Ahh i stayed up late to finish a game demo

Begging people to watch scavengers reign, I haven’t felt this strongly about a tv show in a while.

Seriously, if you like pretty art and animation, horror, and speculative biology, this is your show

I also think the eggs having this much sense of self and acting like kids forming relationships that sort of thing was not something the fed planned and was firmly the Islanders doing like they could have just taken them in as what they originally where am event to be rewarded at the end but instead they said no these are our kids and so that's what the eggs became not experiments or an event that can be over in a couple weeks but kids with emotions and personalities all their own and I think the feds didn't expect that and doesn't really understand it

p3 reload box art + the art book cover!

I used to be one of those guys when I first joined the Kirby fandom, but everytime I hear a discussion of the series writing that starts with "So the Lore is InSaNe-" and not like, "Kirby has a fun writing style that takes advantage of its cute exterior to tell cool stories that reward player's curiosity and leave lots of room for imagination-" I cringe so goddamn hard.

I kinda just hate that people approach things that encourage investment when they don't expect it as inherently absurd. Like it is fun to joke about how absurd Kirby lore can be, but it really often comes with an air of disrespect or exhaustion rather than like, appreciation that these games are made by people who want to tell interesting stories when they could easily make as much money just making polished enough fluffy kiddy platformers. And when it's not met with exhaustion, it's met with - like I said before - that tone that it's stupid for a series like this TO have devs who care about writing stuff for it. Which is a whole other thing about people not respecting things made to appeal to kiddie aesthetic or tone.

Maybe the state of low-stakes YouTube video essays just blows cause people play up ignorance and disbelief for engagement, but like I STG I hear people use this tone for like actual narrative based games sometimes. Some people don't like... appreciate when a game is made by people who care a shitton in ways that aren't direct gameplay feedback. And they especially don't appreciate it when it comes from something with any sense of tonal dissonance intentional or not.

Anyways, I love games made by insane people. I love games made by teams who feel like they wanna make something work or say something so bad. I love that energy, especially when invested into something that could easily rest on its laurels or which obviously won't be taken seriously. I love this in a lot of classic campy 2000s games, I love this in insanely niche yet passionate fanworks, and I love it in the Kirby series and its writing. Can we please stop talking about it like it's an annoyance or complete joke?

journalists underestimate the magnitude of my addiction and how far i'll go for the bit

Look man, maybe it’s just me, but I wouldn’t be feeling more motivated to come forward about work place abuse if somebody was talking about me on stream in front of a bunch of people I don’t know, saying that I’m being manipulated and having Stockholm’s Syndrome, or worse throwing me under the bus for not leaving or having the same problems but then kept tacking on “don’t send hate” despite knowing just how hateful medias like Twitter can be

Like, maybe that’s just me, but :/

there seems to be far too many fans who can't seem to wrap their head around the fact that no relationship in the Vampire Chronicles is healthy. every relationship includes an element of abuse/power imbalance by normal standards. literally every single one.

they are all monsters who are no longer constrained by societal rules. so I don't think it's too crazy to expect them to do mosntorus things. the genre is Gothic HORROR. the show really prioritizes the HORROR element more so than other adaptaions, which i love.

i don't need louis to be a liar to enjoy lestat. if louis lied or misremebered things about the fight in episode 5, i literally do not care because it's never gonna make me hate louis. the baseline of what constitutes "evil" or "bad" is so different in iwtv because of the fact that they are NOT HUMAN. Claudia is literally a serial killer and she's still mother to me. ykwim?

the nature of vampirism is they have to kill to survive. so it would be really cool if people could accept louis, armand, and claudia as complex characters who are fundamentally not good people (because they aren't people!) without being racist about it. THEY ARE ALL KILLERS

im more interested in this exploration of the complexities of memory and seeing how the show integrates the other books into this story in a way that hasn't been done before than I am in discoursing about whether louis is a liar or not. who gives a shit???? grow up and realize that there are no good guys here and that's OKAY

Lovent Theories off the top of my head...

