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Boogey Tango . . .

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Watching Joel's episode before watching Grians was a treat. He's so oblivious.

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Ostania's normalest family

The next day, at a hastily thrown together birthday party at the Forger residence:

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Murderbot S01E10: The Perimeter

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Do I still want this crossover to happen?

Yes. Yes I do.

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I know its probably not but the idea that superman 2025 and the batman take place in the same universe at similar times is so funny to me. All this weird shit is going on with aliens and pocket dimensions in metropolis and then like an hour away its serial killer twitch streamers and the saddest wettest emo boy

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many times in the new movie, clark says something to the effect of "i want to be a good person, i want to do good" and it's just. god. such a deeply common desire, one that could sound childish or naive if he didn't seem so desperately adamant about it. it's what i've always appreciated about the superman comics (and other superheroes, to be fair), the idea that most people, maybe all people, wake up every day and, despite everything that's out of their control, they try their best to do what they think is right.

clark is honestly flying blind a lot of the time. he fights with lois, he's always in trouble at work, he's a superhuman hero with problems that keep getting harder to fight. and yet he finds time to surprise lois for a 3 month anniversary, he makes friends with his falafel cart guy, he takes the time to save squirrels and, after battles, he always turns to the citizens, the children, before the cameras.

james gunn's (and david corenswet's!) superman could easily feel overly idealistic, but it's clear that his "goodness" is not a thing he is flippant about or takes lightly. he's a superhero reporter, he spends half of his days fighting evil and the other half writing about it, he's not unaware. he is hopeful and kind in the face of really scary shit because he knows that that is what being good is. he's an alien with super strength and laser eyes and yet he feels so relatable and deeply inspirational. bc at the end of the day, what is superman?

as always, he's a friend. :)

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the movie ever. HOPE and LOVE and JOY and WHIMSY is BACK IN BUSINESS

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My impression of Clark from the new superman movie (pretty fun movie BTW)

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[takes a long drink from my Arizona iced tea] so like one of the central themes for FFXV is like, growing up, sure. You know that, I know that, whatever. Coming of age, coming into your own, taking the mantle of king, whatever you wanna call it. Cool, awesome, we love a good coming of age story!

But I find the sub theme of that one to be probably the most fascinating? By and large, all the chocobros have to deal with the fallout of being lied to by the adult figures in their lives, and it's the most prevalent with Noctis and Gladio. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of it in Ignis and Prompto too, but the particularly insidious way that Noctis and especially Gladio were lied to sometimes gets me.

See I don't even really think it was actually all that intentional. Not really a conscious act by Regis and Clarus, or the society around them? More like... I dunno, the lies that you get told by your parents as a little kid and you grow up to realize that the world is a lot different than you thought.

That being said, Noctis was absolutely lied to by his father; both about the nature of the King of Light and the idea that he'd succeed Regis as reigning monarch. Regis did it out of love, knowing that Noctis would die young, and reasoned that Noctis should get to have a relatively normal life, but it was still a lie. Gladio, likewise, was lied to by his father and Regis, told that he would be the next monarch's Shield, that he would fulfill a role that's got a pretty set expectation in their society.

See, Gladio expects Noctis to act a certain way, to act as King, and he gets increasingly frustrated when Noctis doesn't, or can't live up to that. He's not precisely wrong to expect it either, given their roles and their statues, and knowing that they're taking the throne during a full blown war. The problem is that Noctis was never taught how to be the thing that Gladio was told Noctis was going to be? And that's what causes friction with them all the time. It's fascinating, watching it play out and realizing the underlying issues with their relationships actually have very little to do with them as people and instead because of what they were told to expect from each other.

Gladio is also his own kettle of fish that I don't think the narrative is quite self aware enough to articulate properly, or even get into. Gladio falls into the trap of toxic masculinity very often -- struggling to articulate his feelings, expressing most of his feelings as anger, picking fights rather than talking about what's going on, using his strength as both a character aspect and bonus, etc. The list goes on. There's also the fact that he's sort of portrayed as a bit of a womanizer and the masculine ideal; tall, rugged, strong, etc which plays into all of that. XV plays him very straight (and straight) with these concepts, and just sort of ... expects it to be fine? Which is at odds with how the other three bros interact and are more emotionally available towards each other, leaving Gladio as one of the weaker bros in canon.

It kind of sucks too, because like, there's so much to unpack with him? His DLC is about wanting to have the strength to protect Noctis on the surface, but really when you look at it... you could also argue that the DLC is about Gladio's fears that he'll end up as dead as his dad did (ha, try that for alliteration) and the crushing weight of failure. Gladio has every right to fear his mortality, fear the fact that he is, nominally, the first in line on the battlefield and the the last defense for Noctis. If Noctis is to die, they will go through him first, and that's! Scary! But the game doesn't really get into that, hardly at all, and it makes picking up the pieces for Gladio kind of frustrating. Out of all the bros, he's the one I have to dig the most to find any kind of depth despite being prime real estate for it.

Anyways Gladio and Noctis' dynamic is fascinating if you actually start to unpack it, especially because it's built on the lies that their fathers fed them as children (that they themselves also bought into). I'd go so far to argue that between the two pairs, Noct/Gladio is in much more of a dire need to sit down and actually hash out what they are to each other, outside of their king/shield dynamic. Noct/Iggy certainly has shades of that, but Ignis has decided that they are friends and that he will defy fate if he must, let the world burn if he must, to save Noct's life. That has some depth beyond king/retainer that they're presented as. Noct/Gladio are sort of just... falling into the king/shield dynamic because they're expected to, and it sort of hampers their relationship and their communication.

I'm gonna scramble them both like eggs, probably into an omelette. They make me Think you know

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did I never post my grian cosplay here? seriously??

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Wip... still trying to figure out how to render these robots I'm so clueless

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Kicking my feet and giggling

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Due to work reasons, it took me several months to complete the Settings of Megatron and Sound Wave. Please enjoy. Any questions about embers are also welcome

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getting really into cyber-knight type characters lately. Yknow. Moral code, physically powerful, cool Armour.

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hungry .