suddenly realizing that for the reboot one of the things that i think i Have to hammer in a bit more is the concept of LV as like. just a straight up addiction
Connecting dots tonight (didn't connect shit, I've connected them, etc) because of this post about item descriptions to do with Sampo I saw a few days ago and! I feel like there are so many interesting things that could be implied from this!! Because the recipe for the High-Tech Protective Gear is given to you by Bronya (before the IPC invaded Belobog!), who says this little interesting tidbit about it:
This is an item from before the Eternal Freeze, 700 years ago. Even to the rest of the universe, it would be SORELY outdated. It cannot be made in Belobog anymore due to the loss of entire eras. It is effectively useless; this recipe had to be somewhere gathering dust, kept around solely for archival purposes. There is no reason for Sampo to know about this item or have any idea how it works and yet. AND YET. He's just running around selling knock offs!!
He shouldn't even know how to make these, but the fact that he does means Sampo either
had the blueprints from off-world before he came to Belobog (most likely but also most boring answer)
broke into Qlipoth Fort and copied down the blueprints (completely plausible - he's possibly shown doing exactly that in his splash art)
found another copy out in the ruins of the old world (also completely plausible - Sampo is astoundingly resilient against both the Fragmentum and the cold, as noted by Lynx haha)
Meanwhile, the Inferior Protective Gear recipe comes from an NPC in the underground, and when she gives it to you, she talks about building robots and the robot fighting scene sorry about the quality I didn't have screenshots for her dialogue so I had to use wiki
Which makes me feel like it's safe to say that the inferior gear is mostly being used in the underground, especially by the vagrants and their robots for fights, because...well, who else would use it? Cocolia has made it illegal to explore too far into the Snow Plains, and besides, it's way too dangerous for most civilians even WITH gear. The Silvermane Guards are funded by official sources, they have no reason to rely on Sampo for armor. So it makes sense for an underground mechanic to know the recipe; there's probably not as much market for it up in the overworld.
And if you look at the descriptions, you can see why this probably wasn't something that could be made in Belobog anymore; it requires a charging system of some sort.
We know it's not a problem with the basic materials because all three ingredients can be found right in the administrative district. But the underground only has two of them; somehow, despite being in the planet's crust, and literally crawling with robots...there is no metal down there. It isn't found anywhere, sold by anyone, or dropped by anything. And metal just so happens to be the one ingredient Sampo replaces in his knock off version.
The Inferior Gear uses trash instead, something which, going by the words of that same mechanic, is MORE than abundant in the underground- any good quality parts are extremely difficult to come by down there.
Anyway, all his shadiness aside, I love the implication that Sampo is smart enough to be able to take this item that no one else on the planet probably knows anything about, and was able to figure out what he could replace, and how, and with what, in order to make it easily accessible to the people of the underground, even without access to overworld resources. Because his version DOES work! It literally gives you the exact same amount of defense boost as the IPC one!
Someone should absolutely still knock him around for it, though, world's most slappable face fr fjkdsjfdkjafk
it's been a while since i tried looking, but i did hear that something like this happens last year and over time started to think, "was it a fluke?" bc no one posted footage or caps of it then, and i aimed for a completionist run in my first playthrough. turns out it's real! and definitely shines a new light on a character that, for most other types of playthroughs, will not give this much emotion! EDIT: transcript now included, and some stillshots under the cut
[0:28]
Marie: Henry, this is the man who kept you from doing the right thing tonight. Kill him.
[0:15]
Forrest: Henry, you don’t have to do this. If you’ve not killed anyone yet, there’s still time to make the right decision.
[0:05]
Out of shot: (Gunshots) Henderson Police! Freeze!
Marie: No! Henry, get out of there!
In my quest to get more people to watch this episode of Marple ("The Secret of Chimneys," season 5 episode 2 if you're interested), I may have inadvertently pushed people to torrent an available copy.
Which is a horrible crime! Not because it's "theft" or whatever, fuck that, this is a 15-year-old show and Agatha's long dead — but because in the torrented version most of this scene is cut, and it's the scene which first made me pause, frown at the TV screen, mutter "wait what" and rewind it to make sure that it's as outrageously flirty as it seemed the first time.
My worst anxiety regarding season three of Good Omens is that the ending will be lovely, but that it will pass too quickly.
I trust that it will be a happy ending; we know it will be. And I want to see that. But almost more than I want to see that, I want to see them breathe. I don't want "they kissed and made up and went off to their cottage and clinked glasses whilst watching the sunset and saying witty sappy things, and everyone sighed, satisfied." That's not too different from what we got at the end of season one, and it's lovely, but these two have been waiting so long.
so. long.
And I want the ending to be long enough that there's space for that "finally." I want there to be room for their emotions. I want them to giggle like teenagers, I want them to find stupid excuses to kiss each other, I want them to hold each other and cry, I want them to talk about the things they always stopped themselves from talking about, I want them to address the complexity of their feelings. I want there to be some recognition of the relief, and of the wounds that still ache. I want to see them slowly, slowly relax into security. I want them to tentatively reach for each other, each time fearing that they won't be there, and each time collapsing under the weight of their relief to find that they are.
I want to see them make plans for their future and let themselves be hopeful about it. I want to watch the reality of their happy ending sink in. I want to watch them heal.
society if literally 80% of rw fandom and especially rw analysis youtubers (who are great, EXCEPT) stopped calling gourmand heckin' chonker chubby diabetic ginormous whatever and paid more mind to their whole character and not just the fact that they're fat
oomf was talking about this combi and I remembered the season 25 episode where they interact for like 30 seconds. and then i got progressively more invested
Btw, I noticed something while going through my other playthroughs. It seems that every companion you romance has a dialogue option of like 'break up with them' (at least, from the ones i romanced - Shart, Astarion and Halsin, they all had an option like that) but Minthara apparently doesn't have one?
Like the options I get with her are like 'can i kiss you' 'stay in camp' 'leave'. Idk if this is intentional or something but I think it's kinda funny to think minthara went like "you're staying in this relationshipm there shall be no discussion on that"
love the addition of Shane venting to the farmer about the effects of his alcohol abuse. I know he had a few lines like this pre-1.6 but I like seeing him open up more and the fact that this line triggered without romancing him makes it feel like he genuinely considers the farmer a friend who he's comfortable mentioning this shit around.
regarding: colour me in – okay – i've been wanting to ask this since i dropped cmi11, and i'd actually looove if you let me know 🥺 ! even if you haven't read the latest part(s) yet – which chapter would you say is your favourite so far and why? 🤍