#and it feels like I'm just...stuck here

[palettepainter]

Warning: Vent

[bezierballad]

"Episode 4 made me hate Ragatha"

...how? Because she called Gangle annoying when she has her happy mask?

Like, first of all she was drugged on the "stupid sauce". I know there's the argument that it basically had Ragatha spill her unfiltered thoughts about other people (such as not just Gangle but also Zooble and (deservedly) Jax), but if she hadn't been under the sauce's influence, her usual friendly and polite facade would've been intact the whole episode and not said those things.

I believe what Jax said was far worse in comparison (which is of course, typical Jax behavior), saying he "liked better when she was sad", since in comparison to Happy!Gangle (who's more manic, more assertive, and kind of a control freak), Sad!Gangle is meek and sensitive and (in Jax's eyes) a doormat, someone who he can easily torment and take his frustrations with the world around him out on without them screwing him over in return. There's a reason why he enjoys picking on her the most out of the ensemble, and right now he's pissed that the shoe is now on the other foot.

Anyway back to Ragatha. Because secondly and more importantly—

GANGLE LEFT RAGATHA DROWNING HEAD FIRST IN A DEEP FRYER.

I know that it was Jax who threw her in (again, typical Jax behavior) but Gangle (as both Ragatha's friend and the manager) still could've helped her outta there, but instead she just jollily walks off while Ragatha is sinking deeper into the oil. (She doesn't die from it, of course, but we clearly see that she's screaming and flailing in pain.)

And you know what else? This isn't even the first time this sort of thing has happened.

The first episode of the series has Ragatha get flung around by an abstracted Kaufmo and starts glitching out as a result (which, like the deep fryer, seems just as painful if not worse.) Pomni, after apologizing for not intervening promises Ragatha (who's a bit more nonchalant that any usual person would be in that position) that she'll go find Caine in order to help fix her.

Minutes later Pomni enters the endless exit doors, in an attempt to leave the circus, not thinking about what would happen to Ragatha.

And the thing is, Ragatha would've had every right to be mad at Pomni. And in Episode 2, it's more than implied that she is at least a little hurt by it.

Yet, despite that, Ragatha never takes it out on Pomni. She just brushes the moment off (or at least tries to) and spends most of the episode trying to befriend Pomni and even later vents to Kinger about her concerns about not being able to help Pomni feel welcome in her new environment. No matter how much physical or mental pain she endures, she keeps her polite and friendly facade. (Really, the only times we see her get pissed is whenever Jax is being an asshole.)

Which, begs the question: how many times has Ragatha gone through this sort of thing? How many times has she attempted to befriend others who later turn and walk away when she's suffering? Has this happened so many times to the point where in the first two episodes she brushes it off like it’s a normal occurrence for her?Judging by her reaction when Pomni thanks her for showing concern for her in episode 3, that could've been the first time someone has ever said that sort of thing to her.

For all we know, Ragatha's unfiltered remarks about others in Episode 4 was her being fed up with being the universe's ragdoll (literally and figuratively). And, since apparently Episode 5 is going to be Ragatha focused, she could be close to snapping (not in an abstraction way at least I hope not) and dropping her own "happy mask" completely.

Honestly I commend the amount of restraint Ragatha has on herself even while on the stupid sauce, because she could've said something far worse than just calling someone "annoying" and a "grouch" (Caine's swear censors aside)

[beargyufairy]

I have a feeling you got everything you wanted

And you're not wasting time stuck here like me

You're just thinking it's a small thing that happened

The world ended when it happened to me

[nenoname]

always kinda unhinged about tbob causing ford to regress back into his paranoia and isolation, along with the fact that he's kinda aware about it and that his family was there to witness it this time

i really wish we got a bit more of a pov from the rest of the family where they just see ford becoming increasingly reclusive and lashing out during that week (and it being during a visit from the mystery twins!! so they just have their grunkle avoiding them that whole time!!!! what the heck!!!) but also them doing a heist and managing to steal the book from right under ford's nose

+ also since ford said he saw bill's mind shatter, it makes me wonder if stan showed ford his memory defeating bill (which means they both didn't notice the backwards dying message...)

