#not so much to the actual fans who have gripes about the story and lore and whatnot

[paris-geller-was-straightwashed]

okay so, having now seen furiosa: a mad max saga opening night and having Ruminated on my thoughts, I am going to give my two-pence on the movie even though nobody asked or wanted it - you're getting it anyway!

but before going into the full thing, I actually re-watched fury road today, bc I just wanted to contrast it now that we know furiosa's full story that lead her to her trek in fury road, and I just had mad max on the brain (and also I love that movie).

spoilers under the cut below!!

first, I already knew before seeing the prequel, that that scene in fury road where furiosa breaks down after learning about what happened to 'the green place,' was going to now hit 2x as hard once we learn what really happened the moment she was ripped away, and...yeah, it's super painful to watch. it was already a very emotional scene, but now having known how much pain and struggle it costed her, how many times furiosa desperately made her bet to get back home and fell short - you can really feel her grief

funnily enough though, I was shocked to find myself tearing up not during that scene, but when furiosa was reunited with the last of the many mothers. having just watched her ripped away so unfairly as a defenseless child, her whole world destroyed and clinging onto this dream of one day, getting to embrace her family - you can't help it!! I started tearing up when the other woman rushed to furiosa, embracing her with the gentle touch of their foreheads, 'this is our furiosa' 😭 like..she did it!! she made it home!!! - also, I learned in the credits - that woman was actually the same little girl, valkyrie, in furiosa who was her friend!!! that girl saw her friend get snatched and pulled away from their home, and then finally, both grown, they reuinite! I just thought that was sweet

what max says to her about hope in the scene after they find the mothers, 'if you can't fix what's broken..you'll go insane.' - my mind immediately jumped to dementus. we get this glimpse that he once had a wife and child(ren) he loved, that were either taken from him or killed, and he tells furiosa in their stand-off more or less how that destroyed him mentally, further plunging him into this hateful madman who acts so cruelly to others. he couldn't 'fix' it by getting them back ('I want them back!!' 'I can't!!'), the one thing he loved that kept him sane, and so he lost his humanity.

I saw a post of someone saying how ricktus's death (immortan joe's son) is 10x more satisfying after having seen what he (nearly) did to child furiosa...abso-fucking-lutely (though, I think with that in mind, furiosa should've gotten a part in it..)

also, max & and furiosa's dynamic after knowing about her & jack...the parallels! the parallels!! their gradual bond of trust, how fluidly they work together to kill/fight the enemies of the citadel akin to her and jack vs. dementus and gang, etc.

this saga, of course, is about hope and redemption, alluded to in both fury road and the prequel. in fury road, max says (I think in his opening monologue) how he was once strived to be a 'righteous warrior', who could do good and help others. later, when one of the wives finds the warboy nux, he's distraught bc he thinks his chances for greatness are gone, but then she tells him that maybe, he's destined for something greater - and that would be, of course, later sacrificing himself to save her and the rest by crashing the rig into the war party. in furiosa, jack says how his parents were valiant warriors, and how he hopes one day, he could be the same - also, later, fulfilling that by sacrificing himself so that furiosa might escape dementus and the destroyed gastown. it's just such an amazing string of parallels - all three men, looking to do something great, and then, through furiosa, they're given that chance and achieve something good even amongst the destruction!! but it's only bc of furiosa, this harbinger of hope, that they do so - she's the tie between them all, the embodiment of that goodness!!! it's! just! so! good!!!

honestly there's probably way more parallels out there I'm sure ppl will bring up, but those were the things that struck me. now, onto my actual thoughts on the prequel.

--I'll start by saying I was unbelievably excited to see this movie. I'm annoyed though, bc despite knowing about it and wanting to see it once it was released, I literally only learned it was coming out a week before the release date. straight up, the press for it was so poor, not once did I hear about it before the trailer randomly crossed my feed one day - and considering how popular fury road is, I find that bizarre (but, I'll bet you a good couple bucks, that the press/hype was deliberately poor bc of the movie company execs, due to this being a female lead film 😠) - but it did mean I didn't have to wait too long, and that I did watch the trailer about 13 times on my own accord until then..

--having read the reviews, I do agree, it is a bit slower then fury road - but, that's really only bc it's a character story instead. fury road takes places in the current time of the film and the actions that follow, whereas the prequel is specifically about furiosa, so it's honed less to the action and more about a certain character, in my opinion. but it's just as good for a character story! it does an excellent job of unfolding furiosa's journey, and really, if you're gunna compare everything in the franchise to fury road, it's never gunna live up. that said, there's still excellent action and real nail-biting moments.

--I will say though, that I found it almost...darker, then fury road? fury road is definitely intense and there's of course violence, but it never openly tips into anything past pg-13; the darkness that is there, is more or less touched upon by the narrative (like, we can get a sense of what must've happened to the wives (ie assault) and why they escaped once we see how immortan joe regards them as property, the suffering furiosa must've went through by the pure vitriol look she gives him when their cars are side-by-side and later, 'remember me?' before killing him (my favourite scene)). but it's never explicit - furiosa is. from the torture of her mother, to that scene right after the max cameo when he drops furiosa off at the citedel's underground where I literally had to cover my eyes and ask my friend to say when it was done..there's an overtone of darkness that gives to the tragedy of furiosa, this child molded from pain (not to mention, again, that scene of ricktus and her as a child which to me, was the most nerve-wracking moment). fury road gives you a glimpse, but furiosa doesn't hold back.

--chris hemsworth, meanwhile, made an excellent villain. not just as an actor, but dementus as a character was fantastic. he's got lots of great lines and brings in a lot of humor - he's both deranged and erratic, while also clever and simultaneously childish, and mostly, cruel. he's wonderfully dynamic. bringing in a backstory of losing his wife/child was a great added piece to his story (I love a good backstory), and the way he takes the loss of his kid and tried to mold it around furiosa, tries to fill that empty piece inside, was a great choice in terms of their dynamic. it made him more then just a mad-man who stole a child for yuks - he had a deeper desire to tote furiosa around, almost as a security blanket in the same way the teddy bear also acts as one. his final monologue was great - the ramblings of a hateful man, but it was, in the end, what got furiosa to see past vengeance, and become better - to choose hope, and not destruction.

--anya taylor-joy did a great job I thought - while I wish furiosa had more lines, she made up for it in just the facial expressions and how full they were, really giving us a glimpse of what furiosa was feeling. even still, it would've been nice to have known what was going on in her head, or even hear her talk about her past - the green place, and then dementus, are the pure driving force of her character, yet she doesn't ever mention or grapple with her grief around these things, simply stays silent (except for the final confrontation with dementus). I would've loved maybe, if she had confided in jack, or maybe even one of the wives, to give more depth to her feelings.

--I also wish furiosa could've bonded with someone else besides jack, or at least before him. it would've been nice for to have had at least one ally, or, I dunno, a friend? like that war boy who had dwarfism - she seemed almost sad, when realizing after the battle that he was dead. instead, she's alone, but a fellow misfit friend could've been nice.

--speaking of jack, loved him! thought he was great! it's unfortunate his part was so short, would've loved delve into his background (also, I'm as gay as they come, but he's like..an objectively Good Looking Man, so well done all around).

--I was really nervous, for how they were gunna do the romance. I was against it initially, bc the great thing about fury road, was that romance was not at all forced into the narrative - you can read that between max & furiosa if you want, but for one of the very, very few times when a woman and man team up, romance wasn't forcefully wedged in, and instead they could be respected allies. so I was skeptical - and then I totally fell for them. they were so sweet! the two actors had great chemistry - their bond was just so soft. the way, after they crash and are caught by dementus, furiosa, who can barely stand, gently leans herself into jack's shoulder, sweetly muttering to each other as he leans his forehead back against hers, like 😩😩 it was so lovely, and so tragic. you could really feel the respect and care they had for each other; it was so organic, bc jack genuinely wanted to help furiosa. he respected her and asked nothing of her - he was a purely good man, and through that, furiosa was able to open up to him and trust him. it's the great curse of the mad max universe though - no romance can escape it's claws, same with how nux and one of the wives were torn apart. in my heart of hearts though, there lives a little AU fic where dementus doesn't catch them, and they make their way back to the green place and live happily ever after with a kid perhaps, and maybe, furiosa and him go back to later rescue the wives (they say, like they're not thinking of already writing that very fic...).

