer rep in the SGE saga — And why criticism is essential to the movie (franchise)

[repost]

Before I start though, I’d like to say that if you have any argument about forced representation, dni. I don’t give a shit that ur faves aren’t white anymore — and please stop fucking harassing Soman and the cast about this non-issue.

Now onto the racial criticism of Soman’s work, which I don’t see talked enough about.

Being a person of colour does not mean you are exempt from racial criticism. I’m sure this is known by now, but in the books, literally everyone is white. Like EVERYONE. And not only that, the beauty standards he portrays and tries to critique (but then fails miserably at unfortunately) are so Eurocentric it’s quite disheartening actually - pale skin, small noses, coloured eyes, etc. The themes are also quite Eurocentric as well — if you had told me that the books were written by a white author, I would believe you.

Now, I’ve always given him the benefit of the doubt here, considering he was writing a middle grade series as a marginalised author, which was a lot more difficult at the time, and because he does genuinely try to improve his POC rep in the later books (even if that does include retconning character’s previous descriptions lol). In that same vein, the cast is also noticeably more diverse, and I truly applaud Soman for that. However, he has not said anything in regards to the racism the cast have been getting, which considering his influence on the fandom, would have been much appreciated. (The only casting choice he actually spent some time defending was brunette Tedros 💀💀 — like mate, get your priorities together!). Also, since whiteness is quite intrinsic to the core themes of the story (I’ll make a separate post on that later), I worry that the movie will unintentionally be pushing it. And if that’s the case, people should be allowed to critique this (hypothetical) poor depiction of race, without it being considered racist. (As previously mentioned — this excludes those fucking weirdos who just hate on the cast coz their faves aren’t white anymore 🙄🙄)

Ok so, in regards to the queer-coding/queer-baiting:

Just like being a POC doesn’t mean u can’t have internalised racism, being queer doesn’t mean u can’t have internalised homophobia, especially to other members of the community. I don’t know why exactly Soman struggles with writing queer rep so much (I mean I can understand in 2013 — but now plenty of middle grade books include queer characters), but he barely has any canon gay rep.

Tristan/Yara, who is not even specified whether they are gay or trans, is one of the first characters to die, with absolutely no resolution to their arc whatsoever - and their queerness is never mentioned again. The next confirmed queer couple are two backgrounder guys who barely have any significance to the story. The couple after that are two evil white boys, who are only confirmed to be queer after they both die. They are are the only relevant gay characters at this point — yet ofc they’re dead, white and evil. This wouldn’t be a problem if there were other (good) queer characters, but since that is not the case, it just comes off as rather… icky.

Now notice how all these couples, as poorly written as they are, are all (white) gay men? There are hints that Hester and anadil might be in a relationship, but it’s never explicitly confirmed.

In addition, sophie and Agatha are explicitly queer coded — (I made a post about it on my acc for anyone’s interested) — they even kiss!! Of course people are going to be mad that they were baited into a relationship that ended up being incesteous! Especially, ESP, considering that Agatha is now a Black girl in this adaptation. We barely see any white canon wlw couples in media — Black sapphics are almost unheard of in the mainstream, especially as leads. first kill, one show that featured a Lesbian Black girl lead (a Dark-skinned one at that!)— got cancelled. And this happens all the time. Lesbians/sapphics, esp sapphics of colour, ESP Balck sapphics are barely given any time of day in our media in favour of centring gay white men in queer narratives, and thus they have every right to be upset at the queer baiting.

I’m not Black, but as a queer woman of colour, Agatha’s character has always been very special to me. I’ve always thought she should be a POC considering how different her and her mum are from the rest of her cookie-cutter village, and queer because she did not fit into conventional notions of femininity. It would be so awesome to see Agatha, a queer woman of colour, as the lead in a high-budget fantasy series. But alas, that is too many marginalised identities for the general audience.

Not only that, the twin reveal was just plain bad writing. It had absolutely no bearing at the story whatsoever and is never mentioned again. It was just done purely for shock value, and for that, I will absolutely critique Soman.

I know that this discourse is tired and worn out — and understandably so, it’s been years. However, now that this movie is approaching mainstream — At worst, this queer baiting can already add to the whole ‘lesbian relationships aren’t serious’ and other terrible stereotypes. At best, it deprives sapphics of much needed representation in mainstream fantasy films.

Remember, unlike with the books, we as fans have the power to influence the story. If the creators see how unpopular the twist is with the public, they can probably change it. We can make a difference! Btw, this doesn’t mean sophie and Agatha should be endgame — I’d like for them to be in a short term relationship and be confirmed as canonically queer — Tagatha can still be the end couple! (Not hophie tho, coz sophie is a lesbian and I despise Hort lol).

[gffa]

what do you think would have happened if the jedi had found out anakin was married pre-rots? would he be forced to leave/choose one over the other? are there any circumstances, even one where he was a completely different person, under which anakin would be able to marry padme and remain a member of the order, and if so, what would the consequences of that be (i.e. what would it look like)?

It's such an interesting question because we really know so little about the Jedi worldbuilding, the only two things I can really even think of that talk about it are : - Padme’s incredibly off-hand mention of how Anakin would be expelled if the Jedi found out about their baby.  What’s the context of this, where did she learn this?  Is Anakin the one who told her?  Because I have some Doubts about Anakin’s reliability on these things, considering that he also has shown an unwillingness to accept Jedi philosophy, according to Lucas.  Anakin, who thinks the Council hate him, may be thinking in extremes and wouldn’t even consider that they’d try working with him. - George Lucas gave a talk at Celebration one year and the subject of Jedi giving up marriage was talked about, where it ties into their willingness to be selfless, to be willing to give up everything (because life is impermanent and transient) when the time comes.  They love people, but they cannot hold onto them--and I think the way he’s framing it is that marriage should be selfish, if you’re going to make that commitment. But he doesn’t say anything about Jedi being expelled for it, just that it’s something they give up.  And given how we see Anakin actually breaking a ton of rules or getting into trouble in TCW and never, not once getting in any significant trouble for it, I think the Jedi would very much be willing to sit down and talk about this. For me, I think, yes, he would be asked to choose and, if he refused to, that’s a huge sign that he’s unwilling to follow the Jedi way of selflessness and a willingness to accept their duty to the galaxy, rather than personal concerns, that he could very well get someone killed because, in a crucial moment, he would choose his own feelings over his duty.  The only other time Anakin is threatened with expulsion is in exactly that kind of context--when he was willing to put his fear for Padme above his duty to help end the war before it even started, when he was willing to jump out of that plane on Geonosis rather than go face Dooku, it showed that he was tempted to put all those lives at risk for his own feelings.  Even Obi-Wan points out:  What would Padme do?  She would do her duty, Anakin grudgingly admits.  Because, in Star Wars, that duty is important.  Because, in Star Wars, that’s how the narrative of the story works.  That’s the themes we’re working with here. Is there any universe in which he could remain married and stay a Jedi?  I did once read a fic where Anakin was given the option to remain a Jedi, but he would never achieve the rank of Master, he would never be promoted beyond Knight, and iirc that he would never be given certain types of missions and I liked that fic a lot, it really worked for me.  I think he’d have to be willing to accept that and I’m not sure if he would, but without Palpatine’s influence, in a universe where Anakin was allowed to actually spiritually grow without Palpatine constantly urging him to give in to his worst impulses, he might not like it when he first agrees to it, but I could see him growing to find peace with it. But I can also see a world where, because Anakin is Anakin, he’ll never be able to find balance between these two marriages of his, one to Padme and one to the Jedi, that it only feeds his fears and his greed for the galaxy to bend to his will. But I like the idea that the Jedi love Anakin enough that they would be willing to find a compromise, one that keeps him from getting people hurt because he can’t achieve the balance necessary for the responsibility they’re given, but that he can remain a Jedi and maybe teach saber classes or engineering classes or something.  Jedi love teaching and while I don’t think Anakin has the patience for the toddlers of the creche, I can see him having a good time with a bunch of little gear-heads who love getting their faces stuck inside a droid just as much as he does.

[vermutandherring]

Horse Ranch was, without exaggeration, one of the most anticipated additions to The Sims 4. Perhaps, if the previous game had not set such a high bar, expectations for the fourth would have been lower. Although it cannot be less, given the game's initially tarnished reputation. Nevertheless, Horse Ranch significantly raises the bar of the game from the first seconds. The developers expose themselves, proving that the closed world is just an excuse for their own laziness and unwillingness to do anything more than small worlds of the same type. It turns out that even in a limited space there is room for majestic and graceful horses, the appearance of which players have been waiting for almost a dozen years. I often go to extremes, saying on the one hand that subsequent games in the series have the right to repeat themselves. If they don't bring to the industry or even the franchise itself, there's nothing wrong with that as long as it's a good game in its own right. But Sims 4 is not the case. I have repeatedly pointed out that this particular game is a leech, which, nevertheless, we continue to play. This waiting game has gone on too long. But, as they say, patience is rewarded.

