airplanned

[airplanned]

This may be a random question--in Displaced, was the irrigation system Zelda was rigging modeled after a ram pump? I recently had a very IRL reason to learn about those, which of course made me want to insert it into my own headcanon, but it also made me think of what you had her doing with the guardian parts. I've been meaning to ask but felt like it would be awkward, but my curiosity needs to know!

Not awkward at all!

So I did not think about the pump that hard. It is “a pump.” It’s built from guardian parts.

If you have thought hard about a Zelda pump, you 100% need to include it in a fic. Those are the rules.

[airplanned]

You're a royal attendant slowly realising that you've lost track of which of the young princess' numerous anti-assassination body doubles is the real one. The royal portraits are so idealised that they look nothing like her, so you can't figure it out that way, and the Queen is a shitty absentee mom who doesn't remember what her own daughter looks like and routinely gets them mixed up, so she'd be no help even if you dared to ask. None of them will break character. You're beginning to suspect they're doing this on purpose.

[airplanned]

My kid: Who’s the smartest Strawhat?

Me (trying to be a good role model): All the Strawhats are smart in one particular area and careless and goofy in other areas 🙂

My bae: Except Zoro. He’s just dumb.

[airplanned]

I know that some British people take umbrage at Americans calling the Great British Bake Off relaxing, but it's just because GBBO is such a different kind of stressful from American baking shows.

American baking shows will be called something like "Cupcake Knife Fight", there's horror movie lighting everywhere and dramatic stings every 5 seconds. All of the contestants are shit talking each other and fist fighting over the one single deep fryer provided by production. It will show the judges all whispering to each other at their super villain table overlooking the whole kitchen, and one will be like, "Oh my god. Everyone look at Brenda right now. She's straight tanking it." And it will cut to Brenda, who is running around covered in flour and crying and also bleeding for some reason. Then you get a clip from an interview with one of the contestants, and they're like, "I really need to win this. Without this award money, I'm gonna need to close my restaurant, sell my dad, and live out of my car. AGAIN." Then the giant digital doomsday clock overhead lets out a horrid klaxon, the judges tell half of them that their cupcakes taste disgusting, and one of them gets eliminated and sent to walk down the dramatically-lit shame hallway never to be seen again.

Meanwhile GBBO is in a lovely, brightly colored tent, there are delightful and friendly hosts/jesters there to keep everyone entertained, and all of the B Roll is of like... a bumblebee going into a flower, or a lamb running in a field. And yes, there will be moments where someone will mess up their timing or something, and they'll be looking at their bake through the oven door like, "oh gosh I don't think this will rise in time!" Then they stand up to find Paul Hollywood directly behind them ominously. His creepy whitewalker eyes will glow white, and he'll say something like "the 12th of June. 2035. Drowning." And his eyes will go back to normal and he'll walk away. Then the baker gives a playful grimace to the camera and says "that didnt sound great, did it?". Cut to a sweet looking older woman sipping tea on a stool and she says "oo I do hope that Prue enjoys the taste of my sugary, sticky baps!". Then, at the end, someone gets a gold star for doing good, and the loser of the episode gets in the middle of a giant group hug. You see all of them at the end of the series at a giant carnival with their families and the post credits informs you that all of the contestants have become a Partridge Family-style traveling band and stayed friends forever.

[airplanned]

Lightbulbasaur 💡

[airplanned]

[airplanned]

Blue Prince (which I love and am obsessed with) really fucking pissed me off, and I need to talk about it.

Massive late game spoilers. I’m so serious. This is like the 3rd (4th?) ending. (3rd cut scene)

Okay, so I hate the Parlor game. It was fun when each box had one statement. It stopped being fun when the boxes had two statements, because I don’t think it was clear that they were AND and not OR statements. Me and my bae had a big disagreement about it, and it kinda soured the whole thing for me. Plus, if I sat and did the logic every time it would just take too long every run. I got the two key upgrade and I don’t even read the clues anymore. I open two boxes and probably get two gems. Lately, the puzzles started over, and I’ve just been handing the controller to my son, who says he loves the Parlor Room (I think because he feels bad that I’m so grumpy about it).

So the last week (in real life) we’ve been having a blast running experiments and removing crates. This is almost the only thing I haven’t done yet, so we were very focused and very sure.

Removed the crates!

Lol! Get the key!

Haha! I knew that door would be somewhere! Score! Open the door!

Ope! Let’s make a contraption!

Hahaha! Another contraption. This is using all the knowledge we’ve built up and we’re so good at this game!

Blue door! I knew that was coming! We’re so smart!

Then….

Parlor game

…

Are you tucking kidding me? Ugh!

Okay. So. One box says the adventure is at its end and one says it goes on forever. So obviously, if ai want one more puzzle, I pick the “the adventure never ends” box. (And the third box says there are two true boxes. Which means that box itself is true and one of the others is true. If that box itself is false, then still only one of the other boxes is false. Okay. Got it.)

Open the adventure never ends box

…It’s empty

There’s a cut scene with somber music where Simon looks longingly at the other box.

I am devastated. All my excitement and enthusiasm shrivels.

