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"After their hit film BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID, Paul Newman and Robert Redford swapped mustaches and got together again with the director George Roy Hill..." - from Pauline Kael's review of The Sting (1973)

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...So no Cannibalism?

[Check out the trailer and wishlist Mandrake on Steam!]

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Walter Molino

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So idk if you guys know of a game called Undertale. Its by Toby Radiation Fox, the guy who does homestuck music.

Well i started playing the demo, and that part with the flower, I thought it was gonna be all cute and nice.

BOY WAS I HELL WRONG. THAT FLOWER FREAKED THE HELL OUT OF ME. IM STILL SHAKING NOW.

someone calm me down. im not even 10 seconds and this is freaky. its like OFF  but idk. sdjgklsdjg;lksdjg

imma keep playing though, hopefully it gets better

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So wait are livestock guardian dogs to their flocks like… Clark Kent among the residents of Smallville? He’s been here since he was a baby, we all know him, and he’s… generally one-of-us shaped, uh, approximately. And then when something goes wrong he suddenly leaps into action and does some terrifying impossible shit none of us could do. And then comes back home and settles in like nothing happened and he’s one of us again.

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Sacrifice

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insane how sexism damaged how we research (and what we know about) animals. did you grow up being taught that only male birds sing? you may be entitled to financial compensation

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Thinking about the history of Prussia and shaking my head in disbelief

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Was watching a video of people playing R.E.P.O., the players struggling to move a tall, thin box that gains damage if not kept upright, and was suddenly struck by the memory of posts you've made about old-school D&D having segments regarding the logistics of getting loot out of dungeons.

... I don't really have any greater thought to expound on there, unfortunately.

I maintain that you haven't truly played old-school Dungeons & Dragons until you've found yourself trying to to recover an 11th Dynasty aristocratic dining table from the fifth level of a dungeon without scratching the finish and all of the encumbrance, travel, light source, and random encounter rules are in play.

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Scott Pilgrim is, I think, the best example I can think of for establishing a setting's Nonsense Limit. The setting's Nonsense Limit isn't quite "How high-fantasy is this". It's mostly a question of presentation, to what degree does the audience feel that they know the rules the world operates by, such that they are primed to accept a random new element being introduced. A setting with a Nonsense Limit of 0 is, like, an everyday story. Something larger than life, but theoretically taking place in our world, like your standard spy thriller action movie has a limit of 1. Some sort of hidden world urban fantasy with wizards and stuff operating in secret has a nonsense limit around 3 or 4. A Superhero setting, presenting an alternate version of our world, is a 5 or 6. High fantasy comes in around a 7 or so, "Oh yeah, Wizards exist and they can do crazy stuff" is pretty commonly accepted. Scott Pilgrim comes in at a 10. If you read the Scott Pilgrim book, it starts off looking like a purely mundane slice of life. The first hint at the fantastical is Ramona appearing repeatedly in Scott's Dreams, and then later showing up in real life. When we finally get an explanation, it's this:

Apparently Subspace Highways are a thing? And they go through people's heads? And Ramona treats this like it's obscure, but not secret knowledge. Ramona doesn't think she's doing anything weird here. At this point, it's not clear if Scott is accepting Ramona's explanation or not, things kind of move on as mundane as ever until their Date, when Ramona takes Scott through subspace, and he doesn't act like his world was just blown open or anything, although I guess that could have been a metaphor. there's a couple other moments, but everything with Ramona could be a metaphor, or Scott not recognizing what's going on. Maybe Ramona is uniquely fantastical in this otherwise normal world. And then, this happens

Suddenly, a fantastical element (A shitty local indie band finishing their set with a song that knocks out most of the audience) is introduced unrelated to Ramona, and undeniably literal. We see the crowd knocked out by Crash and The Boys. but the story doesn't linger on the implications of that, the whole point of that sequence is to raise the Nonsense Level, such that you accept it when This happens

Matthew Patel comes flying down onto the stage, Scott, who until this point is presented as a terrible person and a loser, but otherwise is extremely ordinary, proceeds to flawlessly block and counter him before doing a 64-hit air juggle combo. Scott's friends treat this like Scott is showing off a mildly interesting party trick, like being really good at darts. The establish that Scott is the "Best Fighter in the Province", not only are street-fighter battles a thing, Scott is Very Good at it, but they're so unimportant that being the best fighter in the province doesn't make Scott NOT a loser. So when Matthew Patel shows off his magic powers and then explodes into a pile of coins, we've established "Oh, this is how silly the setting gets". It's not about establishing the RULES of the setting so much as it is about establishing a lack of rules. Scott's skill at street-fighter battles doesn't translate to any sort of social prestige. Ramona can access Subspace Highways and she uses it to do a basic delivery job. It doesn't make sense and it's clear that it's not supposed to. So later on, when Todd Ingram starts throwing around telekinesis, and the explanation we're given is "He's a Vegan" , you're already so primed by the mixture of weirdness and mundanity that rather than trying to incorporate this new knowledge into any sort of coherent setting ruleset, you just go "Ah, yeah, Vegans".

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My silly fakémons Pickerpie & Snagpie! I had sm fun trying to recreate fake gifs inspired by the anime recently, I can't wait to do more :3

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Cocaine Slug (poster, 2025, unreleased)

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only thing that comes to mind today.

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For those wondering - Amazing Spider-Man Vol 1 #338 (Hobgoblin sprays Spider-man with poison) and #339 (Doc Ock reveals the poison only becomes lethal when combined with cocaine).

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we need more divorcebaiting. how strongly can canon imply (without technically outright stating) that these two characters are bitterly, acrimoniously divorced? essential we explore this

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welp. it was bound to happen at some point. looks like the whale was feeding and nabbed the guy by accident, and immediately spit him out: