pompous-old-windbag

[pompous-old-windbag]

There's one other thing that kinda bugs me about Donkey Kong fans hating on the new design, specifically the ones who say it's weird that Cranky is still using his Rare design... and it's that Cranky hasn't used his "Rare design" since the Donkey Konga games.

Cranky, and actually most of the Kongs, were already redesigned once before. And I feel like the difference between Rare Cranky, and Paon Cranky is just as drastic as the difference between "Rare DK" and Bananza/Mario Kart World DK.

Note, the much thicker brow, the flared out nostrils ( something every Kong besides DK and Diddy themselves got in the Paon games, despite having it in the promo art ), the lack of eyebrow hair, the much larger head, his mouth being much lower down, much thicker less detailed lips, smaller feet, less pinkish skin, and his eyes being much closer together, just like Bananza DK.

Cranky isn't the only one, he's just the most obvious example to me.

You've got Candy Kong, who may be even more obvious than Cranky, but she hasn't appeared in so long that I think people forget about her. If she does return, she's one of the few characters I kind of expect to see getting a more drastic redesign.

Funky Kong, who, again, with the flared out nostrils, and his teeth are much larger. Most Kongs just didn't show teeth at all in Rare games, Funky is the one exception. They also seem to be sticking with his DKC3 look for some reason. And he got much lighter fur, likely to make him seem like a "Beach Blonde" type character.

Even Lanky Kong was updated slightly. He's a bit more subtle than the others. His belly is no longer yellow and matches his flesh, his toes are more realistic, and he got some shaggy sideburns... and I think his mouth is a little less frightening to look at, but I can't explain why that is, all his DK64 renderes have a weird mouth, this is the most flattering one.

Then you have Donkey Kong himself, someone who did get updated to show early signs of his Bananza design like the flared out nostrils and much more closer together, taller eyes in the 2D artwork... and yet they didn't actually commit to it and make these changes to his actual 3D models, either in game or promotional art. They only took the baby steps toward giving DK his raised nostrils in the Switch port of Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze, and any other games he appeared in after that ( sans Smash Ultimate, and DKC Returns HD )

Like, they updated everyone else, but kept DK himself the same, despite clearly wanting to update him. Diddy also remained the same, despite also having changes to his 2D art, the only changes they made to him from his "Rare design" was reverting his blue eyes back to black, and making his toes smaller, but otherwise, he didn't change. But again, it looks like they're finally committing, as the little bump where his nose is, can be found on his newest render.

This is why I don't expect any more drastic redesigns of other Kongs, because most Kongs got redesigns already. It's just, for some weird reason, Donkey and Diddy didn't really commit to their redesigns until... years later.

The only Kongs I could see getting a drastic redesign, are those who haven't appeared in any of the Paon games. Specifically Chunky, Kiddy, and Swanky.

But given two of these three appeared in the Super Mario Movie, which seems to be influencing the way some of these Kongs look, I think we may be able to guess how they'll look if they do in fact appear in a future game.

Though there is at least one Kong I do expect a subtle redesign for, because Diddy was so obviously influenced by 1. The movie, and 2. the 2D art, I think the same will happen for Dixie Kong, who also had a pin in her hat like Diddy in the movie, and also has that little nose bump in the 2D artwork. And yeah, like Diddy, she'll also likely have that bit of skin between her newly seperated eyes, I'm one of the few people that don't mind that, though I think it should have been a slight bit wider.

I don't know what the point of this post was, maybe just to point out that most Kongs have already had a makeover, and that people shouldn't worry so much about how Funky or anyone else is going to look if they appear in a new game, because I think Nintendo finalized most of the characters looks a long time ago, they just weren't sure if they wanted to change DK and Diddy until more recently.

[pompous-old-windbag]

Deltarune/Undertale Theory: Papyrus Built the Machine

So... there's a running theory that "Sans Undertale" is actually "Sans Deltarune" right? I won't get into the heaps of evidence points to him jumping from Deltarune to Undertale, but it primarily focuses around the lab, photos, and broken machine hidden within his house. What's LESS clear is how goofy, seemingly ignorant Papyrus fits in to all this, and I'm sure I'm not the first to consider:

What if Sans can't fix the machine because PAPYRUS was the one who built it, and he lost most of his memories during the jump? (We know memory loss plays some role because why else would someone have written "don't forget" on the photos in the lab?)

Papyrus has always been a rather contradictory character, oscillating between intelligent adult and innocent child. This is best summarized by his two favourite books: "Advanced Puzzle Construction for Critical Minds" and "Peekaboo with Fluffy Bunny." These contradictions are what make Papyrus so charming, but we never really ask ourselves WHY he's like that.