[blueskittlesart]

*sigh* thoughts on Nintendo's botw/totk timeline shenanigans and tomfoolery?

tbh. my maybe-unpopular opinion is that the timeline is only important when a game's place on the timeline seriously informs the way their narrative progresses. the problem is that before botw we almost NEVER got games where it didn't matter. it matters for skyward sword because it's the beginning, and it matters for tp/ww/alttp (and their respective sequels) because the choices the hero of time makes explicitly inform the narrative of those games in one way or another. it matters which timeline we're in for those games because these cycles we're seeing are close enough to oot's cycle that they're still feeling the effects of his choices. botw, however, takes place at minimum 10 thousand years after oot, so its place on the timeline actually functionally means nothing. botw is completely divorced from the hero of time & his story, so what he does is a nonissue in the context of botw link and zelda's story. thus, which timeline botw happens in is a nonissue. honestly I kind of liked the idea that it happened in all of them. i think there's a cool idea of inevitability that can be played with there. but the point is that the timeline exists to enhance and fill in the lore of games that need it, and botw/totk don't really need it because the devs finally realized they could make a game without the hero of time in it.

[theactualsunshinechild]

I think Aventio and Screwtio shippers shouldn't fight. After all, Ratio has two hands!

That's right. Two hands.

One for his chalk.

One for his codex.

Both of which he's holding in an embarrassed death grip as they chat away with each other about him.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

I have been following your work since the beginning. At first I just really liked your sense of humour and analysis of MDZS, but with time I started to really enjoy watch your progress in this drawing journey. I just watched your animatic and just wanted to say that I'm really happy for you, you're a really inspirational person.

I usually don't comment in anything and it's just because I'm really awkward about commenting. But I'm always accompanying your posts and seeing your notifications always make me smile, please continue with your good work!

(English isn't my first language, sorry for any mistakes)

Thank you very much! I've seen you around for a long while; I sincerely appreciate your support, no matter what form it takes!

[cataclysmictide]

You've Still Got My Heart Clutched In Your Hand (The Only Piece of Me That's Not Rotten)

Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus - Taylor Swift/Moon Song - Phoebe Bridgers/@littlespoonsokka/Little Women (2019)/Warsh_Tippy and Zelda - Whatever, Dad/@criterioncollectiongirl/Gilmore Girls (2001)/I Look In People's Windows - Taylor Swift/Right Where You Left Me - Taylor Swift/Unknown/Unknown/Unknown/I Look In People's Windows - Taylor Swift/Right Where You Left Me - Taylor Swift

[zvahlne]

i thought about aphmau & levin & malachi & now i need to lie down .

[eff-plays]

One thing I thought was funny was how Lucanis and to some extent, Taash, were positioned as these "experts" on specific things but those things didn't actually end up very relevant at all. Taash spent almost all of the main quest dragon fights going "they're blighted/mind controlled/different, I don't know how to deal with these!! :(((" and Lucanis is just a fucking. Guy. He's literally just the guy holding the knife. The knife itself is the part that can kill a god, anybody acrobatic enough could've held it and/or chucked it at Gilly and Elgar Man. Like he doesn't provide his "mage killing" expertise at any point, and even if he had any, how would that apply to them? Gilly is a huge horrible tentacle mommy and all Lucanis can do is yeet himself at her real hard. And he fails the first time anyway because Spite is doing the Macarena in his head or whatever. Mans doesn't even have any templar magic-nullifying abilities because the old mage-templar stuff is too icky for Bioware to acknowledge nowadays.

Then we got Emmrich, who is our "fade expert," but in truth he's mostly a spirit expert. When the game went "you need a fade expert to understand the Eluvians!!" I was like ... ok what the fuck is Bellara supposed to be then? Is she not a literal Veil Jumper? Did she not literally fix the main one already?

Veilguard wants the team to both be a ragtag bunch of misfits and an elite heist team of niche experts and it fumbles both so bad.

[sysig]

Growing closer than expected (Patreon)

[saintaviator]

FEELING THE REALITY THAT EVERYBODY LEAVES//AND NOW IM TRYING TO HOLD ON TO YOU 'CAUSE EVERYBODY LEAVES

[elvisqueso]

Pocahontas refusing to confide in Nakoma.

Pocahontas (1995)

rambling lil' meta under the cut

i've been thinking a lot about pocahontas's relationship with nakoma and what kind of friends they really are in the context of the film. when we meet them both, pocahontas is elevated and nakoma is in a boat far below her, shouting up to reach her. i think nakoma is always reaching for pocahontas and pocahontas will only reach back sometimes. it's a pretty unbalanced friendship, when you look at it, and i wonder why nakoma remains the main point of contact in the community for pocahontas besides her father. perhaps it's because they're similar ages. maybe they're childhood friends who just got so used to each other that the one may take the other for granted.

pocahontas never confides in nakoma, and you gotta wonder why. even their first interaction has pocahontas demurring when she answers that she was up on the cliff thinking. thinking about what? She doesn't say, but she doesn't refute nakoma's assumptions.