The horses in the Horse Ranch expansion pack have undergone a significant improvement compared to The Sims 3. They look really graceful, their faces are no longer obtuse and silly, and in general they look relatively realistic in the game's cartoonish graphics. In the 3d game, you will need a bunch of mods to make the horses closer to their living counterparts and get aesthetic pleasure from their appearance. In the 4th, they are really nice to watch. Especially in a bunch with well-developed animations.

I last played Sims 3 not so long ago, so the contrast in the movements of both the animal and the rider feels good. They no longer slide across the ground like logs, and the reins are not glued tightly to their necks. Now you see how your character literally sets the direction and the horse, leaning and bending to turn or jump, reacts to the control by realistically stomping its hooves.

The style of the game is also focused on the western type of horse riding inherent in American culture. I will not say that this is the best idea, given that many players think of the classical school when they hear the words "horse riding". I myself would prefer to see more classic elements. But it is worth considering that The Sims is originally an American story about the American dream, created by Americans. I think, against the background of numerous additions that represent various cultures of the world, it is worth leaving something for yourself. However, that doesn't excuse the fact that the game has too… No. TOO little horse equipment per se. 3 saddles, 2 bridles and several accessories, including two saddle pads. For the money the add-on costs, it should have featured some more unusual equipment. In addition, the story of Native American tribes is woven into the expansion, so why not develop this theme a little deeper, and add more historical and cultural artifacts?

The first minutes of the game are really fun. Everything seems completely new, you want to try so many things at the same time. But this euphoria quickly passes when you understand that all improvement ends in the appearance and animations. The new discipline – barrel racing – is not impressive at all. All you can do is run in circles around the barrels. That's all. When I say circles, I mean it literally. No eights, complex tricks or at least movement in the other direction. With show jumping, or rather what was left of it, it is even worse. Instead of a chain of obstacles that could be built into an entire arena in The Sims 3, you can practice with just one small obstacle that is as high as your character's knees. At first it is interesting to watch, but then it is so depressing that training horses turns into a mortal routine.

By the way, now your horses have as many as 4 skills. One develops the character of your pet and expands the number of interactions with it, the other 3 - endurance, jumping and agility - have almost no effect on anything. Gold medals at the first levels of competition difficulty are very easy, even if the horse's skills are minimal. And yes, all competitions are our 'favorite' and well-known rabbit holes, where you cannot even conditionally observe the development of the event. What is even more annoying is the fact that now there is practically no point in training. Unlike Sims 3, in the fourth game foals do not inherit skills from their parents, only character traits. If earlier you could breed a foal with almost 100% skills, train it quickly, win a few competitions and sell it for good money, now you have to suffer for a very long time with one horse to get at least something for it. For these reasons, I see no need to keep a mare and a stallion to develop a pedigree. It's too long, too unrewarding and terribly boring. Considering the lags, it is also dangerous for nerves.

What is undoubtedly pleasing against the background of all these endless minuses is the mobility of horses. They no longer stomp endlessly in place when you try to interact with them, they don't need a lot of space to perform actions, and most importantly, no more ugly stalls that take up too much space. Now you have a 3x3 bedding where your horse can sleep, but which you can do without. Fortunately, instead of large, clumsy barns, you can now build luxurious stables. Another plus is that several horses can use the feeder and waterer at the same time.

In addition, all lots have small paddocks nearby. And all areas of the town have barrels and obstacles, so you don't have to place them on your lot. It is enough to build a house and a stable when the training area is nearby. Thus, on the largest lots, you can arrange whole farms and ranches with a bunch of animals.

Speaking of animals, I can't say much about goats and sheep. Yes, they are cute. But like the rest of the livestock, they have a more decorative function, if you, like me, don't really like to dig around with all this craftable stuff. They are not always friendly, they can butt and do not want your attention. Given that we already have rabbits that can help you in the garden, I think goats and sheep could come up with more interesting roles. If you have too many decorative animals, then taking care of them is a nightmare. Fortunately, the ranch hand you can hire is great at their job. In addition to taking care of the animals, they tend the garden, can do things and take care of the animals from Cottage Living. However, sometimes there are weird lags where they idle instead of leaving the lot when the job is done, or quits without notification and you have to hire them again.

Overall I like the new expansion pack. It adds long-awaited new experiences to the routine of Sims' lives. But as with all add-ons for The Sims 4, Horse Ranch is fun right up until you've tried all the features of the set. A week later, I no longer feel a burning desire to return to my ranch, because I know that nothing new or interesting awaits me. Rather the opposite: endless bugs, simulation problems and sheep that hate me. Undoubtedly, if you are crazy about horses and Horse Ranch was a long-awaited addition for you, it is worth your attention. After all, where EA has screwed up, there will always be talented creators and their mods. If horses sound empty to you, I don't think Horse Ranch will be able to dilute your routine for long. In any case, this add-on is not worth its full price, and despite the good idea that players have been waiting for, it is another heartless DLC that openly encroaches on our wallets like never before.

I think at this point I like the scale of the game more, which the new expansion pack adds to the game, which makes its world feel less closed. My sims can sit in the pond while the horses walk in the pasture and the little goats sleep under their feet.

[commsroom]

i think there's something to be said about what exactly it means to be "non-human" in a story that is as much about humanity as wolf 359 is, where even the dear listeners are defined less by their own perspective and more by what they fail to understand and therefore reflect about the human perspective - to the point that they don't even have their own voices or faces or identities that aren't either given to them or taken from humans. they speak to humanity as a mirror.

even pryce and cutter are "very much humans" - pryce defined by her resentment of and desire to transcend its limitations, and cutter by his aspirations to redefine and create a "better" type of human - and find the idea that they might not be human laughable. it's interesting that they have distinctly transhumanist aspirations when their goal is the narrative opposite of common science fiction fears: that we will expand the definition of humanity so much that we'll lose whatever it is that makes us human. pryce and cutter's transhumanism narrows the definition of humanity to the worthy and the useful, as defined by them; "there will still be a humanity; it'll just be our humanity."

in direct opposition to that, i think it's meaningful that the show instead expands the definition of humanity in ways that include lovelace and hera, who in another show with different themes might be considered (in the descriptive, non-moralistic sense) non-human. i will always make a point of saying that personhood and humanity are two often-related but meaningfully distinct concepts, especially when talking about sci-fi and fantasy. i am talking about humanity.

the question of how hera identifies, and what social pressures influence that, is a complicated one. i've talked about it before and i will talk about again. what's important for the purposes of this post is that i think the show considers her fundamentally human. think about her role in shut up and listen - consider jacobi's lion example and the concept of different paradigms - that even things that are close to humans, comparatively speaking, understand the world in different ways. whatever differences hera may have from the others, it's primarily in experience, not fundamental understanding. she shares their emotions, their concerns, their values, their thought patterns. she has an appreciation for music, which the show considers a hallmark of humanity. she fits within the framework of humanity as the show defines and is, in her own words, left feeling "uneasy" about how difficult it might be to communicate with beings who don't. and it's significant that this takes place in shut up and listen, of all episodes, specifically because the way she is clearly and unambiguously included in the show's understanding of what it means to be human highlights the ways she and lovelace are othered by eiffel's careless comments that suggest otherwise.

(i don't want to get too into these details for this particular post, but it's worth noting that hera will refer to 'humans' as a category, often when she is upset and feeling isolated, but has never said that she 'isn't human' - she has never been upset that people are treating her 'too' human. i've seen it said about the line "you need to get it through your heads that what goes for you doesn't always go for me", but that's a frustration related to ability and safety, not identity. far more often, she will refer to herself in 'human' terms - referring idiomatically to experiences or body parts etc. that she doesn't literally have - and is upset primarily with comments referring to her status as an AI. it does not diminish how being an AI influences her perspective and experience, but again, so much of that is in terms of ability that it feels almost inseparable from a discussion about disability.)

lovelace's humanity and hera's humanity are so interlinked and directly paralleled in the text that i think it's impossible to really argue one of them is "not" human without making implications about the other. in desperate measures, lovelace tells kepler he's "not human" and he responds "you're hilarious. on a multitude of levels." later, defending lovelace against kepler's repeated dehumanization, hera very pointedly uses the phrase "that woman." in out of the loop, hera says she's never met anyone who "worked so hard at being inhuman" as jacobi, who says "what do you know about being human?" hera very emphatically responds, "i know plenty." later, defending hera against jacobi's repeated dehumanization, minkowski pointedly uses the phrase "that woman." with the care taken towards language and the way scenes and turns of phrase will parallel each other, that's not a coincidence. it might seem strange to have the "non-human" characters be the ones to express criticisms based on perceived "humanity" (something hera will do in other contexts as well - "we don't have funerals for animals" etc.) but in the broader context of the show, i think it's the point.

so, whether hera would ever call herself human, or be comfortable with that, is a complicated question for another time and depends on a lot of other factors. but wolf 359 is a show about humanity, it includes her within its definition of what it means to be human, and i wouldn't be comfortable definitively saying she's not human because of that. it can't be a neutral statement within the particular context of this show.

