#DAMMIT I SPELLED MUPPET WRONG

[springypaws]

Haven’t been happy with arting for awhile, so have some style experimentation (featuring the four poorly drawn og’s and some unintelligible personal comments)

Close-up’s and their ID’s (in their ALT texts) under the cut!! … hopefully, idk where the cut starts

[vermanaward]

dawntrail msq, 92-95

earthenshire

i'm just getting this out ahead of time. if this ends in another cheese debacle im. pls don't

apparently 'use your words to ask for things' is a concept that moblins are allergic to. god dammit

koana is that guy who studied abroad for a semester and came home all 'they do it Like This in Sharlayan We Should Too'

dont love that he's internalised so much that the foreign way is besterest, or that the writing keeps half supporting his assertions

[while standing right next to an aethyryte] whyyyyy do we have to taaaake a booooooooat

wait this is why we had that aside with the melodramatic elf wasn't it. sigh

so as well as speedrunning his character arc he's speedrun his citizenship arc. good for him i guess?

cool, role quests unlocked. time to ignore those until level 98

okay the gulool jaja fight was p fun

also i like that this whole hting isn't just. heeheehoohoo trial by combat goes brrr. he's like if izaro actually rubbed his braincells together and didn't set the empire up to fail

[koana voice] everyone will think twice about fighting us once we have advanced technology

yes that's definitely how this works. also absolutely the reason garlemald left sharlayan alone. not because sharlayan kept running away like the cowardly fucks they are.

wow. gee. lamat got herself catnapped this definitely wasn't incredibly predictable

doing the stealth section while it's pissing it down with rain so my girl has her bright white umbrella out = top tier

well. koana's not having kids the old fashioned way

and once again we all just. stand there like muppets while the bad guy retreats.

then again literally all of this could have been avoided if someone had. escorted the catgirl when she was lured into the Very Obvious Trap. sigh

either way this is going to end with one of the cats on the throne and the other in an advisory capacity. and i hate it

i had to xp grind here bc of Miscalculations. how embarassing -_-

worlar's echo

finally realising that the urqopacha day theme has the same opening as the sohm al theme. concerned about what further parallels are going to be drawn. is valigarmanda nidhogg's ex? is estinien going to get posessed again? pls say no

at least there's not a blue hair elf pld for them to kill off this time

okay so i was wrong about valigarmanda. i still expect that the seal in the city will house a boss fight, though.

new prediction: the feat of ice will start with 'strengthen valigarmanda's prison', and end up being 'actually just fucking kill it'

pretty purple bird. it's the next dungeon boss isnt it

dungeon 2 - worqor zamor

alisae green dps LMAO

how i feel during prog sometimes. tbh

krile uses aoe spells?? in dungeon??? what is this MADNESS

hot Damn i like boss 1 a lot. it's cute but also its mechanics are kinda fun

i also like that trusts don't just run to the safe spot straight away any more. little details in programming them that makes them seem more human

boss 3's no slouch either. honestly a good dungeon alround tbh

the gear is unique too. dyes too

aaay got the orc roll too

valigarmanda

...and we didn't use erenville's magic macguffin when lamat was missing because....?

WHY COULDNT WE FEED IT THE INFORMATION IN THE FIRST PLACE. christ this is so needlessly padded

the normal was pretty fun. ex hopefully will be interesting. the persistent dot on everyone after the add phase was an interesting touch. music slaps too

it occured to me about half way through that if valigarmanda is/was an auspice, it probably lost itself to aramitama at some point, which is. sad, honestly. give your local long lived sentient animal a hug before they go mad and blow the world up

also i noticed krile casting aero ii at vali and. i guess her ai script just loops aoe spells in part of it, instead of being smart enough to tell between single target and multiple targets. at least she aoes i guess.

oh. the "golden city" was amarout wasn't it. 🙃🔫

iq br'aax

so instead of using our words and just. asking someone what this recipe is, we're going to watch people and divine a particular recipe from the aether. why is this storyline so allergic to people talking to each other like adults

what am i saying this is xiv nobody talks to each other like adults. urianger least of all.

[consults crafting log] well either it's higher than level 95, requires a master crafting book, or doesn't exist. there i solved the trial can we- [dragged off stage out back]

...why the fuck is french toast a level 93 recipe

oh okay i used my words and asked someone and we were forbidden from being told this information so i guess we're just following quest markers until we stumble upon it by happenstance and exposition

oh my god alphinaud shut up about the fuckin firewood

brokering peace by appealing to a greater xenophobia is. it sure is a tactic i guess

not that he's wrong per se but like.

if there's been peace for eighty years tho, and barring the use of something like black rose, you'd have thought the cinderfields would have grown back by now. ash is a wonderful fertiliser, after all. but what do i know

(even then the east end still has more regrowth that. an old battlefield in the middle of a rainforest? okay.)

pls krile i powerleveled cul so i could afk macro my own consumables. i do not cook

i keep periodically remembering the person responsible for overseeing this expac and i'm just. yeah. the heavy handedness. yeah.

