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nobodysdaydreams · 6 months

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Hatchetverse Theory: The Parallels Between Paul (TGWDLM) and Grace (NPMD):

More thoughts and parallel screenshots under the keep reading, part of my #hatchetverse theory posts. Sorry these are all awful screen shots, I'm bad at gifs, but I hope I made my point.

The screenshots are pretty self-explanatory, but the parallels between Paul and Grace, especially with what happens to their characters at the end of their respective musicals, has been living in my head rent free, and I want to talk about it.

I've seen a lot of posts that speculate that the reason Grace went crazy at the end of NPMD is because she's just that blood thirsty and willing to kill, and while her character (at least of what I've seen of her in NPMD and what I've seen of nightmare time) is certainly intense, I wouldn't quite go so far to say she's always been that willing to hurt others, even for what she believes.

In fact, after rewatching NPMD, I realized something. When the kids first go to the Waylon Place, the others are the ones suggesting ways they can violently hurt Max. Pete even calls Grace's plan "goofy" and Richie is the one who suggests beating Max up. Grace is the one who tells them that all she wants to do is teach him a lesson and scare him and rejects their more violent ideas.

But after Max dies? That's when Grace's intensity starts taking a darker turn, and it's not as noticeable as it might be in the other kids because "Grace has always been kinda weird and intense" and the show has been playing that up for laughs since the beginning. But when you look at what happens to Grace in terms of her character's choices, she's the one who suddenly pulls a "bury the bully" plan out of nowhere when she was against even beating him up just a few hours ago. She's the one who suggests lying to the cops and trying to cover up what happened. She's the one who has a prophetic nightmare after the incident at the Waylon Place. That's also the moment when she symbolically loses her WWJD bracelet (though others have already pointed that out).

And if the LIB could infect Paul with spores just because he happened to be in close proximity to the meteor, then they could probably do something similar to any of the kids in the Waylon Place (and you cannot convince me that they were not the ones who collapsed the floorboards in the Waylon Place and killed Max).

But why would they target Grace you ask? Why not one of the other kids? That's a good question. I have a few theories.

The first has to do with what I mentioned before about hatchetverse's history of Webby's powers seeming to favor kids, and the LIB powers struggling to work on kids. We don't know how old most of the kids in NPMD are exactly, but the musical makes a point to tell us several times that Grace is "only 18" (Shaprio says she's a legal adult and will be tried as an adult in court). The musical also makes a point to have this be the Homecoming Dance (not Prom), which is in the fall, so most of the senior students wouldn't have turned 18 yet. We can also make an educated guess that Stephanie has turned 18 and Pete hasn't because she sings "wake me up when you turn 18" during their song. You could combat this by asking why the LIB never address Grace during the summoning and targeted Steph instead, which is a fair point. But interestingly, if you watch Grace, Steph, and Pete during the Summoning, Grace is silent most of the song, but looks completely horrified (especially when they tell her that they want what she cherishes most), despite the fact that from our perspective, the LIB aren't talking to her. She also seems to know exactly what the LIB want from her, because the next scene she's in is when she shows up to save Steph and Pete. During the Summoning, Pete, on the other hand, seems to mostly be involved in the conversation the LIB are having with Stephanie, although Grace also seems to understand what the LIB want from Stephanie. It's possible that this was intentional on the LIB's part, since they can see every timeline (in the "Abstinence Camp" episode of Nightmare Time, Grace gets between Steph, Pete, and Lumberaxe, risking her own life so that Lumberaxe doesn't hurt them. Grace might be willing to lose her own life for what she believes, but she might not be willing to lose her friends' lives. If the LIB know this, they'd likely want to make sure Grace understands that Steph or Pete will die unless she's the one who pays the price).

They have a personal reason for wanting her. In TGWDLM, Pokey hates Paul because...well, Paul doesn't like musicals but bigger picture, Paul resists Pokey's hive mind. Why would the LIB hate Grace? Possibly because she hates evil, the devil, and sin to an extreme degree. It could be a point of pride for the LIB: "we got the guy who didn't like musicals to join our musical and brainwash the world, and we got the girl who didn't like sin to devour souls for us." I've also seen a theory that Paul has some sort of resistance to the LIB because he doesn't like musicals and in a way sort of serves as a "prophet" in TGWDLM by warning others that musicals are bad. Grace arguably serves a similar role to Max in NPMD. She suggests Max becomes a better person "before he ends up in hell", which is ironic because then Max goes on to beat up Pete, which turns the nerds against him, setting off the chain of events that eventually lead him to actually being sent to hell (the black) by Grace. I've also seen some other theories suggesting that the LIB getting Paul in TGWDLM was really about getting Emma (since she was the one who starred in a musical before), and following that logic, it's possible that the LIB killing Max at the Waylon Place was really about getting Grace, because she'd still actually be alive. The LIB might have known this would work if they knew Max and Grace liked each other, and as seen in nightmare time, Grace is willing to risk her own life for her friends, and this might be consistent across several timelines.

Speaking of sacrifice, I know I covered this with the gifs, but the fact that Paul's last act was giving up his life, and Grace's was giving up what was essentially her morality and who she was so they could save their friends, only to have themselves turned into the very monsters they tried to destroy? Absolute tragedy.

But what's also interesting to me is how this happens. The way Grace and Paul both seem to lose control of themselves. With Paul it happens in one song and is more noticeable, but with Grace, it's a lot slower, and the more bad and morally questionable stuff she does, the funnier it is, and her character has been intense and over the top from the beginning, so you almost don't notice the difference in her actions until you rewatch the show. But her and Paul asking "Who am I?" has a similar creepy vibe, the screenshots I found for those moments (pictured below) even ended up looking very similar, though with Paul, you can see more of the fight happening during the song, whereas with Grace, it's more drawn out over the course of the show with these little moments of clarity where she has a complete breakdown.

Then of course there's the whole: What do you want thing?

Why do the LIB want what Grace cherishes most? Why do they want Paul to want anything at all?

And why do they phrase it in the creepiest way possible, asking for "a peek at Paul's soul" and telling him to "give up his choice" and telling Grace that they'll get "whatever they want" and that she'll "be forever in their debt?"

Well, probably because that does seem to be what happens. The most obvious screenshot parallels are probably their final numbers in their shows, which I think speak for themselves. The only unknown is what exactly is happening with the LIB and their whole "what do you want" thing. By taking what someone wants, do they replace that "want" in the person with wanting to serve them? How does that work?

At this point, I'm not sure, and I'm too tired to continue the rant, but I'd be happy to hear anyone else's thoughts on this.

I hope you enjoy Starkid fandom. Thank you for listening to my rants!

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kotamagic · 5 months

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Lore Olympus this week is whole lot of OOOOHHHH FFFFFUUUUUCCCCCKKKK!!!!!

No sooner has Apollo taken over than he starts cleaning out the dissenters, starting with Eros and Psyche. You know, like a real-world dictator!

Medical gods so corrupt? Why does the American Healthcare system come to mind? Oh yeah.... insurance.

Thank you, Eros, for pointing out the blatant repeat of history.

Oh, and just in case E&P won't be silenced...

...Apollo's got his Mom as his backup with his bullshit.

What pisses me off more is that Leto actually believes her son's bullshit. Like, I get that Zeus & Hera both shafted her when she was pregnant with Apollo and Artemis, but I'd like to believe that SOMETHING had to come off as odd to her about her son. However, given that I don't think she knows Apollo SA'd Persephone, there might be a lot more that Leto doesn't know (and should) about her son's deeds.

And Apollo doesn't stop at just Eros & Psyche. He signed the note as Hebe intentionally to get her out of the way without having to jail her. Ugh!

While Apollo is cleaning out the palace, Persephone is having a serious crisis --- Everything is turning to winter.

From some of her thoughts, snow and winter were a legend of the past, but that it hasn't happened in who knows how long. I wonder if autumn was just an extra long season until Persephone ate the pomegranate.

Needless to say, Demeter is furious that her daughter's very purpose is just flat-out gone. Naturally, she blames Hades, and for once, she's probably not wrong.

[IN B4 YES, PERSEPHONE ATE THE POMEGRANATE OF HER OWN FREE WILL.]

Could we blame Apollo's machinations for this? Possibly. It could be something related to the prophesy, but I don't think this is the case. In terms of Rachel's method of storytelling, there could be a deeper connection to the prophesy of Apollo's takeover.

I think Persephone causing winter instead of spring here was more a part of what she gave up when she ate the pomegranate. If my theory of there being an extra-long autumn is the case, then the pomegranate deal meant that winter happened instead. Persephone had to spend a whole half of the year in the Underworld instead of just 3/4 of it. That would likely put things more in line with not only the real world, but with the original myth as well.

I was going to put this bit in my own words, but Rachel just came right out and said it, so I don't have to.

I know that I and other LO fans have made guesses and speculations that turned out to be incorrect before. It happens. I know I've guessed wrong before. I think in this instance, Rachel didn't want an incorrect assumption to be made right out of the gate and nipped it in the bud immediately.

Anyway, thanks for coming to my LO post!

#lore olympus #lo apollo #lo eros #lo psyche #lo leto #lo persephone #lo hades #lo demeter #LO HOSTILE TAKEOVER

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a-student-out-of-time · 7 months

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The Eternal Endings Cast and History: The Down-Timers

//Hey everyone, Mod Bubbles here! I bring you some more of My Thoughts.

//Having gone through Danganronpa: Eternal Endings with my friend Timeline Anon, I can say it's one of the most unique and interesting fangans we've seen thus far. We had no idea how it would work, but somehow it really seems like it can.

//One thing that really piques my interest isn't just that the cast is in the afterlife, but the fact that all of them come from very different points in history. That's something I think is worth speculating on, especially with how it may play into their characters, both in terms of their places in history and the context from where they're from.

//There have always been small historical tidbits in DR, both canon and fangan, but Eternal Endings is the first one I've seen that specifically has real-world events playing a role here. Our protagonist, Krystal Willard, died in 2021, specifically referencing how the travel restrictions imposed during the height of the Pandemic were being lifted.

//This game specifically doesn't take place in the same timeline as the Hope's Peak saga, since the founder of the talent program is another figure altogether, but I thought it would be interesting to examine the eras each of them are from.

//As a bit of shorthand, I also decided to borrow some terminology from Eric Flint's Ring of Fire series (a great book series btw), where people from the past are referred to as "Down-Timers" and people from the present/future are "Up-Timers."

//This also just gives me a chance to talk about history, which I enjoy doing : P

//So, without further ado, let's get into it.