[asherlockstudy]

Wonderhole E2, E3 & E4

I am going to write about these three in the same post because there is significantly less to write about episodes 3 & 4 than about the first and the second episodes and even last year's monthly videos. I am hoping there will be more to discuss in the upcoming Red vs Blue episode. I wonder whether they considered the Flight Simulation and the Time Capsule so "heavy" that they decided to ease it a bit before the finale. I guess we will find out soon.

We Time Traveled to the Year 2224

Certainly, the Rhinkiest of these three episodes and the one which certainly belongs to the One Story saga.

Rhett and Link decide to pursue extended longevity and eternal life. Rhett explains how they just have to survive in a good condition for 20-30 years more and then they will be able to achieve it. At face value this is not exactly Rhett's crap by the way. I was reading a book about the progress in geriatric medicine and this was stated there; whoever makes it to twenty years from now will hopefully have a lot of new age medicine available to delay growing old and the health issues associated with it.

This episode has some of the most lewd jokes Rhett and Link have ever made. However, they are often given so offhandedly that I did not see much seriousness, any significant symbolism in them. For example, yes, they suck anal toys (Link sucks Rhett's heavily used one) but this was just meant to be an adult joke, I'm not gonna derive any meaning for their relationship through this. Another example is Rhett's titanium - tight ass or the "I don't think I can last much longer with you inside me".

"From journeys long and miles worn, within these walls you are reborn. When weary soul sole is stripped away, whether from work or whether play, come to me with offerings and I will show you fresh new strings." Now, that's more interesting. Rhett points out that there is a double meaning in this. This totally reminds me of the concept of the Bahau Moon riddle, although there the allegory was a little different. Here it is nowhere as serious but it remains 100% sexually coded.

There are two mentions of their wives, one is that they are waiting for their wives "to be thawed", the other is that they both look distressed and uncomfortable when the letter from their past selves assumes their families are doing all right. My speculation is that their wives' bodies were cryopreserved until a revival became scientifically possible. So they are waiting for them to be thawed but it has not happened yet. What does this tell us though? It tells us that whatever knowledge or decision they had to make to achieve eternal life, they shared it with each other and not with their family members. Somehow, there was a choice made or there was a consequence that led to Rhett and Link living forever together but the revival of the wives, maybe even the children, was desirable yet secondary, optional. That's... that's something, for sure.

Did you guys notice the name of the shop next to the shoe repair shop? Their commitment is crazy:

We actually do get some pretty interesting themes here. Rhett and Link visit a shoe soul sole repair shop and the owner promises to keep their clue for the time capsule hidden inside a treasure box, protected very well. This just seems to hint at somebody keeping a secret very well and Rhett and Link completely trusting them to keep doing so. Is the time capsule an allegory for... truth? The official premise (or whatever it is) seems to further support this:

Keep it buried... as long as possible.

The next clues lead them to the desert, the same desert where they dug the medium (and the huge) sized holes. They even wear similar outfits; some of the garments are the same and some are changed. This was clear homage to the Hole Digging video. Besides, Rhett and Link have said there is connection between all these videos (although they probably have made it too hard to discern this for their own good).

There they pick up a fight, disagreeing about the direction they should follow. Rhett prefers the one way, the main way, the standard way pointed by the play button, whereas Link argues they should try "all the ways". The argument escalates and Link screams how Rhett's longevity idea has stuck them into an eternal hellscape (the 2224 universe seems to be particularly unfree and restrictive). Link also adds he 'd rather be with Rhett at their pod watching a sequel of Fast & the Furious than in this adventure, hunt and all, which must be 2224's equivalent for domesticity. Link protests that Rhett is not always right but he simply never changes and in his fury he missteps and falls from a cliff to his death.

During Link's last moments, Rhett desperately considers carrying Link to the nearest cloning facility and put his chip to another Link, a loud nod to their Sketchtober 2015 BFFs video. With the very subtle prompt "Put me in you" Link implores Rhett to put his chip in him, in an attempt to rescue his consciousness. Rhett complies, so he tries to save Link. We return to the One Story tropes (not that we ever left them with this one) where Rhett needs to save Link from something and like we will also see here the only outcome is that Rhett gets destroyed as well. Rhett finds the treasure box only to see there was a whole lot of nothing inside it. In a deteriorating condition he returns to the former grounds of Mythical where the semi-android hacker working there gives him two options: a) they yank Link's consciousness chip out and he's gone forever but Rhett lives on or b) they yank out both chips which have merged and become one and save them in a deadlock in a hard drive.

A deadlock is a situation in which two computer programs sharing the same resource are effectively preventing each other from accessing the resource, resulting in both programs ceasing to function.

Rhett opts for the latter. He sacrifices his life and follows Link. Meanwhile, the hacker indeed saves their consciousnesses - which have become one - in this deadlock, "alone" in a hard drive and hides the hard drive in the previously empty box. They place the box in a dusty shelf and there is this implication that nobody will know or care about this ever again. Also, the fact that it is a deadock is important as well: we have two consciousnesses operating like computer programs which are apparently assessing data differently and this leads them to a deadlock that neutralises them both. So, to bring this to reality, the reason there is so much delay or nothing happens at all is because they have completely different mindsets about what's to be done and how it should be approached. This is actually something we have discussed several times before, how they seem to be on a totally different page.

Beyond the interpretations that can be made for this, we see again a conclusion that we have seen before in several scripted videos. In Hazel, they end up trapped in the woods of the middle room for eternity, in the Brown Diamond they remain trapped to the Bahau Moon to their deaths, in the Unhaunted House they are murdered inside this house without any witness. We have this theme of their souls, their consciousnesses, sometimes even their physical bodies being trapped together, as one, forever without anyone knowing.

So, if we attempt to connect all these pieces together, first of all we get the "wherever you go, I go", the timelessness, the forever. This is a promise to each other, they will be together forever. Then we also have the buried time capsule, which Rhett wants to keep buried for as long as possible, which eventually leads to a long, torturous life that frustrates Link deeply. Link tries to distance himself from this situation but he falls to his death (because it's impossible for him to just let go). Rhett has the choice to go on on his own but instead he opts to try and save Link or die along in his efforts, which is what happens. Ultimately what remains of them is their love, their joined souls, consciousnesses and how they poured their truth in their creation and although it endures forever, it is for nobody to see.

Again, this is the classic story arc we see in most of their scripted videos. Whether it is because he loses control (Digging a Medium sized Hole), memory and freedom (Hazel, TLCOBC), his very life (UnHaunted House, Time Capsule), Link needs to be saved by Rhett but Rhett falls in the trap even more deeply and condemns them together.

Regarding the emptiness of the box, an Anon I just received has a great interpretation that finds me very agreeable, I am linking their mail here. What I will write here is basically the same or very close to what they describe, maybe with a slightly darker twist. Throughout the video, we have the concept of time which seems to be eternal but is not (at some point Rhett says about eternity that it feels like "you have too much time yet not enough") and even though current Rhett and Link seem to be amused by the idea of a scavenger hunt for an empty box, the surviving future Rhett found it disappointing. We can only imagine how mad it would make Link, had he not died already, because he was already frustrated and angry for the hunt alone, so he would probably be furious if he saw what the "reward" was. Moreover, Link puts the blame on Rhett for all of this and it's true that Rhett came up with this idea.

It's like an allegory for Rhett who has this drive and ambition for their career, their creativity, a life of adventure in this context and with this obsession he overlooks and delays other things that in truth may be more meaningful. Years will pass and Rhett will be looking for his masterpiece, their peak creation, recognition and eventually they will go, retire, withdraw, die and nothing will remain behind except for their love, the connection of their souls, which was what was truly timeless about them yet it was the one thing that was kept buried in a box in the dust and never brought to light properly. In the end, nobody appreciated it for what it truly was, neither an observer nor they, for they wasted their time delaying it and trying to find meaning elsewhere. By "they", let's be real, I mostly mean Rhett.

To my understanding this is self-reflection, maybe also a critique of Rhett to himself, a warning of what could be coming, something that Link seems to have notified him about multiple times (the e-mail, everybody?) but maybe it's poor timing to say this now, I sense there is a lot of distance to be run still from theory and creativity to actual action. This video alludes to a reality in which the action was not taken.

We Went to Extremes to Drink a Cloud

Episode 3 is not as heavy with meaning and symbolism. It is surely a "retelling" of their childhood dreams and their commitment to bring them to fruition. Young Rhett and Link promised to do something great together when they grew up and drinking a cloud is likely the symbolism of this struggle. They try a lot, in many different ways, but it's never exactly what they are looking for. In the end they are very happy they managed to do it, although the method they employed seemed very underwhelming and fake to me, which might be the point, I don't know. Of course this is a huge part of their relationship; achieving something great together. It's just that I did not find anything to mention beyond this, except of course for the very heavy deepthroating insinuations when they were drinking the fog.