--one more thing about furiosa I wanted to mention, if I can call back to earlier saying how she becomes a beacon of hope for the various men that enter her life (and the women too, when you think of the wives..) - that, despite all this horror handed to her, at the very end of the rope, she gives into her hero's heart. time over, we see, even as the destruction of the wasteland chips away at her, furiosa can never quite betray her heart. she runs back to her mother even after being pushed to leave, she goes back for jack despite having the perfect escape to finally make it back home, and in the end, takes all her hurt and anger wrapped up in dementus, and turns it and him into something that can bring good into the world. it's about choosing good, above all!! a hero's heart, even in the darkest of worlds!!!

--the trailer really emphases the green place, but we only see it for like...a couple minutes? I was looking forward to more lore about it, maybe seeing some of it's inhabitants like the mothers. but furiosa is taken immediately and then her mother starts her hunt after her, and that's it. kinda a bummer.

--there's a couple inconsistencies here and there - like, when furiosa is first brought to where the wives are kept, there's gotta be about 20 women in there, roughly. but then, as she becomes a young adult, we see at the very end her approach the 5 wives from fury road (I was expecting a call-back, so loved that) and it looks like there's only them there - what happened to the rest of the women??? did they all die in childbirth?? also, when furiosa runs away and hides herself as a warboy/mechanic, how did no one know she was gone?? it seems odd, since immortan joe specifically picked her out and probably has a mental line-up of all his 'treasures', you'd think he'd notice. or how, later on, the new 'imperior' with jack looks oddly similar to that young girl ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

--also, I wanna know how furiosa got away with being the only female imperior - you'd think immortan joe might snag her away instead to be a wife bc she's young and viable, or that she'd be either dismissed or preyed upon by his sons/the other men. maybe because she was partnered with jack it was easier, but that was kinda confusing.

--final thing, bc this post is already too long - my last gripe is mainly about furiosa's dynamic with immortan joe. in furiosa, her revenge is purely motivated towards dementus, but then, switching to fury road, she now holds contempt and anger towards the warlord. part of what I wanted to see in the film, was her past with immortan joe; we didn't know initially how furiosa got to the citadel, but my interpretation, was always that possibly (because she was branded with the logo on her neck) she was brought on as a wife, inevitably abused by him, and then something happened where she was no longer useful as a wife (maybe an accident that cost her her arm) but was still useful as a tool. but, immortan joe isn't really looked at in the prequel; he's here and there, but doesn't show any particular cruelty or act towards furiosa that I was expecting. that vitriol she shows in fury road, and of course, 'remember me?', makes you think there was something there to fuel furiosa's revenge. instead, nothing really occurs between them - of course, furiosa is brought on to breed him children and then is expected to do his every bidding in getting supplies, so, I think we're supposte to assume that she has seen how cruel he is up close, and so acts against him. still, I was expecting something deeper there.

all in all, I loved it and had a great time. fury road will always be one of my favourites, but this is a great addition. fury road is great on all fronts; a fascinating world, great characters, amazing action, a well-made and clearly cared for story, but the thing I love most - is that it's about hope. it's about choosing, every day, despite the horrors around you, to get up and hope for something better. to do something better, even at your own cost. it's about hope and what we mean to each other when we extend it. and I just love that so much

go see furiosa! support it! it's a great time!

[54625]

I'm not sure if this is the end for the QSMP, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were shut down soon after this.

The eggs have been the lifeblood of the server since they were introduced, and having some of them permanently gone from the server is devastating for so many reasons, and bodes terribly for the future of this project. My optimism has run out. I will still wait for updates but I have no hope.

However, I wanted to write a piece for the community here on Tumblr. I know we're all very emotional right now, because while we have no confirmation that the QSMP will permanently close, we now have good reason to assume there might just be no other clear path out of this.

To the community:

Do not feel like you have to stop loving the server and everything it created. Do not stop creating art. Do not stop sharing why you loved the characters and the story and the world.

To completely boycott everything QSMP, you are discrediting the incredible work that the admins put into the server purely out of passion and the kindness of their hearts. Do not waste their sacrifices. Talk about the server and everything they did for it, give them recognition, let them know we love and appreciate all the time and care they poured into this project. Thank them by caring about their work that they put so much of themselves into.

To completely boycott everything QSMP, you are ignoring the beautiful friendships it created between content creators who otherwise would never have met, and the way it ignited such a fierce determination to learn about others' cultures in them. You are forgetting how much these streamers strived to tell engaging, relatable, fun stories, by themselves or with each other, and to have their fans talk about how much they liked their newest lore. You are refusing to acknowledge the effort put in by everyone on the project to tell amazing stories through the language barrier.

And to completely boycott the QSMP, you are denying yourself the fact that you loved this server; the eggs, the streamers, the stories, the cultural events, the laughter, the sadness, the friendships, the ship ships, the builds, the mods, the languages. You are part of this server for enjoying it's wonderful vitality and beauty and hilarity. As a community, we all are.

I have had my gripes with the QSMP fanbase, as anyone has gripes with the dysfunctional mad household they live in, but at the end of the day, I love it so much. This has been my first time actually being part of a fandom; interacting with people and sharing my art and my ideas, getting into silly debates and arguments, running my mouth off more than I should. I love this bizarre toxic fandom for all of it's worth; I love the fanfic writers (even if I think their characterisation is terrible), I love the fanartists (even if they give Pac those yellow scleras that always make me think of jaundice), I love the live bloggers (even if they clog up the main tag), I love the people who write analysis, the people who make animations and animatics, the people who webweave, and all the other things people in this fandom do to interact with the media we all collectively love and bond over.

We do not need to let this be the end of our community, as we can still share our admiration for the hard work put into this project, lift each other up, express praise where it is warranted.

And we can talk to each other, we can vent about how this has negatively effected us (provided we tag it appropriately 👁️👁️) and respond in kind to those seeking someone to speak to who relates.

The QSMP taught us the value of communication. While behind the scenes, it itself did not abide by it's own rules, we can. The QSMP itself is not the figurehead of communication; the content creators and the fans it sent this message to are. We can be an example of what the QSMP should have stood for.

I do not love the deeply flawed execution of the QSMP, but with my whole heart I love the idea; the ambition, the goal. It was noble. It, to some extent, worked.

It united communities.

Let it unite ours.

[xivu-arath]

man after putting a lot of my gripes about relatively recent writing together with The Lore Circle, and then seeing the article about just how dire the state of bungie is right now, it's really... not a surprise. we'd been noticing and feeling the effects of this in bits and pieces for over a year, at least

the weird flattening and streamlining of story and narrative and characters, the unnecessary amount of connections being made with zero ambiguity allowed, characters and dynamics being written in reaction to overall community opinions and vibes but often without actual depth, the very... on the face and rote pattern of seasonal dialogues. not that I care much about gameplay, but the intense pivot towards "challenging gameplay" that feels both one-note and pretty damn brutal for casual players like myself. I'd long held that there had to be a strong executive meddling for how things were being handled, and it sucks to have been so right

and it's so easy to see how things will spiral into going worse. why should longtime fans extend any grace or trust to bungie now? how can we be "earned back" when all the good writers and community managers and counsel and musicians have been laid off? when every well-meaning initiative has been promptly shut down and everyone involved is gone?

I don't generally have the energy nowadays to Express Opinions or be as loudly disappointed as many of my friends are. but I am disappointed and tired and also really fucking sad. the destiny that exists in my memory could actually be pretty good, and sometimes almost matched what I was writing and imagining in my own head. and... it's probably never going to return to that. I'm not going to leave it! I will probably hang around and keep plucking out the dregs that appeal to me, and keep writing and theorizing and talking with the talented and passionate community I've found myself in. I've scavenged and remained invested in much worse and more overall garbage stories

but I am going to grieve this decline for a long time, too. not just as a fan, but for the hundreds of people who did work on this big and silly universe and put their hopes and best efforts into it, and got crunched up instead

[maya-the-skaven]

Much Ado About Rats: Speculative Skavenology

CW: there will be a couple of paragraphs discussing topics related to pregnancy, rape and sexual violence

Greetings everyone and welcome to the second post of my series of posts that will talk about my head canon about the Skaven and the worldbuilding behind the fan fic I am writing about them in the Warhammer: Age of Sigmar setting. In the previous post I have talked about some of my motivations for writing a Skaven story and complained about their near absent characterization. The story is about a small band of Skaven, who essentially tread the line between being villain and anti-hero protagonists, while exploring what would change if you’d yank them out of their society without a clear way inside.