1. How did I pick the wrong box? So if I say I want to be done and end the game? It gives me another puzzle? WTF devs? How does that make any sense? There are plenty of times in this game when the devs and I are on different pages. When there’s a miscommunication. But how was I so wrong in understanding this? And what were the devs expecting?

2. Yes, I see that there is a spiral on the top of the box. I’ve seen that a few times, and I know there is another constellation. One of the times I saw it, it also said “Does it ever end?” Or something. So this is a hint that I need to gather stars and look at that.

However! Why the somber music??? Why make it look like I picked the sad ending? I think they were trying to be obtuse. Is this a puzzle? That’s how the whole game has gone, so I get that. But the sad cut scene that makes you feel like a failure? Why?

Why not have the spiral in the bottom of the box with a piece of paper that says “Does it ever end?” And the cut scene has calming or uplifting music and Simon outside looking up at the stars and then the day ends. That would trick you into thinking “oh, the mysteries go on, but he’s living a good little life and I can stop playing the game.”

The tone is bad here. It’s alienating. This is a serious miss for me.

Yeah, tomorrow I can go back and open the other box, and I can farm stars, but now the game has insulted me, and I’m going to need some time away.

[airplanned]

I saw a One Piece spoiler, and just said out loud, “Oh no. You sweet potato.”

[airplanned]

My new computer does not let me drag and drop.

I’m trying to edit a pdf, but I can’t, because I can’t move it into the correct folder and accidentally moved it to the trash, and now it’s stuck there.

Have I become my mother?????

[airplanned]

Help me make a 30 Day Writing Challenge

I want goofy prompts to write Drabbles in July!

Send me your goofy prompts!

AUs! Situations! Dares! Bring it on!

I will post the list so you can do it with me if you want.

[airplanned]

Help me make a 30 Day Writing Challenge

I want goofy prompts to write Drabbles in July!

Send me your goofy prompts!

AUs! Situations! Dares! Bring it on!

I will post the list so you can do it with me if you want.

[airplanned]

I want to talk about Blue Prince, but I have no idea how to even mark spoilers anymore.

[airplanned]

I literally spit water all over my screen.

[airplanned]

“He would not fucking say that” except its the badly written source material so he did, in fact, say that

[airplanned]

I’m going to talk about the Zelda voice memos in detail. Spoilers below

There is a voice memo about the Sheikah tech. It says, “It seems that when the Calamity was defeated, all of the ancient relics here at the Hateno Ancient Tech Lab turned to dust and disappeared. All that remains are replicas of the originals, and with those gone, these are even more valuable. They will doubtlessly help tell future generations of the history of Hyrule.”

So, I actually like this.

I feel like Tears of the Kingdom was gaslighting me the whole time. Like, “What Sheikah tech? What are you talking about? We have always been at war with Eastasia.” And since I personally loved the Sheikah tech so much and since Zelda loved the Sheikah tech so much, this really hurt. The game was ignoring what I liked about the last game and retconning one of my favorite characteristics of my favorite character. It seemed to show complete indifference to their own characters and indifference to me, the player. And, I think, I felt a bit like, “Well, if the developers don’t care, why should I?”

But this one sentence works for me. Where did the Sheikah tech go? It pooped away. Okay! Thanks for telling me!

And I feel like that’s a character moment for Zelda. How would she feel to have the Sheikah tech vanish? There was a moment of loss and subsequent growth implied here that we just didn’t see because of the time skip. She has clearly bounced back and is in a great place. This is less a jump in her character and more an arc that we didn’t get to see.

And I feel better about everyone’s pivot to Zonai tech. That had always bothered me, because Purah and Robbie dedicated their lives to Sheikah Tech and to come in in Tears of the Kingdom and they’ve had complete corer changes is wild. But “the Sheikah tech vanished,” means that research pivot was forced.

And then I’m thinking about the actual Sheikah tech. For it to vanish as soon as the Calamity was defeated, there must have been some Calamity sensing magic in the materials. Maybe it was infused with a bit of the Calamity’s essence. Maybe that’s why the Calamity could take over the Sheikah tech. Could they have made different tech infused with the essence of something else? Could there be a larger thematic element about something vanishing when its purpose is fulfilled???

So, yeah. That was literally all Nintendo needed to say for me to be cool with it.

[airplanned]

The other night husband and I were watching a documentary about the yeti where they were doing DNA analysis of samples of supposed yeti fur, and every one of them came back as bears.

Anyway, the next night we watched a thing about some pig man who is supposed to live in Vermont. People said it had claws and a pig nose but walked upright like a man. Now, I happen to know that sideshows used to shave bears and present them as pig men. So every piece of evidence they gave of this monster sounds to me like a bear with mange.

So now the running joke in our house is that everything is bears. Aliens? Bears. Loch Ness monster? Bear. Every cryptozoological mystery is just a very crafty bear.

Bears. They’re everywhere. Be wary. Anyone or anything could be a bear.

[airplanned]

(opening the author’s works page after finishing a fic) and if im lucky they’ll have written this exact same fic but different a bunch more times