While this was merely a proposal/pilot that never got off ground, the Kingdom Hearts animatic is cheesy, melodramatic, uncanny, and unintentionally hilarious as fuck.

Just like Kingdom Hearts!

Of course, this is a rough draft, so this is not a shade on the artist, but the amount of memes and/or personal avatar icon for your social media from this short just raised in abundance.

I would have watched the shit out of this show if it had existed back then. Fuck, I would watch it now!

Played about 2.5 hours of Wuthering Waves tonight. I was hoping to unlock the dailies, but I only made it to Union level 4, which I think is too low, but whatever.

My impressions are fairly mixed, but given how many gachas I've now started and dropped pretty much immediately, WW is doing quite well for itself.

I have to say tho that I deeply pity it for how much it will be compared to Genshin.

For positives, I think WW has a rather solid opening section. I focused on the main story to advance the Union level faster, but it seems like you get your main tutorials out of the way fairly quickly and can go and explore from there. Given the complaints I have about being railroaded in other games, that's nice.

Additionally, I think the story is nice if unremarkable. It's paced better than Genshin early parts imo, which were ridiculously rushed, and it benefits from having multiple characters who talk to each other and have different personalities. Yangyang, Chixia and Baizhi invite the harem jokes, but they are a friend group who decide to look after this amnesiac they found. They frame it as a combination of responsibility and friendliness, which I think works. Aside from that, yes, the game certainly leans into the MC being someone super special and important, but it's treated as an actual mystery and the current driving point of the narrative. Plus, the male MC is rather cute, so I can forgive a lot.

Compared to a whole bunch of other gachas, I am actually mildly interested in seeing where this is all going.

For the neutral points, WW actually has a fairly different tone and vibe than Genshin. The colors are more muted, the music is notably less upbeat, and there is a vaguely scifi aesthetic underlying the setting. It also has a lot more... what I read as Chinese cultural influences. You do start in the China region, but there's also stuff like the goofy gourd gadgets everyone has. I have a general impression of what mythological thing is being referenced, but it really does come off as goofy. However, those details are kinda... cute? narm-charm? I guess, when you consider that it's a Chinese developer. It also just has a different flavor from the most common settings, which is always a nice change.

For the negatives, I think the game does lack a few points of polish compared to Genshin. The movement controls feel kinda floaty, the designs (especially the adult female ones) are just not as competent or appealing, the proportions on the models look a bit off at times, and there are even minor bugs, with stuff like dialogue boxes being unable to fit all the lines of text (with no log feature in the scenes themselves), the auto advance moving too quickly and cutting off voice lines and sometimes even making it impossible to read the text fast enough, some awkward visual elements, textures loading kinda poorly, etc.

All of those are very small details and I'm not going to stop because of them, but they do create a certain impression in accumulation.

Examples:

The bottom of the image was also the bottom of the screen. A line or two of the text is just invisible, and this happens quite often.

Weirdly sized and spaced apostrophes.

Bad spacing on the wishing menus.

Weirdly poor textures on this guy. This happens once in a while. There are also very obvious cases of pop in that can get quite distracting during story scenes.

For the spacing stuff, I do play in windowed mode, but like... that's an option they give you. It shouldn't be like this.

All that aside, I'm going to continue for at least a while, though I plan to take it very casually, maybe even as a non-wishing account. The exploration and story can probably be cleared even with welfares... I hope.

rating all of the 3d zim models on the modelers resource

(mostly copypasted from my priv twitter lol)

Nickelodeon Party Blast (2002), Nintendo GameCube, Xbox, PC

this one is my favorite i think. hes so fucking cute. he looks so stupid. hes small. his head and eyes (his most defining features) look good. probably the only 3d zim model that accurately captures his Essence. 10/10 love this guy

SpongeBob SquarePants featuring Nicktoons: Globs of Doom (2008), Nintendo Wii, PlayStation 2, Nintendo DS

ugly. hideous. hate this fucking thing. burn it. his head and mouth look weird and his eyes dont match his outfit. 0/10