However, before going onto the more social, world and character related tangents, I would like to talk about some of my head canon about Skaven biological and psychological function that is essentially aimed to diversify the range of their base characterisation. Without establishing this diversity and possibilities it’d be a chore having to explain and argue with everyone who’d read further information why the Skaven in my fic do not necessarily conform to the very generalistic description of Skaven from some of the very few sources we have about them. I will try to argue for expanding possibilities for the Skaven characters, without necessarily breaking the character of the Skaven faction on the wider average too much. True, my ideas are purely head canon, but in absence of any real nuance is it really that bad to treat it as incomplete information that could be expanded upon, rather an end-all of their lore? My fic is not for the extreme lore purists, but by their standards many Black Library writers would be egregious lore heretics as well, if only they didn’t have the GW stamp of approval.

The established lore on Skaven bodily and mental functions is actually incredibly limited. While we have an established description that portrays them as nearly universally extremely short-lived and deranged there is very little in the way of both nuance and diversity. This is also connected to my gripe from the previous post - that the Skaven are multiple, chaotic, diverse on societal level, but individually nearly always very homogeneous on every other level, to a point where it doesn’t make sense, statistically if for any other reason. In any case, this limitation makes it very hard to write compelling stories and compelling characters that aren’t entirely focused on the current situation, emotions and characters at hand. A story that has a continuity, longevity and is intertwined with the larger world, where we explore the questions of change, escape, relationships and minds, would probably not be very compelling if we knew that, with an extremely high probability, all our characters are just fated die without having lived or changed in a few years, only because that is our fundamental biological constraint. Similar is the notion of being ontologically/genetically evil, it’s a constraint that by design precludes interesting stories, unless you want to focus on the situation and not the characters. This is why I want to discuss how more nuance could be introduced for Skaven biology/psychology, without necessarily dismantling their character at large as species, which are certainly a part of their charm, but also give us the opportunity to use this newly established diversity to write more about them.

So, for one, I want to talk about their lifespan. 

They are described to have the lifespan of literal real life rats, without any real nuance as to underlying reasons, with only exceptions reserved for those most powerful using warpstone alchemy to prolong their lives. My head canon and my fic’s worldbuilding makes a very fundamental assumption about Skaven lifespans to expand on this. This fundamental assumption to the question of Skaven life expectancy is actually very basic - that it is mainly informed by environmental factors, rather than genetics. It is basic, yet it changes so much for what you can do with your characters now that they don’t have to worry about their immediate natural limits to life expectancy if they don’t have access to warpstone alchemy. It is now perfectly possible to say that their short lifespan is an average across millions rather than an actual biologically informed upper limit, kind of like how human average life expectancy was much shorter in the ancient times (but, of course, Skaven lives are even shorter and for different reasons). At the same time it doesn't really break the general characterisation of Skaven en masse having short and miserable lives. I will also explain why this assumption makes much more sense than their lifespan being enforced by some kind of genetic limit.

First of all, it is quite obvious that Skaven aren’t literal real life rats, they are described to be very humanoid in most aspects, much closer to actual humans in terms of anatomy, physiology and internal functions than they are to rats. 

Very close, in fact. That, together with the fact that larger animals and close human relatives just generally exhibit a very strong trend to having longer lifespans, makes me think that lives lasting a couple of years for most Skaven could not be primarily genetic. Additionally, while metabolism, growth rate and gestation periods correlate with lifespan, this is mostly due to mediation of a whole variety of additional biological factors and is very often additionally informed by evolutionary strategy, so you have quite a lot of exceptions to the trends. For Skaven no exact information is present apart from it being fast, but, again, Skaven are by large humanoid and those metrics by themselves mean little.

In the end, there is also not really any information related to Skaven lifespan genetics. Magic also complicates things, like elves having near infinite lifespans. But we shouldn’t treat the absence of evidence as evidence of absence for anything relating to Skaven biology, especially when their environmental conditions actually explain very well the reasons for short lives. I’ve always been a fan of speculative biology and evolution and I think it definitely has a place in fantasy settings, even when we generally have much more flexibility with realism. In the end genetic explanations are absent and don’t make sense on reflection without relying too much on magic (even for a fantasy setting), while the environment provides a good explanation for the state of things.

So what about the environment? Well, being a Hive World/Forge World Manufactorum serf would probably be a paradise compared to what the majority of Skaven laborers endure, especially the slaves. Truly, at least corpse starch supply is usually stable, your supervisors don’t usually execute you if you keep your head down and meet quotas, you can sleep your 2-4 allocated hours of sleep without an overwhelming fear that someone will slit your throat, your working environment was at least initially built not to fall apart from every malfunction and your co-workers aren’t looking at you thinking of devouring your corpse raw. Compare that to Skaven, where even regular clan rats exist in a situation of rampants starvation and disease, barely ever getting any sleep at all, constantly performing extremely hard labor in extremely unsafe conditions and have to constantly watch their back not to become someone else’s meal, with slaves just always indiscriminately utilized to complete exhaustion and death even when preserving labor would’ve made more sense. 

Other Skaven are used as extremely expendable soldiers that are put to near constant warfare with much of the same conditions, like disease and starvation (just remember how big of a proportion of casualties humans used to have due to disease rather than direct combat prior to industrial revolution). Most often they are used as both simultaneously. Skaven barely ever produce any food, at least not in quantities necessary to feed their population, they have an entire clan that just intentionally spreads disease and their socio-economics are anchored around an extremely carcinogenic and reactive material that they use as a drug, facilitate reproduction with  and indiscriminately add into every piece of technology. I highly doubt anyone would survive more than a few years in such an environment, the lowest rungs of Skaven society where coincidentally most Skaven reside are structured akin to some of the worst penal labor camps and slave industries in human history. So you have beings that are forced to immediately perform hard manual labor or conduct warfare after just a brief period of infancy with no effort at all to create any livable conditions, if anything effort is put into making those conditions lethally insufferable, intentionally or not. You could say that the Skaven are #1 employer for child labour in all of the Mortal Realms.

The main thesis of this line of thought is: take a Skaven that wasn’t born out of some warpstone-mutated flesh blob, feed and clothe them, give them medicine and a healthy work-life balance and they *might* live much much longer, if not up to a human’s lifespan then perhaps at least a few dozen years. Of course we know this thought experiment would pretty much never happen, however the redefinition of this constraint from genetic to environmental gives us lots of possibilities for variety among Skaven. If anything, we already know that cases of long-living Skaven, that do not have the same kind of access to life-prolonging magic that the leadership does, exist.

Similarly, I would say the environment primarily informs the supposed incredible metabolism of Skaven. The Black Hunger, their propensity for devouring everything that can be eaten, their general twitchiness. The biggest red flag here should be that, despite their twitchiness and extreme behaviors towards diet, they actually don’t exhibit many indicators of stable fast metabolism found in other animals when compared to humans, such as very fast reflexes, increased physiological activity, healing rate, specific organ functions or having to maintain high temperatures. In fact their high metabolism resembles less animals with actual fast metabolism and is more akin to humans whose metabolism is faster due to conditions such as starvation and lack of sleep, something that nearly all Skaven are exposed to at an extreme level. Some of their behavior is also easily explained by the environment, as humans consistently exhibit extreme behaviors when exposed to extreme prolonged hunger and starvation, while constant extreme exhaustion, lack of sleep and stress very often leads to very real and very strong psychoses. Thus, I don’t really think that a Skaven in a nutshell would have a lot of behavioral and physiological differences from a human in a nutshell in relation to bodily functions.

This is where CW from the beginning comes in as I am talking about some of the reproduction/gender related stuff. If you are not interested, skip to below the meme with Garak and Odo.

Something related I want to talk about and also something that never sat quite right with me for multiple reasons is Skaven reproduction and gender. This is an extremely uncomfortable topic for many and that includes me, but I thought it’d be a bit disingenuous to completely ignore it. There is not a lot of lore about it, except the breeders, an old and rather rarely mentioned piece of Skaven lore that leads to more conjecture than anything really specific. I should probably immediately state that I regard Skaven at large to consist of both sexes in an equal distribution and be largely genderless and not very dimorphic, while (if we are to decide to keep them at all) breeders generally being Moulder monstrosities designed for mass breeding. Additionally Moulder technology is so beyond the realms of realism that I honestly believe that the breeders are custom monstrosities mass produced out of any biological material that is resilient and stable when mutated with warpstone, rather than Skaven of female sex. Otherwise, the Skaven are capable of and have all the parts needed for normal reproduction. It happens and is largely unnoticed due to the sheer scale of Skaven society, and doesn’t hold a lot of consequences regarding gender roles, facilitated by faster gestation periods and growth. 

