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luigiblood · 20 days

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Why Nintendo 64 - Nintendo Switch Online is shit

I have been very critical of Nintendo 64 - Nintendo Switch Online since the beginning, not only the very noticeably broken graphics emulation was certainly a case that everyone understood, but it did certainly make me completely avoid the Expansion Pack subscription entirely for a year because that was genuinely shit in 2021.

Now how is it in 2024? Well, it's not that much better. They did fix a lot of problems during that time for sure, and that's something that we do need to acknowledge to do at least something resembling fair criticism.

Current context

That one Dark Link room in Ocarina of Time was fully fixed, as the fog and even transparency emulation was just outright broken, somehow worse than its Wii U Virtual Console counterpart (which was already not very good), it also affected other games like Super Mario 64 where the fog was actually not correct, but oddly enough, it's not as much of a problem in Super Mario 3D All-Stars, and I'm not entirely sure what happened between that and Nintendo Switch Online for it to have such a massive emulation downgrade.

I've done some analysis of the software, though not a ton because I don't have that much time to waste reverse engineering emulators. Through that, I found out that iQue was responsible for the Nintendo 64 emulator on Wii U and Switch, because of the emulator framework, named "TRL," being 100% identical to their NES and GBC emulator for 3DS, confirmed to be iQue through leaked source code among other things, and the debug menu is seen on Wii U if you have more than one game ROM in the folder, and it's just like the 3DS one.

The Wii U Virtual Console N64 emulator was already seen as worse than its Wii VC counterpart, mainly due to the dark filter, but that thing has nothing to do with the emulation quality it was providing, aside from apparently some additional slight input lag on top of the already massive input lag which I find mindboggling, the graphics emulation was already considered worse than on Wii, a lot of issues that people saw on NSO were already on Wii U VC, which turned into a massive mess of complaints because, yeah, it turns out the Wii U was just not successful, but the Switch is, making obvious complaints very much more important.

The Dark Link room just happened to be using a bunch of graphical features at once which made it very noticeable when they don't work as intended. When I discussed this with other people, I couldn't help but feel terrible at the answer I get: "It's good enough."

This response annoys me to no end, but in truth, yes, the games are playable, nowadays graphically you probably wouldn't tell the difference from the real N64 with an untrained eye, and in fact, so am I at times too. But the problem is that it now becomes an actual history rewrite of how the game actually was, and you could still say that you would prefer the N64 games now than before with better framerates, better resolution, all that.

Better performance is always better?

Now this is still more of an opinion piece so here's my opinion about better framerate and better resolution: It's fucking misguided. Doing better framerate and better resolution works a lot better for games after that generation than the 32-bit and 64-bit era of the mid 90s to 2000, because the graphics looks a lot better for it and the standards are closer to the current era that we're in.

For N64 however, simply running the game better does not work as well as it should most of the time, and, frankly, seeing big polygons in 720p does not work as well as it should for most games. 2D games especially suffer from this and get some really weird filtering that just bothers me, especially in games like Yoshi's Story and Harvest Moon 64, where the emulator seemingly can't decide whether the graphics should be almost pixel perfect, or become vaseline.

Speaking of vaseline, where's the anti-aliasing? The N64 is very much known for its blurry anti-aliasing! While I'm pretty much immune to aliasing myself, I can still see it's not really respecting the original N64 very well about that, and it only deepens one of the biggest history rewrite of the N64 nowadays, where most people is more likely to look at badly emulated footage of a N64 game than seeing the game running on the original system, and this really bothers me that when you have every single other system on the service to care about this to the point of having a CRT screen filter, and even outright and pretty faithful reproductions of the Game Boy series' screens, N64 is the only one that forces you to play in its uglier HD resolution with no actual option to play games in their original resolution with some CRT filter or not, and that is just a real evidence of a lack of care to me compared to the rest of the systems.

When it comes to better framerates however, as much as I love that (Pilotwings 64 on NSO is actually one of the few experiences I can recommend on it), a lot of the games' speed are tied to the framerate, potentially making games harder than they should due to its speed being more accounted for the actual system, and sometimes, causing actual desync problems that iQue had to implement ways to manually slow the framerate down in specific moments of games just to account for it, but this only works for games that can run faster than intended. A lot of games sometimes have their framerate completely capped and doesn't run any faster.

But emulating the N64 lag is genuinely complex, and it's a problem that's not fully solved to this day even on unofficial N64 emulation, because there's way too many factors to take into account that it would probably take too much performance to figure out where it should take more time to process or not, so, on this one, I have a bit of sympathy about that as a developer, but it is still possible to roughly approximate that, even if the result can be weird; but I don't seem to notice any legit attempts about that.

Besides, a lot of people would be annoyed about the N64 lag and bad framerates, but to me if you want better framerates, in my opinion, it would be done differently, and unofficial emulation absolutely can deal with it in ways that isn't intrusive to the game's performance: If you played the N64Recomp PC port of Majora's Mask, you would know this, as RT64, the new graphics plugin powering this port (and hopefully emulators soon), actually handles interpolation between frames, allowing better framerate without sacrificing the game's performance to be better or worse than intended, and it makes for some real impressive results while still being relatively low in cost. For me this seems like a potential avenue to attempt to ease in comfort with N64 games.

Is N64 emulation really that hard?

…frankly, if you asked me this question 10 years ago, I would have said yes, at least to my understanding back then, but also now. But if you ask me this same question now, the answer is no, mainly because of brand new standards that actually makes a huge difference in how to handle N64 emulation in current systems, even through unofficial emulation.

I know it's very easy to mock unofficial N64 emulation as relatively hard to play, and this I would agree with, but this problem is purely user faced now. The old problem of unofficial N64 emulation was mainly that not many people were doing work on it and their time is just not infinite, but that is very much changing nowadays.

