best moments in gaming journalism

journalist gets real yakuza members to play yakuza 3 and asks for their opinions on its authenticity

that’s it

Reading Red Robin is like-

fandom really played like a long game of telephone with this run because almost every popular trope that fanon likes to explore is like taken out of context from red robin

for example, back when i read fanon i would eat up the "Damian cut Tim's line" fics where it's like sad boy Tim and mean Damian and Dick finding out is always such an important plot line in these

but then in the actual book:

Damian cutting his line is a minor moment and immediately followed by them fighting physically with Tim winning

And the only reason Damian even did that is that Tim was still mistrusting him

and Dick knows about the whole thing-he helped solve the problem

there is also the fanon storyline of like Tim feeling super betrayed because no one believed him until they actually got Bruce back.

which is just. not what happened. at all?

Dick is always willing to believe him

and when Tim actually explains himself Dick listens and trusts him

Then Tim's characterization in fanon is also just like flanderised version of rr!Tim

Fanon is basically someone seeing a vaguely worded list of plot points in red robin and then making shit up from there and it so funny to me

Dick Grayson: "Relax, I've got sixty hours in the simulator!" SMASH CUT TO: DICK HAVING PLAYED 60 HOURS OF A RACING GAME IN THE CIRCUS I cannot express how hard I lost my shit at this, because they are currently in the middle of trying to outrun an actual firestorm being rained down on them by Firefly, Dick just broke his promise to save himself if things went down, he dragged his 280lb mentor into the Batmobile and probably barely reaches the pedals because he's still like eleven years old and Batman is FULL FORCE YELLING AT HIM for disobeying direct orders and this CHAOS GREMLIN CHILD HAS THE ABSOLUTE NERVES OF STEEL TO SAY RIGHT TO BATMAN'S FACE "Relax, I've got sixty hours in the simulator!" when he knows Batman knows Batman doesn't have a simulator and HE MEANT THAT HE'D PLAYED A BUNCH OF RACING GAMES. Let's be real, Bruce didn't put that kid on a dangerous path, Bruce put a fucking leash on that kid so he was maybe 5% less dangerous and likely to get himself killed and HE WORKED A MIRACLE TO GET THIS FAR.

i love the ambiguity of zelda and link's relationship. they are in love. they're just good friends. they're married. link just follows zelda around like a puppy and she got attached to him. they're t4t. they're work buddies. zelda is in love with link and hes just doing his job. link is in love with zelda and shes just doing her job. they're soulmates. they're bound together by their duty to hyrule. they're bearding for each other

There was one of those hyperspecific polls that had an option like “your grandfather told you war stories that he never told anyone else” and now I feel like I have to tell the story about how a spider saved my grandpa’s life in WWII and how my family doesn’t kill spiders because we owe our existence to that One Single Spider

230427 - yoongi on instagram: d-day

in a logical world, cas fucks demon!dean and that alone purifies dean

If you want an example of how mythology and folklore works in action, think about werewolves. All the stuff you just know about them even though literally every piece of media has a slightly different version of how they work.

But you know what a werewolf is. Explaining what a werewolf is would be stupid. Everyone just knows what werewolves are. Where did they come from? Who cares? They’re werewolves.

If in a thousand years people just aren’t talking about werewolves anymore they might be confused by our modern full moon werewolves. What was that? Where did it come from? What’s the lore? Surely there’s one origin story for them that we all knew about.

Nope! Just werewolves. We all know werewolves.

And so it was in ancient times. Everybody knows the feathered serpent. Everybody knows Hercules. Everybody knows coyote. You know. The thing. We’ve all got a vibe for it. What’s the definitive one true version of it? Lol and also lmao don’t be stupid. It’s the thing! You know, werewolves.

in middle school during my Intense Greek Mythology Phase, Artemis was, as you can likely guess, my best girl. Iphigenia was my OTHER best girl. Yes at the same time.

The story of Iphigenia always gets to me when it's not presented as a story of Artemis being capricious and having arbitrary rules about where you can and can't hunt, but instead, making a point about war.