Oh Boy Parenthood Drama man

Wuk Lamat Has Two Dads (but no mom. xiv pls)

"several cutscenes" says the prompt, while there's the telltale solo instance marker around an npc. sure, jan

apparently squex did not in fact get the memo that people hate rp battles

wol: [popcorn intensifies]

mamook

we are actually visiting. an entire map during a single arc of the story. this is unprecedented. at least outide of final zones, anyway. which i know this isn't bc my shared fate and aether current trackers are half empty

you know i. i'm extremely not a fan of how it's the lizards of all the groups here that are the supremacists who are not above lying/cheating/stealing/etc. just saying

SILVERSCALES MENTIONED

actually i've been sorta wishing i could bring it up. 'yeah i beat several shades out of him for bullying harmless tonberries. who then finished him off with their knives, yes, but fucker had it coming'

why are there alkonosts here 👀 not that it really matters but. pretty birb-not-birb

man we're gearing up to Power Of Friendship the racist supremacists again aren't we

whatever. lower yak'tel is so pretty, i can't wait to fish here :3

i like how everyone assumes that we're on the level and didn't murder bakool for his blessed scales like he kinda deserved

GLOW IN THE DARK BANANAS

actually i just saw a glow in the dark skeletal alkonost and now im wondering if the glow in the dark isn't like. radiation or someshit

i guess it tracks that the one thing wuk lamat would learn from the wol would be the ability to look at an enemy who despises everything that they are and go. "FRIEND SHAPED. :D"

oh okay we're Power Of Science (And Also Friendship)-ing our way out of this

which is great and all but man. sometimes people are just power hungry dicks, you know? this is the same shit we went through in garlemald. 'waugh they were only xenophobic warmongers because they had to live in a shitty country and people were shitty to them'. which, again. werlyt author -_-

...the catboy's going to quit, isn't he

ilevel for this battle is 666. lmao

"everyone ready?" erenville: [flees]

i didnt realise roegadyn were from yorkshire

i'm going to go out on a limb here and assume the fact that kettie is still alive is connected to something in not!amaurot

im also going to crash here bc its 2am and ive been awak since [looks at clock] too early. TMORROW: WE CONTINUE

[popculturebuffet]

Prince of Wishful Thinking (Tom Retrospective): Tough Love or The True Monster

Hello all you happy people and welcome back to Prince of Wishful Thinking, what is usually my look at the life and times of Tom Lucitor but since I NEED to cover the season 3 finale as vital part of Tom’s story, we’re taking one last look at the tragic tale of Meteora Butterfly before the finale sends these two stories hurtling together. You’d THINK this would be the last detour of this already sizeable arc.. and you’d be wrong as i’ll also be covering Kelly’s World, as I feel it’s vital for both “Curse of the Blood Moon” and “A Boy and his hard to remember title”, as it provides extra context for Marco’s anguish in the former.. and provides extra evidence for why a CERTAIN MOMENT in the latter pisses me off to no end.. seriously even when as universe dies and the only people left are Frankllin Richards and Galactus, there will still be a little note reading “Fuck how they treated Kelly” written in all caps so Galactus remembers to yell it. 

So sadly that DOES mean it’s been three entries in this retrospective in a row that either haven’t feature Tom at all or in the case of the last episode only had him in short cameos. I mean we did get his love affair for pie but we also got a creepy goblin man forcing his girlfriend and best friend to kiss each other, his best friend being WAY to eager to jump to that conclusion, and neither considering using Marco’s Scissors because the writers only remember he has those half the time in Season 3... and clearly I ddn’t either as I forgot to mention that plot hole, something @jess-the-vampire​ brought up to me. Sadly I DID forget to consult on this when we talked earlier this week , and she’s not online as I write this so I won’t have her insight for this one. 

But if you want some Tom content, i’m happy to share my crossover ship for the boy with you. I’ve been shipping him with Octavia from Helluva Boss lately.  Because of course it’s Helluva Boss, i’ve not been at all subtle with my obession with it and much like Letterkenny, X-Men and Dragon Ball Z Abriged it is a love I never plan to be subtle about. 