THE DOWN-TIMERS:

Zhao Ying (1903-1932)

Hailing from the furthest back in time is Zhao, a personal favorite of mine, who was the Ultimate Singer. Just from that time frame, she would've been around for the end of the Qing Dynasty, the Warlord Era, the rise of the Nationalist Government and the very early stages of the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II. Just days before her death- on February 18th 1932- the Imperial Japanese conquered Manchuria and established the puppet state of Manchukuo.

There's also a bit of an anachronism with the PRC's flag being there, given that the design wasn't adopted until 1949, but that's probably for the benefit of a modern audience.

Anyway, Zhao is an entertainer and doesn't really make a lot of commentary on these conflicts. She's a singer, a dancer, and an actress, and had an upcoming role before her death. This is very interesting because the 1920s and 30s represented the emergence of cinema in China. The Burning of the Red Lotus Temple, a 16-part box office hit, was released between 1928-1931 and represents one of the first martial arts action films, but has sadly been lost to time.

Zhao was more than likely a silent film star, although 1931 brought the first Chinese sound film, Sing-Song Girl Red Peony, so it's possible her voice has been recorded as well. If I had to guess, Zhao probably lived around Shanghai, given that it was the center of the Chinese entertainment industry in this era.

One of the most overlooked aspects of Chinese history is that, while China itself was never colonized, it was forced to make Concessions to outside powers. These were pieces of territory in major cities like Shanghai, which were effectively enclaves of foreign territory that were exempt from Chinese law and provided a foothold for European Empires, America, and even Japan to exert influence and trade.

A byproduct of this is that many gangs and secret societies were allowed to operate with impunity in the Concessions, which resulted in prostitution, drug dealing and gambling being quite common. This probably explains why Zhao isn't a fan.

However, the saddest thing about the losses in Zhao's life? She was a mother.

Given that the photo says 1932, this had to be around January or Early February, meaning Zhao's boy, Wang Wei, couldn't have been more than 2 or 3. In-story, she's in tears over leaving her son behind and wonders if he'll even remember her.

Not to make the hurt worse, but given that Shanghai would be occupied by the Japanese Empire from 1937-1945...well, I'm going to hope that the poor kid and the rest of her family made it out.

Earnest Mikkola (1910-1945)

Speaking of World War II, Earnest would've been around for it and its prequel. Essentially the Indiana Jones figure of this setting, Earnest was a worldwide reputation as an explorer, having discovered new animals, plants and even civilizations. His expeditions took him quite a ways around the world, but it's his death that catches my attention.

See, Earnest is Finnish. I've seen some people worried that this means he was one the side of the Axis during the war, but this is a misunderstanding. See, just months after the Invasion of Poland, Finland was on the receiving end of an ultimatum from Stalin. Because he felt the border was too close to Leningrad (today St. Petersburg), he demanded Finland hand over some land to provide a buffer zone or else. The Finns said no, obviously, and thus began the Winter War.

To put it simply, while the Soviets ultimately got what they wanted, the Finns gave them a pretty bloody nose in the process. In just three and a half months, the Soviets suffered over five times as many casualties as the Finns and their international reputation suffered worse.

The conflict was also ultimately pointless, as Finland- while it didn't side with Germany- formed what was an alliance of convenience. When Operation Barbarossa took place, the Finns actually occupied much of the Karelia peninsula, even more than they had before. This lasted until 1944.

That's when Finland pulled an Uno reverse card and sided against Germany, starting the Lapland War, where the Finnish military tried to push all Axis forces out of their borders, and this lasted until April 1945, just a month before victory in Europe was declared.

How does this relate to Earnest? I guess it depends on where he was during the Lapland War, whether he was at home or elsewhere in the world, and whose side he was ultimately in favor of. Could that be why he was poisoned? It remains to be seen.

Yun Jung-Hoon (1936-1952)

Continuing with the war trend, here we have the first one to ask a historical question: local fly boy Yun. Even just from the patch on his shoulder, I could tell what his deal probably was before Krystal even spoke with him.

Sure enough, Yun here was a pilot in the Korean War. For those who don't know, Korea- which had been occupied by Japan since 1910- was divided along the 38th parallel North after World War II. The Soviets occupied by the north and established a communist government, led by Kim Il-Sung, while the Americans occupied the south and established a non-communist government lead by Syngman Rhee.

If you're only familiar with the North/South divide in the modern day, this is where it began. In the Spring of 1950, Kim lead an invasion to unify the country under communist rule, and because the South was militarily weak at the time, he thought it would be easy and conquered all the way down to an area called the Pusan Perimeter. Of course, America and a United Nations coalition force arrived to push them out.

They managed to push their way up to the northern border, where it seemed possible to conquer the North...only for the newly-established People's Republic of China to send hundreds of thousands of troops to support the North. They pushed the front lines south, where it stagnated around the 38th parallel for the next three years.

Based on his death date, if he died in battle, I'm guessing it was either in the First Battle of Hook or The Battle of Triangle Hill.

Yun also asks Krystal about the outcome of the war, but he decides he doesn't want to know and instead says he needs time to mentally prepare himself. I can't say I blame him, given that the war he died in was ultimately just a stalemate and technically never really ended.

Oumar Dembélé (1939-1969)

Another personal favorite of mine, Oumar is hilariously melodramatic, but also quite empathetic and emotionally-conscious dude. He's a relationship counselor and a published author, which is very interesting.

Oumar is Malian, and with that time frame, he would've been born when the country was under French colonial rule. At the time, Mali was called "French Sudan" and was ruled as part of French West Africa, a federation of eight colonies in the region. Mali and Senegal both achieved independence as the Federation of Mali on June 20th, 1960, although their status as a federation only lasted two months.

Even under French rule, there was a considerable divide between Northerners, particularly the Tuareg people, and Southerners. Under independence, the country's first president, Modibo Keïta, moved quickly to establish a single-party state, nationalized a great deal of services, and withdrew from the French Community in favor of closer ties to the Eastern Bloc, although economic problems lead to them rejoining the Franc Zone in 1967. He would later be deposed in a coup the following year.

This doesn't mean Oumar would've stayed in Mali, of course. In fact, I get the impression he probably moved to someplace like France to become as prominent as he had. This probably would've come in the wake of the Algiers War, when France saw many years of economic growth.

Oumar's death is also equally interesting and horrifying to consider, given that he was specifically crushed in a small venue.

This was a case of human crush injury. This is when a crowd of people is so tightly packed together (4–5 people per square meter/2.5 square feet per person), there's no room for them to move or even breathe.

The 1989 Hillsborough Disaster is a pretty infamous example of that, where 72,841 people compacted together in a stadium designed to hold just under 40,000. The result? 766 people were injured, 94 died and another 3 later died of injures they received. The crowd was so packed that even people who had died were still held up through the pressure.

Personal space is important.

Bonnie Clark (1959-1978)

And here's Bonnie, easily the saddest character in the game and I can't blame her at all. Out of all the Down-Timers, she's the one we actually learn the most about in her introduction. She has the vibes of an all-American girl, with a very fitting accent and everything.

She had a friend group that she frequently went to the arcade with, and she worked at a place called Don's Diner. How do we know? Krystal finds a picture.

"Now disgraced" in this context likely refers to Bonnie's untimely death. If any of you are familiar with the Terrible "Accident" PSA on workplace safety, you can probably imagine what happened. It's easily one of the most horrific ways to go, not gonna lie ^^;

Beyond that, there's not too much to really say with her in terms of historical context, given that she's a pretty archetypal small town girl, albeit much more pessimistic than many other examples. That could relate to how the 1970s were a difficult time for America, both economically and socially, due to factors like OPEC's oil embargo due to the Yom Kippur War.

That being said, it was still a time of significant social, scientific and technological progress, although for a teenager trying to make end's meet, that probably would've been a small comfort.

On a much lighter note, Bonnie got to enjoy some of the classic video games of the era: Pong, Space Invaders, Breakout, Death Race, Asteroids, Galaxian and many others.

Fernando Gomes (1958-1984)

And here we have our local himbo, Fernando. He's a pretty laid-back dude and his bio states that, while he's attained worldwide fame for his surfing skills, he prefers to stick around his home town and stay in the lifeguard job he's had since he was a teenager.

Even if you know history, it's almost easy to forget while talking to him that Fernando would've spent most of his life under a military dictatorship.

The Fifth Brazilian Republic, which was established after a coup on April 1st, 1964, was a brutally repressive government. Strong anti-communist policies, hard-line conservatism, political repression, mass censorship, curtailment of freedom of speech and the widespread killing, torturing and deporting of dissidents were all commonplace, particularly in the 70s.

So common, in fact, that the decade between 1968 and 1978 is also called the "Years of Lead."

Despite this, Brazil adopted a highly diversified and developmentalist economic model that helped boost their economy, and they developed the slogan "Brazil: Love it or Leave it." Fernando, ironically, seemed to adhere to that slogan given his love for his hometown.

Of course, Brazil would eventually return to democracy, but Fernando would fatally hit his head on a rock before he could see it happen.

Sonechka Morozova (1978-1996)

And another favorite of mine, Soneckha is our local magical weirdo, whose predictions of the future have been far more accurate than chance would suggest. She's also not disappointed that she's dead, but rather than she didn't end up as Queen of Hell like she wanted.

She's also very interesting in that, while she doesn't seem to play well with others, she'll respect you if you respect her in return, such as not giving her a nickname and understanding what a soothsayer is.

Timeline-wise, Sonechka would've been around for the latter days of the Soviet Union, the Chernobyl Disaster, the collapse of communist rule over Eastern Europe, the independence of the Russian Federation, the 1993 Constitutional Crisis and the First Chechen War.

It's not hard to see how, given that she has the ability to predict the future to a supernatural degree, she likely saw these events, and watching them play out probably shaped a lot about her personality and outlook.

My biggest question is how she wound up dying of hypothermia in the middle of the summer, as July is actually the warmest month in the country.

Petra Nightingale (1987-2006)

First introduced as "Scene Kid," Petra is definitely someone whose design would grab your attention. Her talent was a bit of a surprise to me, but her attitude, not to mention her sweet personality, really make her well-suited to caring for seniors.

Petra is English and would've been a 90's kid, so her time might've been spent with things like classic shows, crisp packets with prizes in them, Mr. Blobby and that time when the console wars were between Nintendo and Sega.

In terms of social and political history, the 90s saw the end of Margaret Thatcher's time as prime minister, the restoration of relations with Argentina after the Falkland War, the latter half of the Mad Cow Disease scandal and the Good Friday Agreement that brought an end to the Troubles.

