sausage-rolll

[sausage-rolll]

I cannot stress enough that the souls like design philosophy of "keep trying the boss and learn its attack patterns and openings to succeed" really doesn't work that well when the boss run back is 45 minutes long and you have to remake your entire build each time.

It's like if every time you wanted to attempt a shard bearer in elden ring you had to go through the entire legacy dungeon again, mini bosses and all, just to get another crack at it.

It might not be as frustrating if Limveld changed more between runs, or if each nightlord had their own personalized overworld design to make each run even more unique. But they don't. It's always the same chunk of Limgrave with a slight variation to one of the corners if you're lucky, with the same miniboss, end of day boss pools, buildings, camps, invasions and events every single time.

[sausage-rolll]

Hi, hello, sorry quick question.

Why the fuck can Morgott the omen king randomly jump you at any point in a nightreign playthrough, completely ruining a perfectly good run?

It's not enough that fighting him is a massive timesink in a game that I think already doesn't give you enough time to do everything you need to do, but he also just has to give you a massive debuff if you die to him that basically ends the run then and there.

It's bad enough in co-op where only one person gets effected by the debuff, but you might as well just reset the entire run if you're playing solo and he gets you.

Just what I need in an already heavily RNG reliant game. The possibility that one of the hardest bosses in Elden Ring will descend from the heavens and strike me down with no warning when I'm busy with something else and have almost no flasks left. And to top it all off, he increases your damage taken for the rest of the run when you die to him.

[sausage-rolll]

Final predictions for deltarune before I go dark to play the new chapters

Chapter 3's castle is going to either be the oven or the fridge in Kris' house

Something horrible is going to happen in the dark world of Chapter 3 that makes it impossible to take the darkners we meet there to castle town, thus making it so we don't just empty out Kris' house at the end.

If Kris is not the knight I believe it's possible that the knight is currently unaware of the cataclysmic consequences of randomly opening dark fountains. Very few people know about the legend after all.

Kris won't be the one to close Chapter 3's dark fountain.

Napstablook will be the officer to appear in Chapter 3, not Undyne. (I'm pretty sure it says somewhere that he's the one who works night shifts)

The weird route is still going to have effects on the later chapters even if Noelle isn't around to manipulate.

If the knight isn't a character we already know about, I think it's possible it's another human.

Ralsei knows about the player

Chapter 4 is going to be much darker than the other chapters and will be a massive turning point in the story.

The darkners of chapter 3 will be familiar with Kris and Toriel because they're made of objects that they use daily.

Chapter 3's darkners are going to be heartbroken over the Dreemur family falling apart and a lot of the conflict will revolve around how their lives have been deeply affected by it, It'll end with them realising they don't have to serve lightners to be fulfilled and this will cause Ralsei to have an existential crisis/confront his biases towards himself and other darkners.

If Asgore's flower shop becomes a dark world, the darkners from there will be incredibly over possessive and protective of him due to the only objects existing there being stuff that he either uses on a daily basis or stuff that he raised himself (the plants)

[sausage-rolll]

I think it's pretty clear that season 2 of Ncuti's era was rewritten at some point and that a big chunk of the original story was lost.

So I thought I'd write up what I believe the original plan was, or at least what I think would have worked better than what we got.

First of all, I think Ruby was planned to still be the companion in this season. Belinda is depressingly underutilised and somehow less relevant to the ongoing plot than Ruby is, despite the fact that she’s the one actually traveling with the doctor. So unfortunately I think she was not a part of the original plan for the story. So in the version I plan to lay out now, she isn’t going to be present.

Now, I just want to stress that me writing Belinda out of this version of the story isn’t because I do not like her or that I don’t want her in the show. It is because I genuinely believe she wasn’t planned to be a part of it until something happened midway through season 1 that led to Ruby’s role in the story being cut down. In my perfect version of the show Belinda would still be a part of it, she would just be a part of a 3rd season (and beyond) alongside Ncuti where she can be actually plot relevant.

Now, with that cleared up, let me quickly lay the groundwork for this alternate version of the story, then we can really get into the meat of potatoes of things. 

It’s quite simple really, only two major things are different.

Ruby is still traveling with the Doctor during season 2 but frequently takes breaks from the TARDIS in order to live her normal life and spend time with family (this allows the events of Lucky day and Joy to the world to happen basically unchanged.) 

The mystery of Ruby’s past and her mysterious and elusive mother is not solved in ‘Empire of Death’ and Ruby is still silently craving answers about everything.

Now let's finally begin.