Artemis was, among other things--patron of hunting, wild places, the moon, singlehood--the protector of young girls. That's a really important aspect she was worshipped as: she protected girls and young women. But she was the one who demanded Agamemnon sacrifice his daughter in order for his fleet to be able to sail on for Troy.

There's no contradiction, though, when it's framed as, Artemis making Agamemnon face what he’s doing to the women and children of Troy. His children are not in danger. His son will not be thrown off the ramparts, his daughters will not be taken captive as sex slaves and dragged off to foreign lands, his wife will not have to watch her husband and brothers and children killed. Yet this is what he’s sailing off to Troy to inevitably do. That’s what happens in war. He’s going to go kill other people’s daughters; can he stand to do that to his own? As long as the answer is no—he can kill other people’s children, but not his own—he can’t sail off to war.

Which casts Artemis is a fascinating light, compared to the other gods of the Trojan War. The Trojan War is really a squabble of pride and insults within the Olympian family; Eris decided to cause problems on purpose, leaving Aphrodite smug and Hera and Athena snubbed, and all of this was kinda Zeus’s fault in the first place for not being able to keep it in his pants. And out of this fight mortal men were their game pieces and mortal cities their prizes in restoring their pride. And if hundreds of people die and hundred more lives are ruined, well, that’s what happens when gods fight. Mortals pay the price for gods’ whims and the gods move on in time and the mortals don’t and that’s how it is.

And women especially—Zeus wanted Leda, so he took her. Paris wanted Helen, so he took her. There’s a reason “the Trojan women” even since ancient times were the emblems of victims of a war they never wanted, never asked for, and never had a say in choosing, but was brought down on their heads anyway.

Artemis, in the way of gods, is still acting through human proxies. But it seems notable to me to cast her as the one god to look at the destruction the war is about to wreak on people, and challenge Agamemnon: are you ready to kill innocents? Kill children? Destroy families, leave grieving wives and mothers? Are you? Prove it.

It reminds me of that idea about nuclear codes, the concept of implanting the key in the heart of one of the Oval Office staffers who holds the briefcase, so the president would have to stab a man with a knife to get the key to launch the nukes. “That’s horrible!,” it’s said the response was. “If he had to do that, he might never press the button!” And it’s interesting to see Artemis offering Agamemnon the same choice. You want to burn Troy? Kill your own daughter first. Show me you understand what it means that you’re about to do.

Don't get me wrong, I love the dreamy fairytale-ness of the Ghibli movie version of Howl's Moving Castle, but the book. The book. Sophie, first off, being so incredibly set on being the boring un-gifted un-adventuresome eldest daughter (as is right and fitting for an eldest daughter to be) that she doesn't notice she's working magic, like, constantly? And when a witch shows up like "hey girlie you are fully working SO much magic that I'm feeling threatened, so like I'm gonna put you in the old lady dimension ciao," she's like well. That was weird. Anyway I guess I better go find something to do as an old lady. And she reasons that this famously evil sorcerer who eats young girls' hearts is probably safe for her now cause like. She's old. What's he gonna do to me. And proceeds to bully her way into becoming his cleaning lady. And Howl, known flaky whimsical fuckboy extraordinaire, is like sure okay I guess that works for me. And just as well because it turns out he's also a fucking bottom who kinda digs this strong stubborn lady who's steamrolled her way into his life, kinda weird that she's disguised as an old woman but w/e he's not gonna question her life choices and like it's not actually a problem for him, and by the time Sophie's figured out that oh crap oh shit she's actually kinda into this flighty asshole, what am I gonna do, he'd never return my feelings in a hundred years, Howl's basically accepted that they're mostly married. And also how can you top "my extremely powerful and slightly fey wizard is just a Welsh grad student who wandered into a portal one day" for a character concept. You can't. It's the perfect book really

Lemme just take a uquiz for fun i said

i was naturally obliterated

a really little animated black cat with giant eyes and no other discernible features

Love how tumblr has its own folk stories. Yeah the God of Arepo we’ve all heard the story and we all still cry about it. Yeah that one about the woman locked up for centuries finally getting free. That one about the witch who would marry anyone who could get her house key from her cat and it’s revealed she IS the cat after the narrator befriends the cat.