Petra also mentions she's from Brighton, and during her childhood, she would've seen the city become much more prominent, which resulted in housing prices going up and a lot of people moving away. Would that have influenced her decision to start caring for seniors who couldn't afford to move.

I think the most interesting part to consider is that, as a senior caregiver, Petra has probably met a lot of veterans from Britain's various conflicts, from both World Wars to the various colonial conflicts to maybe even people who were in conflict with the IRA during the early days of the Troubles.

Not that I think it would've made Petra a judgemental person, as she seems very nice, but someone so young and very clearly quite lonely could have had her worldview shaped quite a bit by vets from these conflicts. I just think it's interesting to consider.

Vivian Wright (1966-2015)

Finally, the most recent Down-Timer and one from an era most of us are familiar with, Vivan was a Canadian teacher who was killed in a car accident. She's actually the first one Krystal meets after arriving, and we see that, while Viv is pretty nice, she also definitely has those anger issues.

I think most of us know what she would've been around to witness just before her death, but in terms of her adolescence, she would've been around for things such as Trudeaumania, civil rights for the First Nations, the many political tensions within Quebec and Terry Fox's famous attempt to run cross-country.

As the Ultimate Teacher, Viv probably has a lot to share on these topics, and I think it's interesting to consider how she could potentially be the one to help her fellow Down-Timers accommodate to the discoveries that came after their deaths. It's an interesting possibility.

//So there you go, some historical context for each of our Down-Timers, which I think could potentially play a role in their characters, arcs and motivations in the story. It's understandable that a lot of them probably have values that we today wouldn't agree with, but the same could be said of us and the Up-Timers, who deserve their own essay as well.

//This is also my way of saying "Go check out Eternal Endings, it's genuinely interesting and I want to see more!" : P

#mod talks #a student out of time #essay #danganronpa eternal endings #eternal endings #dree #Zhao Ying #Earnest Mikkola #Yun Jung-Hoon #Oumar Dembele #Bonnie Clark #Fernando Gomes #Sonechka Morozova #Petra Nightingale #Vivian Wright

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gulfportofficial · 2 months

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Is anyone interested in Pig Lore? Because I am just taking a break from writing about the pig and just sort of organizing my thoughts about the pig and I like to write things like that out.

First of all, while the little dude they keep seeing may be an island pig, it is absolutely not a "native" pig. Just like those tall skinny pines, called Cook Pines (of course they are) are not native pines. It's something a bit more sinister, actually, whether or not it's in any way mystical. And in fact, the fact that Hickey is seeing it in the forest is the major clue. That alone is an indication that the projection Hickey is making that our porcine friend is somehow like, welcoming him to the land like a Tuunbaq that likes him for REAL this time, is entirely erroneous. But let me explain.

So: from my reading, this is all debated, but what isn't is that Polynesian settlers brought pigs to the Hawai'ian islands, in best guess 400CE according to most sources. They were called Pua‘a (pigs still are), current thinking suggests that the relationship those pigs had with people and land was really different. According to this summary, they were domesticated as pets, and the tradition of hunting pigs, esp. in forests, did not really begin until our best friend Captain James Cook, of course, deposited English pigs on the islands and the two species immediately began interbreeding, leading to an increasingly destructive forest-based feral pig population that necessitated culling.

I was driven to write about this because there's a really similar history in Aotearoa (NZ), where I'm from. There, we also have Kunekune pigs, which were introduced by Polynesian settlers and who are also mostly kept as pets, and we also have hybrid feral pigs we call, wait for it, what fucking else: "Captain Cookers". Yeah. Lol. People hunt Captain Cookers recreationally but farmers also hunt them because in addition to ripping shit up in the general environment, they will also ravage crops and eat ANYTHING. Seriously, below is how they're depicted in Kiwi cultural mainstay Footrot Flats (Murray Ball) and below that is how they're described on a website about things in the world it's fun to kill if you're the sort of person who travels about doing that.

"A big boar Cooker easily weighs 440lbs, can be 6 feet long, and has razor sharp ivory tusks that can be as long as six inches. With excellent hearing and a keen sense of smell, the boar is a formidable foe and challenging quarry." (source) My point is, that little guy they keep seeing? Hmmmmmmm. HMMMMMMM. Whether or not the pig in fact means anything beyond the fact that our boy believes (or needs to believe) that he is blessed by destiny remains to be seen, but even if it does, it doesn't mean what he thinks it means. (ETA, and I can't believe it took me so long to make this horrible joke: I mean, he is blessed by destiny. Manifest Destiny.) Something which is VERY much related in this instance but that I'm barely equipped to discuss is the history of the term "long pig." I've had real trouble so far sourcing if this term was ever actually translated from something people really said, or if occupiers just sort of invented it out of stereotypes - you can see from this link that all the sources listed here are Colonial, and this is always the kind of thing you need to verify in Oceania, because there is just so much bullshit. (Like, very much relatedly, the term Pākehā, which is literally just the Te Reo Māori word for "white person" has been ruthlessly etymologized in ways that make it mean all manner of negative things, up to and including "pig", which in my childhood lead to constant lengthy speculation in our serious for real media about whether or not it ACTUALLY meant "long pig". These arguments were very much made by people looking for excuses not to use Te Reo, and especially by people who won't use Te Reo placenames or call themselves Pākehā ("I'm a New Zealander." Shut up, that's not better lol. You're Pākehā. I'm Pākehā. I promise you it's super fine.) But also you can easily see those interpretations have a really sinister undertone, so you see why I would be driven to verify.) However, I am familiar with examples such as Titokowaru's Taranaki campaign (against the British in Aotearoa), in which the embrace of older traditional practices, including ritualistic cannibalism, was deeply entwined with making exaggerated references to them in hopes of scaring the shit out of the British, so it's easy for me to believe it's something people did say. Either about said practices or with the direct intention of wanting invaders to go away. Suffice it to say, whether or not the term was generated from any actual translation, the way Pākehā and other Pacific whites talk about it often repeats a very specific Colonial fear, and one that follows that specific pattern of projecting the Colonizer's own worst onto the Colonized (Said; Fanon; Bhabha). Lest we forget the intellectual champions who survived the wreck of the Essex and were so afraid of South Seas cannibals that they sailed away from islands that could have saved them and out into the expanse of an ocean that had them eating each other. Franklin Expedition-ass motherfuckers. (Seriously, why is EVERY Colonial cannibalism story like this? There are so many practices of cannibalism throughout the expanse and history of the world, but Colonial whites are the only people who ever just go fucking feral on it. I'm still not over the Donner Party and how I was always told about them as brave pioneers beset by circumstance instead of what they actually were, which was woefully unequipped occupiers who didn't even share the remaining resources they had with each other before they started first price-gouging each other (like wtf?????? PRIORITIES) and then chomping each others' bones.) Well, I've got way off track here, but anyway. Having written that all out, maybe now I can finish this fucking chapter lmao. Important note: Like, this fanfiction is not that deep or anything, I'm no The Terror writer, I'm just here to have a good time while also being super autistic*, but like, just in case you were interested. Also here's another Footrot Flats pig. Shit's wild.

*Not a euphemism.

#nice gulfport #The Pig

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scruffyplayssonic · 3 months

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Are the ArchieSonic comics actually an 80's/90's syndicated cartoon? Episode 64-65: TwoMulti-part finale (part 3: Sonic #50 Director’s Cut)

Welcome back to my look at the ArchieSonic comic series, and how it shared a lot of the same story tropes as a typical ‘80s or ‘90s syndicated cartoon!

In my last two posts I looked at the Endgame arc, which had its big climax in issue #50 with the final battle between Sonic the Hedgehog and Dr. Robotnik. However the final version of this issue had been cut down from the creative team’s original vision for a 48 page comic, so lots of stuff was left on the cutting room floor. And so the following year, since the folks at Archie were already releasing the 48 page Sonic Super Specials four times a year, why not use one of those to show off the uncut version of Sonic #50 that they’d wanted to release? Since I already covered the story in my previous post, I’m mostly just going to be exploring the differences here between the original version and the director’s cut. So let’s take a look at what we got, shall we?

Alright, the first big difference we need to address is the cover. What the hell happened here? The original cover for issue #50 was perfect, so why did they feel the need to change it? In particular, why did they need to change it to this?! Young Charles and Jules being featured so prominently on this cover doesn’t feel necessary to me, as they were only in the story as part of a flashback/memory dream sequence. And my God, what is wrong with Robotnik’s face? He looks like he’s straining really, really hard to get out a crap that he’s been holding in for a week. Sorry Mr. Spaziante, but this is pure nightmare fuel.

The next big difference is the splash page, which was a feature of each issue of Endgame that I didn’t really cover. The original issue #50 splash page had a really cool gathering of many of the different freedom fighter groups from the history of ArchieSonic putting the smackdown on the bad guys, all drawn by Art Mawhinney.

Look at this! You’ve got the Freedom Fighters, the Chaotix, the Downunda Freedom Fighters, the Wolfpack, and even Sally’s Substitute Legion are there. Sally herself is not though, because she was still busy pretending to be dead. :P I’ve always enjoyed the Combot’s laser bouncing off various reflective surfaces - including the crystallised King Acorn, that was a nice touch - to ultimately set Antoine’s hair on fire. I kinda feel like he had that coming after accusing Sonic of treason. Twice.

The splash page in the director’s cut is a bit simpler, just using the cover art from the original issue #50 and introducing the reasoning behind the director’s cut.

For some reason it gives me vibes of George Lucas, talking about the special editions of the Star Wars trilogy. In fact now that I think about it, those movies were re-released the same year as this. This is pure speculation from me, but it’s not hard to come to the conclusion that the Star Wars special editions were what inspired the Sonic #50 director’s cut.

Okay, moving into the actual story now. A number of panels throughout the story had their dialogue slightly tweaked in the special edition, and the first instance of this is on the very first page.

In the original edition of the story, the Overlander hunting Robotnik called him, “Julian, son of Ivo,” rather than “Julian of the house of Ivo.” I guess the writers wanted to clarify that Ivo was a clan name rather than the given name of Daddy Kintobor. 😛

We then got a few pages of new content at the end of Robotnik’s memory dream, when his Swatbots woke him up to inform him that they had captured a test subject for his doomsday weapon. And not just any test subject - an Overlander!