⟡ Mhin is not from Lovent, but they DID contract their curse there. "Anything for the pursuit of knowledge..." Perhaps Mhin had only intended to go there for study and they unwittingly brought Something Else back...

Title tag is #lost expeditions... Mhin went to Lovent with loved ones and is the lone survivor of the expedition?? No one has ever made it back except for Mhin?

⟡ Mhin is from Lovent but...

"In a bygone era,"

Is Mhin just...very old? An extended lifespan due to their curse?

Or maybe the whole city got swallowed up the the Shroud and there were some dimension time shenanigans...? The city ended up in a halfway point? And the city is actually still inhabited, but has been in a perpetual state of Zombie Appocalypse Fogfall. Silent Hill...?? am I describing Silent Hill? Mhin fought to escape and that is when Kuras finds and help them?

⟡ Did they learn something about the Senobium while in Lovent? Is that why they are so determined, so sure that what they need is inside?

i just think a cool way to differentiate q!tubbo and q!cellbit designs, since their skins are very similar, it could be:

long-ish hair (shoulder length) white streak at the front = q!cellbit

choppy wavy hair with blonde underneath = q!tubbo

Imma do this final vent and then I’ll shut up about it.

This was a dumb move, from every possible perspective.

In the og goodbye video, they really made it sound like they were doing the streaming service because they wanted to go bigger, make cooler videos, really see what they could do and let their creative vision take the lead.

Growing as an artist is what you do when you Already Have The Money To Do So. You don’t tell your audience “give me money and then I will use to it to make cooler bigger things”. That’s not a streaming service, that’s a kickstarter.

They didn’t have the numbers to pull a streaming service off either. “We think we’re ready for television quality content” no you don’t. Sorry, no you do not. Television quality content means 30-50 crew per project, means at least 4-5 production being worked on at the same time, and at least 4-5 productions being broadcast at the same time. Watcher has maybe 2 series they upload simultaneously and they have 25 employees TOTAL. Not even CLOSE to tv levels of content, who the fuck do you think you are???

Did they really think all 3 million of their subscribers were going to follow them on this? Including kids, whose spending is dependent on their parents? Including the casuals, who only subscribed for the occasional video? Including people for whom $6 dollars on another streaming service just isn’t an option? Why DIDN’T they poll this, was this being a surprise really that important??

AND why would you completely cut off another revenue? Even if YouTube is restrictive, it’s still another source of income. Cutting that off completely is… bold.

Especially since in the apology, they let it slip that no, actually, it’s because Watcher is on the brink of having to close up shop because they’re not making enough money with just the patreon, the merch sales, the ad reads, etc.

So… one of those is a lie. Or at least part of the truth.

But let’s assume they are in financial trouble, then this was still the dumbest they could’ve done.

Welcome to the entertainment industry where we follow 1 giant fucking rule: Kill Your Darlings.

Fellas, pals, amigos, bros, dudes. If your projects spend more than what they make, it’s time to downsize. Not upscale. Cut the shit that’s spending the most money, start concentrating on how you can conserve without having to fire your crew. Put the projects where you have to fly out and buy new stuff all the time on the back burner, you can get back to them once you actually have the money for them. Work with what you already have. You have a MASSIVE studio space, fuckin use it. You HAVE sets, you HAVE props, you HAVE talent and you have ideas. Start workshopping all the crazy and shit ideas you thought weren’t gonna work and start thinking how you could make them work with the lowest possible budget you can have. Your audience is there, they’ll watch whatever you throw at them. Now is the time to go crazy and see what sticks. You HAVE viewership. Collab. CONSTANTLY. Get it the fuck out there that you exist. A lot of people had no idea a patreon existed, mention it ALL THE TIME. To the point that it becomes annoying. Do it!