and nakoma...what does she get out of this friendship? maybe she's just used to trailing after pocahontas this way, maybe she just doesn't have another friend, or she thinks pocahontas needs her.

nakoma is sort of a foil for thomas, who trails after john smith like a starry-eyed fanboy with an intense para-social relationship perspective. nakoma also is the active participant in the friendship, not pocahontas. nakoma fills in the gaps of their relationship with assumptions and guesswork, because pocahontas is so reticent, so hesitant to share of herself that nakoma Has to. and when pocahontas's seclusion goes too far, when she fails to confide in nakoma some of the most essential elements of what she intends, nakoma has to fill in the gaps again. and when she does it's Not Good, and her solution is to send their strongest warrior (a man with affection for pocahontas, who might keep her secrets if she needs him to) to try and save her friend. and then it all blows up in their faces and a man lies dead in the water for it.

every relationship in the movie is so tragic like brO—

[snarkspawn]

light of kshahrewar ✨

[faksyan]

Huey Emmerich, mgs v cast & hypocrisy, a character analysis

Prefacing this with the fact that this is the morally gray franchise with the morally gray characters and I love how it portrays Huey Emmerich precisely for him being Like That. I think he is one of the most nuanced and well-written mgs characters and I'm pretty sure like half of it wasn't on purpose. He is the guy everyone hates for killing his wife (understandabe reason), trying to make one of his kid pilot a giant robot and almost drowning another in a pool (also understandable reason), and, most of all, for being a traitor. And with such a list, feels a bit weird that the accent often falls on that last part, doesn't it. Which is exactly how the narrative wants you to feel about his betrayal, on a surface level.

Every character essential to the Phantom Pain plot gets their "please feel bad for them, sympathize with them" moment, no matter how horrible a person they are. We get multiple monologs from Kaz, we get the 'I was the same way once' interrogation room and the ending of the Truth with Ocelot, we get Paz tapes and 'you're all diamonds' with Venom, we get Code Talker, Quiet, Eli (if they actually finished mission 51), even Skull Face, somewhat (don't even make me start on that guy. how is he less hated than Huey). The point is, the game is trying to make you feel bad for people who murder, torture, and whatever else, and parts of it are working, because it's fiction, and humans and morality are complicated and layered things! But what does Huey get? Torture sessions and tantrums that are framed as pathetic and ridiculous, even when what he is saying makes sense. Because yeah, there's some of that there. It's just that everyone else in the room deliberately doesn't acknowledge it.

When Venom just finds him, the first thing Huey says is that what happened to MSF was Snake's fault. The same during his exile - that there wouldn't have been an inspection, if there weren't a nuke to begin with. and it's like. he's not wrong. Having their own nukes as an independent military organization was a risk Snake and Kaz didn't just take blindly, they knew what could have happened. It was a gamble, and it didn't work out. If it did, it would've been their achievement. It didn't, so it's all Huey's fault, even though literally anyone could've been in his place. XOF weren't even the first to attempt to attack them, Zero was, Paz just didn't succeed. And if Skull Face hadn't either, someone else would have, the attention of the entire world was on them. It wasn't about betrayal, it was Snake and Kaz being drunk on success and biting off more than they could chew. Yes, Huey is a bastard and a traitor, but are we really going to blame all of this on him?

The answer is yes. And the reason is that they need someone to blame that's not them. The whole big theme of Phantom Pain is that Ocelot, Venom and Kaz have to do their best to keep up appearances, for the sake of Big Boss and his reputation. He is a legend, he is above everyone else, and he can do no wrong. Except after the fall of MSF everyone thinks that he can, Ocelot says as much in the briefing tapes. And they can't have that. So they blame it all on Huey. (<- all of this is a dictatorship allegory and critique of governments and military systems btw. 1984 or whatever I haven't read it. yay symbolism.) And blaming Huey is easy.

Huey is not a fighter. His father was a scientist who worked on the Manhattan Project. He was born on the same day as the Hiroshima bombing, his disability was (presumably) caused by his father's exposure to radiation. It's not that there was no choice involved in what he was going to do in life, but it was kind of inevitable that he would get involved with building nuclear weapons. And even when he says he is thinking about quitting upon being found by Snake in Peace Walker, it's Snake who convinces him not to, offering him to join MSF instead. In the PW tapes he also expresses that if it weren't for his disability, he would've been anywhere else, doing something different and living a "normal life".