This person even recognised Robotnik from the old days when he was known as Julian Kintobor - apparently his own people were completely unaware of his transition from fugitive scientist to global dictator. Robotnik gleefully fired the ultimate annihilator prototype at his captive, wiping him from existence.

But little did he know that Snively was monitoring him and vowing to have the last laugh.

Our next change came in the form of more additional dialogue when Drago caught Tails and Rotor trying to escape.

This one was easier to spot because the lettering looked a bit different than the rest of the page. This line where Drago threatened to deport Tails and Rotor to a prison settlement in Downunda (I thought it was only the British who did that :P) leads directly into the next few pages of new content showing Bunnie and Antoine’s escape, so it makes sense that it wasn’t in the original edition. No Downunda scene means no need for a reference to Downunda.

So yeah, next we got to see Bunnie and Antoine escaping from their prison cell, freeing the rest of the Downunda Freedom Fighters, and stowing away on the ore transport ship while Walt and his crew kept Crocbot and his army busy.

In a void this additional content would have been pretty cool, as Bunnie and Antoine had been dropped into the original version of issue #50 after they’d already arrived back in Robotropolis. But the thing was that if you were reading all the ArchieSonic comics in release order - like I was when I was picking these up back in 1997 - then we’d already seen this, and in more detail. Sonic Super Special #4 had featured a backup story called “Down and Out in Downunda,” which had involved Bunnie and Antoine sitting around a campfire, telling their friends about how they’d escaped the prison camp and gotten back for the big finale.

That special had been able to dedicate thirteen pages to Bunnie and Antoine’s campfire story, whereas in the issue #50 director’s cut we only got two pages showing their escape and one page showing what they got up to during their shuttle ride home. So by comparison the director’s cut ironically felt more rushed than the original version of this part of the story we had already seen.

Next we got some more additional dialogue in the scene where Sonic and the others are freeing the prisoners in Knothole.

Once again, this still doesn’t make it clear how Sonic knew that Drago was working with the Swatbots, and the best explanation I can come up with is that Sonic saw him from the air when he was parachuting down into Knothole.

The next update took the story back to Bunnie and Antoine aboard the transport ship, coming across Robotnik’s vlog discussing the Ultimate Annihilator and how his victory was assured.

Antoine and Bunnie agreed they needed to sabotage this weapon and targeted the transport’s Combot commander, who was carrying a bomb on him. Why did the commander have a bomb? Well if you’d read the Bunnie and Antoine story I mentioned from Super Special #4, you’d know that it was given to him by Crocbot, who had ordered him to blow up Robotnik and his Ultimate Annihilator so that Crocbot could take over Mobius instead.

But unfortunately they didn’t really have enough space to explain that here in the director’s cut. Like I said before, it feels cramped compared to the original version of this part of the story we had seen. One difference is that while the original story had an alarming zoom in on Robotnik’s evil smile during the vlog, the director’s cut dialed that up to 11.

So there’s that.

Our next update is two pages concentrating on Drago, while running away from Sonic, being confronted by Hershey.

Despite him currently running for his life he’s dumb enough to fall for her seductive act, at which point she flat out attempts to murder him! Honestly, I’m all for this. Drago is an absolute sleazebag and he definitely had this coming.

But if you thought it was ridiculous in the original cut of #50 that Drago could outrun Sonic, in this version he had enough time to get seduced, then beaten up, then narrowly avoid having his skull crushed with a boulder, then get up and try to run away again, at which point we returned to the part of the original version of the story where he was knocked unconscious with another rock to the back of his head.

Next there were a couple of dialogue additions, again noticeable because the lettering was slightly different.

Yeah, I'm still not entirely sure what's going on in that left panel.

After defeating Snively in the original version of the story, Sonic ran into Bunnie and Antoine - literally - and Sonic told them he was going to confront Robotnik to settle the score. In this version of the story that mostly also happened (Sonic said he was going to buy Antoine and Bunnie time rather than just wanting to punch Robotnik in the nose), but the original Sam Maxwell art was replaced with new art by someone else.

I can’t tell who though, because while the original version of the story had a handy credits box at the end of the issue showing who wrote and drew each page, the director’s cut doesn’t have that for some reason. The best we got is a list of the contributors on the splash page, but unfortunately it doesn’t specifically credit each page’s artist.

What we got instead is a couple of additional pages by this artist showing Antoine and Bunnie getting to the cannon just as it was preparing to fire, as well as Sonic reaching Robotnik just as he was about to activate the weapon but being too busy fighting Swatbots to stop him.

I think that this part is one of the better additions to the director’s cut - we actually get to see Knothole getting blasted by the Ultimate Annihilator rather than just Robotnik pushing a button and gloating about it. We also got to see Antoine and Bunnie planting the bomb and making a run for it before we moved into the big showdown between Sonic and Robotnik.

By the way, this bomb did absolutely nothing. Well, at least they tried.

This fight ended with an extra page from Patrick Spaziante, uncoloured, showing Sonic at Robotnik’s throat as they both faded out of reality. And this was followed by an additional page that was completely blank to to really emphasise how they’d both been wiped out before Sonic shwooped back into existence.

The final change we got to see in the director’s cut was after Sonic had found out that Sally was still alive and had gone to see her. Sally awakening from Sonic pecking her on the cheek was now followed up with a full page smooch. Aww!

My apologies to any outraged SonAmy fans. xD

Before I get into my analysis of the issue as a whole, I wanted to talk about the Ultimate Annihilator a bit. We didn’t really get to see it in action at all in the original version of Sonic #50, so I decided to save this until I got to the director’s cut. And frankly… I don’t understand how this thing works at all. As portrayed in the director’s cut, the Ultimate Annihilator is a massive cannon that fires a laser upwards to an orbiting satellite, which then redirects that laser back down onto the intended target. Okay, fine so far, that fits the bill for a typical supervillain’s doomsday weapon. But how does that fit with Dr. Quack’s description of how Snively sabotaged it?

So let me see if I have this right - you have to specify who you want to vaporise before you fire this thing at them? That’s a James Bond villain plan right there. And I mean that very literally - the most recent movie, No Time to Die, featured a weapon that was harmless to everyone except those whose DNA was targeted. Huh. Who would have thought that Sonic the Hedgehog would predict the plot of a James Bond movie 25 years in the future? That said, while you could potentially argue that it’s an effective weapon for targeted assassination, it seems a little overly complicated for a tyrannical dictator whose goal is genocide. I just can’t see Robotnik arming this weapon and saying, “Okay Ultimate Annihilator, I’m going to fire you at Knothole now, but make sure you only vaporise the people I’ve specified, okay? No one else!” For that matter, how does the targeting even work for this thing? Does it work on DNA samples, like in No Time to Die? After Robotnik invaded Knothole, did he go, “All right, all of you line up single file! I need to get DNA samples from each of you. …for totally non-evil reasons, I assure you”? If not DNA, then does it work based on individual species? I assume not, because then Snively would have targeted himself as well as Robotnik. Maybe you have to manually enter in the name of every target you want to wipe out? “Snively, get me the Knothole phone directory! Okay let’s see here… Alison the Aardvark… Andrew the Antelope… Antoine D’Coollette… Betty Butterfly- my GOD this is tedious. Snively, why did I design my doomsday weapon like this?!” Did he have to do this same input method for the Overlander he tested the prototype on? We didn’t see him do any kind of preparations like that, unless his Swatbots did it for him while he was still asleep.

One last thing - why did Snively spare Knothole? The only reason it ended up in a pocket dimension was because it wasn’t a target the Ultimate Annihilator was programmed to wipe out, due to Snively’s sabotage. But Robotnik had presumably already programmed whatever it took to target everyone in Knothole. Why not just add Robotnik’s name to the list of targets? I’d presume it would be additional work to remove everyone else that had already been entered, and they were all Snively’s enemies just as much as Robotnik’s. In fact, if Snively had let Knothole be destroyed then he wouldn’t have gotten captured just a few months later when the Freedom Fighters came to reclaim Robotropolis in the Brave New World super special.

And when he did get captured, you’d have thought he would have brought up the fact that he’d spared their miserable lives, either to try and bargain with them or at least gloat about how he was the only reason they were still alive. Maybe by that stage even Penders realised how dumb it was for Snively to have not let Knothole get wiped out and thought it would be best to not bring it up again. Unfortunately for him, Sonic fans have long memories. 😛

So is the director’s cut of this story better than the original? Well yes, although that Robotnik on the cover will haunt me for the rest of my days. Apart from the three pages of Bunnie and Antoine escaping and getting back to Robotropolis, which I feel doesn’t live up to the more fleshed out version of that story that was told in Super Special #4, almost everything else that was added was an improvement to the original story. The whole thing with Robotnik getting to capture a member of his own species was pretty interesting, and the additional pages we got of the final Sonic vs Robotnik fight were pretty awesome. That doesn’t mean that the story isn’t still full of plotholes, of course - far from it. It’s a very flawed story that makes no sense at all at times, but it’s far from the worst thing that ever appeared in ArchieSonic. If you put the original version of issue #50 side by side with the director’s cut and told me to read one, I’d pick the director’s cut every time.

Okay, I think I’m finally done talking about Endgame now, which is a bit of a relief after dedicating three blog posts to it. Next time I’ll be looking at Knuckles the Echidna issues #30 - 32, which ended up being the finale for that spinoff when the series was cancelled. RIP.

