#like we understand the meaning ok

[plesiosaurys]

getting emotional over footage of an amateur scuba diver interacting with a coelacanth. they are hunted by large deepwater predators, and here comes a large creature bearing the brightest lights it's ever seen, making strange noises, but it does not shy away. it hovers, calmly, as the diver reaches out and trails a hand down its back. im strongly against the anthropomorphizing of real life animals but the stupid emotional part of me loudly insists this is because it recognizes us, the alternating movements of its four paired limbs matching the diver's four paired limbs, & it is thinking, "hello, cousins, we missed you these 66 million years, it's so good to see you again. welcome back, welcome home."

[eskildit]

i think a lot about hot sauce and jeannemary. two young girls so ready to kill and to die. a comparison made all the worse when you recall that hot sauce lost all her family to the cohort, that she can specifically recall fourth style necromancy (using corpses as bombs). a fourteen and thirteen year old that could easily have been on opposite sides of the same front line. 

[polin-erospsyche]

Using @polinsated gifs to point this out because they’re beautiful ❤️

But it’s always going to be so wild to me that these two need two episodes from this kiss to figure their shit out. I know what is going on in both of their minds, I really do. He’s being hit by a 10 years worth ton of bricks and his world is shifting on its axis and it’ll never be the same from this point forth. She’s thinking this is the end of her little girl fantasy and the door is closing on her hopes and dreams and she will sacrifice those in order to be practical. In some sense too she’s growing up, she’s making what she thinks will be the mature choice. Someone once said that they’re standing on the door’s threshold and it’s symbolic, representing the threshold these two are on, swapping for each other’s place in some ways.

I know all of this. But you cannot deny the absolute softness that is in that kiss. It’s so delicate and they’re so careful it’s as if there is a spell on their kiss and this moment and it would break if they were any more forceful in their kiss. Yet there’s so much passion. Passion which is bursting at the brim, passion which they can barely hold back from it’s so strong. So they stay rooted into place, giving each other the gentlest of kisses lest the spell breaks and they give into each other and their wants. And the fact that they do not address this. That she pushes it under the carpet as soon as it’s brought up. That she decides to leave the dream, their kiss in that garden on that threshold locked away with a spell in a deep deep corner of her mind. That on the other hand he’ll never move on from that threshold, that spell which he will come back to time and time again in his dreams. The fact that she gave up on her dreams of him and he’s chasing his dreams to be with her. The fact that from this threshold they move in total polar opposite of each other and the doubts linger despite how soft and world altering the kiss was for both of them, it will never not be wild to me.

[moeblob]

Sorry I forgot Hanneman suggested Byleth undress after they show up with a different hair color. And I miss Hanneman. And also while swapping between Houses and Hopes and seeing Hanneman pop up to help in a Hopes paralogue is just devastating since he doesn't ever actually join you at all and I am denied my old man rights.

So I had to draw this. Thank you for understanding.

[jewishjon]

Look, I love Jon as much as the next person but I think some of you have gone so far along the ‘Jon is a sad little man who did nothing wrong’ route that you’ve genuinely forgotten all the times he held power in a situation or like. Made a decision that hurt people

[stuckinapril]

One day I’ll go through med school and then I’ll go through residency and then I’ll go through a fellowship and then I’ll be the most crybaby neurosurgeon you could think of. Bursting into tears if I so much as graze ur hypothalamus with my forceps

[ineed-to-sleep]

Funny how all it takes is a couple of conversations with a cis straight man about gender to make me go "yup I'm definitely not cis"

[foxgloveinspace]

People jumping ship cause of the new masks is very ahhhh. Telling. Tbh.

[lunataurora]

forever amazed and confused at how often transformers franchise just straight up depicts suicide attempts. like not even considering the superhero trope of "i have to save everyone!!! by choosing to die!!!!!" thing. like. non-allow-yourself-to-die-to-stop-a-thing-from-killing-everyone-immediately type situations. which tbh i wish more ppl talked about but not the point here

like. sure mtmte, a comic abt mentall illness and war, i expected it to be aware of the concept. but its not handled well and mostly used for shock value or "im better now i swear! i have a husband and everything" BUT ITS IN THE KIDS SHOWS TOO??? MY BESTIE G1 RODIMUS?? BEAST WARS DINOBOT???

[qulizalfos]

"mike is Just a useless bumbling idiot"

[liquidstar]

and now for something stupid

[hanzajesthanza]

this looks like a long time but initially it said 1 MONTH 15 days

[soccerpunching]

Inazuma eleven initially spoke to us bcs all the characters are so mentally unwell. All of them are us fr

The only differences between the characters is how much help theyre getting and have gotten which speaks to how better they are at then being present for another character and being sensitive with someone's issue

Ofc this isnt universal bcs you also sometimes have characters who obviously sets their own issues aside to help someone else and is still very good at helping them (looking at you tenma and possibly yuuichi if he had more screentime)

Anyway, what im getting at is all the antagonists and protagonists are all insane and that speaks to us

[mulletmitsuya]

random tokrev rant ahead !!

when i first started this blog it was going to be for random shitposts, groupchats once in a while, and mostly tokrev analysis but i was so scared of discourse that i just chose to do the funnier stuff 😭. when tokrev was at it's peak i'd be reading 20k+ words of analysis and it was so fun!! but i felt like i couldn't word what i wanted to say properly so that discouraged me but i wish i'd ignored that because there would have been at least one person who understood what i was saying yk?

[villainvillain]

fionna and cake having a really underwhelming ending (glob knows if we get a season 2) was NOT on my expectations list at all like genuinely i was ready to be emotionally devastated and screaming endlessly for the next week but.. hm,,..