But I just think they compliment each other well: They have contrasting atittudes, and tastes in music, but seem like they’d share hobbies. Like taxidermy.. I could see Tom buying this... demonic combination of a badger, a skunk, a deer and my nightmares Octavia is preciously holding up.

Granted I also feel tom would both animate them with their dead souls.. and then use his new woodland friends of the dammned as a chorus to sing “Can You Picture That” from the Muppet Movie, because that’s what my mind does on a regular day. I think the contrasting attitude creates great chemstiry and it made me also realize I have a thing for ships with directly contrasting home lives.  Tom has two loving decent parents who deeply love one another and at worst simply didn’t reign in his worse behavior because it was standard for demon stuff. Octavia in contrast simply has two parents, one who DOES love her and tries his best, but his best includes calling his side piece “My big dicked blitzy” right in front of her and hiring said side piece to guard them, and her mother who clearly thinks so little of her daughter’s emotional well being she hired a cowboy to shoot her daddy dead in the middle of a large crowd. The point is I think they’d be adorable and they both badly need to be happy after being emotionally fucked over by people they care about. 

But  alas my new ship will have to wait as we marginally important things to get down too.. things that will impact both this season and the next’s endgame and utterly destroy Eclipsa and Moon’s relationship for good. Sound fun? Well if so join me under the cut won’t you?

We open in the Pidgeon Kingdom.. and things aren’t exactly great.. and by that I mean Meteora stomped a hole through it and ravaged the place and Rich demands blood.. and vengance.. and possibly blood vengance. But not Tekken Blood Vengance.. he already has like 5 copies of that on dvd. Still needs it on Blu Ray though, hook him up if you got it. 

So Moon and Eclipsa are trying to smooth this over/find out which way did she go George which way did she go, and are angrily dismissed after they try Rich’s patience, not helped by Eclipsa not being familiar with the Pidgeon Kingdom because they hadn’t slaughtered everyone who used to live there yet. Look that’s what happened, Star outright mentions in the Big Book of Spells that htey suddenly sprung up where another kingdom was and no one knows what happens. There was some bird murders up in that place.. or birdur if you will. Some birds drank some human blood. This is what Alfred Hitchock tried to warn us about with his film built on horrifying actress abuse. 

The point is with some more pidgeon-led murder stabbings on the cards our heroines are trying to find her since their attempts to convince Rich not to go on an Archer Style Rampage fell on deaf ears. 

But it’s clear from the second the two are alone both have diffrent priorties: Eclipsa desperatley wants to find the daughter she lost and talk her down from what sh’es become, help her become better and hopefuly heal from the pain she’s been in. She’s lost her husband, her kingdom and centuries. She can’t loose her baby girl too.

Moon on the other hand... clearly has no intrest in helping Meteora or stopping this peacefully. Her first thought is stopping Meteora. Her living through it is not necessary. It’s also clear her racisim isn’t REMOTELY gone depsite Buff Frog and Star’s best attempts and despite learning just how deeply and horribly Mewni’s engrained racism has hurt eclipsa and destoryed Moon’s own family history. To Moon this is just a big monster to fight.. i’ll dive into this more in a bit.

For now our heroines encounter an angry mob. This time their not here for Homer Simpson, but for Meteora as her rampages have destroyd their towns, livelehoods and given some weird guy a hat. It’s the best bit of the episode and i’m embarassed I forgot it happened. 

So with them being no help our queens back out but end up finding some actual help: Eddie! You know the guy from the episode I skipped over... River’s cousin or something like that. He dosen’t have a wiki entry, I do not know why. He’s voiced by Rhys Dharby of Flight of the Conchords Fame whose since made quite the career as a voice actor. No major roles yet that i’m aware of, but a lot of delightful minor ones like this. It’s good to see him he was one of the highlights of that show and not just because he sang this..

Eddie showed up in the Bog Beast of Boggabah and I honestly forgot he was in this episode.. but again, it’s Rhys Dharby. It’s not like suddenly finding out “Aw god dammit Pauly Shore is in this”. So Eddie agrees to help as he’s been tracknig Meteora.. and we find out something troubling: Meteora is getting BIGGER. Gradually, to the point the bog from said episode Is skipped over is drained because she DRANK IT. We also get a great exchange “I’d hate to see the size of her mother” “Actually her father more than helped with that”

Awwwww.... seriously Esme Blanco is a national treasure and has some great deliveries in this one.. and some heartbreaking ones. But before we can get to that it turns out Meteora sucked the powers out of Eddies family.. who he misses..e xcept one guy> That guy can fuck right off. Seriously Eddie is also a national treasure and I wish he’d shown up in season 4. I mean he couldn’t of HURT it. For one it’s Rhys Dharby and for another that season shot itself in the face, both feet, the groin and then the face again enough that I don’t think anything could hurt it as bad as the writers already did. 