#archiesonic syndicated

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canmom · 1 year

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Hi! Question about the Baru Cormorant series for you! Any chance you could expand on Barhu finally discovering that the blood of Empire of gold? (Or do you do that in your analysis series? Maybe I missed it) It doesn't seem like a realization many other 'dystopic'-ish works address.

hiii! always glad to talk Baru, but I admit I'm a little confused about the question. guessing like, the blood of Empire is gold? implicit in the metaphor of bleeding Falcrest by siphoning its circulating wealth out through Baru's trading concern? but I think it's pretty likely I misunderstood you!

anyway I talked about Baru's grand plan in Butchering an Empire - that's where I went and learned about the history of John Law in France, which was a bold new financial scheme that collapsed on itself when it turned out that colonising Louisiana wasn't as immediately profitable as expected, and the British 'South Sea Bubble', which was an elaborate insider trading scam around slave trading. what I said there was that while those were both financial disasters for their host empires, and may have checked their ambitions to expand and even laid some seeds that affected the later French revolution, they clearly weren't fatal. when the financial system broke, the governments tore it up and made a new one, because the collective fiction of money was no longer serving their interests. call it a blood transfusion if you want.

but Baru aspires to more than that - not merely to pop a speculative bubble but to usurp the actual flow of goods so the Oriati Mbo can cut Falcrest out of the equation by force. in that case the analogy is like uhh... you're a vampire and you drain someone's blood before having a boxing match with them?? anyway would that work? maybe! then I go into a long aside about denazification and its limits as an analogy for what might happen afterwards, because destroying a financial system and political structure doesn't put an end to ideologies and social relations and such.

so I'm not sure how far that answers what you were asking about. i can take some guesses like circulatory system : body :: economy : empire. we could be more specific e.g. money is the universal equivalent which allows the capitalist optimisation process to quickly redirect its efforts, at least in theory. is the circulatory system analogous? it circulates oxygen and glucose, which we could liken to fungible raw materials like yards of linen (;p), and ig you could say like, when part of the body demands oxygen and glucose (a muscle in the leg when you're running), blood flow increases to match, so that's kind of a similar function: directing resources to where they are in demand. and by this analogy disrupting a financial system is like... an artery getting clogged, resulting in getting tired more easily. i can see it being a productive analogy as they go.

i actually don't know how the body directs blood flow too much. i assume something unconscious in the brain controls heart rate? but what about how capillaries open and close to help manage temperature, is that determined more locally? would be interesting to look up.

anyway, as i understand, part of the theme of book 4 is going to be deflating this whole idea of baru's that one sufficiently clever person can have such an outsized influence on historical events. but also it sounds like the redrafting process is pretty brutal even by seth's standards lol, so i don't really know where it's gonna go.

anyway, i agree that the economic angle of Baru and its ability to make that immediately engaging does a lot to help the setting of baru feel solid, and thus its model of colonialism in a bottle feel meaningful. it uses it to greater effect than for example the stories of Daniel Abraham that I've read, which use economics for flavour...

...but at the same time it's still a shell game, like all fantasy. I am certain that Seth didn't work things out in spreadsheets behind the scenes, because it's not about simulation, nor should it be. it's an exciting, dramatic story that dresses itself in the exciting parts of the history of economics. because it's a story about the worldview of someone indoctrinated to view the world in that light, as a huge deterministic machine, that she needs to solve.

no idea if that's a proper to your question, anon. lmk!

#baru cormorant #the tyrant baru cormorant

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dragonthunders01 · 1 year

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I guess it was matter of time until I had to do it, like with T. rex it seems is paleoart fate to draw once Otodus megalodon, the largest predatory shark on history, fragmentary as hell but still enough that it can be speculate the body shape being the source mostly based on recent 2D body reconstructions in Cooper et al. 2020 with some minor changes from different suggestions, overall sticking on the body proportions speculated for a high pelagic macropredator. To remark about the size of the specimen in my drawing is scaled to IRSNB P 9893, I'm quite cautious about the max size estimations even though corroborated by math is pretty much too speculative with the very poor known body material, the range of size is variable and the biggest often are the most fragmentary

#paleoart #miocene #megalodon #shark #megatooth #neogene

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sweaterplant · 1 year

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The vanilla orchid (Vanilla planifolia). Specifically, my vanilla BEAST.

Note, I do say beast intentionally. Orchids as a whole remind me of animals more than other plants. I’m not the only one it appears... Luigi Berliocchi gives some grating laudatory passages about orchid hunters of the colonial 19th century in his book The Orchid in Lore and Legend. But he also talks about people like Hieronymus Tragus (1498-1554). Despite the awesome name, Tragus is NOT the Hieronymus Bosch Garden of Earthly Delights fame. While the latter was painting people humping giant strawberries, Tragus was only just germinating. Tragus went on to make a scientifically fanciful yet aesthetically appealing observation: orchid flowers look incredibly similar to animals. People have gone on to speculate an evolutionary mechanism for this (e.g., flowers that resemble pollinators are more likely to attract them and successfully reproduce the plant). (pp. 35-36) But long before Darwin set sail on the Beagle, Athanasius Kircher (1610-1680) speculated that orchids sprouted from animal sperm that dripped out onto the ground because --- get this --- animals liked to copulate in fields where orchids grew plentiful (pp. 36-37). We can’t blame Kircher for overlooking the fact that making love in a field of flowers is particularly romantic and inspirational; he was a Jesuit. Clerical celibacy has been enforced in the Catholic Church since the 11th or 12th century. Berliocchi expounds upon the uses and applications of vanilla elsewhere in his book. Guess what? One of the reported uses was as an aphrodisiac (pp. 110-111). The Aztec emperor Montezuma II (c.1466-1520) was reported to have used this liberally (p. 111). It must have worked because the emperor had 19 children according to Fernando Alvarado Tezozomoc, possibly a descendant of Montezuma himself and a renowned chronicler of mestizo history and language.

#plantblr #orchid #vanilla bean #history #plant lover #plant lore

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spaceorphan18 · 2 days

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X-Men 97 6 Review (And some more thoughts on 5)

I didn't really get in depth on my thoughts for five, and I'm not really going to here, either, but I kind of want to break down the episode. Just for me. Because, omg, it's been a week and I'm still thinking about it. And there's so much to unpack.

It's by far the most complex and the most adult of all the episodes they've done.

And, I mean, it helps that the focus was on characters I like ;)

So, at some point when people will probably not be talking about it any more (my vacation probably), I want to take a bigger look at it.

Meanwhile...

I knew episode six wasn't going to be a continuation. I didn't expect a lot of Xavier/Space stuff though, but it's not surprising.

This episode was fine. I just... am not a huge fan of the space stuff (which is really Chris Claremont's doing - and while I like the guy - man did he love space soap operas).

Do I have a lot to say about Xavier and Lilandra and the Shi'ar? No, I don't. It gets us from point A to point B well enough.

There's some speculation that Xavier's vision of Gambit will dig into the whole Deathbit stuff (in the comics where Apocalypse turned Gambit into death). I don't think it's going there - and this is a nod. I at least hope so... that was not a great moment in comics history. :P

So, yeah, Xavier's coming back. Yay?

Meanwhile - we get more Storm and Forge. I like this story better (LifeDeath is a fantastic comic for Storm), but it's not my favorite. It's not surprising to me that after a heavy death episode we get Storm coming to life again. It's poetic. And, I think it's a nice quiet breather from the events of last week.

I'm not sure it fully worked -- but I did love the sequence where Storm got her powers back. Yeah, let's get this girl back, the team needs her.

And then... the twist of Sinister being behind the attacks. Well, okay then! Sinister is a great villain. Let's see where this goes.

As for moving forward -- I think next week (based on the title) will be about Cable and his story. And then there's the three part finale where things are really supposed to suck. I'm kind of guessing the actual ending of this season will be a cliffhanger as to whether or not everything will be changed....

#xmen #x men 97

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nflsundayticket · 5 days

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You Won't Believe Who Will Win Their First Super Bowl Next!

Quarterback most likely to win his first Super Bowl that's out there right now would you care to guess which which quarterback he named well, I know the answer to it so I'll, uh, uh, would you like to guess which qu Dak Prescott? That is not the answer that is not the answer. Summary: As the NFL season heats up, all eyes turn to Michael Strahan bold prediction for the next quarterback to clinch their first Super Bowl victory. Eisen's controversial pick, Josh Allen, has ignited passionate debates among fans and experts alike. Amidst speculation and anticipation, the NFL community braces for an electrifying showdown on the gridiron. He said Josh Allen. Oh, is the quarterback he thinks is most likely to get his first, first interesting. What are you laughing about? I just, I'm stupid. Okay, is that a, is that what it is? Did you go, that's what she said, right there? You are just a child. No, I'm just saying, of course he didn't say goodness gracious. Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah, um, would you agree with that? No, who would you choose Prescott? Who would you choose? Are you seriously choosing Dak Prescott? Choose Dak Prescott. I mean, for my own sake, yes. Of all the quarterbacks that in the National Football League right now who have yet to win a Super Bowl, Tom Brady anointed Josh Allen is the one. I, I'll tell you who mine is but I wait to hear from yours. You say Dak. I mean, okay, I'll take Dallas out. I, I'll go with, I, oh, I hate to say this because I don't like this team but the ners are really good. You're gonna say Brock pie, maybe Brock P. I was gonna say Jaylen Herz. I still think Philly is really good. Nobody says Joe Burrow, huh? AFC what is AFC? AFC turned out to be less than what we expected last year. Everybody thought that was they won the Super Bowl, dude. I'm aware of that because one of the most dynastic teams it appears in the National Football League history is currently residing in that conference. But last year everyone's like, good luck making the playoffs in the AFC. What with Aaron Rodgers, what with Justin Herbert, the MVP Super Bowl winner from the all three of those guys didn't finish the season with a with with season-ending injuries of varying degrees. Oh, look out for the, look out for the Browns 'cause they have Deshawn Watson. Look out for the Broncos 'cause they have Russell Wilson. And then it turned out to be one big nothing Burger, including Trevor Lawrence. Lamar was the MVP of the season, right? That's pretty good. I, I know that Tua had a nice run for two thirds of the season so I'm not going to buy that. Look out for the, A. It's too tough to win in the, in the NFC though, right? That's, you would think what they turned out to be not as good. Nobody's mentioned Burrow. I mean, the Bengals are running it back guys. I mean, they are missing their offensive coordinator finally. There are serious questions about him being able to play a full 17 P's. Not a bad one. Not a bad one. I also like to say Lamar too with Derrick Henry on that squad now. Yeah, completely different. I'll go with if I had to choose one. I'll go with the guy who's act the only other human being in the National Football League, the only human being currently in the National Football League to beat Momes, to beat Patrick Mahomes in the playoffs. Okay, I'll go with that guy and I'm not gonna fult you for that. I will go with the guy who can actually beat the guy you have to beat, that's it. The only human being that stepped on a playoff field in the Patrick Mahomes era, currently still in the National Football League. And the only other one was the one sitting in Vic Blend's chair on the podcast. That's it. I'll put that up as a poll. That's two people, which is what, who, who's, who's the one most likely to win it for the first time, who's next to win their first Super Bowl. So who you putting up Burrow? I'll put the ones that we just said, we just mentioned Burrow, do all and um and Jayen. Oh, got you. We'll do Josh Allen, we'll do Brockie. I got to hold out hope you're all in on it clearly. I got to hold out hope. Read the full article

#Championship #Controversy #Football #NFL #Predictions #Quarterbacks #RichEisen #Showdown #SportsAnalysis #SuperBowl

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fringefangs · 21 days

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Abandonment in New England

*As a disclaimer. I am aware of Lovecraft’s extreme racism. I am not trying to defend it.