The Nintendo 64 is actually a well understood system, additional research are still being done, but for the most part, we can understand the N64 to a decent degree. The actual bottleneck of N64 emulation was actually how to emulate it on current systems, when we were stuck to older graphics API standards like OpenGL and DirectX 9.

However, a shakeup happened since with Vulkan and DirectX 12, allowing deeper GPU control. This, is actually one of the most important events of computing that actually unlocked bigger N64 emulation potential and finally get rid of problems that plagued N64 graphics emulation and it started with an adaptation of THE most accurate N64 graphics plugin as Parallel-RDP, and its extremely good, but its pretty much asking on performance and requires a decent GPU (no need for the latest stuff though).

Unfortunately, not much happened since on that field, due to as I said before, a lack of developers, but now RT64 exists, and is made to be extremely performant, and especially made to be accurate without relying on any game specific code for it, which is extremely impressive and shows a lot of potential for the future, while providing tons of new features that allows enhancements like frame interpolation and more. RT64 was fully enabled because of Vulkan and DirectX 12, else it would simply not exist!

Now why did I talk about this stuff that's seemingly unrelated to NSO? Well remember that Majora's Mask PC port I talked about earlier that uses RT64? I saw that thing running on Nintendo Switch, seemingly perfectly fine, with enhancements as well.

This makes me look at N64 NSO differently, and with even more criticism than before. Instead of making good graphics emulation through Vulkan, they seemingly instead just ported the graphics emulation from Wii U VC's GX2 API to Vulkan. That isn't without effort, but it is quite frankly lazy, and means that whatever they're doing, they're not using the technology at their disposal to the fullest, especially since Vulkan is a standard that applies to pretty much every current GPU under the sun now, whatever the work is done here, it would likely work on the long term, especially the next systems after the Switch. Why Nintendo did not allow that is just sad, and a waste of time. RT64 was done by mostly a single developer, and while it took many years to be developed, these years could have been reduced a lot more if it was handled by a team fully dedicated to this, with possibly even more cutting edge to it. The ingredients are there, but the recipe was just botched.

Genuine trust issues with the quality

But aside from all this stuff I just talked about, if you didn't understand much of it, hopefully this part should help you understand other issues that I have with N64 NSO.

Remember that the first version of N64 NSO was graphically buggy, and while they did fix that over time, new games sometimes were outright buggy and possibly game breaking:

When they added Paper Mario to the service, while the game did actually receive some improvements over the Wii U VC emulator, the game, somehow, was more prone to crashes. If you game over with Watt as a partner, the emulator crashes, and you lose your progress. If you have the curiosity of hitting trees with your hammer, one of them in the snow town actually crashes the game too! Thankfully both were fixed, but you still needed to wait months! If you had no idea why crashes could be caused as Nintendo just never warns about that stuff, that is genuinely inconvenient.

When they added Kirby 64; the western version actually had a game breaking bug that makes you softlocked if you get hit in a particular way underwater. That is genuinely a terrible bug that could affect just about anybody playing the game. Thankfully, they fixed it the next week, but that REALLY shouldn't have happened to begin with!

There's also the smaller problems like Yoshi's Story's boss, Inviso, where the point of the boss is to be invisible. Except he's very visible at all times making the point of the boss moot and any respect to the original game gone. For some fucking reason, they took more than a year to finally fix it, and that's just a huge shame.

There's also how Jet Force Gemini had a worse widescreen mode and somehow thought it was good for release, thankfully fixed 2 months after, but you still had to wait 2 months!

And then F-Zero X still has genuine framerate problems to this day where the game just runs worse over time. That game is known to run a perfect 60 FPS on the original system, so there's no excuse here.

I could also mention Goldeneye and Perfect Dark, but just look up Graslu's videos on them, he has done a full comparison, showing what's wrong with them with enough detail.

For these, I just mentioned the glaring issues plaguing several games, but a lot of times these issues just comes on their addition to the service, and then only gets fixed months later; and for me, that's an actual disrespect to the player. I understand the developer is doing their best here, but frankly, what that looks like to me is a legit constant: they visibly seems just scrambling to get games to work to a "good enough" state. I am NOT accusing iQue of this, however I accuse Nintendo to not have taken any measures to stop having these kinds of problems to begin with.

To speak better of iQue, they seem to be good at reverse engineering, as they do patch games to fix issues, or sometimes just modifications like anti-epilepsy measures or other kinds of hacks.

The controls

I had some really bad things to say about the controls, but it got partially invalidated when I played Perfect Dark on the service to see how bad it got. I think I simply overthought about it.

Now I have an opinion about the controls of Goldeneye and Perfect Dark that will not please people: They're… fine. The default controls I mean. I know people have some real aversion to FPS that doesn't use a double stick, but frankly I dare say those controls didn't age as badly as you'd think. Some people say it's best played on a N64 controller but I don't agree about that, it's also okay on a regular Switch Pro Controller.

Turok however, oh boy, the default controls can be a double stick FPS… except it's reversed. That's where the ability to remap controls would be very useful here, or possibly just one moment where better forced control setups would be actually nice here.

Or how Pokémon Stadium has minigames that uses actually both the D-pad and the Stick, it could be great if the right Stick acted like the N64 Stick at that moment on a Pro Controller instead of the C Buttons!

Instead, I sometimes get told it is an excuse to get the (frankly expensive) N64 controller. Fuck no. I should not be forced to buy that, and I actually dislike using that controller, and I played tons of N64 games through emulation with different controls without having serious issues either, so for me, this isn't an excuse. Wii U VC also provided button remapping!