Now to the important stuff, will the Fog Chasers song be released? SOON PLEASE???

We Chopped Down a Tree with a Peanut Butter Axe

To be honest with you I don't want to write about this episode because I don't want to watch it again. Not because it made me emotional but because watching the squirrel family again is equivalent to torture for me. I am sorry but I actually really disliked this episode. Fortunately, there is still not much to say here either. Or maybe I did not notice because I was impatient to be done with it....

The episode is largely a tribute to Ben and it offers this exposition they had also done in a very heartfelt Ear Biscuit episode. In Ben's memory they chose to chop down a tree in their state with a peanut butter axe made by their university; peanut butter because Ben died from testicular cancer and tree chopping because Ben thought it was fun.

The only thing I wonder is whether there is any meaning with what happens with the squirrel family and whether it is a side story not associated to Ben's life. I wonder this because Rhett and Link seem to have thought about it thoroughly; the tree would go down anyway, they will plant 1000 trees in its place, so it's all good. Even though they have thought this through, it turns out there will be victims due to their decision. A flying squirrel family, with a non-winged squirrel stepfather whose home is obviously going to be destroyed. Rhett and Link cause the dissolution of this family and this is what I find interesting. The kids eventually try to see the positive side: they are close to adulthood anyway, so they choose to leave home behind and start their own lives. The stepdad, the non-winged squirrel, literally opts to stay at home and die. The mother squirrel tries to change his mind but it's not like she's losing her mind about it to be honest and soon she goes too and leaves him behind. Who the stepfather squirrel stands for - if he stands for anyone in the first place - I cannot say. But I did find interesting this side theme of Rhett and Link's action basically leading to a family falling apart and everyone taking a separate path in life (or death).

One Story Masterlist here

[crystallizedday]

So I’ve been hyperfixating on both Demongo & Fusionfall as of late, & I wanted to put that energy to good use somehow.

But since I currently do not have the energy to draw anything as of late, I decided to do something

A little different.

Since Demongo is only ever canonically shown as an enemy/obstacle in Samurai Jack, Fusionfall had to make a few creative decisions to better flesh out his character so he could interact with players in an organic way.

This means that Fusionfall added QUITE a lot to his character, something that I have been keeping track of for quite some time now. While it is very unlikely that any additions to Demongo’s character line up with Genndy’s vision for the character…

I mean

Genndy doesn’t do shit with the character anyway. Y’all remember what happened in season 5?

Heartbreaking shit for any Demongo fans out there…

SO

To show some appreciation for my boy

& also to talk about what exactly Fusionfall added to his character

I want to cover every single significant detail regarding Demongo’s character.

I will split this up into 3 sections: his NPC voice lines, his Nano voice lines, & his text box dialogue.

Let’s start with his

NPC VOICE LINES

Because not only are the lines coming from the original Demongo, but they’re voiced by his og voice actor as well, so if any of these sections were to be considered the most “canon” depiction of him, it’s this one.

I have actually found & recorded all 15 different voice lines from him & packaged em all into a zip file… but I’m stupid & I don’t know how to insert that shit into Tumblr, or if that’s even a good idea considering zip files tend to be sus as fuck.

So uh

For now

Y’all just gotta take my word.

After thoroughly reviewing all the voice lines, there is ONE key addition to his character here that stands out right off the back.

This version of Demongo is the SASSIEST he’s ever been.

He literally will either greet you by sarcastically asking if you’re looking for a mission to do like an absolute smartass, or he’ll just talk down to you & refer to you as “another human child”.

Hell, referring to you as a child is something he commonly does in these lines.

Most of the time, he will speak to you in a way that emphasizes his own importance, especially when he talks to you via the nanocomm.

He definitely displays that classic huge ego his original character had, but he sometimes has a bit of a cheeky tone about it, like the sorta vibes you’d get from a rich & spoiled kid who thinks they’re the greatest thing to be put on this planet.

One of my favorite examples of this is when you accept a mission from him, & he’ll sometimes tell you “Do you think YOU can save the world?”

However, as much as he downplays your abilities, he also will sometimes find interest in your endeavors & even be impressed when you complete a mission.

One of his victory lines also has him actually openly celebrating your accomplishment, which is a cute detail that’ll come back later when we talk about his Nano lines.

While this isn’t exactly something that says a lot about his personality, I also wanted to point out how one of his victory lines has him remarking “Your soul BURNS with a warriors fire!” This remark actually attempts to connect Demongo’s fire theme in his design to his whole soul-collecting shtick, suggesting that to HIM, stronger & more determined souls will have a fiery aura to them… which is unsurprising considering that ONE Japanese legend about blue fire & souls &- I’m getting ahead of myself WKWWKSMSODMOM

No matter what Demongo says to the player, he always speaks in a manner where his tone of voice drastically shifts from word to word.

You know that whole bit where the fandom likes to call this guy a theater kid?

Well

With how he says shit in such a dramatic, expressive, & ever-changing tone…

He kinda IS.

He SOUNDS like someone up on a stage, putting their heart into EVERY SINGLE line they say.

It’s honestly kinda adorable.

One last thing I found significant about his lines his how he fully admits that he often schemes in his downtime. However, while this may be interpreted as him scheming against the good guys, I don’t think this is the case, especially since we’ve never had a mission from him that either relates to Aku or gives him something powerful that HE could use against the heroes. I will talk more about this once we get to the text box section.

But before we do that, we need to move onto the

NANO VOICE LINES

There are… a LOT of voice lines for his nano counterpart.

Thankfully, all of these lines are publicly available here!

So y’all can have a listen to them whenever you please!

I am unsure just HOW much of the original Demongo carries over in his Nano counterpart’s personality, so what I’ve done is cross-reference Nano Demongo’s lines with Nano Aku’s lines. After all, Aku is a rather interesting character since he’s both a terrifying threat while also being a lil bit of a fucking dork in the original show, & while HE isn’t present in Fusionfall, his nano IS.

So anything goofy Nano Demongo displays that Nano Aku doesn’t suggests that these lil quirks ARE things that originate from the original Demongo (the Fusionfall version, of course).

Imma list each of my individual findings numerically so they’re a bit more organized & easier to read.

Ahem…

1) Demongo enjoys dancing

Considering even Aku enjoys boogying a bit (at least in season 5), it isn't all that surprising that this trait carries over to Demongo.

However, comparing Nano Demongo's lines with Nano Aku's, Aku acts more so like he is forcing YOU to dance, & sounds like he does not enjoy having to dance himself.

This makes sense considering the very specific circumstances season 5 Aku was in, so I’m certain Aku wouldn’t typically be in the mood for that sort of nonsense.

On the other hand, Nano Demongo LOVES to dance. He ADORES it, & even though one of his lines is rather demanding, it isn't in a "you will dance or I will disintegrate you" kind of way like how Nano Aku’s lines would be like. Nano Demongo wants you to dance WITH him, not FOR him.

His lil “Go go DemONGO!!” as one of his lines is so fucking cute that it actually makes me a lil mad KWMWKWMWKDMEODMON

HE IS SO PROUD OF HIS DANCE MOVES, I CAN’T

FUCK

… ahem

Uh

Him loving to dance actually lines up pretty well with the theater kid energy he already has, so this trait actually fits for him.

I think he’d be pretty damn good at ballet KAMWKWMWKSMSODMDOM

2) Demongo can experience love

Look

I know this sounds fanfictiony

But

Like

When one of his lines is basically just “Demons need love too!” & like ACTUALLY DOING THE FUCKIN DREAMY SIGH THING in another line

Like

Come on

How are you gonna disprove that?

& this isn’t something exclusive to the nano counterparts.

Nano Aku will just say shit like "love is for losers" & pushes the love narrative onto someone else, claiming THEY are infatuated with HIM.

So while Aku doesn’t give two shits about the subject (aromantic icon /j /j /j), Demongo's out here acting absolutely SMITTEN, one of his lines being him promising not to eat a person's soul purely out of infatuation.

Like

Damn

Like Aku's canonically tried impressing literal children before so they adore & look up to him before, but Demongo really do be shaping up to be the bigger dork of the two KWMWKWMWOSMWO

Like

It’s probably HARD to imagine even Fusionfall Demongo having the capacity to love, but since even Nano Aku is disinterested in that sort of shit, it’s hard to just excuse it as a nano-exclusive thing.

Plus

I think it’s cute. KAKWWKISDMOSXKOMK

Makes me wonder if FF Demongo has exes, cause that would be kinda funny to explore KAWNWODMWOMDOWDM

3) Demongo cries. Hard

Not only does Nano Demongo have TWO SEPARATE lines where he's just bawling his fuckin eyes out, like straight up whimpering & wailing, but Aku's lines in comparison are just "this is so sad" with the most fake fuckin crying I have ever heard KWNWKWMWKSNWOXKONWC

& when I say “fake crying”

I mean like

“Oh booo hoooo, lemme play a sad song for you on the world’s smallest violin…” kind of fake crying. There’s like NO effort behind it KWMWKWMWODKEON

Like

Aku out here never expresses sadness to such a dramatic degree (& only ever gets like… emotionally depressed in season 5 where he just doesn’t feel like doing anything)

Meanwhile Demongo is bawling like SpongeBob during the dark ages of the show KWMWKWMWOSMSODMON

Im almost convinced FF Demongo has the ability to cry on command, just so other people will pity him so much that they’ll do shit for him.

