the funniest meltdown ive ever had was in college when i got so overstimulated that i could Not speak, including over text. one of my friends was trying to talk me through it but i was solely using emojis because they were easier than trying to come up with words so he started using primarily emojis as well just to make things feel balanced. this was not the Most effective strategy... until. he tried to ask me "you okay?" but the way he chose to do that was by sending "👉🏼👌🏼❓" and i was so shocked by suddenly being asked if i was dtf that i was like WHAT???? WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY TO ME?????????? and thus was verbal again

i think the fast travel in this game is very cool 👍

So I spoke somewhat about my thoughts on Emanator Sampo here, but I never really thought of it from a design point of view or what kind of powers he would have until just recently. But I actually kind of love leaning into it from a "stage hand" perspective?

Because like. Aha's body in THEIR official art is completely black, giving attention to all the fun brightly colored things around THEM. And that's so fitting for Sampo! He usually prefers to be a side character. He likes to act from the shadows. His is a much more subtle hand.

So I wonder if as an Emanator, a lot of his clothes are actually very dark? Not necessarily plain, still extravagant and needlessly detailed in things like cut and quality with lots of different fabrics and textures and ornamentation, but dark. Or maybe even his skin itself becomes blackened further down his body; his hands in particular are dark, as a sort of sleight of hand reference.

The motif of a lot of straps wrapped around him like in his canon design is still present, but they're all loose and flowing off of him like paper streamers now instead of restraining him or holding him together. He is no longer contained! Or maybe they're still a bit more rigid/heavy, but just draped more like red stage curtains!

And this is like. Fully self-indulgent, but I love inhuman designs, and there's nothing in canon to say I can't do this, so screw it! Go for broke!! Maybe it's not visible to normal people, but Sampo having a second set of arms would be really cool, as further sleight of hand reference. One set is almost normal looking, but his hands are a bright, attention-drawing white, and the other is dark, set almost in the shadows of the first arms, to act less noticeably.

He also has something of a broken heart design to him in canon (the front of his black shirt with its jagged shape down the middle; his coat looks like a full heart shape in the back), and I actually like him keeping that element as an Emanator, because I think it suits him. Sampo says his taste in aesthetics and views on Elation involve human dignity,

and the story he helps create in Belobog involves the long and winding road of resistance and survival and eventual triumph in the face of some very adverse, oppressing odds. (I'm pretty sure I heard he once called Wildfire "artless" though, plus the man acts like he thinks Shame is some kind of dessert, so like ndkdjzjskkd) But the point being!!

I think Sampo is someone who can appreciate heartbreak and angst and tragedy in a story, because it makes the victory at the end all the sweeter. And this would be another thing he shares with Aha, because I think THEY did bless the Mourning Actors partly just to be a little shit, but also because Aha does recognize tragedy as part of THEIR Path, too, and you can see it in some of the game. So a broken heart motif can still suit him, and I like him having elements of both comedy and tragedy. Like his clothing having a happy sun/sad moon (like the moon in Aha's art) or him having both of the traditional comedy/tragedy masks in his design.

And as Emanator, Sampo can maybe play with the stage settings environment, too. Like lights sometimes behave strangely around him, appearing blindingly bright to someone or dramatically dark. Sampo wills it and suddenly there seems to be a metaphorical spotlight right where he wants everyone to look. And when he doesn't want to be noticed, his face seems to be cast in shadow, he seemingly just fades into the background, no one notices or recognizes him and he sneaks away easily. He can create smoke or fog literally out of thin air without his bombs now, too, the air will just suddenly thicken until his stage is obscured, and Sampo can set the scene as he pleases or disappear without a trace.

And in line with being a stage hand, Sampo can direct attention like no other. He was already extremely good at this as a normal mortal, and becoming an Emanator only took it up to 11, past human limits. Sampo points, and all present feel compelled to follow his fingertip. He looks away, and they all follow his gaze. He can even affect the mood of an audience; he can influence everyone to be calm and placid or he can whip them into a feverish frenzy. Sometimes a crowd will start to become unsettled, agitation stirring until it boils over, until it incites a full on violent mob.

And in the middle of all that chaos will stand one perfectly calm figure, face cast in shadow, until they quietly slip away out of sight.

Personally, I think they should turn the fact that Aiden Gallagher is basically an Adult Man into a running gag in Umbrella Academy. Like yeah, I'm cool with their "y'all have had to accept weirder things than this 19-year-old in pre-pubescent schoolboy shorts, just ignore it and look at the sentient cube thing" approach. It's quite humorous actually, but I think it would be really funny if they just:

"Hey guys is it just me or does Five look a lot older than you remember?"