The forced use of ZL as the N64 Z button, and L for N64 L button for every game, also bothered me. I know they care about consistency, but then, I got actually curious to check how they handled Z and L on Wii and Wii U VC… and holy shit. They handled it right from the start. On Wii they actually just used the L button for the N64 Z button! But, the N64 B and A buttons do correspond to the B and A buttons on the current controllers regardless. Though, on that one, for most games, it's not as much of a bother, but if you're playing games like, let's say Wave Race 64 or F-Zero X, this is particularly worse.

F-Zero X has the use of strafing left and right, so I'll let you imagine how worse that sounds if you use ZL and R. NOT ZR, that's for C Buttons macros on the face buttons. It feels horrible and unintuitive, but also there's how the B and A buttons on N64 are vertical, and you just use your thumb on both buttons, making it easy to boost or to soften bounces on waves in Wave Race 64, which is a pretty darn important thing to understand, but instead you have to handle it on horizontal B and A buttons, making it a slight bit more annoying to your thumb, physically speaking. It just feels unintuitive and actually bad for your thumb, frankly.

It's where I wish games would actually make either ZR or R buttons to be swapped depending on the title, to be the R button and C button macro, and also offer an option to rotate the face buttons so that B and A would be placed on Y and B instead, corresponding more to the actual feeling of the N64 controller.

Sin & Punishment is oddly enough the only game of the bunch that comes with slightly custom controls, more adapted to the game, and I'm sorta glad that they bothered.

Just to go back to the N64 stick emulation, I also wish the sensitivity of it was managed better on current controllers. It really seems like when some games run faster than intended, added with the fact the stick isn't reproduced faithfully, some games are a lot harder to play, especially with Joy Cons if that's your only and basic options, where for example, turning the camera is way faster and you just keep wanting to reposition all the time.

Missing features

Man, imagine emulating the Controller Pak for the ability to save in games that only uses it instead of battery backed save memory in the cartridge, but then, literally never use it, ever.

Well that's what happened to Wii U VC and N64 NSO. iQue has actually emulated it, but for some reason, they never use it, and I just do not understand why, especially in games where the Rumble Pak isn't supported.

Speaking of the Rumble Pak, it is emulated, but there's one thing I just do not understand: Why isn't there code to automatically swap the Controller Pak and Rumble Pak? They have the best ways to actually handle this in ways that is pretty transparent and unobtrusive, but somehow, they don't bother with it, and it's just very strange. I know the N64 games are weird about it, but some outright allow to swap them, sometimes they even bother to remove the No Controller Pak message in Winback, but in other games they don't even bother removing the Rumble Pak swap message. It's just inconsistent and weird.

We don't have Transfer Pak emulation unfortunately, but that one, I can partially understand, it's definitely a bit messy, but it would still have been cool to play Mario Tennis and Mario Golf with your GBC characters and to level them up on the N64 games. Instead, in Mario Tennis GBC, you actually get the Transfer Pak content unlocked from the start, which is still pretty cool of Nintendo to care, and a mere reminder that they do care about these details in other apps. But in Mario Tennis on N64 NSO, the Transfer Pak courts are yet to be unlocked.

Then there's the wish to see 64DD emulated, which they initially did some work towards that back on Wii U VC, but then simply never touched in years, and then removed the code after I noticed they tried to support the fanmade cartridge ports of them. It's probably just for testing though, I don't really care that they do it like that, but I would think it's particularly crass had they used them officially on the app. This has yet to be seen again, so I don't have my hopes up. Here's hoping the Nintendo Museum made them care though, considering Doshin The Giant 64DD actually showed up there.

The future

I think I pretty much said what I wanted to say the most in one place. It might have been a little hard to read, but I really wanted to make my points very clear.

When I look at N64 NSO vs the rest of the service, I just cannot help but see how worse it is in general, I have genuine trust issues as it is very badly managed as games get added but then doesn't run properly, only to get resolved, if it does, only months later. It just makes me want to put off for later any time I wanna play a N64 game on that service, and I really want to love that service, I want to recommend y'all the biggest N64 library so far that Nintendo has given us that surpasses both Virtual Console libraries on Wii and Wii U, but I just can't.

Unfortunately, I don't see the future to be that bright. I see no reason to believe Nintendo has done any big efforts to allow a better N64 emulator, and of course, Nintendo has never really addressed complaints, and I partially blame the "good enough" feeling. When I read ArsTechnica to make an article just to complain about the borders after the N64 NSO ordeal, it just makes me feel like no matter what, this bigger complaint of mine across all of N64 NSO just cannot be seen seriously. It's a much bigger problem than borders (though, I agree, they should allow more, including pitch black borders).

I don't see any reason for Nintendo to read this either, but that's my full impressions of N64 NSO so far. Nintendo 64 NSO is just shit, and disrespectful to the legacy of the N64.

I outright accuse it to force people to buy a N64 controller just to play it correctly, which definitely worked as it definitely was out of stock several times, but if that's truly what they aimed for, then it's an app that doesn't know what audience it wants. If it aimed to be played by casuals, they'll be put off by the controls. If they aimed for the hardcore, they'll find problems, no matter what.

And it really cannot be helped when the emulator is clearly designed for the developers to manually fix problems per game instead of having a better emulator overall.

#nintendo switch online #nintendo 64 #rant

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revenantghost · 8 months

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I'll write a proper post on the official account when my head doesn't want to murder me, but thank you so, so, so much to everyone following along and participating in tristampparty--all of your enthusiasm, creativity, and passion for this show, even a year later, is mindboggling and genuinely made my almost-two-weeks

#TristampParty #I am having Emotions

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beesmygod · 5 months

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do the forbidden woods have any connection to the beasts or great ones, aside from being geographically adjacent to byrgenwerth? Are the snake infested fellows just "normal" as far as yharnam is concerned? Like before yharnam got all bloodborney, was the Yharnam Cartographer's Guild map of the woods still just a big circle with SNAKES written?

this is a really good question because, as a lore psycho, i think the understated lore implications of the woods are genuinely fascinating. i think there's a lot to unpeel, even if we take into account that it was one of the places in the game that was chopped up at the 11th hour and scrambled before release.

as always for these lore posts, important nouns are bolded and speculation is in italics. we are going to discuss the woods in three parts: from the gatekeeper to the windmill is "the village". from the windmill to byrgenwerth is "the woods". the subterranean cave shortcut back to yharnam will just be called "shortcut." i'll expand on this shit GREATLY when we reach this part in "you hunted" (I HAVENT STOPPED WORKING ON IT I PROMISE IM JUST SWAMPED) so considered this a light overview. feel free to ask for more details on things and ill do my best to fill in the blanks.