It’s a good substitute for threatening them when uh

He can’t exactly live up to his threats

Since his powers got yoinked…

So what better way to get other people to do what you say than to make them feel like a piece of shit for NOT helping you?? OWMWKWMWODMWODM

4) Demongo can get overwhelmingly terrified

Like

Yeah

Duh

He’s helpless without his powers

So it makes sense that without them, he’d feel like anything could kill him at any minute.

But he straight up sounds like a cornered mouse in one of his lines. It sounds like he’s balled up in a corner, panicked for his well-being.

It’s actually kinda sad…

For all his talk of being the best there is, I can imagine that if he finds himself powerless, he just goes into panic-mode if he feels like he’s in danger.

& the fact that this is one of the more canon-accurate additions to his character breaks me wee lil heart…

… oh also

Nano Aku’s scared lines are like

Uh

Mm

Let’s just say they DON’T sound like he’s scared…

So that again isn’t a nano-exclusive part of Nano Demongo’s personality.

But this isn’t really a big claim, so :p KWMWKSMWODKS

5) Demongo laughs like a god damn dork when he genuinely finds something funny

Like we know he's got that gremlin laugh in the show & it's wacky as fuck, but according to his audio files, when bro is fuckin AMUSED, he displays some of the DORKIEST laughs l've ever heard out of a cartoon demon.

I’m not being biased.

Listen to the files yourself.

He like

Does the nerdiest lil “HEH!!” in one of them. It’s so fuckin GOOFY WOEMDODMDOSKDODK

Meanwhile, Nano Aku sounds like what you'd expect Aku to sound like when laughing.

Just evil laughs all around.

Not Demongo though, no no NO.

Bro laughs like how me or my own buds laugh.

Like a fucking nerd.

This is another cute addition to his character.

I dunno. I just like the idea of Demongo being such a sassy dork, but often puts up a tough & menacing front so people will take him seriously.

It’s that kind of characterization that inspired me to make the Duo of Doom AU, actually.

Speaking of the funni fella being a fuckin dork

6) Demongo is adorably ECSTATIC when victorious

Like

Nano Aku's out here with his classic bellowing evil laugh & shit

It’s what you’d expect from Aku

& then there's Demongo

Who sounds like a god damn excited cheerleader when you & him win a fight (it’s in the “Battle Outcome” folder, if you’re following along with the audio files).

& then you have bro's cute lil "let us REJOICE!!"

Like that’s the kind of shit you’d hear an optimistic or comic relief character say at the end of an episode or animated movie where they’re like “Let’s PARTY!!” or something.

You don’t get that shit from Nano Aku, & especially his og counterpart.

I like to think that if FF Demongo did end up pulling off something cool or successfully accomplished something, he’d get so fuckin excited over it, maybe even doing a short celebratory dance cause he just feels like he NEEDS to with how excited he is KWMWKWMKWMWOSKOM

& then promptly panic when he realizes he’s not the only one in the area & fears that someone just saw him dancing like a fuckin dork OWMWKWMWOEKEODMSOXKSOCKOM

There’s so much you can do with his character in FusionFall that it pisses me off how no one in the FF fandom’s taken advantage of this shit…

Y’all keep writing him as this super serious character, & I’m just sitting here like

Naw, man

You don’t know him like I do /j /j /j KQMQKWMWKWMWKWMWOEMEOEM

Okay.

Now we have ONE more section to cover before y’all can understand this character just as much as I do.

We now need to look at his

TEXT BOX DIALOGUE

You can find all his dialogue on various wiki pages covering the missions he gives & missions that he just so happens to be a part of for one reason or another.

I recommend using the breezewiki Fusionfall pages since they actually showcase Demongo’s lil “emails” he gives you as you progress through the missions he gives you.

However, if that website doesn’t work for you for whatever reason (like how it is on my end), the fandom wiki will do just fine.

I’ll also provide SOME screenshots of my findings so I actually have some photo evidence for what I’m about to claim.

Before we do that, however…

Yes

Demongo DOES often speak in third person in the written dialogue.

I dunno why, since he doesn’t talk that way in his debut episode…

So I just like to ignore that trait of his

Or just say that he started talking like that cause Aku tends to refer to himself in the third person sometimes, so maybe he got it from the big guy himself…

Speaking of Aku

Hot take:

I don’t think Demongo’s working for Aku.

I know this doesn’t say much about FF Demongo’s personality, but it’s just something that I want to address cause I feel like I’m one of the few people that believe bro isn’t snitching on everyone to Aku.

There is a mission where you need to retrieve something for Demongo before a timer runs out. If it does, Demongo says this to you.

Notice how Demongo refers to Aku here.

Isn’t it a little odd that he refers to Aku as his “lord” & not his “master”?

It COULD be an oversight

OR

It could be that he currently sees Aku as his lord, much like a civilian to a king, rather than his master, someone he directly works under.

Additionally

Isn’t it also odd that the only time he mentions Aku to you directly is when you fail him?

Sounds like SOMEBODY remembers that time he first failed Aku & got fucking crushed…

But considering Demongo gives you a second chance to fetch the thingie for him…

Mmm

Seems kinda generous of him, don’t you think?

I like to see this as Demongo, having experienced that position before, not wanting to do the same thing to you (especially since… well, he can’t do shit to you while he’s weak like this).

He doesn’t wanna be the Aku in THAT situation…

& the only other time he mentions Aku is this line here, when you ask him about his allegiance on behalf of Jack.

Yes. It IS shady that he doesn’t outright say that he’s working for Aku.

But like

If Aku is watching

Then why the fuck would he say that he ISN’T working for him?

He doesn’t wanna be offed for potential treason after all.

& if he was REALLY working for Aku, then he wouldn’t be in the position he’s in right now.

He’s powerless. He has to rely on others at the campsite to ensure his safety.

If he was working for Aku, then bro would be FINE. He wouldn’t be HERE, at the campsite.

If Aku is watching, then he doesn’t need a spy to keep an eye on Jack & the others for him.

THAT’s why I believe Demongo isn’t just fooling everyone to get info for Aku.

Hell, a friend of mine suggests that Demongo may not even KNOW if Aku still wants the fiery lil guy working for him, like he just pissed off his boss but never got that notice that he got fired. Maybe Demongo genuinely doesn’t even know.

Also, all of his missions are either about the master weapon or about himself & ensuring his reputation isn’t tarnished by his weakened state.

He doesn’t ask for anything suspicious.

Hell, when you DO get all the master weapons, he doesn’t get all giddy about having such powerful items at his disposal. No.

Because he too expects the player to use them to help win the fight against Fuse. He KNOWS their chances of winning are greatly enhanced by having the weapons in more capable & experienced hands…

& then Jack asks you to destroy them, but that’s a whole other story KWNWKWMWOSMWO

Demongo just never acts like he’s doing anything FOR Aku, & is just focusing on himself, probably because that’s the only thing he CAN focus on without his old master being there as a safety net.

Overall. I find this interpretation to be a FASCINATING way to better humanize his character a bit…

Speaking of humanizing him

The entire “Infernal Racket” set of missions talk about how hard it is for Demongo to concentrate when a bunch of floating rock head guys across the campsite keep smashing into each other like football players, & he remarks how he’s losing sleep over the noise.

Meaning he actually sleeps.

& considering he resides at a campsite

I can only imagine that one of those tents is his.

I just find that fact cute KWMWKWMWODMW

This also makes me think that Demongo has trouble concentrating if the environment isn’t quiet enough.

As someone with ADHD…

I can relate KWNWKWMWODMWODMOEFK

It is ALSO this line of missions that reveals something adorable about him

He has a favorite color.

& he doesn’t DEMAND blue ear muffs either.

He says it like he just asked you to get him a slushie, & he’s just like “I mean, I would LIKE a blue raspberry, but if they’re out, it’s fine. It’s whatever. I mean, I’s be a lil bummed out about it, but it’s no big deal, I guess.”

… which is also something I can relate to KWNWKWMWOWMWODKK

It’s like

One of the few times he acts so casual with you as the player.

It makes me think that he honestly WOULD act a lil more casually if he were to drop the whole “I’m super powerful” front & actually

Ya know

BE emotionally vulnerable for once.

& I think that’s a really sweet idea…

… Ah!!

I almost forgot!

Remember that “scheming” line from his NPC’s dialogue?

THIS is what I believe he is referring to when he says that.

He seems to actually STUDY the master weapons you collect.

Even Jack admits that he had immense knowledge regarding this kind of magical weaponry, which appears to be quite useful.