But sadly we say farwell to Eddie as he goes out how men have since the begining of time.. deciding to poke a strange creature till it murdered him. Or took his soul out in this case, speaking of which...

Yeah while I couldn’t get Jess in time for this review, she did bring this up in the past: Meteora’s ablility to pull a 

Comes right the fuck out of nowhere with no build up and no explination for it. She DID drain personalites and according to this episode youth.. but that was with a big ole machine. It MIGHT have been intended to be one of Globgor’s powers.. but that makes zero sense, as if he COULD do that, as we saw with Toffee last season when he had that power, also out of nowhere but at least it made a touch more sense given his power was draining magical energy anyway at the time, so adding souls to that isn’t a huge stretch, but as we saw that would’ve been game over for the comission, especially since we DO see him fighting them one on three next season. If he had this power, he wouldn’t be in crystal and I think they realized that, but just tried to act as if his daugther COULDN’T do that and assumed everyone would casually forget. And I get not accounting for me writing about this years later, even I wouldn’t of thought that, but not counting on fans both young and old to latch onto a continuity error? Have you met fandoms Disney, have you? It dosen’t bring the story down entirely and I get WHY ti’s there, so she can nonlethally kill people so we’re not down most of the cast for Season 4, but it feels like an easy win button and one she barely uses despite it being eye beam activated. It should be easy enough to pull, boom, soul suck, win, rinse and repeat. It’s okay to have uber powerful tequniques but they have to have a drawback. For instance the Kaioken from DBZ. It’s a really damn cool technique that gives the user a neat red aura and amplifies poewr.. but the more you amplify the more strain it puts on your body and the more likely you’ll die, and Super later creatively explained why it hadn’t been used since Super Sayian was introduced because said form would’ve sped it up so much it’d be too much for a body to take. Here whie Meteora dosen’t use it in EVERY fight, she uses it enough that it makes no sense this isn’t just her first move for every fight she gets into, mental breakdown or not. 

That being said Meteora’s current mental state as she talks to her mother, having regressed to talking in only a few words and acting like a child, makes perfect sense. Henious already wasn’t in great mental shape to begin with, having a slow sustained breakdown since Marco overthrew her. and now on top of this she remembers her whole life has been a lie, starts to mutate into her natural state at a rapid and likely unehalthy pace, and then finds out on top of all of this Mewni is rightfully owed to her. Given she ended last episode blowing a guy up for rejecting her, it’s not a stretch that given even more power and no time to process anything, Metora would deteroate further. 

Esme and Jessica really knock this scene out of the park as Eclipsa presents Metora with her old doll Bobo and gently trying ot talk to her.. but you also get the fear Eclipsa feels as she tries to awkardly manuver around the fact her daughter is far more unhinged than she was prepared for, even threanting Eclipsa simply because Eclipsa wanted to be called mother instead of mommy. But despite this fear.. Eclipsa wants to help and Walter beautifuly captured metoera as a hulk like tragic figure:a being with low sanity and too much power desperate to be loved by the one person it cares about. And it makes it even more heartbreaking as Eclipsa explains what happened: bad people trapped her , a disfunctoinal society with a racist queen and even more racist subjects has taken hold in her absence... and it’s clear both want opposite things: Meteora wants what sh’es owed, her family back on the throne and Mewni back in her graps, but has lost herself so much to rage, anger and insanity she can’t see it’s not hers to take, while Eclipsa.. just wants her daughter back. She’d be happy just settling down with her and having a LIFE after hers was taken away. Eclipsa just wants a chance to be with what family she has left. It just HURTS to know that despite RIGHTFULLY hating the comission, despite having eveyr reason to take the crown from Moon by force and make the world better by force.. she dosen’t want that. She just wants some peace. It’s selfish... but it’s hard not to be when you havealmost nothing to hold onto. Eclipsa has lost her legacy, her husband and her crown... Meteora is all she has and all she wants and sh’ed of been happy if she just accepted that. If that was enough. 