What if it's because memory loss has caused him to partially regress to this childlike state?

What if the Papyrus of Deltarune is ONLY the workaholic puzzle-solver, without the childlike whimsy to balance him out?

We haven't met him because he's holed up in that lab, studying and monitoring the "anomaly" (us) Sans talks about in Undertale. He convinced Sans to move to Hometown directly before the start of the game because he predicted that's where the anomaly would appear, and he's building that machine because he's trying to escape the collapse of Deltarune's timeline.

So why did only Papyrus forget everything when they made the jump? Because UNLIKE Sans, he had nothing anchoring him to Deltarune's reality. Sans had the memories of friends and loved ones to hang on to... meanwhile Papyrus had isolated himself. His brother was all he had. Thus he kept only fractured memories. His memories of hyper-vigilance tell him that "when the human arrives" he "MUST be prepared," but he no-longer remembers WHY.

Final thought: Papyrus in Deltarune wasn't a happy person. He was alone working night and day in that lab, painfully aware of his own insignificance and the impending doom of his reality. Sans did his best to support his bro, but couldn't really grasp the extent of his research or responsibilities. When they escaped to Undertale and Papyrus reverted to a childlike state, Sans opted to let his brother stay ignorant and happy. He figured it was his turn to take responsibility, even if he never wanted to.

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Hey

Hello, mysterious stranger! To think, our two, wildly complex lives met here for this brief moment, never to meet again. I wish you the best!

[pompous-old-windbag]

Good heavens! Ideas based off my idea? I'm flattered!

I absolutely adore what you did with Miss Willis's design. (Crazy I can use a name besides 'Scout's Ma' now!) Just look at that fur! Now THAT'S a woman who would have me shot without a second thought. I especially love the idea that Spy specifically fell for her because his usual tricks didn't work, because it mirrors Scout falling for Miss Pauling. I can totally see a young Spy pining after her the same way Scout pined for his own employer...

young (red) ma and (blu) spy!!

ma's design inspired by this theory:

and this meme:

[pompous-old-windbag]

I've always found the uniformity of Toads to be a huge waste of artistic potential. Mushrooms offer so many fun shapes, why must Nintendo always settle for one generic look?? They STARTED to branch out in the mainline games with old Toadsworth, but then immediately went back to generic Toads. It's tragic!

(Oh, also I'm so happy to see someone else with the "Peach was originally/is secretly a Toad" headcanon.)

Heres all the toad redesigns at least the important ones

below is all the mushroom references I based them from

Porpolomopsis calyptriformis (Ballerina Waxcap)

Amanita muscaria (fly agaric)

Rhodotus (Wrinkled peach)

Amanita pantherina (Panthercap)

Gliophorus psittacinus (parrot waxcap)

[pompous-old-windbag]

Mario Doesn't Host Mario Party

I'm real tired of folks using this assumption to mischaracterize Mario as a Diet Wario.

Mario is a blue-collar plumber. That's his WHOLE character design. He's a humble man who wears his work uniform even when visiting royalty, and lacks the resources or the showmanship necessary to host giant go-kart competitions named after himself. He's also reactive, not proactive. We never see him initiate anything: if Peach doesn't invite him for cake or Bowser doesn't invade, he's content living a peaceful life with Luigi. These are all REALLY important aspects of Mario's character, because without them he's almost indistinguishable from Wario. Wario is the proactive seeker of fortune and fame who puts his name on everything. If Mario ALSO does that, then Wario has no reason to exist.

A good rule of thumb: if it's something Wario would say or do, then Mario WOULDN'T.

The spinoffs aren't parties BY Mario, they're parties FOR Mario, organized and funded by the people he's helped, primarily Princess Peach. You think Bowser would peacefully participate in an event hosted by Mario? Never. But if PEACH was hosting, then of COURSE he'd show up, invited or not.

Lastly: folks often wonder about whether we should consider the spinoff games canon, which is totally fair, because they create a LOT of questions: How/where are they building all these crazy tracks, stadiums, and boards? Does Waluigi really own a giant pinball machine? Is Mount Wario a location or an instruction? My personal headcanon is that (with a few exceptions) they take place in Mario 64 painting worlds. That lets us hand-wave most of the logistics.

[pompous-old-windbag]

Rival Tech, Invasive "Species" (May 2024)

[pompous-old-windbag]

Ramb was the Jevil/Spamton of TV World

- Jevil concluded that if nothing was real, he could do anything without consequence.