Additionally, Demongo is also the one to initiate one of the final & direct attacks in Fuse’s territory, having planned to use Eduardo’s imaginary energy against Fuse’s forces.

I’m almost certain HE planned out this attack.

Him being a good strategizer (if that’s even a legit word) honestly fits with his whole “making souls fight for him” shtick.

Sure, he probably isn’t a genius (ESPECIALLY in comparison to Dexter or Mojo), but he KNOWS how to plan attacks, & thus probably spends a lot of his time doing THAT as well.

That’s probably what he means by “scheming”.

It’s honestly a shock that he doesn’t boast about this clear skill of his like he does with his “powers”.

JACK is the one to point out how knowledgeable he is about magic & strategy.

To me, it kinda feels like Demongo takes his knowledge on these subjects GENUINELY seriously. Maybe it’s cause these are things that take him time to flesh out & perfect & shit, & he’s just so focused on learning & executing what he can that he doesn’t even think of it being necessary to brag about this shit.

I dunno. I just found that lil detail interesting KWMWKSMWOSSMOD

… speaking of having to interpret shit

This shit

Confused me

For the longest time

Until I eventually realized something:

They help him keep up a semi-menacing appearance.

Like

I can imagine he uses them as discount fog machines, helping to make the atmosphere around him more mysterious & intimidating…

Which is SO fuckin dorky & also plays into his whole “theater kid” personality…

… which can ALSO be seen HERE.

Like

Guys

Guys

For the love of god

All we need now is confirmation that bro sings in his free time KWWMOWMWOSMSEODMEKN

Actually

Since we’re on the topic of Demongo’s goofy attributes

There is ONE more thing I wanted to share before I wrap up this post.

The world is fucking ENDING in this universe

& Demongo is FAR TOO PETTY & butt-hurt to even talk to Jack directly.

It is HILARIOUS KAMWKWSMWOSM

He’s such a brat sometimes, but that’s what makes him such a fun character in my eyes KWMWOWMWOSM

AAAAAANYWAY

That’s all I have for now.

If there’s anything I showcased here that you have a different interpretation for, POP OFF!!

I LOVE hearing people’s different takes on this kind of stuff!!

I love seeing how creative people can get OAMWKWMWKWMWOWMWOEOM

Uhhh anyway

I hope this post has opened some of your eyes about how much potential Demongo has as a character, inside & even outside of Fusionfall.

…

& ALSO makes you wish that Genndy treated him with just as much love & respect as the Fusionfall team did KWMWKWMWKDMEOFM

[the-nosy-neighbor]

Tic-Tac-Toe (Part 3)

Theories

See the other two posts about Tic-Tac-Toe on this blog, detailing the game's history and use on the Welcome Home website. This may go to a Part 4, depending on how clunky this is.

OK, this is a weird idea, but as with other iterations of tic tac toe, this reminds me of the neighborhood.  Each time we are running into 9 spaces.  In the lore, we have 8 neighbors plus home, who is considered to be the 9th neighbor.  However, there is an extra item. 

I have seen another version that places the neighborhood in a modern tic tac toe configuration to try and figure out what it might say about the neighborhood: 

In this example, there is a space that isn’t occupied, but would be similar to the Roman version in that extra space, even in the location.  But something is there now. 

We have a new player.  The tower.  (Now I want to explore the idea of the tower.  I am calling this a tower, because of it originally being conceptualized as a clock tower, although it doesn’t currently seem to serve the purpose of a clock.)  Would it be crazy to consider this a birdhouse?  I’m always looking for Sunny. 

The tower has appeared and completes the gameboard.  Could this be a new player?  A new force to be reckoned with? Only one game board on the website includes a move on that square, which could be significant.  The tower is also a tarot card, which shows a tower being struck by lightning and on fire, with people jumping out of it.  The lore around this card references the Tower of Babel, though this isn’t certain.  The earliest version known at this point was in the 15th century, so one would think that New Testament symbology would be used more often, but there are examples in art of Old Testament themes as well.  Meanings are danger, crisis, sudden change, destruction, higher learning, and liberation. 

Just a bit more about the Tower of Babel, it is an Christian Old Testament story that is about how the different nations of the world banded together to build a tower to reach God.  God was not a fan, so the tower was destroyed and God gave all the different nations different languages in order to lessen the chance that he was going to be threatened by their cooperation again.  It’s super weird, but in the way of most religious/mythological stories, it makes sense as an explanation for the reason that different languages developed.  According to some interpretations, it is the sin of hubris/ that is being addressed, which has been a common thing throughout religious history. 

The story may have been based on an ancient Sumerian story called Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta about building a giant ziggurat.  (We’re going to build a giant ziggurat, and the Lord of Aratta is going to pay for it.)  There are also famous equivalents in Greek/Roman myth and Mexican stories.

An interesting note that I hadn’t heard of before explains that reaching heaven wasn’t the only reason for the attempt, but also as a safety in the event of cataclysmic flooding.  So Noah had the ark, but after that, humanity builds a massive tower for insurance in case god tries to do it again.

Modern Representations of These References

In discussing the tic tac toe motifs in Welcome Home, I decided that the tic tac toe references could be pointing toward Rota and the Wheel of Fortune tarot card.  The Rota board looks like the tarot card “Wheel of Fortune,” which also has 9 major locations on a wheel.  This card upright symbolizes good luck, karma, life cycles, destiny, a turning point; reversed, bad luck, negative, external forces, out of control.  The image in the center, the wheel, is thought to resemble a compass, with alchemical symbols around the edge.  It has the letters TORA, counterclockwise, which is said to mean law (referencing the Torah).  There are four Hebrew letters standing for the unpronounceable name of god.  There are alchemical symbols for mercury, sulfur, water, salt, considered the building blocks of life (according to facelioncards.com). 

That last bit makes me think of Terry Pratchett’s book, The Wintersmith, in which the personification of winter seeks to make himself a corporeal body and follows this poem, (which I honestly thought was an old poem, not something he had written) called “These are the Things that Make a Man.”

Iron enough to make a nail, Lime enough to paint a wall, Water enough to drown a dog, Sulphur enough to stop the fleas, Potash enough to wash a shirt, Gold enough to buy a bean, Silver enough to coat a pin, Lead enough to ballast a bird, Phosphor enough to light the town, Poison enough to kill a cow, Strength enough to build a home, Time enough to hold a child, Love enough to break a heart.”

― Terry Pratchett, Wintersmith

According to Wikipedia, 11 (don’t trust the google ai, folks, I just about told you wrong) elements make up the human body, 99% from six elements:  oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium and phosphorus.  The remaining is comprised of potassium, sulfur, sodium , chlorine, and magnesium.  We also have about a .4% salt content, which is crazy. 

All the things in a body are super weird.  Anyway, this is a multiple step crackpot theory, but could tic tac toe be referencing Rota and The Wheel of Fortune.  The idea that these symbolic games could be referencing Wally trying to create a physical human body is very creepy and cool (and besides, who doesn’t love Clown’s human Wally from the Pokemon series of drawings?).  You could argue that he doesn’t need a physical body other than his puppet body, since that has worked for him before in the prior run of the show.  But we have seen physical manifestations of puppet world and animation world, so human Wally is not so outside the realm of possibility.  It’s a very Doki Doki Literature Club type concept.  I had to look it up, because I knew there was a story about an animated figure that wanted to come to life, and it was 1992’s Cool World, which was a fever dream of a movie.

I read the summary, and remember my high school self being somewhat scandalized by it, since it was probably my first introduction to a cartoon for adults, but apparently, it was not a great movie anyway.  In it, a cartoon lady seduces a hard-boiled detective so she can become real.  I suppose you could argue that it is a Pygmalion story, but in those stories, the woman is generally an object (literally) and the an object as defined by a man’s idea of what a woman is, or at least what he wants her to be.  I cannot tell you how much I like My Fair Lady and how angry I get at the last line of that show.  But I digress.  Pygmalion, Pinnochio, or “Become A Real Boy” tv tope, it doesn’t seem so unreasonable a goal for Wally in our reality, but I struggle to think of a situation where being a real boy benefits him more than being a Muppet.  After all, Muppets are considered innocent.

Other options for this theme include vampires, werewolves and robots.  https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BecomeARealBoy, which does kind of resonate with Wally.  He is often presented as robotic.  While canonically, I believe, Wally is neurodivergent, he’s got that robot that wants to be a human curiosity about the world, and seems to have blown past any efforts at containment that the world has offered him.  Surely, it is not long until he breaks through the security features on the current website.  In terms of werewolf and vampire energy, Wally has much more of a vampire personality.  He feels like he kind of has to be welcomed in, but might have that vampiric power to influence us.  The vampire stare, in particular, has been around since the beginning of vampire movies, as seen with Nosferatu in 1922 and Lugosi’s Dracula in 1931. 