"You're right actually, weren't you thirteen like a week ago? Why do you have a five o'clock shadow?"

"You've all aged me 20 years just let me f*cking retire."

*taps mic* hello can we talk about these two

kavinsky's death is actually the closing arc in a great tragedy to me bc his actions throughout the story are mostly just him practically begging for someone to be on his side, to care about him, to even just look at him. his father tried to kill him, his mother is completely uninterested. he can dream himself as many people as he wants, but they will only ever think of him because he made them to do so. the dream pack are just physical manifestations of his desire to not be alone in the world, to have someone, anyone, connected to him. he so desperately tries to draw some sort of emotion out of ronan, good bad or ugly, because the intense similarities they share mean that he's the only person who might be willing to look long enough to see him. and when it doesn't work, when he realizes it can't, that this world is not for him and he is not going to be a part of it in a way that involves anyone else, he decides that everyone is going to look at least this once. they will all see the finale if nothing else. genuinely doomed from the start. and how truly devastating that is in comparison to the core group the story focuses on, characters that even at their lowest and darkest and meanest and absolute worst have others there with them. characters that always have someone looking for them. dying is a boring side of a life that has nothing inside of it.

spooky month fans looking for hints to the next episode in every doodle pelo makes

Part 2 / Part 4

Bonus:

I supposed Izzy’s “ooh daddy” thing did work after all because poor Lucius look haunted

Has Neil Newbon ever seen the original What We Do In The Shadows (the movie)? Because I'd love to hear Astarion do some of the lines lol

"I like to go for a look I call... Dead, But Delicious."

[On the topic of vampires preferring the blood of virgins] "I think of it like this... if you were going to eat a sandwich, you would enjoy it more if you knew no one had fucked it."

"I'm doing an erotic dance for my friends. You ruined it. I was in the zone. My friends were loving it."

"At first I wanted to kill him, but now I'm glad I spent time to get to know him."

"I really hope that those guys don't kill those police, because it will mean more police will come. Possibly even Christians, which is totally the last thing we need in this house."

Like, he would slay these.

Bonus, this one with Halsin:

Astarion: "How was your night, last night?"

Halsin: "I transformed into a dog and had sex."

Astarion: "Cool!"

I mean, I like Daigo and Y3 but it's undeniable that a lot of the reason of MineDai being small is cuz Mine, Daigo and Y3 are generally unliked? Not like hated but like just not liked down upon the bigger side of the fandom. Add to that that the yaoi girlies, like us, are just like a fraction of the fandom... well, not exactly big shit to have.

Personally... I'm kinda glad Mine is overlooked cuz... dear fucking god the radioactive waste he could create if he was popular. Mind you, I'm not exactly a Mine fan but I know he would be... not the best for larger audiences.

minedai really is just for us yaoi girlies you're so right .....

"Who is Sora's father?"

I feel like the answer to that is fairly obvious. 👀

yes yes odalia is a horrible mother who emotionally abused her 3 kids for 16 years and that's why she would be a horrible influence on the collector so instead ppl are clamoring for the collector to be adopted by eda or camilla. but consider this: the collector being luz's sibling in law would be so fucking funny.

Tuvok being funny + It’d be interesting if this really did become the Voyager crew’s reputation. As in if one of that ship’s crew is on board it’s like a bad omen

what is a better way to celebrate the pocky day than celebrating it in prison <333 (i know it's late i know i know)

Big Kiddo: "What does this read? S T O..."

Now he's reading out Start and Stop.

A big day.

Something random I find interesting about Bowser is how his “modern” personality was actually there very early on, but it took forever for it to become a thing in the games.

(Tl;Dr is basically the last paragraph)

Like, when the first Super Mario Bros came out, Bowser was shown as a conqueror, destroying the Mushroom Kingdom and turning its inhabitant into blocks just because he could, only kidnapping Peach because she had magic that could counter his. All in all, he was nothing more than a monster.

But then one year later came the 1986 anime movie “The Great Mission to Rescue Princess Peach”, and for this movie, Bowser was completely revamped. Suddenly he became a hopeless romantic who kidnaps Peach to marry her, tries to comfort her at two instances which shows some level of being genuine in his feelings, and is a bit of a dumbass at times. It’s actually pretty funny to see the contrast between Bowser in this movie having done terrible actions (which we see through Mario and Luigi’s quest) but then when the focus is on him, he’s kind of adorable actually. Also there’s that post credit scene with him working where the brothers used to early on that shows him as nice.