All in all, my personal head canon and something I write into my fic is that sex and gender is just not really a thing that matters a lot to Skaven, neither are breeders (which I'd honestly rather not keep at all as something universal) really tied into it, nor are they necessarily a specific and universal thing opposed to general Moulder chicanery tied to reproduction, this is something that in my opinion is much more in tune with the Skaven society of mass numbers, social indifference, general ignorance and universal misery. Basically classical patriarchy is at the same time both not evil enough, too restrictive for strength in numbers conquerors and too complex for a society that doesn’t care for any of its members, while being capable of applying both extreme cruelty and mutagenic magic to any Skaven regardless of anything. This is my head canon and it has minor but still important implications for the characters that I will talk about in the next posts.

This is, again, a very uncomfortable topic, basically my attempt at detaching the Skaven from the very flimsy and bad-tasting lore that implies patriarchal rape factories as the only possibility, while at the same time keeping Skaven just as alien in their capabilities for similar evils. In the end, we have trillions of Skaven and thousands of clans, so there ought to be variability in how they approach reproduction and gender, especially since not all might be able to afford Moulder creations and hoards of warpstone and it never made sense that reproduction could be handled by just a couple dozen breeders, while every other Skaven was exclusively of male sex. Additionally, those reproduction and gender practices could be one of the elements that determines longevity for Skaven, how these determine gestation, growth, how mutated they are from their very birth, how unstable and vulnerable to cancers their genes are. This head canon, in my opinion, doesn’t take away from Skaven, but yet again gives us much more possibilities, while keeping things more comfortable, but at the same time preserving their general capacity for alienation and evil. I personally find the whole matter of breeders distasteful and ignore it as a bit of very poorly aged lore, however it wouldn’t be completely fair to pretend this is some kind of evil Skaven are incapable of doing, I merely just offer a framework where this ceases being a keystone issue and thus makes Skaven more varied in the vibes that authors want to get from them. And not wanting to work with very graphic rape-patriarchal themes is completely fair.

Lastly, I will talk briefly about Skaven “nature”. I will again be very forthcoming and say that I don’t believe that beings as sapient, intelligent and free willed as humans can be “naturally” evil or represent a homogeneous mentality as an entire species. Skaven are not daemons, are not mind controlled, nor incapable of any non-malicious emotions. Yet again, I believe their psychology is a product of their environment, just like their Black Hunger, destructive behavior, twitchiness, and at least part of their general insanity can be very well explained by psychosis and mental instability induced by living in a horrible environment, starving, being diseased and having extreme stress. Yet again, we have seen a wide range of human behaviors, that at several points in history defined entire cultures, events and societies, but we could never say that those humans somehow bred themselves to exhibit those mentalities (rather than reproduced those behaviors socially, generation after generation) without looking like idiotic racists. A society that literally puts you into a position where you must murder and devour corpses for the very basic survival, while danger to your life lurks literally around every single corner to the point that you can’t even have a moment of sleep or work without expecting to die every single day, would never produce mentally stable, healthy individuals and would not select any traits that we, humans, would consider “good”. It’s rat eat rat society through and through and it reproduces itself just like human societies reproduced bigotry, superstition and abusive traditions for thousands of years in some instances. 

One final point to this question comes from the argument that the Skaven are inherently touched by Chaos. While this is ostensibly true since, we never see any Skaven that were somehow detached from the Great Horned Rat or actively sought any kind of redemption or cleansing, “tainted/touched by Chaos” by itself just doesn’t mean anything, it can result in a whole plethora of symptoms both physical or mental while at the same time not really at all resulting in you being inherently evil or enslaved by Chaos powers. We never know what exact role Chaos plays for Skaven, other than them being universally worshippers of the Great Horned Rat and some inexact mythology, it can mean anything and nothing, can be minor and major. Skaven are not daemons, they have relatively stable societies and physiology, unlike the usual Chaos mutants, they do not draw that much from Chaos itself rather drawing from products of it such as warpstone and winds of magic, their “aspects” are arguably socially constructed rather than born out of Chaos, they have souls that belong to them until they die. So we don’t know their Chaos “grade”, it also doesn’t mean much out of context and they are not at all daemonic, while being stable species unlike Beastmen and Chaos mutants. In absence of nuance to this question and general inconsistency and indifference of Great Horned Rat towards his own followers (unlike other Chaos Gods that will influence their followers in rather certain ways), it’s natural to assume a very plausible, simpler and creativity-inducing alternative explanation for their behavior as the ground truth.

Yet again, I present you with an environment that presents behavioral patterns as distributions and varieties, very heavily biased towards self-preservation, antagonism, avarice, betrayal and extreme power-seeking. Nevertheless their psyches are not set in stone and not completely incapable of “good” traits, it’s just that nothing ever cultivates or reproduces those traits, as having them usually just leads to dying sooner than the others for not having the same tenacity for survival and power. This framework again gives us much more leeway to create different characters with different emotions and motivations, while presenting an explanation that both is much more plausible and interesting than “they all have evil in their genes”, while not taking or majorly changing the Skaven at large.

So, what role do these assumptions play in my fiction? Without expanding too much into the world building that I will perhaps write about in the later posts, two groups of Skaven figure in my story.

One is where the main characters come from, those are Skaven inhabiting a part of Blight City that is isolated from the rest of it by a mix of toxic wasteland and realm of chaos bursting through the cracks of reality. This area is a part of an ancient junkyard for failed Skryre technology, which is the only source of warpstone that area has, being otherwise very poor in it. The Skaven inhabiting it are the renegade clans, clans that lost in warfare, fell out of power, were proscribed by the Council, etc. These renegade clans, while very resourceful in their own regard, do not readily have the same access to many of the technologies that are commonly produced in the industrial centers of the Blight City. However, this lack of warpstone and having to procreate mostly naturally resulted in the Skaven of this area growing up a little bit slower and having the lifespans that often exceed a decade, more if extremely lucky.

Much much later the characters would also encounter a clan of Skaven inside of the Mortal Realms, abandoned to its fate hundreds of years ago in a location that magically makes it very hard to maintain stable gnawholes. This led to the clan having to rely on the local realmstone instead of warpstone, while gradually losing a lot of technological advancements and social structures present for the overall Skaven. When the characters find them, they have completely regressed into a neolithic primal state. While they still continue a lot of the traditions we find evil, the Great Horned Rat worship, sacrifices, warrior culture-related violence, etc, they at the same time are depicted to be much more physically healthy and survivable, living longer lives and procreating slower, while additionally being generally much more cooperative, even if hierarchy is still being upheld with violence, kratocracy-like.

[thefirstknife]

Speaking of lightfall being good actually, my biggest gripe with people going “but but but the radial mast!” Is that it’s called out as a light artifact. We already know of the duality of light and dark, especially after learning about the veil. And furthermore, if they’ve played previous campaigns and stuff we know the witness has used out ghost to communicate (a thing of the light accessed through the dark) and it even happens again during lightfall!

And don’t get me started on “why don’t we just grab/shoot ghost?”

People were genuinely going CinemaSins over Lightfall and that's what infuriated me the most. Some comments about Lightfall were identical to people being like "Why didn't they just fly the eagles to Mordor?" The amount of nitpicking I've seen was also bizarre to me because I know most of those people never cared about Destiny story and lore (this is mostly about all the content creators and their fans who were spreading the worst negativity; I know for a fact that y'all have never been interested in the story because I used to watch your content).

The Radial Mast thing is also something that made perfect sense on replays which made it more enjoyable for me to actually get through the story again because I kept discovering new things! People were so focused on obsessing over what it is when that doesn't matter at all. It's a Light artifact; that's all that matters. The whole point of the Radial Mast is to tell us that the Witness needs something made of Light to "interact" with the Veil. At first we think that the Witness wants to destroy it because that's what it says so we believe that it needs a Light artifact to destroy the Veil.

But in truth, it needs something made of Light to connect the Veil and the Traveler. This is a hint that it will later use our Ghost! The Radial Mast is an adequate substitute for our Ghost, but the Witness wants it to be a Ghost. Like, it could've done it with the Radial Mast, but it's much better if the connection is done with a Ghost, a creature created by the Traveler, but also capable of being manipulated by the Witness.

This is also super interesting because it's brought up later in the final Veil Log where Osiris wonders about Ghosts and the ability of the Witness to talk through them. It's an active mystery that we're meant to be discussing and wondering about! It's something exciting to keep us on our toes as we're waiting for the final act in the story! Lightfall and this whole year is a cliffhanger, giving us pieces of the story slowly over time to keep us engaged. This has genuinely been my favourite and most engaging year overall, rivalled only by the BL year because of the ongoing plotline about Savathun impersonating Osiris.

[convexicalcrow]

Oh? How normal are we about Pharaoh Cub?

Okay look. You gotta understand. I've been interested in ancient Egpyt since I was a kid. It's my longest-running special interest/hyperfixation, so much so that I've been practicing ancient Egyptian religion for over twenty years. It's something that's very, very precious to me, bc it's so personal to me, and bc I'm who I am, my knowledge of this stuff is arguably higher than the average person. This makes any kind of media about ancient Egypt actually not that interesting to me bc my brain will Not shut up about inaccuracies, so I tend to avoid them bc of that.

(I could go on about my issues with ancient Egyptian themed media, but I won't, that's a whole 'nuther essay frfr.)

(Also I hope you like infodumping, anon, bc that's what I'm about to do :D)

That said, I've actually written a whole lot of Egyptian myth rewrites, as well as ancient Egyptian stories exploring all kinds of various topics. I have some published on an old blog of mine, but some I never finished for various reasons. It's a whole thing. It's been a whole thing for me for a very, very long time.

So, you're me, someone with a more than average knowledge of and interest in ancient Egypt, and you've just become a Cub fan in s8 bc that was my first Hermitcraft season. I had heard about the pyramid, and Pharaoh Cub, and I was both SO INTERESTED but also actually quite hesitant to watch Cub's s7, bc I didn't want to be disappointed if he messed it up or did something wrong that caused my brain to Disagree. Again, very irrational bc my brain do be like that, but also based on previous experiences of seeing ppl just taking the aesthetics and doing whatever with it, and screw historical accuracy.

(Honestly, this is, like, my One (1) critism with the lore TrixyBlox built into the USW map. Can we Not have evil pharaohs plz just for once. ;_;)

I wanted to trust Cub, bc I'd seen the research that went into the canyon build. He's a smart dude. He cares about getting those kinda details right. And I did genuinely want to see how he approached the pyramid build and how he was going to use it as a base. But again, SO HESITANT. bc what if my blorbo messes it up and ruins the whole thing for me bc m brain is Stupid about this sort of thing. ;_;

But I'm so glad I trusted Cub when I did get around to watching s7, bc I fell in love with the pyramid. The fact that he cared about making it as life-size as possible, but also that he took an approach of taking what works, but also making it his own, and making it fit into the minecraft world. Like, using Standard Galactic for hieroglyphs! I loved that small little detail! It makes so much sense to use it that way.

Like, my very-not-srs gripes about the Pharaoh skin and its weird sleeves aside, his approach was very much how a lot of Egyptian pagans approach things today. Take what works, or what makes sense, and adapt it to where we currently are in the world and what we have access to. And I could tell from how he talked about it throughout the season that he really had done his research. And just- The Morning and The Evening Sun/Star epithet he gave himself like!!!!

Like, it's the little things, like the lapis roof, the stars - including Sirius!, the most important one bc its rising heralds the flood of the Nile and the new year - on the ceiling in the bedroom, the statue room and the way he built those five statues to represent aspects of himself (I cannot stress enough how much I adored those statues), allll the little tunnels and sekrit passageways, and the cartouche on the wall with his name in SGA and using SGA in the museum room, the treasure room with its traps, and the tomb of the Pharaoh himself. Like. It was such a perfect blend of Cub and Egyptian stuff. 10/10. I can find no faults. Although I do want to go back and finish the oasis room at some point. Make it a healing pool room with a shrine or two in it. Something like that.

Like, I had my doubts, but I trusted Cub and his process, and I was right to do so. It cemented Cub as my favourite Hermit at that point, bc he took my special interest and did it justice. And that's why I'm Very Normal about Pharaoh Cub.

But there are also other aspects too! Pyramids were designed to be tombs, and that's where the Pharaoh was left to rest at the end of s7. Which seems very appropriate, given where Hermitcraft went after that.

The reason I fixate so much on this is that there's this Egyptian underworld book called the Book of Caverns, that describes the King's journey through the underworld. It's not as well-known as the Book of the Dead, but the reason I keep coming back to it is because of Cub's canyon in s8. Where he built everything in little caverns in the canyon itself. And with the change of skin to young Cub, my brain just cannot let go of the idea of s8 being Pharaoh Cub's journey through the underworld, culminating with the final battle against the serpent we do not name so we do not give it power (a/p/o/p/h/i/s) that is here manifested in s8 as Moon Big. It's not a perfect metaphor, and I won't pretend it is. Especially bc while Cub escapes, the world is destroyed, and that's not necessarily accurate. But! He still escapes! He uses all his knowledge and resources that he's gained through his journey through the underworld to escape. To rise again in s9 as the new sun.

AND AND AND the fact that in s9 PHARAOH CUB DID ACTUALLY RETURN. Only now, we have the Pharaoh as a distinct entity. A divine akh/ancestor, a master magician, one who is clever and wiley like Thoth and who loves playing games and playing pranks. (Thoth is a trickster, and a very smart one.) And to have the distinction between Pharaoh Cub, who is a god, and mortal Cub, who is just Cub, like.

(Cub and his possession kink is also a whole 'nuther essay frfr)

That distinction makes sense in an Egyptian theological framework. Once the Pharaoh dies, they become divine akhu/ancestors. Very few were Actually Deified in a way we would recognise, but Cub is still not wrong when he calls the Pharaoh a god. The Pharaoh was a conduit between the people and the gods. He acted as the only high priest of the religion. He became King by hosting the Kingly Ka, the divine soul of Horus that legitimises their rule. This Ka/soul, has been with every king before it, and all the kings are attached/accessed through it. Kings live forever, after all. My own personal religious work has involved various Kings and Queens and working with them. (Not the most famous ones, tho, it's mostly the Sobek ones bc I worship Sobek first and foremost.)(Sobek being a crocodile god, a strong protector, and a god who was incorporated in Horus at one stage and gained Kingship attributes from that.)

And so it makes so much sense for the Pharaoh to be a separate entity now. The old man died, bc Cub is mortal, and ba/eternal soul of Cub was reborn into a new, younger body, with a whole new ka. Everyone has a ka, it is the soul that belongs to a particular lifetime and is the one that goes through judgement after death. The ba is eternal, and can have many kau/souls throughout its existence.

And bc the Pharaoh has died and become an akh, he can be contacted and manifest in the world again through the mortal Cub. The fact that Cub never actually changed the Pharaoh skin to reflect his younger self? It still has the old man's face? Like. This helps the distinction work. They're two different souls. This is theologically sound. And honestly I never imagined the Pharaoh lore would get to that point. But here we are, in s9, and we have the Pharaoh and mortal Cub, and I am Just So Normal about this bc I thought I'd missed my chance at Pharaoh Cub bc I only started watching in s8. BUT NO. s9 came along and is like, would you like some more Pharaoh Cub? and it's eating my brain like. oh my gods.

And also like, the Vex Magic Grimoire I've been working on? Canonically (to me), it's being written by Pharaoh Cub. Once the ConVex and ConCorp shenanigans settled down, and Cub had space to really focus on his magic, that's when he starts working on the grimoire. bc almost all Pharaohs were also master magicians. They had to be! It was part of their work as high priest and conduit for the gods. So Cub has Pharaoh magic on top of Vex magic, and in working through his new powers, decides to start recording down all he knows about Vex magic. Scar does some as well, but it is intended to be mostly Cub.

(I have an ask I STILL have not got around to about the Pharaoh's magic, and I will save a longer discussion for that there. I will get to it, I promise, anon! It's just taken a while to get my thoughts in order. <3)

It's like, in Pharaoh Cub, I can combine my love of writing about Egyptian things with my current hyperfixation on Cub, and it's so much fun omg. Cub doesn't do deep lore the way someone like Sausage does (again, whole 'nuther essay lol), but there's enough there to make a really good story, and build up these aspects of his character and make a really coherent story out of it.

And with Pharaoh Cub, I can explore all kinds of things that maybe don't work with other characters. Like death! In a way that doesn't really happen in minecraft bc players just respawn. Permanent death is something I've really only encountered on Empires, not Hermitcraft. But with the Pharaoh dying and being laid to rest in his pyramid? Like. That's something to work with. There's lore there to explore. Old Man Cub coming to terms with dying and what happens afterwards. and bc like. idk if anyone has actually ever written Old Man Cub as an actual Old Man. But as someone who's approaching 40, and has their own chronic pain stuff to deal with, like? Maybe I see it differently. Maybe I want to approach Old Man Cub as an old man. And maybe the Old Man dying as Pharaoh, and being reborn into a younger body is one way to do that.

Sure, it may not be the most popular fics for ppl. Maybe ppl are more interested in my other works. But I don't care. It's all my special interests in one place and I'm having the time of my life. :D

Even if I STILL don't know what to do with the journey through the afterlife!s8 caverns idea. Maybe one day I will find the right spark to do that idea justice. <3

[walkawaytall]

Now that I finished reading (and reviewing) Collateral, I thought I'd come with some questions, if you haven't answered them before! This was the first fic you posted, but was it the first HxL fic idea you had? How did you come up with this particular take on the Ord Mantell mission? Are there any subtle Easter eggs that you had fun including?

Ooh, thank you for asking! Other than a vague idea I started to write down as a preteen that essentially amounted to “Han proposes to Leia the night after the Battle of Endor and I’m sure I’ll come up with an actual plot later”, this was the first fic idea I had. I had written for another much, much smaller fandom in high school, but hadn’t written or read fanfic in probably 15 years or more. I was in severe professional burnout toward the end of 2022, had just sort of re-embraced Star Wars after avoiding it a lot post-TROS, and decided to start reading for my original OTP. I had also been working on a novel for quite a long time and it was driving me insane, so after blazing my way through a ton of Han/Leia fics on FFN, and later on AO3, I thought I might try writing some fanfic just to have fun with writing again since the novel was making me miserable.

I remember coming up with the idea for the Committee first — the intent with at least part of the fic was to suggest that a lot of the stuff Leia and Han say to piss each other off in ESB are kind of low-blow-type callbacks to private jokes or things they had discussed previously. I also remember reflecting a bit on their relationship and how it’s portrayed at the beginning of ESB — how some people have interpreted that to mean that they spent three dang years griping at one another, but somehow fell in love in between verbal jabs. I think I mentioned this in an early author’s note on Collateral — I had a friendship that was mostly verbal sparring and stupid arguments about things neither of us cared about and it stops being fun after awhile. Eventually, we both just kind of started acting normal around one another. And I just kind of figured that, even if Han and Leia started out picking each other apart, there’s no way they’d go from that to romance in a few words, so I felt like they had to have a friendlier history than what we’re shown. (Plus, I may be reading too much into it, but the way Carrie and Harrison play those parts in that movie, it doesn’t seem like two people who just hate each other to me; it seems like two people who’ve been deeply wounded by one another and aren’t sure what they’re supposed to do. And you have to care about each other somewhat to be wounded by one another, ya know?)

I wanted a fic that was limited in scope for my first fic so I wouldn’t get too carried away with trying to add to a meandering plot or whatever, so I decided on the couple of weeks before ESB starts. I had read a handful of fics about Ord Mantell or referencing Ord Mantell and decided I wanted to do my own take on it. I didn’t know a ton of Star Wars lore, so I remember having to research on Wookieepedia a ton. I do believe my initial intent was for Han and Leia to start their romantic relationship on the trip, but the characters misbehaved while I was writing and Leia kissed Han in her room instead, and I ended up going with that.

Even though I knew most H/L fans would be expecting Ord Mantell to go poorly, I wanted to repeatedly put people at ease, at least in theory. The gang isn’t even worried about Ord Mantell, so why should we be? Everything’s going so well! Han and Leia go on a cute date and everything is fine! Basically, if someone went into the story not knowing about the infamy that Ord Mantell has gained in H/L circles, I wanted them to wonder if anything was actually going to go wrong.

As far as Easter eggs go…I wrote Han with the “Han Solo is mildly Force-sensitive” fan theory in mind. It’s not blatant, but it’s there. Some of the conversations they have reference Leia, Princess of Alderaan and From a Certain Point of View (Leia knowing Huttese comes to mind), and I do assume people catch this, but just in case someone didn’t, the final big conversation that Leia and Han have in her office occurs the afternoon before ESB picks up. The sensors she talks about are the same ones he and Luke are placing at the beginning of the movie.

Oh! Wait! I forgot my favorite one. I never come out and say it, and I don’t know if I even ever implied it, but in my mind, the reason the Falcon is in such rough shape at the beginning of ESB is because, after Leia and Han’s interactions go entirely sour, she stops helping with background repairs, which means Han and Chewie have more to do with just the two of them.

This was incredibly long! Hope that’s okay 😂

[bardsandbees]

Here’s my semi-brief thoughts on the new Avatar show. Spoilers below:

My biggest gripe with the new show is that it’s a prime example of the death of media literacy. SO much of the story has been dedicated to just…info-dumping lore and basically having to say out loud who’s good and who’s bad and how you should feel about each character. It was cool to hear Gran-Gran say the intro of the OG show but she did it as a major exposition bomb. One of MANY especially in the first few episodes. ATLA’s heart is it’s world-building and the relationships between it’s characters, and those things went hand in hand as the OG show progressed. The characters learned from each other and grew as people, and the new show just feels deeply bland and shallow. The characters have been stripped of so many of their most human traits because it makes them seem like bad people, and it needs to be shoved in your face that they’re the good guys, so they can’t possibly have flaws. Sokka can’t be a huge misogynist, Katara can’t be angry and impulsive, Aang can’t be childish, etc. Hell, even Zuko seems to have been dumbed down at the cost of making Iroh seem like the better character, and don’t even get me started on what they’ve done to him. In season one we’re supposed to hate Zuko, so that his redemption arc is all the more compelling. Taking time this early to force out that “he’s a good guy don’t worry!” speaks very poorly to the writing, among other things. Overall it just feels very weak, and like the writers felt the need to spell everything out for audiences. The show starting in the past, while interesting to see and setting the mood quick, it was thematically so absurd and set me up to be disappointed. Aang should never have known about the war and the Fire Nation invasion before he went in the ice, it’s part of what bonds him to Katara in the first place! She teaches him what happened and tries to help him through the emotions of that realization. He comes to terms on his own that he’s the last of his people, he doesn’t have some old lady throw it in his face in a crowd. Listen, there’s some things about this show I actually enjoyed, and it certainly could���ve been worse. But God, I’m not a fan. I hate to say it, but I’m hoping Netflix stays true to themselves and cancels it after this season.

[millaneyy]

Why TOTK Ganondorf is the best Ganondorf in the series

This became a bit of an essay by accident hehe

Goes without saying: HUGE MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR THE FINAL BOSS AND ENTIRE STORY!!! All the gifs used are my own, and even though they're a bit crunchy, feel free to use them as you wish!

Anyways, starting at the start.

The Character

I'm not exactly a long time Zelda fan (botw was my first proper zelda game), and therefore didn’t know that much about Ganondorf before I saw him in the trailer and decided to research the lore like a crazy person. Based off of that, I think that Wind Waker Ganondorf is the best by far.

He had such an interesting aura to him- less like a power hungry madman and more like a wise old king who was also very evil, and his motivation made it difficult to see him as a true villain. As they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. His whole plan revolved around the fact that the Gerudo people, his people, were left to suffer in the desert while the rest of Hyrule prospered, and he decided to take action. At least, that's what I remember. Please correct me if I have that messed up!!

Anyways, I think that motivation is what makes WW G-man cool- he's a total asshole, yes, but he has this kind of twisted honour that almost makes you feel bad for him. And this brings me to my one little gripe about TOTK Ganondorf- he doesn’t really seem to have a motivation? At least, not that I heard of. So in that sense, he doesn’t really feel as driven as WW Ganon. We never learn WHY he wanted to rule over Hyrule, he kinda just did. He wanted power, that much was obvious, but that was it. On the other hand though, it’s always fun to have a villain who’s evil for the sake of being evil, and it didn’t detract at all from his presence in the game.

And boy, is he a PRESENCE. Some of his lines are incredibly cold- "I will rule. That is what a king must do" WITH THE ORGAN IN THE BACKGROUND AND HIS DEMON KING TITLE ON THE SCREEN, or "Do not look away, you witness a king's revival" (the line that drove the whole community insane for a little while- if you know you know) as he draws his sword with all the confidence of a centuries old evil incarnate.

Even better- "I will be taking far more than your arm this time", as if Ganondorf, through the Calamity, hasn't taken away everything Link knew and loved already. This dude is crazy.

(And a little bonus that I found out about right before posting this- apparently in the Japanese version, he does have a very clear motive? But it was lost in translation? I need to research that a bit more though. If you know anything about that, do tell!!)

Now, with that out of the way...

The Build Up

Thematically, I think that the build up to his fight is pretty awesome, even compared to the other three G's. If you did the entire story (geoglyphs included) beforehand, then you know that this dude:

a) straight up killed someone with his bare hands (he wasn't holding the knife when he killed Sonia, so I kind of just assumed he broke her spine or something)

b) is so powerful that 7 of the strongest warriors in Hyrule WITH secret stones couldn't defeat him, and was only taken down by sealing his power away- which is still only a temporary solution

c) lived on after reawakening despite being an actual emaciated corpse

d) was so busted that even in (kind of) death, the essence of his power (the malice) that leaked out of his seal was strong enough on its own to completely DECIMATE Hyrule

So yeah, I was a little scared on my way down because I knew this guy was going to kick my ass (spoiler alert: he did).

The little gauntlet of monsters to fight as you descend was pretty sick, and serves as a fairly good warmup for the army later on. The silver lynel totally caught me off guard though. As you get closer to the lowest point in Hyrule, you end up amassing some of the most powerful weapons imaginable thanks to all the silver enemies, which got me feeling so goddamn strong! That's important later.

And eventually, getting to the Forgotten Foundation and realising that I was back in the prologue area as that scary music started back up sent chills down my spine.

And the music. THE MUSIC.

Give this a listen (youtube because soundcloud links are jank, sorry)- skip to about 2:00 because that's the bit I'm talking about!

As you get deeper and deeper, the music gets more and more intense- and if there’s one thing I absolutely adore about TOTK, it’s the dynamic music throughout (see example: THE DUNGEON THEMES). The use of music that changes as you go- and this is by far the best example.

At first, you don’t really notice it while you’re preoccupied. You’re more focused on weapons and monsters and all that mess. But the first time I really noticed it was, as I said, when I realised I was in the prologue. The cut up voice clips and the drone in the background are a little creepy, and remind you of what happened the last time you tried to fight this guy,

Then, it starts to develop once you walk past the mural. There’s the choral singing, the drone in the background picks up into something with more melody, and the entire run up to the boss is completely enemy free- it gives you time to let the circumstances sink in as the music swells and you approach the heart of the depths. Also, the music builds as you get deeper and deeper, which from what I know is a subversion from the usual "music building as you climb his tower" or whatever he's in normally. Very nice.

Idk about you guys, but I slow walked down there for the DRAMATIC EFFECT.

At about 3 minutes into the video is how it sounds when you dive into the imprisoning chamber, where it all started (and I'll talk more about the parallels between this and the prologue another time... THE TORCH AUGHHSYWJHFH) and keep trucking on through the gloom, the horror movie piano kicking in as you walk through the final tunnel and stand on the precipice overlooking the dark, unknown pit below...

And jump.

Then the track finally reaches its climax as everything starts to overlap, the bells and organ (i think thats what it is?) screaming at you in the background as you fall, making the song feel like an epic of vengeance. There's so much dread, and an underlying ominous/threatening feeling that encapsulates the fact that Ganondorf is the embodiment of an ancient evil, one that has tormented Hyrule for centuries- but at the same time, there's an element of finality and inevitability, because you're going to put that evil down, and make up for all the grief and the death and loss that constantly follows in his wake.

I mean, just listen to the last 30 seconds or so of that track and tell me you don't feel excited. In awe. Because I deadass teleported back up to the mural just to hear it again.

I think I got a little carried away there, but moving on to the bit you probably came here for…

The Fight

Phase one - The Demon King's Army

Remember how I mentioned that the earlier monsters and busted weapons make you feel powerful? This is basically that x10.

The whole sequence feels very epic, ESPECIALLY after the build up, and with the appearance of the Sages mirroring the attack of the Champions from BOTW, it almost feels like victory is assured already as you cut down hordes of monsters with practically no effort, all while the strings in the background kick in and get more intense with every wave.

This serves to make you feel even more like God- taking out waves and waves of fairly tough enemies made me feel like I was on top, like nothing could stand in my way. It's pretty cool, a good way of integrating the monster army you keep seeing in the cutscenes, and manages to keep the energy from the descent going pretty well, while also being a casual reminder that this Ganondorf bloke can summon world ending horrors at will. ESPECIALLY when the dungeon bosses come back to life and force the Sages to stay behind.

Phase two - The Menace Unleashed

Once again, the music goes absolutely crazy. The first phase feels intense, but still like the fight is only just beginning. Just an ambient drone, near silent as he approaches, picking up as you start to duel. No one is here to help- no Sages, no Zelda- just Link and Ganondorf, a rematch that's been in the making since 2006.

If the army battle makes you feel powerful, then the first few seconds of this fight are what takes that power away- because this guy is a total damage sponge and moved a lot faster than I could predict. Additionally, you can't fast travel outside to heal gloom hearts if you have medallions set up (i thought i was so smart for that too), so if you used all of your sunny food during the army, you're doomed.

Most of his attacks in this phase are fairly simple, with only one or two for each weapon he can wield (and tbh the switching weapons really threw me the first time), but like I said, he goes pretty fast. Therefore, if you're like me and can't differentiate some of his tells, you're also going to lose a lot of hearts very fast. And did I mention he gives you gloom hearts instead of normal damage? Again, no sunny food = death of the instant kind.

On top of the general stress of trying to get the timing down, there were a couple of moments in this phase alone that had me yelling something along the lines of "WHAT THE ACTUAL SHIT"- one of which being some of the tricks he pulls under certain conditions. For example; a standard looking sword attack where he swings once, then as you lower your shield to get a hit in, as you naturally would, he swings at you again. He also kicks you if you hang too close, and fires off some of his gloom attacks faster if you're trying to attack him as he charges. It makes him feel more like an actual person you're fighting, and stops you from hanging close and swinging wildly the whole time.

(i was going to make this a video, but tumblr only lets you add one. anyways, see what i said about him swinging again if you lower the shield?)

As well as that, he taunts and mocks you when you get hit- make any misstep or stumble into an attack, and he'll laugh and insult your skill while he casually walks up to you like the absolute gigachad he is. It's not like the Twilight Princess walk where it feels a bit slow- this walk made me feel THREATENED. Circling in the opposite direction when he circled me with the spear made me feel like a pro swordsman. On one hand, I thought the taunting was super cool as a mechanic! On the other hand it made me want to kill him even harder.

And the other moment that made my jaw drop? This guy. Can DODGE your regular attacks AND FLURRY RUSH. And by flurry rush I mean take a really tough/fast swing at you. BUT STILL.

For as long as I can remember, the perfect dodge and flurry rush have given Link an unfair edge over most enemies and bosses- it's an opening to deal mass damage with no counters. It’s made link OP against everything the game throws at him- up until right now. This highlights the fact that Ganondorf is no pushover- him and Link are evenly matched, and you’ll need some actual consistent skill to take him out. The good news is that your own flurries are still pretty powerful, and 5 or 6 are enough to start the next phase.

As the fight progresses and his health starts to go down, the music starts to build up more (at about 1:25 in the video above)- the barely present drums starting to speed up and get louder, accompanied by sporadic piano, more choral snippets, and an ominous undertone as their duel grows more intense, eventually building to a climax and slowing down a tad (2:45) as he activates his secret stone and transforms, beginning the third phase.

Phase three and four - Master of the Secret Stone

Well this one was certainly something. Once again I jumped out of my seat and YELLED when his health bar started to refill past the normal amount, all the way off of my screen. It just didn’t stop. There are no words to describe the primal fear of realising how insanely busted this dude was. I tried to get it on the gif up there, but that made the video too long to convert :(

The music here is my favourite bit of the whole phase- as you face down the powered up Ganondorf and his phantoms, you hear the familiar but melancholy motif of BOTW/Dark Beast playing around the same time the Sages show up once again to deal with said phantoms (at about 3:22). For a second it's just that- melancholy, encapsulating the same kind of hopelessness that followed Calamity Ganon 100 years ago. But at the same time, as your squad comes to assist, you're reminded of the Champions and their aid, and suddenly it feels like you could still turn the tides of this seemingly impossible battle. Just like you did with the Calamity.

Yes it was cool, and yes I nearly cried.

The phantoms were actually the worst for a minute or so- it takes a while for the all of the Sages to appear and lighten the burden, meaning that you end up needing to take on 2-5 of these guys at once as well as the real deal. This got me killed more times than I'd like to admit. Once all the Sages arrive, the arena becomes a complete warzone with everyone duking it out at once, the real Ganondorf’s attacks start to get faster and harder hitting, and he starts to dodge and rush you more often- even dodging more of your attacks and forcing you to flurry him, so if you don’t have your timing down, this is awful. Not to mention, it's very easy to lock on to the wrong Ganon, which makes it harder to block the real attacks with a shield.