Nicktoons MLB (2011), Nintendo Wii, Xbox 360, Nintendo DS, Nintendo 3DS

honestly not bad. i like his little smile. hes stylized in a way that feels natural. my only nitpick is that he looks too tall. i like the party blast one better but thats just a personal preference. 8/10

Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl (2021), Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S

why the fuck is he shiny. its rly distracting me. i feel like i would like this model a lot more if not for that. also is it just me or does his top lip look weird. ALSO also ik this is bc of the way models r saved in the T pose (or the A pose in this case) but i do think its funny how huge his pak legs are LOLLL

on the bright side however, gir and minimoose r there too!! gir looks great and minimoose looks very silly and orb shaped. i may not be entirely fond of zims look here but im including gir and minimoose as part of the ranking and i do like them. i just wish zim looked better. oh well. 6/10

BONUS: Nicktoons Nitro (2008), arcade

this one wasnt on the modelers resource but i felt i had to include it anyway bc it is a core memory from my childhood and one of my first exposures to invader zim. honestly hes kinda terrifying but in a funny way?? like.....i wouldnt let him near me but he is kinda cute and fucked up. 3/10 for the narm charm

anyway thats it hope u enjoyed my autistic rambling. have a trophy :)

So I recently watched the 2023 Goosebumps series on Disney plus (pirated because I don't support Disney at ALL!) and... I hated it, mostly the tone, I was gonna expect the narm charm of the original TV show, but all I got was basically a adult reboot (Ala Ren & Stimpy: Adult Party Cartoon, that stupid Velma series, and the upcoming TMNT Last Ronin film) I don't like adult reboots because they make me feel weird (I know that TMNT started off as a adult comic where they kill the shredder in their debut, but still) and also the tone of the show is trying too hard to be scary. And you wanna know something? I'm about to destroy the world with this thing I'm gonna say. I personally enjoy Shadow the hedgehog (2005) more than the 2023 Goosebumps show. And thus, here is a meme I made:

Note: The gay kid, the worm monster, and Slappy himself weren't that bad.

sometimes i am so reminded that this series is comprised of narm charm. i am laughin but SO endeared how am i supposed to make serious analyses in these conditions. how is this game so visually pretty and so earnest but SO silly. the charm, man

Favorite narm charm of special effects before realistic CGI go!

Buffy monsters get their own special category what the fuck

You know it’s funny people are calling the writing in forsaken “cringe” when really, in my opinion it’s the exact opposite. it’s not that forsaken is cringe, it’s that it’s trying so hard to be not cringe it’s become cringe inducing. It’s a style of writing I call “anti-cringe” or “anti-narm” Narm is a term I'm borrowing from TV tropes, and it’s basically whenever a scene is so over the top, unrealistic, unintentionally goofy, that it takes the view out of the experience. It’s basically where a scenario becomes so unrealistic it brakes suspension of disbelief and becomes comical. And I’m convinced somewhere somehow avoiding harm suddenly became the mandate of every pice of fiction targeted at an audience over 15. One of the most famous sources of narm, especially in the early 90′s and 00′s when everything was going edgy, was tonal dissonance. Most famously when things that were ridiculous were treated with absolute seriousness and played completely straight. Now if your gonna avoid harm their are only 2 real ways to do it, 1) their is nothing ridiculous in your work, the setting is either entirely realistic or the fanatical elements are limited in scope and made to be as in line with our real world as possible 2) Lampshade EVERY fantastical eminent calling out had unrealistic and weird it is so that your characters and audience will never feel disconnected, and only have your characters treat the grounded elements (death, metaphors, romance, ect) seriously. And when looked at through this lens suddenly forsaken, and the breath of MCU movies that are stuffed to the gills with jokes and meta humor make so much sense. High fantasy and Super-heros are two things that just can’t be fully grounded. They are inherently fantastical and at times ridiculous concepts. (Flying beast Roma the skies while cosmic forces middle behind the scenes in complex and over convoluted planes that must be solved by a single midget and his jewelry, men in spandex decide the fate of the world by shaming into yachter.) So instead everything must be lampshade, all the characters must feel as skeptical and unbelieving of the fantastical as any one consumer might be. Here’s the when focus on avoid narm in a fantastical setting not only do you wind up writing characters who seem uninvited, uninterested, and disbelieving of their own world, you lose narm charm. This is where scene is unrealistic or kind silly, but you, don’y care. You’r so bought into the world and story and the myths it’s built that no matter how ridiculous it is you on the edge of your seat.