THE VILLAGE:

-from the jump, the village gatekeeper is a fucking weird little blip in bloodborne's narrative. i haven't thought about him enough to figure out if he's more than just a spooky, unexplained element but he has some cut dialog that sheds some mindboggling information about yharnam: he seems very confused about WHEN it is and will cite the last time he had a visitor as anything from a year to a century.

-the lamps in this area lighting the way to the village are little burning fetal beasts of some sort.

i'm starting to understand more and more about how fire operates in the world of bloodborne, since most of the time it appears in the game, it's seemingly impossible. the thing that confused me the most was how old yharnam was still burning if it happened a long time ago. i think it's time to start thinking of the old blood as impossibly combustible and a great source of light/fire. this isn't the first in-universe example of creatures being used as fuel: the lamps in the fishing village are slugs (also infants? they strongly resemble the hunter's appearance as a baby great one in the "childhood's beginning" ending). this is a whole fucking like, thing. it's its own post.

next, the huntsmen enemies here are dressed funny. you probably noticed it but couldn't pin down how. they're dressed in white church clothes! the first model here is used only in the forbidden woods. the two on the left are from central yharnam. note the gloves on the first two; these are church doctors!

(this post goes on like this for some time)

the white church doctors are the ones that were doing "experimentally backed blood ministration". the butcher's garb further defines it as "forbidden research". these white church doctors are the citizens of this "village". in the clustered buildings where the majority of the huntsmen are, you can find blue elixir and beast blood pellets in abundance. both of these items can only be purchased from the store after obtaining the choir's badge, drawing a firm connection between the white church doctor's research and the goals of the choir.

although, this probably isn't too much of a surprise; it's almost certain that this is where fauxsekfa came from. she took the same shortcut we did, right? i'm not really sure i understand the shortcut too much. but let's talk about it.

THE SHORTCUT:

although not explicitly stated, i am strongly convinced that this cave is the entrance to the hintertomb. at the very least, it is absolutely an entrance to the labyrinth. the presence of tomb mold, blood gems, parasite larva, and pthumerian giants/corpses makes this very clear. the root chalice for the hintertomb describes it as "a cesspool of noxious snakes and insects"; i think it's likely that the snakes came from the hintertomb given they can be found in the swamps there.

the giant graves here and further into the woods are referred to as "tombstone[s] of a great one".

the hunter's mark i think would suggest these are pthumerian made. its possible that the hintertomb is spilling out into the world above but frankly all of the graves here are baffling. grave placement and appearance needs more research. the graves in the woods only are developing a strange sort of honeycomb rot pattern not unlike the head of an amygdala. this pattern shows up enough that it warrants more investigation.

the slow poison-inducing "water" here has similar properties to the slow poison pool in the research hall. they are different colors, but have similar origins: the poison pool in the research hall is from the decomposing bodies of the patients, who were exposed to bizarre blood ministration and parasitism. the pool here is likely from decomposing great ones. with this in mind, perhaps the silvery liquid is mercury.

the ladder leading out of this area is fucking insane and i have a hard time understanding what occurred there. like what in the hell is up with that grave you exit into in yharnam. who popped it open. why is it so cavernous. what happened to the contents.

anyway, let's just go back to the woods.

THE VILLAGE (again)

there's really only two more things to mention here before we move on: first, beast roar can be picked up here. it's the undead, still twitching hand of a darkbeast. nothing touched by the old blood can truly die, and these severed limbs are no exception.

second are the butchers. these are the people who collect specimens, hack them apart, and present them to the church doctors for research. they show up in three different ways: the surviving madaras twin wears the butcher's set (the hunter picks up the set from the other twin's corpse), the "executioner" enemies (REMINDER: a better translation would have been "butchers" [or, literally, "dismantling men"], i have no idea why they went with "executioner" outside of their superficial appearance) wear the cape with the popped collar, and there are huntmen enemies skulking the streets below the grand cathedral hunting for victims dressed in the garb. they literally only appear there.

ah, one more thing. this is the place where you can find the suspicious beggar and interrupt him while he's in the middle of chowing down on one of the biggest families i've ever seen in my life. at first i thought the devs hysterically fucked up the sizes of the corpses, but they're dressed like the citizens of yahar'gul. while not outright stated, evidence strongly suggests that the beggar is irreverent izzy or one of his followers such as the close proximity of one of izzy's inventions and the beggar's clothing reflecting his past as both a veteran tomb prospector gone mad and former church agent. there's a lot of meat on that bone, but for another time.

OKAY. LAST PART NOW.

THE WOODS:

this is the part you probably remember the most bc it's snake hell. the first thing we absolutely need to keep in mind is that the snake-infested guys you meet are a reference to doobie from jojo. the snakes are parasites to people, but the snakes themselves are also being parasitized? they are covered in ticks, those are the huge bloated blobs all over them. given that the augurs of the great ones are invertebrates...what does that imply about the inclusion of the ticks narratively?

there's something absolutely fascinating happening to the flora and fauna in this section of the woods but it's hard to know what it all means. some notes:

-when enemies in bloodborne die, the game handles their corpse in different ways. some of this is lore related, some of it is to reduce hardware strain. some corpses turn into ragdolls, some explode into blood, some explode into white particles (sometimes with blood but not always). snakes explode into white particles. i got way too into the fucking weeds with this, but (outside of the slime scholars....kind of) all of these enemies either appear or were intended to appear in the chalice dungeons, the nightmare frontier, or the nightmare of mensis (the lecture hall containing the scholars connects the waking world to the nightmare). all of these locations are, arguably, the nightmare.

-there are statues of amygdala and a presumed evolution of the celestial child sprouting out of the ground. i am almost certain these are original versions of the statues in the grand cathedral and yahar'gul, respectively.

-remember that strange pond with the fireflies? the only place in the game where there's fireflies? what the hell is up with that lol. i kind of have an answer:

most concrete is this: back when the original boss of the woods was snakeball, you would have faced a rematch in this pond.

insane theory crafting moment: look, this is stupid complicated and a reach so if i have to get into really defending it it, ill do it in another post. but in bloodborne people can be teleported around via "communion". communion is the means of entering the chalice dungeons and requires three things: ritual blood (or perhaps just liquid, if rom's arena is anything to go by), something to hold the blood (typically a chalice, but sometimes the "chalice" is a skull), and light (this is almost always achieved with candles). this pond is probably full of blood, if the rotten bodies nearby are any indication, and the fireflies offer light. but, look, this shit was cut so don't think too hard about it.

-its in the art book but also in the game (but hard to see): the wall separating byrgenwerth from the rest of the world is melted.

wait wtf there's dudes in it. lol. what da hell!

oh my. the name for this asset is "wall of divine tomb". cool. every day i lean some new insane shit about this game, for real.

anyway the only other point of interest is whatever the fuck valtr and the league are doing. too deep of a topic for now. anyway, those were the points of interest in the forbidden woods. i hope this was....whatever counts for informative when it comes to video game trivia

#bloodborne lore #bloodborne

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luckylolabug · 7 months

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The final pieces for the last chapter of On the Wings of a Wild Grey Heron by @cats-and-metersticks for @lockwoodandcobigbang2023

I am so weirdly emotional at being done with this? It's been a staple every week for a while now, and it's going to be SO incredibly weird not having that to fall back on every week when things get quiet. I could not have asked for a better team to illustrate for! An incredible author AND an incredible cheerleader (@pininglikefinedining), who really didn't need to offer up as much encouragement as she did. The fact that I even was given the opportunity to try and put down visuals for the amazing, and frankly picturesque, words that she manages to pen down is so mindboggling to me. I am so incredibly grateful for a multitude of reasons that I was able to do this, and I really, genuinely, urge every person to go read the entire beautiful thing if they haven't already. It's so amazing.

#bugs doodles #lockwood and co #lockwood & co #lockwood and co big bang #george karim #anthony lockwood #flo bones

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slutforpringles · 6 months

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you're honestly one of the rare good parts of the f1 subreddit, but i genuinely think i'll have to peace out soon or at least remove myself for a bit. ppl FROTHING at the mouth to hate on daniel, jfc guys you need to get a life

Thank you, that's really kind of you to say 💕 yeah the Daniel-hating obsession is genuinely getting way excessive at this point. There's like 25 variations of similar articles/quotes posted all about how Daniel has to do better, that have all attracted every single Daniel hater out to give their take or given them an excuse and platform to just straight up hate.

As I've said before I'm all for actual criticism of driver performance and genuine debate, but a lot of the stuff on there is just nasty, biased hate. And i cannot stand the way people create these revisionist histories/opinions that are not based on actual facts that then somehow become widely accepted povs on the f1 sub is mindboggling.

I've been actively trying to avoid a lot of those posts because I know it will 1) put me in a terrible mood and 2) make me waste way too much time trying to argue with every idiot on there farming Daniel hate for upvotes.

But yeah I totally totally get needing to take a break/leave 💕

#anon ask #daniel ricciardo

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blatterpussbunnyfromhell · 11 months

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Did Silver kill Flint?

I keep seeing cold ass takes in the Black Sails side of tumblr that make my blood boil.

Look, I got into Black Sails in 2017, three weeks after the finale aired. Back then, there seemed to be an understanding that the "Silver killed Flint" interpretation was just a fringe theory from straight people made uncomfortable by the queer lead getting a happy ending. Personally, it was my first encounter with the phrase "unbury your gays" (having learnt "bury your gays" a year earlier with The 100). It seemed to be generally accepted that Flint lived, and that this was the whole point.

Now, it would appear that a shift has happened in the fandom, where the idea of Silver killing Flint is no longer treated as a theory by straight weirdos but as a canon, onscreen event, and these posts come from queer fans. It seems to come from younger fans who were about 12 or 13 in 2017. It's so mindboggling to me.

The arguments for this Silver-Killed-Flint thing is usually the same two: birds flying away and Silver's men turning around in the forest, as in reaction to a noise, which is interpreted as a gunshot.

Like, I'm just elaborating on a rant I sent to my friends earlier today here but, if Silver killed Flint, then :

Why would we be shown an entire sequence with one of Silver's henchmen looking for Thomas where he is?

If Thomas and Flint are dead, why aren't we shown their deaths? It's an actual rule in cinema that a character whose death isn't shown on screen isn't dead, a rule that the show does follow (we see Billy's funeral but not his corpse). Besides, Black Sails doesn't shy away from showing death on screen, even for main characters. Then, why not show how Thomas died instead of telling us? Why not show us Silver shooting Flint? The writers trust their viewers to understand the pattern, and understand that the reason we do not see their deaths is because they aren't dead.

Why would Silver bring up Thomas to Flint if he'd planned on killing him? Or if, as I've also seen it said, it was just a lie he made on the spot for Madi ?

And talking about Madi, I've seen A LOT of people saying she would never forgive Silver. And to that I genuinely have to ask, have you seen their last appearence in the show? I dont mean their argument in the cabin, I mean the scene where Silver sits on top of a hill and turns around to find Madi waiting for him on the path. I mean the scene where he walks towards her and she waits for him. So, my question here, if she wasn't gonna forgive Silver, why is she waiting for him on that hill? Nevermind the fact that Treasure Island's Long John Silver is in a relationship with a Black woman (I've seen posts saying that could be Max, and really wtf??), what is the point of showing us this scene if she's not gonna forgive him? Why not stop their arc at the cabin where she sends him away?

At the time when Black Sails' finale aired, Supernatural was still queerbaiting its audience, and Sherlock ended in a fucking shitshow. People were throwing fits over Bill Potts, Doctor Who's first ever onscreen lesbian companion because she was a lesbian with a masculine name. A year before that, The 100, a very popular tv show at the time, had just killed it's only lesbian character and faced so much uproar and backlash for it. (That was my entry into the LGBT+ community, by the way : the first character to make me think I might actually like women getting killed on screen two scenes after having had sex with the female lead). Sense8's two-hour long finale and Love, Simon wouldn't air for another year.

So yeah, if you weren't into queer media back in 2017 (and omg I sound like such an old twat), I don't think you can understand just how important that ending, with Flint being reunited with the love of his life after so much pain and loss, was.

If your interpretation of Black Sails is that the events of Treasure Island happened the way the book tells you, then I'm sorry to tell you this but you completely missed the point of the show.

#black sails #black sails meta #long post #silverflint #long john silver #james flint #thomas hamilton #james mcgraw #captain flint #ok to rb

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daydreaming-scheming-demon · 2 months

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vivzipop discourse is fucking mindboggling to me, because i genuinely think she’s done some truly fucking awful things and has some very bigoted beliefs, but every time i see discourse surrounding her it’s always some shit like ‘she drew art of a 17 and 3 quarters year old with a slightly sexualized ass 10 years ago’. like, there are so many genuine reasons to hate this person, so why does everyone only ever hate her for the stupidest of reasons?????

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ask-serendipity-sky · 1 year

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Hey,

Hope you’re having a lovely day. I sent this ask because I believe you and I are in the same place, the middle ground, not a pjm but not fully ot7(at least by twt standards)

I would like to have a discussion on the drawback of Jimin. I’m new to the fandom but even before I joined I distinctly remember the name Jimin.

I was a 1D fan and Jimin was all up on my YouTube. I remember watching his compilations before I could even tell the band members apart.

Anyway flash forward and that same Jimin is what has me joining a tumblr space to share my woes. Why?

Because I genuinely care for the guy. Like if something were to happen to him I’d cry. I resonate with his albums. Appreciate his music and I feel proud seeing how his voice has improved.

I don’t feel the need to be up in his private life but I still like to know he’s okay once in a while.

He is kind of like an acquaintance.

Anyway, I feel it’s important others know, as a past local, that Jimin knows how to shine.

This guy is smart, he knows himself and he knows his charms and if he WANTED to, he would.

No one can ignore Jimin. Everything about him stands out: his looks, his voice, his charms, his dance.

My take on FACE as someone in marketing: it’s poor marketing.

Hybe knows how to market.

You don’t become a multibillion dollar company and not have a marketing team.

My take on the marketing strategy: Use Jimin to draw the public eye, then as a ladder to push the other artists up.

On the street, smoke sprite, face, people Pt 2

All released around the same time. Multiple music shows, beat coin, Jimmy Fallon, face playlist, behind the scenes content, face live

Did I miss anything? Maybe it was such a whirlwind.

Anyway I give the marketing of FACE a 5/10. Nice buildup but chaotic/ crazy at the end.

Listening to Jimin I realize he’s very humble and hardworking.

he’s the kind of person that you can’t help but praise, and that stirs jealousy.

his members praise him, the persons who work with him praise him, his fans consistently praise him, his friends praise him, he’s even made an impact on his tattooist.

locals praise him. But he also stands out too much. Like from a marketing POV, JK is much safer? Even look at reactors, they feel so strongly toward Jimin that they have to preface: I’m straight blah blah whilst the others it’s just “yeah I like RM, JK/V”

I don’t know how to describe it. Jimin is so unique he’s controversial.

I could be watching a BTS video with a muggle and they recognize no one but the “guy who looks like a girl”, then all of a sudden we’re in a conversation about their sexuality .

it’s kind of frustrating, and annoying….so most Jimin fans are understandably silent. Especially with this influx of jealousy and hate

But what is silence? Silence is not good for data.

so what does hybe marketing team see? A whole lot of jungkook and tae

Jungkook and Tae on instagram. Jk and Tae on TikTok. Jk and Tae topping google searches. JK especially

so they likely conclude, we should make JK our pushed product. Because they can’t afford to push everybody.( or can they?)

And then, what happens? Jimin who’s been basically working with his in-house producers this whole time comes and pushes the competition out the water by topping the billboard, AS A DEBUT, with a song in KOREAN.(again the man isn’t safe lol)

I can’t describe to you how mindboggling this is. If I was a marketer I would have been shocked and realized that, Jimin has a silent fanbase but a highly engaged fanbase.

There is a reason Tiffany and Dior wanted him. A highly engaged fanbase is more likely to spend money, while a bigger but less engaged fanbase is good for mass appeal( say Calvin Klein)

A highly engaged which is so much more important imo. That is the foundation BTS propelled itself off of. That means you just need proper promotion, his silent fanbase just need to find the courage to speak and share and you have a force.

The issue? Jimin’s fans are silent because Jimin is silent. They were loud when Jimin was loud, locals couldn’t stop hearing Jimin. They subconsciously follow what Jimin wants, and maybe, like many others, they probably feel Jimin isnt ready to shake up the whole world yet as a solo artist yet.

and he made it clear he isn’t. He made the album to get it off his chest, and is basically saying he does NOT want to outshine his band members. (JM: I know you love me but remember BTS is first everyone)

so Jimin fans are basically stuck supporting his music and sticking with the ot7 till another time.

but I want to say to all Jimin fans, with that #1 on Billboard you made a statement. There’s a reason kpoppies are all up in your grill. There’s a reason Hybe is putting more focus on the other members. There’s a reason Jimin is not promoting himself that much.

cause they know, they all know. Even Jimin himself knows he’s a force to be reckoned with. The man just wants to chill as a member of the band for now, but continue reminding him and the company time and time again that he has the potential to shake up the industry .

Hi anon,

Thank you for sending this. I really do appreciate it. I'm sure a lot of people do as well.

Perhaps Jimin does want to do things quietly or perhaps not. But I don't want him to ever think that he is not enough for us and therefore we didn't do enough for him.

So let's follow what this anon is saying. Stream his music, give views to his MVs and fancams, engage with any content that has Jimin like Tiffany, Dior, naver articles, all of that.

We will see what happens in the future but for now, this is what we do.

Jimin deserves the world.

Thank you for sharing all this!

-I have attached a post with Jimin centric playlists:

-Please give views to this video (it's a competition, ok?):

youtube

-If we want Jimin to get awards, we must give Youtube views. I hate Youtube but it must be done.

-Presave Angel pt2, which will be released on Thursday, 6/15. Don't buy on Thursday, wait until Friday. I will post playlists once the song is out:

I think the link might not work for everyone so try here too:

https://fastx.lnk.to/AngelPt2

I think that's about it...for now

#jimin #asks #jikook #kookmin

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kabutoraiger · 6 months

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finishing up the first arc of saber and you know. this show still has charm points for me for sure but it's genuinely kind of mindboggling that they wrote the plotline "the MC was saved by a handsome hero as a kid who influenced their whole life then met him later after they'd taken up his hero mantle & he'd gone to the dark side" and managed to make that into something i am not compelled by in the slightest. anyway RIP kamijo "whatshisface" calibur. he sure was a guy

#watching saber

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thefirstknife · 2 years

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It's starting to feel like there's an implicit understanding in the community that complaining about the game is one of the main ways to engage with it, and maybe is something newer players pick up as part of the 'haha even diehard destiny players hate destiny' narrative. =\

Im happy to see the playerbase growing, but dang, I wish there'd be a bit less of 'if you love this thing you'll be passionate about criticizing it' among some of the big personalities

Yeah. Destiny always had that whole joke like "The one thing Destiny players hate the most is Destiny." I never understood it. When I mildly disliked Destiny, I stopped playing. Genuinely cannnot fathom playing a game religiously while hating it. Mindboggling. I'm also somewhat salty that a lot of people "criticising the story" and latching onto this whole vibe have never actually been fans of the story or have never really paid attention to it.

Like, it feels somewhat strange to me that suddenly every single content creator, including those that were openly NEVER into the lore and even content creators who literally only play pvp and those that openly play with voicelines and subtitles off, are suddenly great experts on how this story apparently sucks. And of course followed by a million of their fans who have until yesterday only ever cared about meta weapons for Trials, but have overnight become lore masters who understand that the story was "bad."

I know people who ARE into lore and who had issues. I also know that there's a lot of new players who were probably utterly confused, though that's to be expected when you tune into the 9th year of the franchise. I'm totally fine with that and respect people who have a different view of the campaign and how it felt to them. And of course if any new players are super confused and have no idea where to start learning more... I sympathise. Greatly. And I'm happy to help! Obviously a lot of what people are discussing right now is really complicated and draws from super specific lore that might not be easy for a new player to understand right away. It will take some time and that's okay!

But when I see the amount of people blasting the story, I'm left thinking... Really? There were so many lore enjoyers out there all this time? You're telling me that twitter user xxTrialsHunterMain69420xx understands the problems with the narrative and can talk with authority on obscure lore references and how Bungie fucked them up? This is absolutely news to me, as most players have been dissing the story for years and if they weren't dissing, they just weren't engaging with it at all.

Obviously every player has a right to say how they felt playing and how they vibed with the campaign and if they didn't vibe with it, that's fine. They didn't vibe with a lot of campaigns that I would die for, like for example Shadowkeep. But there's a distinct feeling like a lot of these people are just latching onto the hate train for no real justifiable reason of their own. Like, it's popular to shit on the campaign now and people will do it to fit in, even if they personally have never ever had any stakes in what Destiny's story is about.

They've been given not only permission, but encouragement to blast the campaign over something they barely understand and something that a lot of people reacted to out of their basic impulses. And I get it because my basic impulse was negative too. I feel like maybe a huge personality who influences the entire community shouldn't post the first thought that comes to their mind uncritically to social media. Or at least that they should feel like they can change their mind and correct that later. I feel like a lot of them would never do that now because it would mean alienating their audience. "Oh yeah I told you all that this sucks, but actually no it doesn't, just listen." Yeah, not going to happen. Not to mention that outrage brings clicks.

And of course, now the whole discourse has been completely ruined by the outrage so it's incredibly hard to find and filter who actually has decent feedback and who is just riding the hate train. Frustrating and draining.

#destiny 2 #destiny 2 spoilers #lightfall #lightfall spoilers #ask

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feyascorner · 7 months

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I love TFBU and gods has it made me cry. I love angst, especially the kind that genuinely makes me cry. Could you add me to the tag list pretty please? Btw your writing is SO good.