And the funny thing is, that new side of Bowser that this anime brought actually stuck around…in everything except the games. In the following games (Mario Bros 2 Lost Levels, 3 and Mario World), Bowser is still the same monster who’s destroying things and kidnapping Peach for the heck of it. But outside of the games, we see that softer/goofier side of him shine. Or at the very least, in instances where he’s still pretty horrible/doesn't show that softer side, his motivation remains to marry Peach instead of going back to him wanting power first and foremost. And even then his defeats have some comedy to it.

It’s especially visible with Mario World and how, while the game doesn’t expand on him, there’s an interactive anime where he mentions wanting to marry Peach, and the Manga Super Mario Kun version of this game shows him to be a lot like in the 1986 movie, at least in his first appearance (I only found the first few chapters of this comic translated in english so I don’t know how he acts past that scene where he gives Peach an oversized ring; wouldn’t recommend those mangas btw, unless you like absurd humor with a plot that goes nowhere and wastes your time on stupid stuff). Same for the “Super Mario Adventures” comic where’s he’s yet again both a softie and a moron.

And outside of Mario World, there’s also a commercial for the very first Super Mario Bros with Bowser giving Mario flowers with no evil intention to it, or those three very badly made retelling of stories with Mario characters, two of which have Bowser wanting to marry Peach (for those wondering how the hell did I know about this compilation, I found a reaction to the 86 anime and the channel also had a reaction to those, so it was through sheer luck ¯\_(ツ)_/¯).

So overall, Bowser being more comedic and endearing through being an idiot + having romantic feelings had been a thing since pretty much the beginning, Nintendo just took a while to put it into the games. And even then, from my understanding, the first show of Bowser’s softer side was in the RPGs, with Super Mario RPG having him as part of the team and Paper Mario 64 apparently being the first time his crush on Peach was put into a game (for context I know very little of both of these games so I don’t know exactly how they portray Bowser, I just know RPG has a crying sprite + he’s a team member and Paper has him crushing on Peach). So it basically took a good decade for it to become his game personality.

(Note that him becoming a playable character as early as the first Mario Kart and remaining playable in most sport games could also be a sign of Nintendo wanting him to be seen as less threatening, but those games don’t exactly have a story to truly showcase it so I wouldn’t exactly take them into account)

As for the mainline games, we had to wait even longer to see that side of him, up until Super Mario Sunshine in the early 2000s. And funnily enough, Nintendo has ever since been much more open about taking Bowser a lot less seriously in mainline games (Mario Galaxy ends with the group waking up at Peach’s castle and Bowser seems rather chill in that moment, New Bros Wii and U have funny cutscenes at the end, same for 3D Land, New Bros 2, his losing animation on his car + him in the credits in 3D World, and Mario Odyssey also ends on a comedic note for him).

And since I’m talking Sunshine which showcases his softer side through his kid, that’s also a good show of how long it took for him to be like that in the games. Bowser had been a father since Super Mario Bros 3 with the introduction of the Koopalings, yet neither this game nor Mario World show the kids interacting with their dad. We had to wait until New Bros Wii for that to happen in a mainline game (the ending cutscene). And while I wasn’t born back in the 90s so I can’t fully back up this claim, from what I’ve seen Bowser in general mainly interacted with the Koopalings outside of the games, like with the Adventures comic (tho even then it’s minimal) and the US cartoons which focus on him as a dad.

So yeah, all-in-all, I find it interesting how Nintendo had clearly always seen Bowser as more of a comedic character, mostly through being a hopeless romantic and a dumbass with a soft edge despite his horrible actions, but for the longest time they put this wish to the side. It wasn’t until the RPGs that this side of Bowser came out, and it took even longer for it to become a thing in the mainline games. And while of course this makes sense given Nintendo is known for not having stories in Mario games, meaning there’s no point in making Bowser anything more than the bad guy, it’s still funny how, the second they gave Bowser that comedic edge in one mainline game, it was the push they needed to run with it and never look back. As a result, nowadays, even in the instances where Bowser is at his most dangerous/intimidating like Galaxy, Bowser’s Fury or the 2023 Movie, there’s always still at least one moment where he’s not taken that seriously.

(Last second addition : I guess it is worth pointing out how Bowser being less threatening started with his romantic feelings, with his role as a father not being that important; but nowadays it's sort of the opposite with him being a parent first and foremost while his feelings for Peach, though still very much core to his character, take a bit of a backseat at times, or at least him having Junior and parenting him is brought up more often than his desire to be with Peach)