He talks about the concept of nuclear terrorism there too, about nukes falling into hands of people without state who would be able to use them however they want, and I wonder if that was part of the reason for his betrayal. He didn't make the decision to bring nukes to base, he doesn't actually know these people. If maybe he thought it prevented a hypothetical nuclear catastrophe. Huey does say that he trusts Snake not to use them, that he values how honest Snake is, and is honest with him in return, even telling him things he's never told anyone before, like about his plagiarism of Granin's work. So what changed between then and the inspection, what was his motivation for betraying MSF, why was he approached about it of all people? Did he lie in the tapes, did he change his mind, did Skull Face offer him something that seemed more compelling, just threaten him? We never get to find out anything about it aside from every other character screaming that he's just a coward. No villain monolog, nothing.

Maybe it was about feeling important, like he is in charge, something that the hostility he has faced throughout his life didn't allow him. Huey is a sheep among wolves (wolf in sheep's clothing more like, but still). He does not fit in with the buff cool masculine soldiers, and even while working with Strangelove at NASA, he was regarded as obnoxious and spineless. It's not surprising he agreed to work for Coldman, since he, apparently, was the first person to actually recognize his skills. And even that later turns out to be a lie told to use him. Huey rarely if at all has been treated seriously, he is an outcast, even among people who share his ideas.

All he has is his brain and his knowledge, but it's never framed as much of an achievement (despite people exploiting it left and right), nor is him essentially being the nerd in a military setting ever really viewed as something dorky or endearing by the narrative like with Otacon, because the characters around him don't see him as such (as a result, so don't the players). On top of that, every other person uses his mobility aids to further degrade/harm/threaten him, even though he is already harmless when it comes to physical confrontation. In short, people he is surrounded with just enjoy the powerplay.

Right up until the point he actually does something that hurts them. And this is where my favorite part kicks in.

All three Diamond Dogs' higher-ups blame Huey for slightly different reasons, some maybe even believing that they are in the right and entitled to it (looking at you Kazuhira), but I am more than sure they know what it is that they're doing. And it's not like Kaz lacks self-awareness either, I don't think. Maybe it's denial that some of his actions led to the death of his friends, maybe blind belief in his own martyrdom and self-righteousness (sounds an awful lot like another character we know, huh), it still doesn't change much. How they all frame the story is the same. Huey's powerless and pathetic, but has ruined everything at the same time. And it doesn't really make sense, but everyone on the base agrees. It's the moment where individuals turn into a crowd that demands blood, but at least it's not their commanders it's directed at!

The Questioning Huey (6) tape is a good example of that. I especially like the bit where he starts talking about how DD is not actually a dog, because on a smaller scale, it shows how people on Mother Base just roll with things that are objectively false and turn on anyone who says otherwise. No, DD is our beloved mascot, and we are called dogs, he is just like us. And it's not like DD is just a wolf either, so neither of them are right here. But each of them thinks that they are.

That's why the amount of genuine Huey hate is a bit amusing to see, I guess. Because it's precisely the thing the game is trying to commentate on. None of these people are good. None of them have it figured out. The point is that it's just narrative bias that makes you belive that some are, if not good, at least better than others. In reality, it's never about morals or being correct, just perspective.

Huey himself, on the other hand, falls into another extreme - in his eyes, he's done nothing wrong. Because he can do no wrong, he's powerless, like everyone's alway told him, remember? He sees himself as the victim, because in a lot of cases, he is.

You can say that he is a lying traitor and that the truth serum didn't work on him because of some failsafe Skull Face thought of, but really, would he bother? He didn't even view Huey as anything but a traitor he despised. you know, the guy who was in charge of organizing the betraying part. the guy who put bombs in people and wanted to commit mass-murder on a scale no one has seen before. So the obvious and the most simple answer here is that Huey whole-heartedly, truly believes he hasn't done anything wrong. He thinks he doesn't possess the power to, that he isn't important enough. And it's drilled so deep into him he never acknowledges it's not really true. Even when he kills Strangelove, he still doesn't accept that it is his fault and his actions matter.

That's my favorite part about him, I think. How deep in denial he is about having an impact on the people around him, while also having a sort of god complex when it comes to his machines. How everyone around despises him for it, while being the ones who caused it and doing the exact same thing, refusing to get off the high horse. Metal gear is a messy franchise about messy people, but it's good exactly because it shows what has messed these people up so much. And more often than not, it's the system they're surrounded by, or that they created themselves in an attempt to escape the previous one. It's easy to point at Huey as just a bad person and only that, but I find the context of his whole life and the ways he's coping with it really compelling. There is a lot of complexity to it, and in the end of the day, they are all hypocrites.

[uhbasicallyjustmilex]

me stubbornly forcing myself to drink green tea and rest from my THIRD COLD THIS MONTH