You can’t get that if you're constantly making jokes at your own expense, how is the audience supposed to buy into this world if the character themselves don’t.

dick from a girl with narm charm

have you ever played Sonic Heroes? because I have TONS of fond memories of playing that game and reading through the character bios in the manual as a kid, it’s so fun🥺🥺

(also I never actually beat the game, good versus evil games kinda freak me out, but it was so fun!!!)

i had the pc port but never beat it! i was a little kid with poor motor skills at the time so i think the furthest i ever got was bingo highway with team sonic but i had fun. i think i still have the disc lying around somewhere, now that i have better hand eye coordination and an actual controller it might be worth trying to wrestle a disc image onto my laptop and actually beat it start to finish

It may surprise some, but a lot of people enjoyed the Fifth and Sixth Inspector eras,

even when the episodes generally sucked.

Vintergatan 5b Avsnitt 16 (1/3)

keeping up my vintergatan spam, there is apperntly an entire plotline about glen time travelling to the nordic iron age in one of the seasons of vintergatan :O !

Me, wandering befuddledly back into The Librarians fandom...

... Has anyone ever done that ‘I will protect it ... I want to see it grow up safe and healthy’ thing for Ezekiel? bc that honestly just sums up the whole of my feelings for him.

AHS look-back: Smoldering Children

We are getting closer to the end!

As usual - SPOILERS AHEAD, and I’ll take notes as I rewatch the episode, so follow along!

# Notes for my future studies of the chronology: Tate was six in 1983, when his father “left”. 

# I’m sorry but Tate’s lines to the exterminator always felt “narm” to me X) I could never take them seriously. Oh yes another logic gap in this season: if the exterminator dies here, then isn’t his vehicle left abandonned nearby? Isn’t anybody going to notice he is missing? 

# However Travis ghost is the right level of narm - the “narm charm”. it is sweet, funny, borderline ridiculous, but it works because it is also very emotional and touching in-universe

# Lorraine is an interesting character in that she offers a contrast to Constance - whereas Constance unleashes more of her fury and negativity on Moira, Lorraine refuses to acknowledge Constance as the source of the problem or the one that needs to be punished - rather considering Larry the most guilty party. 

# Trivia from the wiki: in Tate’s bedroom you can see a copy of “Evening in Byzantium”, by Irwin Shaw - not only dealing with an alienated poet commenting on the chaos and tumult of the world around him (paralleling Tate’s life) but also having a character called “Constance” (here a woman trying to become the protagonist’s lover). 

# In his interview for Entertainment Weekly concerning this episode, Ryan Murphy explained that while he knew that Violet had died after taking the pill he actually left the writers in the vague about it, only revealing the truth two episodes later. He also commented, in his “preview” for Birth, that he regretted not having the Chad/Constance confrontation earlier in the season because of all the characters Chad is probably the only one that can really go against Constance.

# Ryan Murphy also had this to say about Tate’s reasons for becoming a mass murderer:

So is Tate’s reason for the school shooting mostly Beau’s death and his hatred for his mother?