If your studio is becoming too expensive, get rid of it. Sorry, kill your darlings. Move some shit around in Steven Lim’s tesla garage, put up some green screens, this is where you work now until you can afford a studio in LA again, you dipshits. Editors can work from home, sound designers can work from home, writers and researchers can work from home, meetings can happen in someone’s kitchen or living room.

And finally: be transparent. Be honest to your audience and communicate. “We’re sorry to put Ghost Files on hiatus, however we can no longer justify the cost of traveling to locations.” The majority of your audience will understand and show patience. The part of your audience that matters will wait and enjoy your other wacky shit in the meantime. Hell, they might spontaneously start their own kickstarter because those who can, will want to support you financially, if you’re just hONEST WITH THEM.

As a business, you constantly have to choose between your financial stability and that of your employees, your vision and the future of your company and what you Want to do with it, and your integrity, the trust between you and your audience. (Especially that last one, businesses can’t pretend they don’t have a relationship with their audience, that’s not how business works, guys.)

When you’re in financial straits, one of those has to go. Watcher chose the latter, they should’ve picked the middle. Their grand television quality ideas can fucking wait, if money is a problem.

Look, I’m an artist too. I had a vision too. But it was either my creative vision or being able to afford food and rent. Creativity can wait, creativity will always be there once I can support it. Living comes ALWAYS first. Asking my audience to fund my huge artistic dreams though, with only the promise of something cool, NEVER even crossed my fucking mind. That’s what donations are for, that’s what the patreon is for.

They apologised. And good. But this was a dumb decision from the goddamn start. There were like 500 steps in between and they skipped all of it. And for what? For money? For grand ideas? For greed or for hubris? How many of their original subscribers are actually gonna come back? How much money did they lose with this stunt? If they really are in financial trouble, this MASSIVE risk -which is what it has always been- might just be their downfall. And it’d be 100% their own fucking fault.

I barely animate myself but oh how I want to dissect others animation frame by frame I can talk for hours if you don’t watch animation frame by frame you’re missing out big time

originnssssss who remembers origins i Loved origins

So Greg Bryk regularly goes live on Instagram to chat with his followers and answer a few questions, and almost every time, someone asks if he’d like to play Joseph Seed again if he had the chance, to which he used to always reply that, yes, he absolutely would. However, in early 2022, he didn’t seem so sure anymore and said it would depend on the script (the question was specifically about a potential Far Cry 5 movie) and the writer(s). Then, a few months later, he implied he didn’t feel like playing the Father ever again because he thought the character’s story was “finished” and that Ubisoft should focus on creating new things instead…

Well, on October 14, 2023, he once again went live on Instagram and, when people mentioned Far Cry 5 in the chat, he revealed that he had reached out to Dan Hay and Drew Holmes, two of the game’s three main writers he’s become friends with, and that they had visited him “on set” (I’m not sure what he was shooting) the day before. In the past, he had already explained several times that he had loved working with them and thought the story they wrote (along with “JS”, Jean-Sébastien Décant, the game’s third main writer) was fantastic. This time, he added that Far Cry 5 was really “special” to him because the writers “cared a lot” about creating something great with amazing characters, and that he thought the whole Seed family was really well-written.

A few minutes later, when he was asked which character he would like to play again if he could, he said it was hard for him to choose because he loves them all, but he eventually picked Jeremy Danvers (Bitten) and Cobbs Pond (Frontier).

Then, surprisingly, he also mentioned Joseph.

I don’t know why he changed his mind again or if the fact he contacted Dan Hay (who doesn’t work for Ubisoft anymore) and Drew Holmes (who recently became the new IP Director for Far Cry) means anything, and I’m not sure I want more Far Cry 5 content to be released anyway (for continuity reasons), but I guess the Seed family’s return, as equally exciting and truly terrifying as this eventuality sounds to me, isn’t completely out of the question anymore in Greg Bryk’s mind!

anyway, im done talking about totk for now bc i dont want to keep thinking about this stupid game, it just gets worse the more you know