 

TV tropes has an entry for this one as well, “The Unblinking.”  https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheUnblinking.  Basically says that thing doesn’t blink and it’s not natural.  It leads us to feeling like the figure is scary, inhuman, or evil.  Though intense eye contact can also be a behavior in neurodivergence, as well as the opposite, the lack thereof, it is also considered challenging on a lizard brain level (if you believe that sort of thing).  In general, humans want eye contact as a form of connection and interpreting emotion, but not too much, because it can be aggressive or threatening.  A lot of the science has to do with connection and interpretation.

So, in this iteration we have a mysterious knew player in the game, and a history of unblinking, unnatural characters.

[sweetlikehoneystingslikeabee]

Riddlers with a s/o who really likes horror movies, old ones, news one, everything in between long as it's horror? Need to know who's ear I can talk off

"Riddlers and Horror Movies" Riddler party x Reader

Several of these riddlers share direct horror movie quirks with me have fun guessing which. Also listed favorite horror film(s).

TW: horror films, blood and gore descriptions, mentions of emotional self-harm

Gotham

He's the guy who is going to contradict and tell you every medical inaccuracy of the deaths and mechanics in the movies. Yes, of course there's suspension of disbelief but at some point things are just wrong.

Babe, that should be arterial blood but they're portraying venous blood consistency :(

If you don't mind him talking at length about how these things would actually go OR conversely how well the sfx portrayed real injuries, he is your horror movie buddy! None of it bothers him considering how many real life murder, suicide and accident victims he's had to perform autopsies on.

Cuddling with his gangly legs on the couch bundled up in a big blanket with you while the sounds of screams echo from the tv and fill the room. Huge smile. He especially old classics when you're in the mood. Black and white films and transatlantic accents... It sounds like a great night to him.

Favorite Horror Movies: Might be a surprise but he really loves "Freaks" from 1932. He will talk for a long time about how, even though many of the disabled actors were ostracized on set, the fact that they were present at all is significant. The ableist assholes get theirs in the end! He also has a lot of fondness for "Re-animator."

Btas

He's the one interested in the sfx rambles. What, you think he designed a video game and labyrinth for a theme park just because he's intelligent? He likes behind the scenes work. God help everyone if he and Scarecrow decided to get together to make a haunted house.

You ever see those huge animatronics in horror mazes, especially the huge end show pieces? That's where his interest goes.

Depending on how much you watch and express interest in that kind of thing, he genuinely might start making horror animatronics and programs. He has the know-how! His would be the realistic looking ones, especially for animals. Spooky but definitely based in forms you see in real life.

Well, beautiful, you might have helped him find a very profitable side gig. Everyone else might be sore at you for a while, though, given Edward scaring the fuck out of them with holograms and mechanics. Plus more team-ups with Scarecrow.

All this because you wanted to watch horror movies with him. His darling <3

Favorite horror movie: "The Thing" (1982) and while it's not his absolute favorite, he ends up enjoying "Willy's Wonderland" a lot for both the animatronics and video game nods.

60s

The old ones with little to no gore is fine! More modern hack and slashers might be a little too spooky for him :( definitely never show him "Hostel" or anything in that vein.

Truthfully, it's not the violence or the blood, he's seen that. It's the suffering that gets him. It all seems so pointless and needless. At least when he's attempting to cut batman into tiny pieces using a comically giant fan, there's a goal or point. In his mind, anyways.

Before dating you his idea of horror was "Dracula", "Frankenstein"... "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken".... Start with horror that has a more comedic or cheesy element- "Little Shop of Horrors" to "Tucker & Dale vs. Evil." "Creepshow" 1 and 2 from the 80s! If you ease him into it and don't go too extreme, he'll love watching horror movies with you.

Favorite Horror Movie: OKAY THIS IS CHEATING BECAUSE IT'S NOT A MOVIE BUT. He'd be a HUGE fan of the "Tales from the Crypt" show from the early 90s (that is almost impossible to find streaming rip my horror uncle The Cryptkeeper). Horror plus puns. He will always take a funny, morbid pun! Plus... man can appreciate a cackle. He also has several opinions about the original "Suspiria."

Zero Year

It has to have something of a decent story or he's not paying attention. Where is the BACKGROUND? Sidenote: if you get him into something like Bloodborne (I know, not a movie) with lots of lore, expect to not see him for a hot minute as he consumes all the information he can like a sponge.

He tends to favor psychological horror- Although, if it means spending time with you and gaining favor, he would watch most anything. Especially if there's the possibility of close physical affection... ANYWAYS. He's also the one who wants to watch a bunch of foreign language film horror such as "Les yeux sans visage" in original French.

Another thing is that he will watch things over and over and over again with you if you want. Part of it is the undiagnosed neurodivergency. Part of it is because you always catch new details when you watch things again. Him noticing something that you didn't and him getting to tell you and impressing you is a special kind of high. He will talk about movies for hours afterwards. "Jacob's Ladder" has been a several hours long dissection MULTIPLE TIMES.

Favorite Horror Movies: "Angel Heart" is his top all time favorite. If you haven't seen it, he will practically tie you up to watch it together- He also really enjoyed "The Lighthouse" and "Us."

Arkham

Similar to BTAS, he is also interested in the animatronics. His, however, would lean to body horror and sci-fi. Something about biology and machine blending together... it gets him kind of excited.

He will sit and work while watching you play something like Deadspace (sorry, a game again) for HOURS. Then he wants to watch the prequel movie with you. Also if you don't mind subtitles, he has this recommendation for "Tetsuo: The Iron Man" if you haven't seen it already. And if you haven't... You are in for an experience.

In short, this man is about the body horror. He likes other horror too, but that's his bread and butter. Sci-fi horror as well. Bonus when there is overlap. He's seen "Annihilation" at least twenty times and has the books dog-eared and rough from multiple reads somewhere in his belongings. Yes, they are ultimately different, but he's in love with the concept enough that to him he appreciates both.

He is going to scare you with animatronics he makes. Sometimes intentionally. Sometimes not. Have fun with that.

Favorite horror movies: Cronenberg period but he has a special fondness for "Videodrome" and "The Fly" (1986).

Telltale

Despite it being an excellent movie, he despises "Jacob's Ladder." It brings up too many unpleasant thoughts. Movies, especially horror, with medical experimentation are a trigger though he'll never say it out loud. You find this out as you discuss watching certain movies and see the connection between all of them.

That being said, the horror movies he likes have two themes: they have meaning/ a message or they involve transformation. The first is because anything too simple bores him. The second is totally absolutely NOT because of projection of his own trauma.

Show him "Get Out" and "Nope" and he gains a deep reverence for Jordan Peele as a writer and director. Intelligent, entertaining, and the perfect amount of horror mixed in. Kind of a fan, only you know, really.

80s version of "The Fly" makes him emotional and you probably only watch it once with him. He likes it a lot! Just... the slow transformation via a science accident is very relatable. Madness overtaking you.

Favorite horror movies: "An American Werewolf In London" it's a classic. Not to mention in his opinion one of the best transformation scenes in a movie.

2022/nashton

Ha... so here's the thing. He likes "Hostel" and movies like that with lots of violence and gore. He's even seen "Wolf Creek" and got some real excitement out of it. HOWEVER. Movies in that vein are a form of emotional self-harm for him. He likes them in the moment but they also usually trigger massive anxiety and depression episodes for him later on in the day/night.

Others like "Se7en" (I know it's a thriller not true horror), "Saw" and the like are usually okay. There's a distinctive difference that may only exist in his own mind, but the more you watch with him, the more you'll find out which movies are "safe" for him. Which is good! He does like horror movies, but as we know from the prequel comics, he's not always good at taking care of himself due to massive amounts of trauma.

He loves films that are gems that aren't super well known in the US when he can find them. Have you seen the Korean horror film "The Silenced"? No? You're in for a treat.

He likes movies that have a logic or puzzle to them. Complex mechanics and traps. A sick sense of justice dispensed.

Favorite horror movies: The "Saw" series. Also "The Collector." He sees the upside down shot with the reflective contacts and the spider allegories and his eyes dilate like a cat seeing it's favorite toy.

[pynkhues]

I don’t know if you’ve seen the cut lines from the S4 script yet (where Stewy references some semi-ominous sounding games he remembers from when he and Kendall were growing up like Punch-Chess and Dinners for Winners) but this kind of made me think back on the games throughline (motif?) with Logan. We get to see how insane Boar on the Floor was in real time and we’ve gotten a pretty good sense throughout the series that Logan has a penchant for framing violence through the lens of games (not dishonestly might I add – I think there’s a reasonable read of Logan whereby he himself doesn’t view his games as a means for violence at all but just as tools or in some cases, truly just games).  

Recently I’ve seen some discussion that kind of lumps together games the kids played (Bitey, Dog Pound) with Logan’s games (Boar on the Floor, Dinners for Winners) and that struck me as kind of odd. Rightly or wrongly, I’ve been mentally distinguishing between the games the siblings play with each other as different from the games Logan concocts. It might just be me, but Bitey and Dog Pound read to me as within the realm of reasonable kids games (noting that a ton of kids play kind of insane games lol). I also just feel like the power structure is…different when it’s just the siblings? Does that make sense? Whereas when Logan invests games for his kids, there’s something more…uneven and off-kilter about it to me. Idk – do you think they’re all part of the same motif or that there’s some level of distinction?  Maybe I just to think about it more haha – I guess this is a super long round-about way of asking: how do you view the use of games (“games”?) within the context of the show?