Yes. Well, I think it’s more than that. I don’t think his motivations were as sinister and dark and f***ed up as Dylan Klebold for example. I do think Tate was probably someone who was bullied and made fun of. What he has done in many ways, all of it is in retaliation of Constance. She had several children and he was “the most beautiful” and she had such high expectations and needs and wants and probably wanted him to fill some of her own dreams and ambitions and he was just not gonna have it. We show him doing a lot of crystal meth. That’s what he’s doing, coke and crystal meth, before the shooting. I think his massacre became even worse because of the drug taking.

Just wanted to weigh in (belatedly) on your DA2 pt and say I started in the same boat. Played immediately after DA:O (like, 3 days?) and felt like it was trying too hard to be what O had achieved. Not as funny or compelling. But, like everyone else has said- it really is more relationship driven, and if you try to appreciate it as Origins, it really does feel lacking, doesn’t it? Love everything you’re sharing to this point on character analysis and broader POV on familial expectation 1/?

Oh, and also, my first pt I completely skipped Fenris, too. I was aiming to get enough gold to go on the expedition and by the time his quest came around I was like, “Nah, I’m good. I don’t need to go do this umpteenth side job.” See ya! And thus had a gap in my loading party screen the whole game XDDDD. Feel free to take a phone pic of your Hawke and share it with us if you’d like :D Also you should definitely consider doing some DA2 art :D

Thank you! I’m so glad you’re liking the rambling. It’s been an interesting experiment.

Oh, you too had the Mysterious Gap? *laugh* I did a lot of squinting and head-tilting my first playthrough, wondering if it was just my imagination or weird design.

I would definitely say that trying to make it fit my image of Origins meant it was doomed for me. It has its own charms, narrative and mechanics-wise. I will always be fond of it for introducing melee-mages as a thing.

One of the things I really enjoy in DA2 that isn’t explored nearly as much in Origins or Inquisition is how the companions in DA2 have been through A Lot, and the narrative is often quite unflinching about that. Trauma isn’t just portrayed as an angsty backstory you can infodump about and then go back to laughing with friends. Sure, they go for drinks and they make roots and they’re all badasses and a lot of them have a great sense of humour, but... they’re all bitter, and most importantly, they’re all allowed to be, which is not something I see in this genre much. (I need to make a separate post about that sometime.) They’re... difficult, at times, and obviously in pain, and not condemned for that.

I’d also forgotten how much I loved Anders - I really do, and this is going to hurt, and I’m still angry about how fandom treated Jennifer Hepler. I like healers and hurting, sarcastic characters (who knew?). And blonds. *cough* Do I think some of the mental illness metaphor is a tad heavyhanded and tasteless? Oh, fuck yes, that’s never been something I was comfortable with. Do I like him as a character? Yes.

Oh, also Fenris is not the way I thought he’d be at all, and he’s a lot more fun than I expected. I didn’t expect to like him, but I wanted to keep an open mind, and I’m warming fast. (And Emery’s voicing decisions with him are not what I expected, either. I really like that the guy who’s usually hired as muscle and spent years as a bodyguard has fancy enunciation, clearly got sick of hiding his intelligence when he was captive and refuses to do it anymore, and chooses his words so carefully. And then comes out with some of the most ridiculous jokes, even moreso than Anders - still utterly deadpan. “Smell the oppression,” dear god, man. Also that his voice is about six foot four and he’s about five-ten.) 

Also, finally getting to high approval with Isabela and Fenris and taking them around has been delightful. I absolutely understand why some people find their banters uncomfortable, and I might yet run into something that changes my mind - Isabela is unrepentantly pervy about some of the most inappropriate things - but it’s shown that she’ll back off if she’s asked to - see Varric’s objectification banter - and he seems to find her lack of pity refreshing and enjoyable. I love how she can almost always make him laugh, and how much they genuinely seem to enjoy each other’s company. Neither of them wants to be pitied for the pain in their pasts, and they both value freedom in very different ways. She’s also one of the few companions who he actually reaches out to, when he gets prickly. When they’re talking about the issue of mage freedom, she says, quite earnestly, “Let’s not fight,” and it’s him who makes a tentative quip about her guessing the colour of his underwear again and lets her change the subject. It’s an unusual, weirdly sweet moment. Despite making some decisions that may be selfish, Isabela is one of the most matter-of-factly kind, conciliatory companions in DA2, and that is an unexpected delight. And he’s one of the few companions who pays that back in spades (other than Varric and sometimes Anders).