Horror, as a genre, is, fundamentally, an expression of anxiety. An author’s fears become manifest within the pages of their writing. Central to the cosmic horror written by H. P. Lovecraft is the existentialist notion of abandonment. This essay explores abandonment in both The Call of Cthulhu and The Shadow Over Innsmouth.

To start, we must first define what we mean by abandonment. Jean-Paul Sartre describes abandonment as the assertion that “God does not exist, and that we must bear the full consequences of that” (27). He elaborates that it is “extremely disturbing that God no longer exists, for along with his disappearance goes the possibility of finding values in an intelligible heaven.” (28). This is to say, if God is the source of all that is good in the world then the supposition that God does not exist means that it is, at best, impossible to determine what is good or, at worst, that people are naturally inclined towards evil. Thus the consequence of God’s absence is that there is no limit to human immorality and nothing to encourage people to act morally.

Moving to the texts proper, it is important to demonstrate that the eldritch entities and their cults which pervade Lovecraft’s works indicate the dissolution of God. In The Call of Cthulhu, he routinely conflates the Cthulhu Cult that appears within the story with religion and faith and refers to the Great Old Ones as “unhallowed blasphemies” and the images and hieroglyphs etched into the walls of the city of R'lyeh as “impious” (41, 43). This cult “paled the speculations of theosophists” who “have guessed at the awesome grandeur of the cosmic cycle” indicating that these theosophists are unnerved at the notion that their understanding of God might be wrong given the presence of the Great Old Ones (The Call of Cthulhu 26, 5). In The Shadow Over Innsmouth, The Esoteric Order of Dagon is harshly described as “a debased, quasi-pagan” cult surrounded by “rumors of devil-worship” with the evocatively named Devil Reef located just off the coast of the town (8). With virtually every person from Innsmouth being a member of the Esoteric Order of Dagon and each of them being inexplicably drawn to Devil Reef on that fateful night, it is clear to see that the intention of the author is to show how people are being drawn away from their faith. Finally, when referring to the Great Old Ones, Lovecraft capitalizes the pronoun used, elevating Them to the same magnitude as God, further evidenced by Castro’s cautious disclosure that “They had come from the stars, and had brought Their image with Them” invoking similar language from the Book of Genesis (The Call of Cthulhu 39).

However, it is necessary to clarify that Lovecraft is not just concerned with the conception of a new religion that stands in opposition to existing faith but also that this is a total replacement of God. The narrator in The Call of Cthulhu is worried that, upon the reawakening of the Great Old Ones, mankind will become as Them, “free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside” (28). In The Shadow Over Innsmouth, the “ruinous old churches” of Innsmouth are not only decaying, indicating the decline in faith reflected in the state of the building, but they are actively being repurposed by the Esoteric Order of Dagon (18). As the narrator passes one of the churches he experiences “a momentary conception of nightmare” and an “unaccountable horror” at the sight of a priest from the cult within the basement of the church (The Shadow Over Innsmouth 12). In Zadok Allen’s drunken recounting of the history of Innsmouth, he refers to Captain Obed Marsh as the “old limb o’ Satan” and that Captain Marsh believes that “all the folks stupid fer goin’ to Christian meetin’ … they’d orter git better gods” (The Shadow Over Innsmouth 21). All of this is, in so many words, the kind of distress that Sartre describes that is felt by those experiencing abandonment. If God does not exist then all that will remain is chaos.

Yet this is not the full extent of the narrators’ distress. The abandonment weighs heavily on them as they fall into deep despair upon acquiring the knowledge of their abandonment. In The Call of Cthulhu, the narrator states that “I have looked upon all that the universe has to hold of horror, and even the skies of spring and the flowers of summer must ever afterward be poison to me.” (48). And in The Shadow Over Innsmouth, the narrator comments that “Some frightful influence, I felt, was seeking gradually to drag me out of the sane world of wholesome life into unnamable abysses” (49). The despair is often accompanied by an admission that death would be preferable to the future created by this abandonment. In The Call of Cthulhu, the narrator says that “When I think of the extent of all that may be brooding down there I almost wish to kill myself forthwith.” and that “Death would be a boon if only it could blot out the memories.” (42, 47). In The Shadow Over Innsmouth, the narrator says that “So far I have not shot myself … I bought an automatic and almost took the step” (50).

To conclude, this existentialist lens demonstrates how Lovecraft is grappling with an indifferent universe devoid of any intrinsic morality. The author is wary of people because he knows that there is nothing that mandates them to be moral and are thus capable of any number of abhorrent actions.

WORKS CITED

Lovecraft, Howard Phillips.The Call of Cthulhu. Strelbytskyy Multimedia Publishing. 2018.

Lovecraft, Howard Phillips. The Shadow Over Innsmouth. Gothic Digital Series @ USFC.

Sartre, Jean-Paul. Existentialism Is a Humanism. Translated by Carol Macomber. Yale University Press. 2007.

#essay #literary analysis #horror

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shizucheese · 9 months

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So Fenfest weekend is over. The absence of my FC mates that couldn't get tickets was sorely felt but i got to spend one of the best weekends of my life with one of my best friends who also happens to be one of the people I've known the longest in the game. I'm currently sitting at the airport with the sniffles, 2-3 hours in to a 4-5 hour wait for my flight because my friend drove here and had a 7 hour drive ahead of him.

I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about this weekend.

I'm excited for Dawntrail. I'm excited to find out what the beginning of our next, what, 10 year journey? Is going to be like. I'm surprised they didn't announce female Hrothgar at this fanfest since Viera were originally announced at the 2018 NA fanfest but I feel like the fact that there are Hrothgar native to Tural all but confirms it, and maybe they're waiting until JP fanfest to officially announce it since that's when they originally announced male Hrothgar back in 2019. Also maybe where they are with the graphics update has something to do with it, because when we *do* get that progress video, you *know* it's going to be with the new graphics, because why bother making it with the old ones?

On the subject of the graphics update, I'm super hyped. When we finally get the benchmark trailer it's going to ruin the live version of the game for me for the rest of the expansion until 7.0 comes out. I'm planning on turning off all of my ReShade filters before servers go down when DT releases and then the first thing I'm doing when servers come back up is turning them back on one by one and seeing which ones I even need anymore. (In an ideal world, I just wouldn't need any of them anymore, but let's not get too far ahead of ourselves here, especially since my current filters help with my photosensitivity and I don't think anything has been said about improved antialiasing?)

I'm excited to find out what the new jobs will be. My prediction for months now has been a caster DPS and a melee DPS that uses scouting gear, because right now NIN is the only job in the game that doesn't share gear with anyone and DRG not sharing gear with anyone was the rational they gave for RPR using maiming gear.

My personal guess is the caster will be Geomancer. Back before Stormblood released, Yoshi-P did an interview where he mentioned that they had been considering an "Onmyoji-like" job before settling on RDM instead. At the time, the interviewer thought it might have been Oracle, but then SB came out and the the Geomancers in the AST job quests are onmyoji in all but name, so I'm pretty sure that's what the scrapped job job was. And the devs have a history of taking scrapped ideas and implanting them at a later time: Samurai was originally considered to be the tank in Heavensward (iirc the went with DRK at least in part because Yoshi-P didn't want SAM to be a tank). They considered Viera for the new race in HW (this is part of why people were so upset when we originally only got female Viera, because we knew concept art for male Viera existed and had seen it years before), before they decided to go with the FFXIV-original race of the Au Ra instead. So it wouldn't be surprising at all if the new caster ended up being that scrapped job from SB that sounded an awful lot like GEO. Assuming the TMNT shirt is hinting at the melee job, maybe it'll be something using nanchaku?

I know a lot of people are speculating Corsair because of what we've seen of Derplander so far in the trailers, and the whole the idea that he's one of the new jobs to mark the beginning of a new adventure is valid (and the fact that his outfit is being hidden by a robe the entire trailer lends credence to this) I think it's important to remember that the only expansion where he has ever been a job newly added to the expansion, it was also the only expansion where he was two jobs, the other one being one that had been in the game since ARR. What we've seen of his outfit may not even be a hint, because it reminds me a lot of his 6.1 outfit that we got as glamour. Based on the fact that we saw him fighting with a sword and no shield, I want to guess RDM (I know Alisaie is already our resident RDM, but...), but it's also entirely possible that when the full trailer comes out we're going to see him toss aside the sword and pull out a different weapon entirely (of the tanks, the only one he hasnt been yet is GNB, which I think would be a good fit for this expansion because of the Hrothgar connection. The only two melee DPS he hasnt been are NIN and RPR, which Indont think fit so well, but maybe he'll step out of his melee comfort zone and give magic ranged or phys ranged a try? Aesthetically I could see MCH being a good fit for this expansion...) The next 6 months are going to be very interesting.

Two Dyes! Two Dyes! Two Dyes!

(I wonder of us being able to use two dyes will affect what new gear looks like. Crafted leveling gear and some dungeon gear, like the first dungeon of the expansion and the dungeons added on even numbered patches, has always included gear that was reskins of previously added gear; in the past the could get away with this because it would dye a different part of the outfit or the color of the undyable part would he different. It'll be interesting to see how this gets handled going forward.)

I'm excited for next patch. I think people are overblowing the impact the change to alliance raid roulette will actually have. Like...yes, it'll prevent people from ilv cheering, which will be a huge help. But there are still a lot of people who only have the Crystal Tower raids unlocked because it's required for MSQ.

I can't wait to dump cash shop stuff into my aromoir; unfortunately until they make it so we can dye items in the armoir and *keep* them that color, it's largely going to only be items that can't he dyed and stuff that I don't actually use that goes in there. Should still be a huge help though and it'll open up some retainer space, since that's where I currently keep cash shop items I don't use.

I'm excited to see where MSQ goes (I'm willing to bet money we're going to take all that light aspected aether on the First and Dark aspects aether on the Thirteenth and find a way to connect the two worlds to balance things out. Did Zero turn herself into a Memoria crystal and we just carried her to the First in our pocket?)

Also very excited for the new Varient dungeon. I'm willing to bet money that Asura is actually one of the bosses from the Varient/ Criterion Dungeon. This might even be why people found the fight so easy, because it was effectively an 8 person version of a 4 person fight. I'm kinda having flashbacks to Protoultima and the expectations vs reality of that.

Then again, she had voiced lines, so maybe I'm way off and this is a second 6.5 trial (the first one being Zeromus). I just hope this isn't a repeat of Yojimbo with her being tied to Hildibrand. Then again, as my friend pointed out, she does have multiple arms...