Oh, yeah, I totally agree that the games the kids play with each other are very different from the games that Logan concocts, anon, but I’m not surprised to hear that people consider them in the same sort of discourse. After all, the games that the kids play with each other, now that they’re all adults, are viewed through the prism of the power dynamics in the current family unit.

In other words, even games that are on paper the sort that any kid plays (Dog Pound being a good example – my five and seven year old nephews actually play a pretty similar game at the moment called Puppy and Person, although I think their game involves more patting and cuddling than Roman and Kendall’s probably did, haha), because we’re encountering it with Kendall and Roman in their late-thirties and through the lens of undealt with sibling resentments and adult competition, they can be mistaken for the same sorts of games that Logan played / still plays with the kids.

In that sense, I think the clearest point of distinction is the fact that Logan is never really a player in the games, he’s the overseer of them – the judge, jury and executioner – and we’ve seen that twice. The first time with the baseball game in the pilot, and the second, of course, with Boar on the Floor. Interestingly, the only time we’ve actually seen him participate in a game as a player was in I Went Shopping in the Thanksgiving episode back in S1, and well, we all know how that ended.

Games are integral to the show, and it’s interesting because I don’t think they have any one particular meaning. I think the writers like them as a shorthand to convey certain themes and relationship dynamics, I think they’re an efficient and compelling way to move plot forwards, and I think the writers like to use them to trojan horse the history of abuse within the Roy family, which is exactly what that new excerpt from the script of 4.04 demonstrates.

Critically though, I also think they’re significant thematically in depicting both childhood and masculinity, and I think that’s really where the distinction comes in when it comes to the games the kids play together (yes, even Dog Pound, as much as that game [and Kendall] wants to pretend to be about masculinity, I personally don't think it is at all), and the ones Logan does.

So, let’s talk about childhood.

Games are integral to childhood, there’s no getting around that. Games are what teach children social skills and curiosity, strategy and the ability to both win and to lose, which is, of course, also the skill to enjoy success and sometimes embrace failure too. One of my current jobs is in a company that does play-based theatre for children, with a special focus on traumatised children, so I could talk a lot about this and the evidence behind it, and how crucial games are in empowering children and helping them develop agency away from the family unit, but that’s kind of where this story stops, because while games should help children to grow into playful, empathetic and inquisitive adults, the Roy children do not play games with outsiders.

The Roy children have lived in a completely insular world – a playground their father has built them, as Marcia so aptly put it – and so these games don’t evolve. Instead, these games like Bitey and Dog Pound and even Kendall’s LEGO become manifestations of current anxieties, insecurities and resentments, and an encapsulation of Shiv, Roman and Kendall’s arrested development.

(Maybe interestingly, I consider Connor slightly less arrested than his little siblings, and I do think a part of that is from his parentification, but also a proxy result of effectively having been raised in those formative childhood years as an only child, especially if he was, as Alan Ruck has said, about fifteen when Kendall was born).

Of course, Logan encourages this.

Logan’s inability to face his own mortality or seal off his own legacy requires him to keep his children, well, children. He needs them under his thumb, sure, but he also, I think, needs to keep them young so that he can feel young. Needs the promise of his own future reflected in the length of their own, and his frequent infantilisation of all four of them is a part of what keeps them regressed and reading meaning into games they played and places they lived when they were too young to know any better.

Let’s talk about masculinity.

Funnily enough, I actually talked a little about this in the context of Tom and Greg back when s3 was airing here, but a few years ago, I read Anna Krien’s Night Games which is one of my favourite non-fiction books of the last decade.

The book itself is about masculinity, sport and sexual assault, in particular patterns of gang rape by teams in Australian football and cricket, but she goes a lot broader in terms of games and male intimacy, and in particular how team sports give men a sense of community which, as a result of toxic masculinity, is generally reinforced by ‘othering’ outsiders of the team / environment, whether that be players on the opposite team, perceived interlopers, women, or even members of their own team who don’t participate in the right way with the group.

I don’t know if any of the writers would’ve read Night Games (it’s an Australian sports journalism book after all, haha), but I think they do understand deeply the way masculinity operates in these circles and the ways games of any sort can be utilised as a shorthand to exert power and solidify connection. Boar on the Floor is, of course, the clearest example of this, where Logan utilises the context of the game to dig out his betrayers, and while the first round has everyone as an unwilling participant, once a smaller group of 'others' are picked in Tom, Greg and Karl, the safety of being on the right team makes everyone becomes complicit in the second round.

This is something Logan’s a master of and what he does routinely with his children in general, but also in the rules of the games Stewy talks about in the 4.04 script. Those games are about the othering of a person and the increased intimacy of the rest of the team. If Dinners for Winners has the loser acting like the help, the winners are the rest of the family celebrating their renewed bond as, well, winners.

I don’t think the kids are immune from this in their own behaviour. In fact, I think the biggest examples we see of the kids engaging in this particular type of game play is in Roman’s treatment of the child during the baseball game in the pilot (and I actually am reading the scripts [albeit very slowly, haha] at the moment and read 2.01 last night and was pretty fascinated to discover that the boy’s father is one of the landscapers at The Summer Palace), and in the sequence throwing back to Kendall’s bachelor party with the tattooing of the homeless man’s head with Kendall’s initials.

These aren’t complete games, and interestingly they don’t create the same sense of shared compliance and group intimacy in the way Logan’s games do – no one’s fully on board with Roman’s behaviour, and Roman betrays the group bond in terms of Kendall’s bachelor party by telling Gerri and trying to use it against Kendall – but I view that as more a reflection of Roman and Kendall’s failures in masculinity and authority than in anything else.

It’s that failure there though which, in many ways, further separates the games Logan plays with them to the games they play together. Roman and Kendall continue to fail to imitate their father in his particular brand of games, because Logan knows how to divide and conquer, which they simply don't.

That also though is a direct contrast to the games the kids play together, because those games, whether they be Bitey or Monopoly or even Dog Pound, those games are about shared connection. After all, Kendall wasn't the one who sent Roman away, Kendall was just playing a game with his brother, no matter what they both have inferred in it over time.

[ilynpilled]

Kinda unfair/or unpredictable question but do you think at some point in the next books Jaime and Daenerys will interact to a higher degree? Or better question -- do you think that's a good idea? Jaime has so much personal trauma with the Targaryen family, it feels like it may be realistic to have a meaningful conversation with Dany. (If he's surviving his current predicament which I think he will :P) Though maybe it'd just be beneficial for Jaime, and Dany is not interested in dwelling on it

and i find it interesting that this jape is in the chapter where all this significant rhaegar talk happens:

all this could mean nothing, and these things are hard to predict, and i think the show especially offers very little in this regard considering how much the stories of these two in specific were shifted in certain directions, so this is all i am gonna say anon: i do think the set up for an interaction can be interpreted from the text. dany is “rhaegar returning” in some form, so maybe there is more to that “talk that never was” than just tragic irony. when and how and exactly what it would mean for them at that point? idk. i just think jaime (and only jaime, as he would likely be the last living “monster from viserys’ stories about RR” by that point: not only was jaime kept closer bc he was a hostage, but barristan doesn’t really dwell on rhaella’s abuse, and it is possible that he will not live to be the one to communicate the extent of the ‘real aerys’ to dany, he was dancing around it in the text so far thats fs + brienne knows about the wildfire plot but that would be significantly less personal, same with the pieces just being put together after KL goes up in flames imo, which they likely will be, but i just think it would be missing that ‘personal layer’) holds information that dany does want to learn, and him telling her could bring a lot of things full circle for them as characters (+dany and rhaella have a number of parallels, and i do think that piece of information for example, as painful as it is, would hold significance to her and her understanding of her family other than just a form of closure, especially relating to a major theme concerning the downfall of house targaryen and the abuse and oppression the women faced from their male counterparts following jaehaerys’s rule, the dance, complete patriarchal hegemony etc. and that whole downfall did culminate in aerys and everything he represents, and her experience with viserys is also an extension of all that). idk if jaime is meant to confess the wildfire/kingslayer thing in specific to anyone other than brienne (from a more thematic perspective), but who knows, especially if he does live past a KL going down in flames scenario, which is possible because there is a set up for him wielding widow’s wail which is there rn. the whole rhaegar motif in jaime chapters was always something that i found interesting (i have a very specific interpretation of a parallel/anti-parallel with the children that i think is actually unrelated to dany/jon etc, but i am too lazy to get into that right now.) but yeah he is the pov character with the second most mentions of rhaegar by name in the text as he is a key manifestation of guilt, the first one being dany obviously. if not, then george has bran + magic to get that info to dany ig. we will see in like 20 years lol