On the other hand, I don’t miss the grimdarkness. You’re right, DA2 is less funny than DAO - and that’s because it’s less often allowed to be. They definitely had a tone they were going for, and sometimes that falls into Narm Charm with just how grim it is. Sometimes it feels like companions’ anger with each other is a tad arbitrary and inserted for the sake of Conflict(TM). And also, while I know for a fact he can do serious, stoic writing very well, there’s something tragic about having David Gaider in your team and not letting him go full-snark with his characters, even if he was head writer and I’m sure that was his tonal choice. I miss the “snarky and sometimes prickly but so often compassionate and rarely intentionally cruel unless you poke ’em” feel he brings that’s one of my favourite things about Dragon Age (Zevran, Alistair, Cassandra, Dorian). Sheryl Chee is pretty great at that, too. Inquisition, I felt, got the balance about perfect, and was noticeably lighter and sweeter than Origins or, especially, 2. 

And I would rather not have more quests with murdered women as a background narrative event. (At least in The Witcher, which is not immune to this, it became a full-on investigation and examination of the tropes rather than just a mood-setter that would be something to beat the protag round the head with later.) 

It was a great delight to me when I was wandering round the Deep Roads, ominous music and all, and got the Varric and Fenris, “What do you do in that big mansion all day?” / “I dance” banter. Because God, I needed that. (One of my favourite moments in Origins was exploring the seemingly endless, dark Deep Roads, and getting into a chat with Leliana about silk shoes by accident. That was when it truly felt like she and my Warden were friends.) I feel like Inquisition has a better balance that way; it has so many wonderful, absolutely brutal moments (I still find the “sometimes love isn’t enough” banter bloody hard to listen to), and so many wonderful palate-cleansers (arse-arrows).

This is actually one of the few games my mid-good PC can run! Pre-2013 there’s a half-decent chance. I doubt I could run Inquisition well. So here’s some Guin:

Kirkwall: A Summary.

And yes, I may... already be doodling. *cough*

So watching Endgame, one of the only serious issues I had with the film is the fact that for all she was hyped up as some serious part of the way to fight Thanos, to the point she was front and center in advertising and got her own Happy Meal toy and everything, Captain Marvel doesn’t do all that much, and in fact, every single thing she does could have easily been done by another character.

Tony and Nebula need rescuing? Kraglin’s out in space, have him save them and get him integrated into the plot - it makes him appearing and delivering the godsend needed to beat Thanos that is Howard the Duck WITH A GUN more sensical. Thanos’ ship getting blown up? There’s like literally every single hero ever on that battlefield, pretty sure one of them could handle that, not to mention her blowing up a ship is incredibly boring as it is what we just saw her do in the disappointing climax of her own film. Someone needs to get the Gauntlet from Spidey to Tony? Watch Nando v Movie’s video on how it could have been done way better and in a way that turns the narm charm of the girl power scene into honest-to-god awesomeness. The long and short of it is: LET NEBULA HAVE THE MOMENT SHE DESERVES.

For most of this three hour film, Carol sits out by being off in space helping other planets. Frankly, this all makes the stinger of Infinity War incredibly unsatisfying, and it makes the stinger of Carol’s own movie unsatifying. Now, I don’t think her movie is a groundbreaking masterpiece or anything - it’s a solid film that struggles to stand out in a crowd but features a lot of good ideas, good chemistry bewtween Larson and Jackson, and a greaat character in Talos - but it really did build up Carol as being important to the mythology of the franchise. This movie... just doesn’t deliver.

And on that note, Carol’s own film portrayed her as a much nicer person. In Endgame, she is a lot cockier, arrogant, and even kind of a jerk. While she was a bit no-nonsense in Captaian Marvel, I never got the sense she was mean, or rude, or arrogant, and she had really great chemistry with about everyone she met with. Here, though? She seems really cold, distant, and rude. She doesn’t even introduce herself to Spider-Man! Literally the sweetest boy in the franchise and she doesn’t even tell him her name after he introduces himself! And the fact there is a huge universe-threatening battle going on is no excuse because Steve, one of the faces of the Infinity Saga, introduced himself to Groot in the previous film during a similarly huge battle.

And I think therein lies the biggest issue: Carol is supposed to be the face of the post-Infinity Saga MCU. I’m fine with this. Like I said, I liked her in her own movie, Brie Larson is a good actor, and I think with more time she could really excel in the franchise. The issue is she feels really shoehorned in to the Infinity Saga, a last-minute addition to a plot that was fine without her. I’ve seen some people say they would have rather had Adam Warlock to be more in line with the comics, but that would have been pretty bad too. I like how the films are not beholden to the comics, how they draw inspiration without showing me the same things I’ve already read. And Warlock actually falls into the same problem Carol has: there is absolutely no stakes beyond “oh wow look I’m a strong space dude, gonna fight Thanos.”

That’s my biggest issue with Carol’s role: she has absolutely no stake in this beyond Fury getting dusted. Every other hero in this story is one we have spent multiple movies getting to know, getting to care about, and this is why when they lose at the end of Infinity War and when some of them die, we care, we feel for them, we want to see them kick Thanos’ ass. Carol has had one okay film. She has not interacted with Thanos whatsoever. And the only people she could conceivably care about, we have no idea of their fates. Monica? Talos? The other Skrulls? We don’t hear anything about them when she shows up. What is her motivation beyond just being Space Superman? I just don’t understand her role when there is no clear reason. I suppose you could argue doing good for the sake of doing good or just being a hero, but this is a fictional narrative, not real life. When you throw a character into a narrative in a role that is supposed to be important, there needs to be a reason. You don’t just toss in super powerful characters willy-nilly and then do nothing with them. Again, would have had the same problem if they threw in a guy who hasn’t been properly introduced solely for the sake of fanservice and slavery to a comic, but bungling is bungling no matter what.

 Frankly, they should have held off on introducing her until Phase 4, where she could properly shine as the star that we need now that Tony and Steve are out of the picture. As it stands, though, she honestly feels really underwhelming and almost like a deus ex machina that never even fires off. I’m confident this will change in the future, but really, she should have debuted later. 

I think a lot of the blame can be placed on the heaad of Ike Perlmutter, the racist, sexist jackass who used to oversee Feige and the films and who flat out said women and black people could never draw in audiences like straight white male heroes, and who really wanted an Inhumans movie. Perlmutter is the reason for a lot of the messiness in the early MCU, and him getting booted over to the TV department is whaat led to the more creator-driven films from the likes of Gunn, Waititi, and the Russos. He’s the reason Terrence Howard, Natalie Portman, and Joss Whedon all left the MCU, due to all his meddling, and whether you agree those people should have been there or not, I don’t think it’s a good look to defend the tyrannical bigoted meddling of a guy who has no comprehension of what audiences want. The point I’m getting at is: Captain Marvel is a character who feels like she should have debuted in Phase 1, and because of this they hastily slapped her into the story to right the wrongs of the past. It just ended up being messier than intended.

Still, this is a minor issue. Endgame is still my favorite movie, a film I admire greatly, a film that does a great job at wrapping up and paying tribute to the first ten years of the MCU and all the characters we’ve come to love in it. I look forward to what they do in the future, and I pray they can make Captain Marvel as badass and important as I know she can be.