- Spamton concluded that if nothing was real, he needed to make himself real.

- Ramb concluded that if nothing was real, the best he could do was offer "freedom" to someone who IS real. (Us)

While he talks to Kris, it's clear how much of his dialogue is aimed at us. He talks about games, about being railroaded by developers and morality, and how true freedom can only come from playing the game how YOU want to. If you're on the weird route, he'll even say he's indulging "the part of you that enjoyed yesterday," because he knows if the player sought that path out and is sticking to it, they must be at-least partially enjoying it.

He never references the morality of our actions, because he believes that they don't matter. It's just a game, right? All that matters is that the player enjoys themselves. This is also meant to mirror Ralsei's perspective pushed to its logical extreme. Ramb exists entirely to serve the player, regardless of their actions, even as he gradually petrifies. One of his last lines of dialogue references how Kris is talking to an electrical outlet, reminding us that he isn't real and doesn't matter. He's fully succumbed to the same nihilism that haunts Ralsei.

(And of course, he also mirrors Jevil and Spamton in that he's another peculiar little guy with a unique way of talking. If he'd had a boss fight, he would've been the next Tumblr Sexyman for sure.)

[pompous-old-windbag]

🐝🐝🐝CAINE'S BEE-SONA! 🐝🐝🐝

LOOK HOW HARD HE TRIED!

[pompous-old-windbag]

So after TADC's 5th episode, a lot of little details about the circumstances of the Circus have been revealed:

1. C&A has moved or been fully shut down for long enough that the building housing the Circus has been considered abandoned. For that to happen, you'd need a good 10 years of neglect, I'd say.

2. Pomni and Zooble both got trapped while exploring the abandoned C&A building. (Zooble is the second-newest, according to Gooseworx)

3. It's modern day out there, with Youtube and whatnot. Remembering that the Digital Circus is a late-90s era PC game, that means Kinger has probably been trapped in the Circus for around 25 years. For perspective, he's been in there for longer than Gangle, Jax, and Zooble have been ALIVE. No WONDER he's crazy!

4. This is further emphasized by the fact that nobody else knew about Kinger's wife. For that to happen, you'd need two degrees of separation from when she abstracted: both the people that knew her AND the people that knew OF her are gone. How many abstracted people have been entirely forgotten? How many people has Kinger seen lose themselves?

5. Caine's general looniness may not JUST be the result of him running non-stop for so long. The physical hardware hosting the Circus is likely starting to degrade after so much time. Eventually it WILL give out entirely, assuming it isn't being maintained. The fact that it's still receiving electricity despite the building supposedly being "abandoned" DOES imply someone is trying to maintain the circus, though!

6. If C&A is abandoned then nobody is maintaining the characters' physical bodies. The fact that nobody's died implies their consciousnesses are fully severed from their bodies. This also means that they probably CAN'T escape from the Circus, because they have no bodies to return to.

7. HOWEVER the fact that Pomni didn't mention seeing any decaying bodies when finding the headset implies they're either being moved, or there are many different headset that all lead to the Circus. Either way, it feels like someone on the outside is working to maintain the Circus's existence for some reason...

[pompous-old-windbag]

That's definitely what we8re supposed to infer, since Pomni said it when asked how she ended up in the Circus. I also agree that that's likely how Zooble got there too, since they were the second-most recent addition to the cast, according to Gooseworx.

This of course has some big implications, and creates some even bigger questions!

How long has the building been closed? Why is it still receiving power? How long until the lack of maintenance degrades the hardware of the computer they're all trapped in?

Hey wait a minute. Didn't Pomni say she recorded herself exploring abandoned buildings and didn't she find the digital circus headset in a Caine and Abel company building? So was her transfer into the digital circus recorded? Is there a camera in the building with evidence of the process?

Or if she live streamed to YouTube her exploration. Did people witness it? Also, Zooble said they explored abandon buildings too. Did they get transferred in the same way?

[pompous-old-windbag]

Donkey Kong Timeline Theory

So Bananza has thrown a real monkey wrench into the Kong/Mario timeline, however considering the way the game pays homage to every aspect of DK's history, I don't think Nintendo is breaking everything without some idea of how the pieces will fit back together. Going off the pre-release information we have, I've cobbled together a two-part theory of how events play out whithin this new continuity:

1. Jumpman and OG Pauline are Mario's (or Mayor Pauline's) mother and father. This is the only explanation I can think of for why Cranky mentions having an overalls-clad rival in Bananza while Pauline is as young as she is. It actually solves the old problem of Cranky being so old despite Mario still being in his 20s. It also conveniently saves Mario from being the whip-wielding villain of DK Junior and cleans up the old Pauline/Peach love interest swap.