IT BAFFLES ME WHENEVER SOMEONE SAYS THEY CRIED OVER TFBU BECAUSE????? THATS SUCH A COMPLIMENT?? LIKE MY WRITING WAS ENOUGH TO PROVOKE ACTUAL EMOTIONS?? IT’S MINDBOGGLING

that being said ofc!! I’ll add you to the list :)) Ty for reading ❤️

#tfbu #feyascorner

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hypemon · 1 year

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OK, so this year's MindBoggle trailer briefly mentions there being some sort of entity that feeds off of the song and harmony of monsters, and it's implied to have caused or contributed to some of the major catastrophes in the lore?

I'm not... Sure how to feel about that idea?

One of he novelties of MSM is how peaceful things are in their world; there's never been any opposing forces, monsters are only kinda rude or mischievous at worst and all major conflicts seemed to have came about naturally and/or inter-personally. The fact that MSM lacked any antagonist made things interesting.

The fact that we have something that suddenly fulfills that role is just a culture shock to me. Why? What? How is this going to effect the story? How is this even going to effect the game itself???

Since we know next to nothing about this yet, there's a good chance that they may make something good out of this that'll change my mind, but for now I'm skeptical.

[TANGENT UNDER THE CUT]

Y'know, I talked about this exact thing with my sister (she isn't much into the game, but I've rambled enough to her that she has a good grasp on it) a while ago, and she actually proposed an interesting idea that I built upon with her. She had the thought that, if MSM were to have an antagonist, it would be monster hunter; plays into the whole close connection between the monster and human worlds, with how it could possibly go wrong, and also acts as a sort-of antithesis to Wardin E. Spurrit (potentially even going under the same transformation, for the irony). Though the prospect of it being a hunter sounds edgy, I think it'd be more cartoonish and pathetic for the most part, with only brief moments of being a genuine threat. That would be very interesting to me, but we'll just have to see what the actual case is.

#msm #my singing monsters #rambling

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ngame989 · 1 year

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One Last Starco Sucker Punch

Hey y'all, @seddm was too much of a coward to post this but I'm bored so it's time to light one last fire before I skedaddle on to greener pastures for real. Back in Sept 2022, there was an anniversary Q&A with Daron, Adam, and a few others. One response in particular from Daron is, frankly, so mindboggling that even this many years after my very vocal frustrations with S4 in particular, it still managed to shock me in a new and terrible way.

"In your headcanon what are the characters doing after the finale?"

I'll say, I do imagine that Star and Marco are happy wherever they end up in the future, and I do in some ways kind of see them possibly- you know, hey if they're together, if they're not together, maybe they'll get back together- they're very young. That was always something too that I've had some reservation about, because they do have this really lovely romance where they really come together as this like, you know, two characters who just really love each other but are these two good friends but they are really young and, hey. Most people should not actually get together with the people they meet in highschool, so that's... yeah. But I like to think that eventually maybe they come back and they're happy... but I don't know! I don't know where we might go exactly and I don't wanna say 'cause- if that happens I want the option to not have everybody yell at me if I change my mind about something.

Ahem.

So you're telling me you submitted an episode for an Annie nomination entirely about how the main characters couldn't just go back to normal friends anymore, did it AGAIN via magical asspull in S4 because the tension was impossible to stall off any longer otherwise, DIRECTLY concluded that even that magical asspull meant nothing because it was all real the whole time, and then DEDICATED HALF THE FINALE to how momentous and important Star and Marco's journey had been, but maybe they break up because kids do that sometimes????

Can you fucking imagine a murder mystery that builds up for years and they FINALLY solve the case and arrest the murderer, and then the creator says "well maybe the jury finds them innocent and they're not convicted, who knows, that happens sometimes! The justice system is weird like that!" Well you don't have to imagine, because I've (BARELY) modified the above answer for just that context!

"In your headcanon what does the future look like for the serial killer after they're finally caught?" "I'll say, I do imagine that they'll probably get punished, and I do in some ways kind of see them possibly- you know, hey if they get convicted, if they don't get convicted, maybe they'll get caught again later - it's still pretty early in the justice process. That was always something too that I've had some reservation about, because the heroes did all this work to uncover their murders and found a lot of compelling evidence and the guy admitted to it, but hey sometimes stress makes people confess to things they didn't do and detectives are wrong sometimes! Most people should not actually try and get justice for their family's killer… yeah. But I like to think that eventually maybe they get sentenced to jail… but I don't know! I don't know where we might go exactly and I don't wanna say 'cause- if that happens I want the option to not have everybody yell at me if I change my mind about something."

I've always been a massive advocate for character and relationship arcs not being some lower form of storytelling, there's no reason a complex plot and characters' emotional journeys shouldn't be held to similar standards of integrity and consistency. And I'm not saying a hypothetical future requires them to be 100% perfectly happy forever, I'm absolutely sure they'd bicker and disagree on some stuff. And characters are allowed to grow and change in sequels too, but there's a huge distinction between a genuine character arc and "actually the entire first series' emotional climax didn't matter and its resolution just undid itself because life is random like that sometimes!"

Look, you could say I'm maybe being uncharitable, and I acknowledge that this is just a casual off the cuff answer years and years after they wrote the story. Even though I've soured so, so much on most of the show over the years, I will gladly sing the praises of the emotional highs in the finale and how good that last few minutes is as a thematic sendoff for the main two dorks, and some unscripted Q&A response doesn't change that. But at the very least it means that whatever conviction she might have had about it is flimsy now, and with Disney's current raging reboot 'rection, there's a terrifyingly nonzero chance SVTFOE gets another chance in the limelight.

My time as a fan has long passed, but as someone who did care very deeply about Star and Marco's journey, it's frankly fucking insulting to see it so casually disregarded like this by the person likeliest to be involved in its hypothetical future.

#star vs the forces of evil #svtfoe #starco

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