The piano concert was great. Amanda Achen has pipes. I spent the last two years wondering what zone's music Soken was going to adapt to otomoton and now I'm kidding myself because the answer seems so obvious.

The Primals concert was great, but I wish I'd brought ear plugs. I've been expecting a Primals version of Hic Svnt Leones ever since I first heard it and it didn't happen, which shocked me. What we *did* get was a Primals version of Scream and now I'm torn, because Koji's version was incredible, but I would also kill to hear a Primals version of that song where Amanda does the singing.

We were also lucky enough to get tickets for the Eorzean Symphony and it was amazing. I cried. Back during the digital fanfest I mourned because I thought I'd never get a chance to hear the ShB music performed live, but last night they played Shadowbringers and Tomorrow and Tomorrow and now I feel...idk, healed? I cried ugly tears during Tomorrow and Tomorrow. Maybe it's because it's my favorite song in the entire game, or maybe it's because of the cold, but I'm getting a bit weepy right now even just thinking back on it.

Overall, it was an incredible weekend. I'm glad I went, and hopefully two years from now, I'll be able to go again (preferably with more of/ all of my FC). Or like...we'll all take a FC vacation together or go to to someone's house and watch the stream together while eating pancakes. We'll see what the future brings.

#ffxiv fanfest #ffxiv #ff14 #dawntrail #ffxiv dawntrail #fanfest 2023 #ffxiv spoilers #eorzean symphony #eorzean symphony 2023

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arcane-ish · 2 years

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Talking Ships: Silco/Jinx (Jilco)

Okay for the sake of this post, I’m just going to say Jilco to mean the storyline, the father/daughter-ly relationship and the ship, kind of all scrambled into one.

A sidenote on shipping: Am I surprised that there is shipping-shipping? In addition to “just appreciate the storyline as a creepy storyline” and “like them unironically and find them sweet as a platonic storyline”? Not really, it’s the internet, there is Rule 34, there is the fact that tumblr loves their skinny pale murder boyfriends, there has always been at least some unironic Joker/Harley shipping (no matter how clear the creators have made it that he cares nothing for her, that it is an unambigious depiction of a standard abusive relationhip and that Harley is happier with Ivy), and I know endless depth lurk in the “Dead Dove Do Not Eat” tag on A03 (cough, Harry Potter early years).

Joker/Harley type things, various “murder husbands” or Thornbirds in general have never been very high on my personal shipping lists when I look at my personal history, I just accept that it exists and move on.

Other Sidenote. i genuinely wonder if Vander had stuck around for Act 2 whether we would have gotten a lot of Vander shipping with various people, whether it’s Silco because imagined backstory (we know they were only metaphorical brothers, not literal brothers as per Jinx’s dialogue) or various top side characters he hadn’t interacted with in Act 1.

Anyway, I’ve talked quite a bit already on why I think their relationship so subtly disturbing feeling and also why I think those same characteristics might make the relationship feel really confusing so some people (TLDR: Silco and Jinx lack boundaries, whether physical, professional or emotional) and I have speculated what might in character/in universe drive these characters to accept this relationship and stay in it (for example, my head canon/theory is that Jinx felt like Vander preferred Vi)

Meta on:

On Vander’s parenting style versus Siclo’s parenting style

Reasons why people might mistake it for a good parental relationship

Helplessness/wanting to be useful

In my other ship talks I talked a bit about what I perceive to be the writing flaws in the storylines. With Jilco, I feel like the storyline benefits the most from a lot of vagueness. Like, it’s really hard to say that Silco’s actions are out of character or rushed when we don’t really know him well enough to 100% know is intentions.

So most criticisms to me move rather quickly into the philosphical realm. Should you portray a weird and skeepy relationship like this? Is Jinx/Powder a sensitive or insensitive portrayal of mental illness? If it really cheap to once again take the character who is arguing for social chance and revolution and cast him as the skeevy guy?

On a pure story POV, I guess my criticism would be that it feels a bit odd Act 1 it felt like things in the city were at a boiling point, like Silco wanted to strike right then and there, like if nobody turned themselves in, everything would explode. Except Vander gets killed/disappears, Vi does not get put in jail for the robbery, now do Mylo and Clagger on account of being dead and yet we jump 4-6 years into the future and it seems like no major clash happened. And Silco who seemed so eager in Act 1 is still in “slowly building up my strength and army” mode. I guess maybe we are supposed to take it that meeting Jinx and taking her in convinced him to take it a bit slower? Anyway, I thougth that that was a bit of a shift in focus.

And then there is Marcus abduction of Vi, just at the same moment which I felt was underexplained and just like really a bit too convenient.

Let’s Talk Silco

I think the core thing about him is that he sees himself in or projects himself into Jinx, that he tries to make his trauma hers. He has said some intersting things, like how he originally thought Vi was the more valuable daughter, but he came to see Jinx’s potential (again interesting parallel to Mel seeing potential in Jayce). I lean towards thinking that he is truthful about this, that he came to be really impressed with Jinx, whether it is her violence or her tech knowledge.

We know some factor is him seeing himself in her, Vander’s “betrayal” of him, versus Powder’s falling out with Vi. I wonder whether he saw potential in this too, he knows how deep his rage over that betrayal goes, so he thinks or hopes that with Jinx he feel forge somebody who knows the same hate and will hence fight just as fierecely against the topside. Or whether his “abandonment” has made him feel lonely and bonding with Jinx will fix that lonliness?

Another element I wondered about is whether there might also be some element of jealousy or revenge in regards to wander, that he is taking Vander’s daughter and doing a better job than Vander.

I talked about how Silco’s lack of boundaries with Jinx might seem nice or cool, but how they aren’t actually good parenting. But to me the core conflict of the Jilco relationship is clearly Vi. Whether Silco had something to do with it or not, he swooped in when Vi was not available and he is now trying to keep them apart.

Maybe there are Silco fans who have the stance that Vi is a jerk who hurt Powder so it’s a good thing that Silco is trying to keep them apart. But I just don’t think that that is the aim of the story. I think the story is that Vi loves Jinx and Jinx at the very least has powerful comlicated feelings about Vi (I would say she still loves Vi just as much and misses her, but admittedly there is that scene where she shoots the girl who looks like Vi in the back in the beginning of episode 4).

Bascially, my stance on it is, if Powder loves Vi, then Silco’s love for Powder is not credible if he is trying to screw with that relationship and working to keep them apart. At the worst this shows that he is possessive and does not care about Powder’s feelings, in the most charitable interpretation it means that he can’t see past his own hangups with Vander to realize that maybe Vi deserves to have a relationship with Powder.

Like the “nice guy” option would be that even if he dislikes Vi and is skeptical about her to let the sisters talk it out under supervision. You know give them the chance to fix their relationship in a way that hom and Vander were not able to. And of course have his parental love for Powder be tested via his willingness to give her up, should she want that.

Of course that is not where the story is going, and in the end a likely factor is also his plans for the topside, that by now Jinx is important to those plans and that Vi coming back is just messing up his timetable.

Another thing that has been thrown around is that Silco is letting Jinx’s mental health symptoms run wild and encourages her bad behavior. To which I yes, as in that is a factor in why they are an unhealthy relationship, but morally that’s where I’m giving him some minor leeway, because it’s unknown to what extent he understands that, either because the whole topic of mental health isn’t really developed in their fantasy universe, or because he has his own issues, or simply because his world view is so different and at the very least it’s consistent with his world view.

Let’s Talk Jinx

One scene that is really fascinating to me is the scene that birthed them. Powder launching herself at Silco and hugging them. Was it because she was that heart broken she was looking at anything? Did she mean to attack him and just in the middle of it lost her strength because of said heartbreak? Maybe as he was coming at her with a knife, surrounded by his goons, with Vi having abandoned her and not being there to defend her, maybe in a way her hug was her last line of self defense. She knows she can’t beat them phyiscally, so the last weapon her her arsenal is trying to use her cuteness?

Especially since we see her later of being capable of using her hugs as a way to manipulate people (when she hugs the bartender so she can place an explosive prank on his back). (there is this really lowkey disturbing line in Legends of Runeterra where Jinx gives advice to a street urchin in the street and says (as a way of giving advice on how to beg more successfully) "Stick your lip out and give 'em puppy eyes! Trust me.")

I’m generally wondering how exactly Jinx feels about Silco. I have theorized that she likes him because she felt Vander loved Vi more than her and now Silco loves her more than anybody else around.

I also think she is lonely and she seeks him out because he is the only one who gives her the time o’ day.

As I talked in some of the metas, he gives her a lot of responsibility (like injecting him), asks a lot of her (I need yout to finish the hex tech etc), which binds her to him and probably makes her feel indebted and responsible.

At the same time, I think Jinx also keeps part of her to herself. She has her lair with images of her past. We see Silco oversharing with Jinx and see her accepting it, but we don’t really see her sharing much on her side and him listening to and taking it in, beyond the outburst that brougth them together (of course Silco has an interest in talking down her connection with Vi and Vander, but even outside of that, do you think she ever talked him about Mylo and Clagger?). We have that scene in the water where she makes fun of him telling her the Vander story again rather than I don’t know, tearing up because she empathizes so much with him. (also see my comments about Jayce and Mel and how Jayce doesn’t really get emotional with empathy when Mel shares stuff with him about her family situation).

So basically I think Silco is projected himself full force into Jinx, but it’s not completely the same way on her side.

Overall

You know, my questions

1.) Do I think that they do/did they fuck?

2.) Do I think that they could be happy together?

Are actually kind of interesting here. Like with 1... I look at their scenes that I like to think that that’s not what they are indicating, even as they do indicate that they have an inappropriate level of closeness. And then there is the other part of my brain that says, okay, if we were being realistic here, if we just remotely applied real world standards: Jinx is a neurodivergent orphan minor who spends her time seemingly exclusively highly criminal and potentially at least slightly drug addicted adults.

It feels almost like a numbers game that Jinx likely was molested at some point. And if it wasn’t Silco, chances is that it would have been one of this goons (again the optimistic mind wants to pretend that even if something like that happened, well Jinx is a murder girl and would have fought back and even if she didn’t Silco would have gone after them/would never have let that happen/it wouldn’t happen because everybody is afraid either of her or of Silco... but there is a part of my brain that says that that is probably too optimistic).