2. Mario DOES still save Mayor Pauline from a "Donkey Kong" as referenced in Odyssey... however this was Donkey Kong JUNIOR, not Cranky or modern DK. Junior was perpetuating his father's feud, and we see his battle with Mario in Donkey Kong '94 for the Gameboy. (Hence why it stars Mario and Mayor Pauline instead of Jumpman and OG Pauline.)

This new timeline helps explain why Pauline dedicated so much of New Donk City to the Kongs, since in the old timeline her only experiences with Kongs be negative. It makes much more sense if all the street names were honouring the events of Bananza, and the Jump Up Superstar finale was celebrating Mario defeating one bad Kong.

Of course there are plenty of little details that contradict this theory. I have no explanation for why there's another DK Junior in DK '94, or how modern DK is now seemingly older than Mario despite him showing up as a baby alongside baby Mario in Yoshi's Island DS. Some things just aren't going to fit, and that's ok!

[pompous-old-windbag]

Have you ever experience a real-life Monkey's Paw moment?

I encountered one last year. I had a cough/minor fever that wasn't going away. Figured it was light pneumonia, and went to Emergency to get some antibiotics prescribed (hooray for Canada's free healthcare!)

I knew I wouldn't be high on their priority list, so I downloaded some stuff to watch while I waited, including the latest episode of Arcane S2. It ended on a big cliffhanger, and as many of us do, I wished desperately I could just jump forward in time to when the next episode had released.

I then awoke a week later in Cardiac Intensive Care with a dozen tubes attached to my body and no memory of how I got there. Apparently a fluke reaction with the fever had inflamed my heart, lungs, and kidneys all at once to a point where they'd started to shut down.

Still, I got my wish! A week had passed and the next episode was out! A shame I was still too high to retain like any of what I watched.

Damn you, Monkey's Paw!

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Just stumbled on to this comic, and am immediately quite interested! It's a tale following the (now grown-up) boy that stabbed Old Nick back in that first TF2 Smissmas comic, and Olivia Mann. Delightfully creative stuff!

merry crisis and happy holidays boils and ghouls! i have once again crawled fourth from my deep reclusive hermit hide to lay the second chapter of This isn't Over Jack at your feet (please read it... plblese....)

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While I'm waiting to have less work and go to read the Asterix comic again in my local library, I'm rewatching all the animated films, and I find this extract from Asterix in Britain both very cute and very funny.

I find it very cute because the first thing drunk Obelix thinks about is if Asterix still likes him and that his friend reassures him in a gentler way than in the original comic.

And what makes me laugh every single time is Asterix's reaction when Obelix runs towards the Roman patrol.

Like this man is so done

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Does anyone else get lesbian vibes from the 1970s commercial??

[pompous-old-windbag]

Quick Invincible Season 3 Parallels Analysis

To me, Season 3 was all about forcing Mark (and the audience) to understand how Nolan became who he is through the parallels of Immortal, Conquest, Oliver, and Invincible.

Immortal exists as a contrast to Nolan. Despite living for hundreds of thousands of years, Immortal remained a hero because he lived amongst humanity as a regular person. He only becomes a monster once he is elevated ABOVE humanity, and shackled with the responsibility governing them. This is an intentional reversal of Nolan's arc, who started off as a detached monster but found goodness when he was forced to live amongst humanity as a regular person.

Conquest represents what Nolan could have become had he remained detached. A mindless force of violence, extraordinarily lonely yet too far gone to find redemption. All he can do is blindly go through the motions, his only connection with others being brief moments of confession before he kills them.

Oliver represents what Nolan started as, and how without guidance he became a monster. Oliver is a sweet kid whose accelerated growth and sheltered upbringing threatened to detach him from humanity. He couldn't understand why killing "bad guys" was wrong because of his limited connection to others. It's made clear that without Mark and Debbie to help him, he would have developed a simplistic and tyrannical perspective of the world.

Finally, Mark reflects the best and worst parts of his father. There's his "might-makes-right" clash with Cecil, his paternal role to Oliver even as they fight over the same issues of condemnation vs redemption that made him threaten Cecil, Powerplex reminding him of the weight of his responsibilities and if he deserves to live a normal life, the Invincible war showing him both how dangerous and frightening his power is to others, and finally Conquest forcing him to recognize his true capacity for violence.

The underlining theme within all this is how our connections to others keeps us grounded, and that the long-term impacts of isolation, responsibility, and power eventually corrupt us all.