But the real telling part, and the thing that ultimately makes this go as bad as it does.. is Moon’s reactions to all of this. Sh’es CONFUSED by Meteora having a toy as if that’s foreign to her a monster would, and she’s cleaerly livid , if restrianing it, at both Meteora’s deire for the crown and Eclipsa RIGHTFULLY calling out the state of how things are, and mildly at that. Despite seeing how much damage Mewni’s inherent racisim has done, how it lead to her living a lie, ruined Eclipss, Globgore and Metora’s lives, despite how DESPERTLY her daughter struggles to fight against it, despite seeing firsthand that Monsters can have famiies and lives... she can’t let it go. She can’t see monsters as people. SHe dosen’t see a flawed person who was turned into a metpohrical monster by years of brainwashing and abuse and is slowly unravling under the weight of her true self.. she just sees a threat to her kingdom. She dosen’t see her kingdom as racist, just as it should be. And she dosen’t see herself as stepping down like hse damn well should’ve the MOMENT she found out everything. Because at her heart Moon can’t accept the truth and clings to her racisim. 

And that my friends.. is what ultimately leads to Tragedy. Not Meteora’s unraveling mental state, not Eclipsa’s naitvite. What happens next is ENITRELY Moon’s fault. Whle Eclipsa was failing to get through to Metora, she was trying her best and might of gotten somewhere.. but Moon was already settling to attack.. and does so, making it look like Eclipsa set her own child up. 

A fight ensues, a suprisingly even one... but Eclipsa breaks it up and PROVES her way could’ve worked. In one of Esme’s best performances sshe tearfully tells her daughter she loves her.. that ALL she wants is time with her to make up for what she’s lost.. she dosen’t need a kingdom or her crown or her wand, all things she DESERVES... she just wants her daughter. She just wants to help her baby girl before she goes so far down this path of hatred and vengance she’s alreayd well trod upon there is no point to return to. 

It gets through to Meteora, makes her stop... and Moon TAKES ADANTAGE OF THAT. She then restrains metoera with a magical rock barrier and starts palpatineing her to death. It’s a horrifying moment that ultimately shows who Moon really is.. that when given the chance to let Meteora go, let her CHANGE and grow as a person and help the kingdom.. she instead tries to kill her. When she’s no longer a threat,  hasn’t seriously hurt her in their fight, and could use her power to RESTORE the damage she’s done, fix what she’s broken and help the kingdom grow and mend the bridges racisim has torn down. But all she can see is a monster, and something to destroy.. not someONE to save. 

So Eclipsa does what Moon would do if it were star about to die and saves her daughter, desperatly trying to stop mooon.. and allowing Meteora to get a clear shot and take half of moon’s soul. While Eclipsa is able to stop her from taking the full thing, Moon is left disoreinted and half alive and leaves on insticnt to parts unknown while Meteora escapes. Eclipsa is left alone, devistated and with her daughter truly lost. And the worst is truly yet to come. 

Before we get into final thoughts i’d like to talk about how this scene impacts Moon’s betryal later. To me having rewatched this scene.. it only makes it work MORE making it clear Moon simply can’t fahtom racial equality and that she can’t fahtom that eclipsa had very good reason for doing what she did ... to me it comes off as her using Eclipsa betryaing her as a very flimsy justifcation to not validate her rule and to first retire and then try a coup. That “Well she “BETRAYED” me so i’m fine. “ But in truth... she betrayed Eclipsa first. She attacked her daughter TWICE when Eclipsa was close to getting through to her Her reasons are flimsy.. because i’ts not ABOUT eclipsa, but what eclipsa represents: equality with a race Moon dosen’t see as people. It’s about Moon’s racisim coloring everything tills h’es truly blinded and should have lost everything She didn’t because the ending is a fucking disgrace, but we might get to that at some point, the point here is for all that disgrace’s faults... it did get it right here, and Moon was always portrayed as being unable to let go of her racisim no matter what it cost her or how much her daughter despteratly tried to change her. Trust me as someone whose Dad used to argue that gay marriage meant he should be able to marry his cat, and who still argues against trans people using the bathroom of their choice, I get trying desperatley to change someone who don’t wanna. “Sigh”. 

Final Thoughts: This episode is truly excellent. The writing is top notch as is the voice acting for all involved and the climax isa true, well led up to tragedy. The animation is also on point, with the characters emotions on perfect display. This is an episode I now realize is one of the series best and worth ar ewatch if you haven’ts een it. Truly amazing stuff that gets me pumped for the finale.. and disapoints me in how the series could reach these highs for one finale.. but would sink to it’s lowest point for next seasons.  Next Time on Prince of Wishful Thinking: Star tries depseratly to find her mom, while Marco, Tom and a motely crew of misfits try to take down Meteora and Tom learns the awful truth from the photo booth and wears a zuko ponytail which weirdly looks good on him. That boy can rock anything let me tell you. 

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