Not question 2 is even more fascinating to me. First let me say that my answer to this is a firm no. To me the story of Silco and Jinx strikes me as the kind that is heading for Silco to die, likely in a way that might have a strong effect on Jinx, whether she kills himself or has to watch him die. But like with Jayce and Mel, let’s talk hypotheticals here. In a perfect world, whether everything goes well, there are no obstacles, could they have a last happy relationship?

This makes me mull what exactly a perfect world would look like. So what, Silco defeats the topside, becomes king of the city and installs Jinx in a palace as his perfect 100% free roaming princess daughter who can do anything she wants and never get in trouble? Would a happy ending for Silco be to achieve his goals, die in peace and hand his empire over to Jinx, so she can rule the city? Would it be his happy ending to die for her, in her arms as he assures her and she weeps over him?

They just lead such violent lives, I just have a hard time picturing that their story wouldn’t end in violence. Also their co-dependency seems to be kind of centered around struggle, or to be precise, Silco’s struggle versus the top side. It seems kind of questionable whether that struggle can ever be successful and even if it was, I expect that Jinx would be the kind of to run off and have adventures.

Which brings me to... Jinx. I have to say I struggle in general picturing what a happy end would look like for her. Like even if I completely throw out Silco and try to imagine her with various other League characters where you don’t have age difference or you don’t have the traumatic past, whether it’s fellow chaotic murder fans like her or loving idealists, I generally have a hard time picturing Jinx in anything more than having temporary nice romantic adventures (I will get back on that when I talk Jinx x Ekko).

Anyway, getting back to Jilco, let’s say Silco’s struggle gets resolved somehow, Jinx goes on adventures across the continent, an older, more grown up Jinx who had a chance to have her own experiences comes back and meets up with Silco again. Maybe he is in jail, maybe he is running the city, maybe he is still in his mob boss lair, maybe he has a little farm in the countryside somewhere, what would this older Jinx and him even talk about?

As I said in her section, to me I feel some hesitancy on Jinx’s side, like she doesn’t really see things 100% the way he does, but she stays because there is enough overlap, for now, I’m not sure I 100% buy her ever overcoming that. There is also the factor that even though I think Silco sees a lot of himself in her, he isn’t hyper or manic like her. He isn’t the guy who like jumps on a hoverboard and high fives her as they throw bombs together.

In short, even when ignoring all #problematic aspects, I just can’t picture it.

Final Grade: ??? B? (because it’s an interesting relationship to talk about? And it probably achieves what it sets out to do in being creepy and surprising? Or D because it’s not really shippy to me personally? Like I find it intriguing but I don’t get the fuzzy “awww, cute murder dad!” feels personally)

Disclaimer: these are my feelings as of the end of Act 2 of Arcane, my rating might go up or down drastically based on what happens in Act 3.

#arcane #silco #jink #jilco #ship talk #vander

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universallywriting · 2 years

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I know you don’t think the show can be predicted. But I think it might be fun to try any way. Why do you think Felix have his ring (amok?) to Gabriel? He had to give Gabriel the yo-yo to set up the next season. But why would Felix do it. And how does it benefit the plot?

Well, first of all, I don't work from the position that Adrien and Felix are sentimonsters. Like, I think it's a cool theory, and I think it's totally possible, but when I think about the show I don't think "Okay, so those two are DEFINITELY sentimonsters" because I don't think it's been proven, and I honestly think it's pretty confining to future speculation to just assume that it's true and work from there.

Though, again, it's a cool theory and I hold no hate for it or anyone who feels like it's true or proven. It's not as fun for me to feel that way, but everyone has their own way of enjoying fandom and that's great!

I think the much more important and interesting issue is Adrien's family history, which is consistently left very much in the dark despite how crucial it is to the entire plot of the show.

Please feel free to correct me on lore if I'm wrong, but as best i can gather: We know that Master Fu had all the miraculouses 172 years ago, and then lost the peacock and the butterfly. So we have a 172 year gap in which those miraculouses were off doing... something.

Whatever these two miraculouses were during during this 172 year gap, it was so low profile as to be untraceable. Until Emilie's corpsewife status occurred, Fu had no idea where those were and he was definitely on the lookout.

EDIT: We also know Gabe picked some magic shit up in a shop, so, like, it's possible that these little trinkets were just lying in a bigass pit for 171 years lol

We have absolutely no idea where the Graham de Vanily fortune came from. We do know, however, that Felix has a lot of knowledge about the family history and a desperation to reclaim items that he feels Gabriel has unfairly stolen from the Vanily family. He also seems to know a lot about miraculouses. Like, a lot a lot? To the point that he was pretty instantly able to figure out everything Gabe was trying to hide.

If I was going to guess, I think we're going to get massive plot reveals involving the Vanily family and the history of the butterfly and peacock.

EDIT 2: "Both of these miraculouses would have been possible to use very subtly in order to amass fortune and status in a nearly 200 year gap." I don't even feel like this is true. Like, I'm just rambling but I think Emilie and Gabe found it together? So maybe Gabe built his company off this shit? Or maybe Emilie tried to make a puppy and immediately dropped dead idk.

So, like... how did their family come to have this stuff? How did the peacock miraculous break? They're not exactly delicate pieces. Why did Emilie feel the need to use it after it had broken, despite the risks? What exactly is her weirdass corpsewife status and her suspended animation cryotube?

You know, a lot of this could be revealed to be part of the sentimonster theory, but a lot of this could also just be... I mean, like, anything? The possibilities are really broad, and I feel like people are limiting themselves in theorycrafting by starting with the idea that Adrien and Felix must be sentimonsters.

Maybe the twins are sentimonsters. Maybe sentimonsters are used in secret and have been for generations. Maybe the butterfly miraculous was used behind the scenes to trade off superpowers, allowing people to supernaturally succeed in all kinds of different ways. Maybe they even consider themselves guardians of these two miraculouses, and are desperate to be in possession to continue to protect them from people like Gabe.

I think there's a lot of really cool options, but if I had to place my money on anything, I think that the incoming season is going to give us some big pieces of backstory for Adrien's family that's going to explain what started all of this mess in the first place. How the peacock broke, and why Emilie used it after it broke. Those are the two big mysteries I expect to be answered by Felix's actions.

#miraculous meta #miraculous #miraculous ladybug #miraculous spoilers

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tedturneriscrazy · 3 years

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Okay, here we go, time to gather my rambly thoughts about Echoes of the Past!

Huh, from the trailer I figured this version of Eda was a lot younger.

More studious Luz, please. Also that doodle is so anime, I love it.

Lilith for Titan's sake put your glasses on

Why is Lulu and Hootcipher so good, tho? 😭 (yes, Luz, it is nice that they're friends)

Ooh, invisibility glyph! Em and Ed can never know about that one (though realistically they can probably already make things invisible considering their track)

"Don't ever do that again!" "Do that again!"

Also, King seems to have a shaky grasp on object permanence.

So Lilith's a history nerd, interesting...

That black eye really just came from the high five, huh? And yes, I am still stuck on that high five, it's so good. I'll need to find a gif of it at some point.

Let's not sleep on that roast from Lilith, though. You can tell Cissy has fun with lines like that.

Raving about tyrannical rule immediately followed by Luz cooing over King with belly rubs. Yep, this is The Owl House.

Jesus Christ, Lilith, you didn't need to be so savage

Luz's turn to be mom, I guess

"Hootrageous!" Dammit, now I want to see Hooty cosplay as Brave and the Bold Aquaman.

Oh hey, Hollow Knight and Piplup!

It doesn't seem like King should be able to grab the staves so casually, but eh.

You can tell Hooty has been waiting for a long time to be allowed to go somewhere. Also him detatching from the door is apparently as gross and horrifying as everyone was led to believe.

Hooty has no right to look so adorable in that little portable house, especially with the pulsating organs!

"Oh, no, not again!"

Okay what the hell is that bathtub thing, Eda?! You had that this whole time?!?!

Very convincing "aw," Lilith. 10/10.

This episode's gonna have some lore.

Hooty really just decided to be Lilith's bodyguard, love that for him.

Luz seems especially dedicated to indulging King this episode so far.

Hooty does have a point about the graffiti. It is quite nice.

I don't know why I keep being surprised by Lilith being cute, but I love it.

"With all the sugar I eat it better be!" More mounting evidence for @nikkydash 's moss mouth Luz theory.

I see Lulu and Hootcipher have reached the "sharing a single brain cell" stage of their friendship.

So apple blood really is just booze, huh? And they serve it to children in schools? Damn, the Demon Realm is hardcore.

Luz, no! You of all people should know not to split the party!

At least high fiving a dessicated corpse wasn't Luz's first instinct?

To quote Strong Bad: "Gross! I hate you! Gross! Gross! I hate you!"

I do love Eda's potion bandoleer. Very reminiscent of my artificer in D&D.

And nice to see Lilith's big sister instinct.

Backstory time!

Am I the only one who got film noir vibes from Eda's narration?

Boy, that curse does a number in the span of eight years, huh?

BABY KING HHEIKWKWJWHWG

So that's what happened to his horn!

Holy shit that's Dana voicing baby King, isn't it?!

I know Eda lied to King, but her telling the stories to King looks so cute.

Welp, that's heartbreaking.

Also, Alex Hirsch is a good voice actor, who knew? /s

"Is this what regret feels like? I HATE IT!" Future meme material.

Oh hi, guilty Luz. Haven't seen you in...*checks watch* five minutes.

King is so...shattered. 💔 (Bravo, Alex)

"Special delivery! P A I N"

I love everything about Hooty bazooka...Hootzooka!

Putting those invisibility glyphs to work. Very nice.

(Oh god I just realized that fanfic writers have been given a dangerous tool)

Hmm, maybe those "delusions of grandeur" weren't so delusional, after all...

Okay, creepy moon flesh thing, I hate you less now.

Ooh, future adventure hook!

Everyone looks so done with Hooty about that.

So that thing's name is Jean-Luc, huh. Bet I won't see any TNG references in the fandom. Nope. Not at all.

"All out of kisses." Amity will be so disappointed...

So. Many. Questions.

Final thing to note: this means King is only 8-9 years old, which means that younger sibling energy he gives off with Luz is justified.

Well, that was a great episode! Emotions and lore galore! I'm eager to meet Mama Clawthorne next week! Then again, considering what people have speculated about her, maybe I shouldn't be?

At any rate, I'll be chiming in once again next week!

#the owl house #king of demons #toh king #luz noceda #eda clawthorne #lilith clawthorne #toh hooty #echoes of the past #toh s2 spoilers #the owl house s2 spoilers #the owl house season 2 spoilers #toh spoilers #the owl house spoilers

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