The Doctor and Ruby, after another adventure in time and space attempt to return to Earth on the 24th of May so Ruby can spend time at home for a while, only to find that… They bounce right off of it? That’s strange… that’s certainly never happened before. The doctor is silently concerned about the implications of this, but makes sure to keep an upbeat and carefree attitude to hide his worries from Ruby. Ruby isn’t necessarily happy about being unable to return home at the time, but just assumes that it’s another quirky “timey-wimey” thing that the doctor can figure out. Overall she’s slightly annoyed but not worried.

The doctor whips out the vindicator and explains that it can be used to triangulate the coordinates to get them back home. Things continue relatively identical to the original version for now. They go to Earth 1952 where they face off against Lux. During the 3-dimensional part, the doctor confides in Ruby that he is terrified he won’t be able to get her home safely, that he’s worried he’ll never be able to save Rogue. And one other thing… something that (I believe) he’s never admitted to Ruby before. He isn’t just a timelord. He’s the last of the timelords. The soul survivor of his species. This pops him back into full 3D. From here the episode continues as normal.

The well happens essentially unchanged.

Lucky day also happens unchanged but is an episode set slightly in the past during a time Ruby isn’t travelling with the Doctor. However young Conrad sees Ruby and the Doctor together in the opening segment with the vindicator which is part of the reason he tries so hard to get close to her during the events of lucky day. He recognises her from his childhood and it drives him mad because that isn’t possible.

The story and the engine once again happens mainly unchanged, however Poppy does not appear this time. (I can’t think of a way for her to fit into this rewrite)

The interstellar song contest occurs, once again, almost unchanged. They finally have enough vindicator juice to force their way back to May 24th and rush into the TARDIS without saying goodbye after hearing Earth's history and how it ceased to be on that very day. Miss Flood Bigenerates and all the cards are set as she, using her own TARDIS (The Doctor doesn’t have the only one, fuck you) uses the vindicator coordinates to also get back to earth. Well after a quick pit stop to pick up one more thing. Flood is dropped off in modern day to break Conrad out of prison while Rani goes to the past to find their trump card. Desiderium the god of wishes.

-

Wish World

John Smith (The Doctor) wakes up in his house. He’s alone as he starts his day. No partner, no pets, just him in an empty house going about his morning routine. It’s not that he didn’t crave companionship, he did. He deeply did. But he was never particularly interested in women and… well there certainly wasn’t any other options. Not in this world.

Not in this world. This perfect little world.

John realises he’s running late for work and rushes out the door, only to be greeted by an unfamiliar face. A girl. Young, short and blonde. She asks John if he was… The doctor? No, of course not. He’s just an ordinary office worker, but if the young woman needed help he’d be happy to call someone, it’d have to be quick though since he was running late for work.

The girl quickly apologizes and mumbles something about her being mistaken before running off… How strange.

How strange indeed. Desiderium’s power… it doesn’t seem to work too well on Ruby. yet another oddity to add to the list. Her oddness was what drew Ms. Flood to her in the first place, not that Ruby would know this . She wanted to understand what made her tick, she needed to understand what made reality bend around her. 

Now from here things continue as normal. John Smith goes to work and Ruby stews in her confusion and false memories.

After work the doctor sits down in front of his TV and watches Conrad's channel. The only channel. But… then something else fizzled into the picture. The stark white background was drowned out in a deep red and Conrad was replaced by someone else. Seeing him made the Doctor’s heart drop. There was something about the man on the TV. He liked him. He really liked him.

He listens to his advice and slowly begins to snap out of his delusions, but before he can, Miss Flood arrives and takes him to the tower.

From here Rani's plan is revealed and the doctor is plunged into a decaying London.

-

Reality wars

From here, things once again happen almost identically to the original, however without Belinda there is no need for the stasis cube.

The doctor and Ruby free Unit from the Wish, confront Miss Flood and Rani and make the plan to infiltrate their tower, take Desiderium and stop the Rani from freeing Omega.

The doctor encounters Rani, keeping them distracted as Ruby goes after Conrad.

Omega appears, killing Rani and Miss Flood escapes.

The doctor forces Omega back into the underverse and Ruby defeats Conrad and returns the world normal.

Everyone meets back up at Unit and celebrates defeating the Rani and the Wish world. The doctor walks over to Ruby who is still holding Desiderium, a nagging feeling eating away at him as he approaches. The two of them talk for a short while and the doctor neutralises Desiderium powers with a wish.

It isn’t foolproof mind you. There’s no knowing what their life is going to be like. Their powers could reawaken at any moment, and even if they didn’t it could still bend reality around it just by existing. But to the doctor it was worth the risk.

Then why was he so scared?

Ruby sees The Doctor’s concern and offers for him to hold the baby. He agrees.

The doctor picks up Desiderium from Ruby’s arms and looks down at the baby.

And his heart stops.

He’d seen this baby before. He’d held this baby before! But where?!

His mind raced trying to grasp what gave him such a suffocating sense of deja vu.

And then it clicks.

Then it finally made sense.

Everything finally made sense.

The Doctor looks up at Ruby and thanks her.

He shouts out into the Unit headquarters that he knows exactly what to do with Desiderium. They would be safe, happy and loved, he would make sure of it.

He runs into the tardis clicking buttons and pulling levers, all the while never letting go of small Desiderium.

He knew exactly where he was going.

He puts Desiderium down for just a second, just long enough to throw on a long, hooded cloak from his wardrobe. He picked it so the young baby wouldn’t get cold. It had a built-in heat regulator that would stop the small thing from freezing. Ironic that it also covered The Doctor’s body head to toe.

He picks Desiderium up and steps out of the Tardis into a cold, dark alleyway.

He would have parked closer but he knew what was about to happen. He couldn’t risk being spotted by anyone lest the timeline unravel itself at the seams, and he’d had quite enough of reality breaking for one day.

As he walked through the dark street looking down at Desiderium, he thought about his time with this face. It was all so nostalgic. 

His mind wandered to Ruby. He thought about how snow and soft tunes of Christmas hymns followed her everywhere she went. How no technology in the universe could track down her past. How Mistro was terrified of her. How Sutekh was curious about her. How Desiderium’s power failed to keep its grasp on her.

She had defeated the very gods. And now he finally knew how.

After a short walk through the snowy streets he finally found his destination. A small, simple church. Snow falling heavily all around him and the sound of singing getting ever so closer.

He gave the small child a light kiss on the head and set her down on the front step of the church before turning around and walking away.

Away from Desiderium. He didn’t even look back. Afterall, he knew she was in safe hands here. 

He knew she would be safe, at the church on ruby road.

He returned to the present with a grand smile on his face, stepping towards Ruby and pulling her into a hug. They had a lot to discuss.

[sausage-rolll]

I would also like to know why the fuck she randomly appears in The story and the engine??? Like, was that just RTD jangling keys in our faces to get us talking? Gotta be honest, these are some of the weakest and nonsensical mysteries Doctor Who has ever had.

And like you say, Poppy was a real person with an actual life. So either the wish created a life out of Doctor and Belinda's memories and wishes or space Poppy is just fucking dead and was placed on earth during the reality war and later got her life rewritten to be Belinda's daughter.

you know what's bizarre? poppy was a real person. i feel like i'm going insane here. like in-universe poppy was a real child with her own life before she was retconned into being belinda's daughter. what the hell

[sausage-rolll]

I am so disgusted with how Ncuti was handled as the doctor. The first queer and the first POC doctor and he only got 18 episodes (2 of which are incredibly doctor lite so in reality it's more like 16 episodes.) And they managed to completely underutilise him throughout the entire time. Not to mention all the loose plot threads. He never got to reunite with Rogue (meaning until further notice the other queer character in this run in fridged in a hell dimension because the doctor never bothered to go looking for him???), The gods haven't been properly defeated, Susan never returned and Miss Flood is still out in the universe causing mayhem.

Overall it was an incredibly short and weak run which failed to wrap up all but 2 of its story threads and just left me feeling that Ncuti was robbed so hard by the writers.

Not to mention that his run began and has now ended with him being overshadowed by two incredibly big Doctor who actors.

[sausage-rolll]

Belinda's first appearance: criticising the doctor for scanning her without permission

Belinda's last appearance: happily watching him do the exact same thing to her daughter without comment.

These are not the same character.

[sausage-rolll]

Y'know, for a show that's constantly trying to parade how progressive it is in the most hamfisted and performative way possible they do sure as shit keep doing their minority actors and characters a massive disservice.

[sausage-rolll]

I feel like the way the series is heading, the doctor is being set up to be revealed as part of the pantheon himself. The way the timeless child just appeared one day from a place outside of reality is very reminiscent of the rest of the gods we've seen, and much like the god of wishes, the timeless child was used more as a tool to others than a force of nature themselves.

But that just begs the question, what god will the doctor be? The god of time seems like the obvious choice but no, I don't think it'd be that. Time was always more to do with Gallifreyans and while he is the 'timeless child' his inherent powers really have nothing to do with time. I think the doctor will be something different, and I think I know what it could be.

I think the Doctor is the god of life.

Think about it, what is the timeless child's one power? The thing that the time lords siphoned and abused for themselves? It was the power of regeneration, the power of eternal life. Timelords may have had command over time and space but that extension of their lives and power to regenerate and cheat death over and over was never theirs, it was something that they stole from the timeless child.

Not convinced? that's fine, it's not exactly a flawless theory.

How about the fact that fairly recently the Doctor has figured out how to use his regeneration to heal others. At the start of space babies the doctor uses his power to bring a butterfly back to life. He literally breathes life into another creature. And this actually isn't a new thing either. It's just never been this powerful before.

Eleven heals River using his power and Twelve does the same to Davros.

There's also the fact that his power was fully compatible with Lux, another god of the pantheon. Mayhaps because they come from the same source?

Not to mention that the doctor is, for all intents and purposes, the primary protector of life in the universe. Whenever the doctor dies, it's shown to have horrific ramifications on the universe as a whole. Specifically in the name of the doctor and turn left, where it's shown that if the doctor were to be killed, entire galaxy's would be snuffed out and the sky would turn dark.

He also has a deep inherent respect for life and an even deeper aversion to death. He hates to kill, and will avoid doing it by any means necessary, even when it would be the preferable option (Like in Arachnids in the UK, where she refuses to kill a group of overgrown spiders despite the fact that they were suffering and could not sustain themselves due to their size.) Or when death would be by far the preferable option, like in Family of blood, The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos and rogue. Granted he does kill sometimes, but that's only really when all other alternatives are expended and he has no other choice. Even when it comes to his enemies, there's rarely a time when he's in his right mind that he'd let them die without trying to save them. He doesn't just hold back from killing, he wants so desperately to save as many people as possible.

It even comes down to his very name. The name that he chose. The Doctor. The man that makes people better. The man that saves peoples lives.

[sausage-rolll]

It always annoys me when people say that the Jurassic Park movies are ‘proof that bringing extinct species back is a bad idea’ or that the message in the movies is that a dinosaur zoo is impossible to safely run, because the parks in those movies literally never fail because of the dinosaurs. They fail because of corporate greed and general incompetence.

The original Jurassic park? Failed because of security malfunctions, sabotage and general lack of knowledge on the living specimens due to incompetent levels of research before they were introduced to their enclosures and guests.

Jurassic world? They had it in the bag. They’d created a profitable and incredibly safe system that had very few structural weak points and even less incidents involving guests being harmed by the dinosaurs. That was of course until they decided they wanted more money and fame and genetically spliced a superweapon dinosaur that could outsmart and overpower everything else on the island. Which obviously led to a security breach because they didn’t even do the bare minimum of research or even tell the people watching it WHAT IT WAS SPLICED WITH TO BEGIN WITH!

And then we have all the times where dinosaurs were released in rural areas and caused insane amounts of damage and death, which once again, only happened because greedy, underprepared and incompetent business men brought the dinosaurs to those locations without any sort of plan.

[sausage-rolll]

I've had a bit of a mixed opinion on the newest doctor who stuff for a while now, and for most of that time I've really struggled to pin point what exactly it is that's been missing. The writing isn't bad (for the most part), the actors are great, the settings are interesting and overall its felt like a very needed breath of fresh air for the show... but there is something missing, and I think I've finally figured out what it is.

The aliens are gone.

No seriously, look back on all of 15's episodes from both the current season and the last and count how many of them include some sort of alien civilisation or society. Not just a singular monstrous alien that acts as an antagonist but an actual collective. There are very few. And no, aliens that are visually indistinguishable from regular humans do not count.

from what I can tell, there are three. Just three. Three alien species across an entire season and a half of doctor who.

There's the slugs from dot and bubble, the birdmen in Rouge and the singular Silurian in joy to the world.

And from those three all of them act as antagonistic forces.

Just as a quick comparison, the first season of new who, which came out in 2005 and had a significantly smaller budget had at least 6.

Sorry, wait, did I say first season? My mistake what I meant was first two episodes.

Where have they all gone? The universe of Doctor Who used to be teeming with so many different reoccurring and one off alien races that all interacted and coexisted. They weren't just throwaway villains, they were living, breathing creatures.

It used to be so rich with so much diverse life. The living plastic, The Slitheen, Daleks, Adipose, Sontaran's, The Catkind, The Ood, Silurians, The Silence, The Atraxi, The Racnoss, The family of blood, The mighty Jagrafess, The Reapers, The Judoon, The Hath, The Ice warriors, The vashta nerada, The Sycorax, The tree people, The Zygon.

But now the best they can do is regular humans and sometimes the odd robot or two. It's kind of depressing when you really look at it. The universe of doctor who has lost its magic, the life that was once abundant wherever the doctor landed is now sparse and non-existent. We don't visit alien civilisations anymore, we don't even encounter aliens anymore.

[sausage-rolll]

While I doubt they'll actually get added to wilds, it occurred to me recently that Seltas and Seltas queen would work really fucking well with wilds' Alpha/Pack system.

Like, imagine a quest similar to Alpha Doshaguma and it's massive pack that happens in the windward plains but it's a Seltas queen and her swarm of Seltas followers in the scarlet forest. I just think that'd be neat, especially with how underutilised the Alpha monsters were in wilds.

[sausage-rolll]

Been thinking about HTTYD 3 recently (mainly about how much I dislike it) and man, it really is just the antithesis of the rest of the series isn’t it?

The whole franchise of HTTYD from the movies, to the specials, to the 2 TV shows is all about building the relationship between humans and dragons. It’s about them learning how to coexist and how to support each other.

1 was learning that coexistence was possible.

The first TV series was getting a deeper understanding on how to make coexistence work, and where it might not be possible in certain cases.

The second TV series largely built on this and also involved deeper conflicts with other human civilisations.

And 2 is basically the apex of everything they’ve learned. Where they’ve fully developed a symbiotic society for both people and dragons on berk and the only threats they really face at this point are from other, more aggressive and exploitative dragon users.

It ends with Hiccup becoming the chief of Berk and Toothless becoming the Alpha for the dragons.

That is until 3 comes along and basically says “coexistence is too hard, let's send every dragon in the world to a secret underground cave, sometimes the fight to exist is just not worth it and it’s better to roll over and give the oppressors and the extremists what they want”.

Which is a horrible message for the end of a series that largely revolves around how humans and dragons deserve to share the same space and that it’s possible for them to live harmoniously with one another.

[sausage-rolll]

Nothing in monster hunter wilds feels worse than someone joining your hunt (uninvited) right at the end and stealing literally half your Zenny from doing nothing.

[sausage-rolll]

Monster hunter wilds spoilers

Thinking about how there’s a possibility that Guardian Arkveld had Deviljho DNA in it.

It’d explain why it had this inherent, powerful desire to eat that other guardians lacked, to the point that it was able to teach itself how to with no outside influence and why when it did learn how to, it just couldn’t control itself.

And even if Guardian Arkveld lacked a digestive system like the other Guardians (which is unlikely because that food has to go somewhere and also unlike the other guardians it has/or grew reproductive organs), there’s a very real possibility that it would still suffer that same ravenous, environment destroying hunger that Deviljho possess.

There's also the fact that Guardian Arkvelds battle theme literally contains segments from Deviljho's own theme. This may just be hinting towards the thematic similarities between the two, but personally I think it could be read either way.

If this is true then... Holy fuck Wyveria really created the most aggressively violent and angry creature they could. Giving a monster Deviljho's aggression and ceaseless hunger with the ability to fly, tussle with every other apex predator in the area and with no way to satiate that hunger due to not physically being able to eat. They basically created a monster that's only goal is to kill everything it sees without need for rest or even stopping to eat.

Zoh Shia is their equal dragon weapon, but Arkveld strikes me as their attempt to create something that will kill as much stuff as quickly as possible.

[sausage-rolll]

Monster hunter wilds spoilers

The way I screamed when I saw that Olivia was going to be joining me while fighting the fish apex. Story hunts with other characters was something I really wanted out of wilds but wasn't confident we'd actually get, so when I saw that she was still there after the cutscene transition I was so excited!

That sort of thing was one of the big things I thought was missing with world's story. Especially when it came to Nergigante and Teostra, where it felt like there were very prominent characters tied to the monsters/missions, but it really stands out with just about any hunt where there's another well established and more experienced hunter around and they just turn to you like "ok you can handle this right? I'm gonna go back to camp and have a cuppa" So seeing the fellow hunters in wilds actually do something alongside you was so incredibly exciting and makes it feel much more like you're part of a team.

[sausage-rolll]

'Whetfish'?

Uhhhh yeah? They live in the water?