[rawliverandgoronspice]

Small Tears of the Kingdom changes that could have done a lot

(at least according to me, the one singular flawed person writing this post)

In my desperate attempt to close off the Tears of the Kingdom season on my side of the internet (failing so far), I wanted to join the proposals of a couple of small restructurations/rewrites I've seen on my dashboard. These wouldn't change much of the game, but enough to boisten some of the themes and make the experience both more open and more streamlined. They try to ignore a lot of my own biases towards what I would have loved to see explored within the game and focus on what already exists (I said try). These changes are not only story-driven but also focus on quest design and narrative reward logic, which puzzled me even more than the story itself.

It's obviously not the end all be all of everything, there's a ton of small things that aren't fully adressed, etc.

Here are the 3 main tenants of this proposal:

We know about Fake Zelda by the end of the tutorial section. We see glimpses of her all the way, even though Rauru doesn't seem to be aware she's here, and most of our obstacles come from us trying to reach and save her. Then, by the end, she tries to kill us in the Temple of Time, and we realize she's fake and a lure (it could be a small mini boss, nothing too severe; just something to prove we understand combat). It could also be an earlier occasion to have Ganondorf shit-talk us using his creepy voice through her body, that could build up a better sense of rivalry going forward and make the betrayal of him using her body sting much more than it does in the current version.

Ganondorf, using Fake Zelda, tries to antagonizes each region of Hyrule towards their princess --and, the very important part, it works. The kingdom is splintering apart as he plans his return and his invasion. The goal in each region is not to vaguely solve the weird local problem, but, using the regional hero that knows and trusts Link, to prove that whatever is happening isn't Zelda's fault. This allows to build some sense of tension and stakes, makes us deeply empathize with an overwhelmed Zelda trying to step up as a leader in the aftermath of the Calamity and isn't here to defend herself (and then when we learn where she is and what she did it hurts so much more). The camp where Purah is could also double-down as the beating heart of Hyrule trying to reconnect with the suspicious regions suffering the turmoil isolated from each other.

The Dragon's Tears questline is overhauled, and that can happen in two simultaneous ways. Some of these memories remain Zelda's, but now only some of them, perhaps those who are connected to Zelda's decision to become a dragon without ever spilling it out (and could even focus more on her insecurities as a young ruler and her relationship to her ancestors), remain sprinkled into the land to reward those who want to understand more about her motivations. But now, each of the secret stones collected along the way also function as tears, and instead of being treated to another delicious serving or The Imprisoning War? The Demon King??? we get to discover a little bit more of the mystery. The way it could work is quite simple: the Sage introduces us briefly to their own perspective into the war outside of a voiced cutscene to give the writing more flexibility regarding what the player already did to avoid repetition ( :) :) ), and then plays a pre-determined cutscene in a linear fashion, which is one of Rauru's memories embedded within the secret stone and tells the story of the fall of his kingdom to Ganondorf. (also bonus: now Zelda's tears don't embody the entire kingdom anymore, which was very strange and never sat right with me)

So what we did is to separate the different stories while intertwining them: Zelda's struggles and sacrifice on one hand, Rauru's regrets and bitterness on the other (lololol sorry), and Ganondorf's attempt to break the kingdom apart --which would feed into both Zelda's anxieties and Rauru's long winded defeat. The bonus to this approach would also be to question Hyrule's legitimacy: the various races would then need to decide, after having actively questioned the young princess, that they actually still believe in Hyrule and a future they all get to live in together.

This would also give a little bit more teeth to Ganondorf's motivation, his deep envy for the power of Hyrule and the fact that his own people chose it over him, let alone everyone else. As for the Link's motivation, trying to have everyone see that Zelda is worth it and stop that evil force from shattering her image while also acknowledging the faults of the past could make the player invested in wanting to bring Zelda back down after everything she went through and all the sacrifices she made to prove herself a worthy ruler (Rauru's forcefulness in assimilating the realm under his banner even though he meant well being his actual character flaw that Mineru could eventually acknowledge, to give her something to do instead of... feeling bad for no clear reason!! Also just *give emotional weight* to that time she holds Rauru's hand again when she swears fealty to Link, this was so simple and obvious how was it not given the time it needed for us to care about what was lost!!! aaa)

Yes, it's still about the power of love and sacrifice over ruthless domination, but now characters have a little bit more agency and we feel a little less like they have a zonai knife under their throats the entire time forcing them to always be happy and enthusiastic about swearing fealty to the immortal kingdom. They find out about the past but get to redefine their future instead of falling over themselves in worship; literally using pieces and bits of the past in the form of zonai tech to rebuild their own kingdom and their future dreams. Together they are stronger; but because they all chose to believe in that mantra instead of having it being imposed by long dead kings and faceless ancestors expecting them to die for a war that shouldn't concern them.

(Also, obviously, the gerudo region has to reckon with the Demon King being particularly angry at them for betraying him, and them deciding to reject his rule a second time and embrace their own path, because in the original TotK Ganondorf being gerudo could be removed entirely without any consequence, which is pretty sad since it's basically an enormous part of what makes him compelling as a villain for a lot of people and keeps him from being a completely generic Nintendo stock villain!!)

And honestly? Beyond a couple of dialogue changes and slightly different setups and reasonings for Link to do certain things, especially in the various regional quests? Most of everything else could stay roughly the same. The bones are here! They're just arranged in a really weird way.

(except for Ganondorf surviving as a big bad dragon in the end through the sacrifice of his mind to immortality because that's just much more interesting than turning him into a supernova --but that's really a bonus honestly)