And also, this is the point where he starts destroying literally all of your shields in just a few hits, meaning that if you can't dodge or parry, then it's only so long until you're left defenceless.

Aside from that, this phase plays out like the Phantom Ganon fight in the Castle until you get his health bar down about halfway, when he recalls the phantoms and biden blasts the Sages away, beckoning Link forwards and starting phase four, which is basically phase two again but insane.

This is where the fight- for me, at least- became incredibly difficult, since Ganondorf not only dodges your regular attacks, but also dodges your flurry rushes and counters with his own EVERY SINGLE TIME, forcing you to flurry rush again to hit him. Not only does this require perfect timing, but is also the only way to damage him for the remainder of this fight (unless you cheese it with arrows or sneak in some hits in while he's switching weapons- but the latter is dangerous since he still attacks faster when you're close).

A little video to emphasise the flurry rush thing; the timing for that second dodge had to be dead on. What you can't hear is me yelling something along the lines of "GOD, FINALLY" after dying to this phase many times and mashing the y button like my life depended on it. LOOK HOW FAST THAT MF IS ON THE SECOND ATTACK

The soundtrack becomes super crazy again, this time using the motif of Calamity Ganon/the Blights (starts at 5:00, and you can also hear it in the video above) and bringing back that sense of hopelessness again- but this time with with a strong side of excitement since you're now in the final stretch of the fight. Because the Blights were supposed to be the equal match for each Champion, this bit of the theme makes it feel like Ganondorf is an equal match to Link- which I know I've said already, but that's kind of the thing that's blown me away the most about the whole battle.

It's the fact that you can't just wail on him and spam flurry rushes without him countering you in some way- which in this case mostly consists of him dodging you and attacking back at an insane speed. This isn't like Calamity Ganon where you just hit and dodge for five minutes, this is an actual proper swordfight, and exactly what I'd been hoping for from the final boss!

Additionally, the Blight/Calamity motif (well, more like entire theme) represents his ties to Calamity Ganon, the force of nature that took Link 2 tries to beat (with death included), and it's use in this part of the battle tells you that right now, Ganondorf possesses the same level of destructive power as that thing- and he's sure as hell going to make sure you know that.

As well as the whole "dodging the flurry rush and forcing you to pull it off twice" thing, he also pulls out a few more projectile based attacks. These aren't too bad (WE GET THE RETURN OF ARCANE PING PONG FROM OOT), but he usually follows them up with a quick swing, making them a distraction that takes a while to get used to.

And finally, as a last little surprise, getting hit by any of his gloom projectiles in this phase takes away one of your maximum hearts. PERMANENTLY. Not like the gloom hearts, where you can get them back and then heal. Nope. That shit is gone gone.

Once you finally whittle down his ridiculous health bar, we launch into the customary "massive beast" style phase as he straight up just rips the secret stone out of his head and eats it, giving up his mind, body and soul for the sake of defeating Link, becoming a Dragon and escaping through the top of the arena.

Phase five - Draconified Demon King

So like I said above, the Demon Dragon is basically Dark Beast 2, except it's so much cooler! The cutscene does a great job of highlighting the insane size of this guy- it's like 3x the size of the already massive elemental dragons and emerges from the depths in a way that eerily resembles the Calamity, right down to the glowing yellow eyes. And yeah, that's probably the point, but it's still cool.

Luckily for Link, Zelda/the Light Dragon swoops in and rescues him from the jaws of death (literally), taking him high up into the air so he can attack from above. It's an absolute spectacle, and the epic style remix of the game's main theme that plays makes it even better, instilling the same level of awe that Dark Beast does- at least for me.

Just like DB, the fight has you up against a massive malice/gloom infused monster (the dragon, in this case), getting close and attacking it's weak points and then finishing it off by destroying the secret stone on it's head. There's a lot of downtime, which is kind of to be expected with this style of fight, but I honestly don't mind because these colossal battles are supposed to feel less like a Dark Souls boss and more like a victory lap- like a "you're Link, the legendary hero, slaying this massive beast in the name of Hyrule" kind of thing.

My personal favourite bit of this whole phase is the fact that when you dive down to the Dragon's weak points, Zelda dives down next to you to get underneath and catch you afterwards. So sick. I also really like the use of skydiving! It pairs super well with the music and made me think of that final trailer we got in April- like THIS is the epicness we were promised.

(and also dodging the fireballs was way more fun than slowly sidestepping a laser. sorry dark beast, but i gotta say it </3)

Final thoughts

I'm gonna be honest: I kind of forgot to compare his fight to the other 3 mainline ones, but doing that now would make this way too long! I just love the TOTK fight so much and needed to get it out.

While I'd still say that each Ganondorf (in the mainline games) has their own unique trait that makes them cool: OOT Ganondorf is the original, and the most cunning, WW Ganondorf has the best character and TP Ganondorf is the most evil by a mile- TOTK Ganondorf feels like a combination of those best traits (minus the characterisation) paired with the greatest final boss I've ever seen in a Zelda game, which makes him the best for me.

The first phase in particular was my favourite- wayyyyy back in April when I saw big G in the trailer, my first thought was "oh man i hope we get an actual sword fight boss instead of calamity ganon 2.0" AND MY PRAYERS WERE ANSWERED!!!

Ganondorf literally just rolled up, delivered some cold lines, and then kicked my ass with his cool sword. Many times. And I think that's exactly the kind of boss fight he deserves. I'm just so happy that it feels like we're in an actual duel, mano a mano, instead of just being able to chance a win like with Calamity.

FIN

thank you for reading my zelda obsessed rambles! i just beat the boss last night and have been working on this on and off all day, so any reblogs or shares would be massively appreciated <3

GANONDORF FANS UNITE!!!!

[greagors-breath]

Non-spoilery FF7 Rebirth thoughts

So, I finished watching Rebirth and after having a few days to marinate on it, here are my thoughts. (I'm not gonna talk about the ending here for the sake of the folks who have not gotten to it yet.)

Regarding the parts that adapt the original story, I think they were pretty well-handled. Most of the changes they made made sense and added more to the characters and their relationships. Everyone in the main party felt important in their own right and I really got the sense that these people like and care about each other.

I like what they did with Rufus and the Turks too - on one hand, they felt much more like proper antagonists and an actual threat now, whereas in OG they felt more like an obstacle in the post-Midgar story. On the other, they also felt more like a proper, coordinated team now. I'm so glad they actually let Rufus be a villain while also giving him some humanizing aspects - I'm curiously awaiting his development in the next part.

Of course, as a Tseng fan I was very anxious about how he will be handled but I am pleased with what we got for him. I definitely got the sense that he has more thoughts about everything that's going on than what he lets on, which makes sense for his character and I love how they portrayed that with his subtle body language. My only wish is that we got more of him but that is my very personal bias.

Speaking of little screen time, Vincent was amazing in the short time he got to be there. I love that his past as a Turk was made more relevant, as that was never really brought up outside of his backstory before. Cid, on the other hand, was kind of just there? I guess they're saving most his character development for the next game but he really didn't get to much to do in this one.

Zack's storyline interfered a lot less with the main plot than I expected and I think the way it was eventually tied in fit with the themes and rules they have established in the story.

As a Before Crisis fan, I was geeking out over the new added lore for Kalm.

I've only two big gripes with the game; one is that my fear of it being too over-packed with minigames and side-quests was not unfounded. Only watching through them got tedious sometimes, I can only imagine what it's like to actually having to play through them. And when I think about how all that time and memory space could have been used for more story-relevant things... yeah. (I only recommend the protorelic quest in Gongaga if you're a Turks fan.)

Another was this insistence of the story bringing up the Tifa-Cloud-Aerith-Zack love rectangle. Like, they will be just interacting and all getting along, then someone would ask "does x like y?" and I was groaning and rolling my eyes. I am not strongly invested in any of these ships and this constant focus on the romance started to make it feel like their bonds don't matter if they're platonic. Not to mention how this will further fuel the seemingly endless ship wars.

Overall, I think if you're someone who liked Remake, you'll probably like Rebirth too. If you didn't, you might not like this either. When I first got into Remake, I didn't know anything about FF7 other the names of the 4 main characters and a couple of plot points. Having now played the OG and consumed the rest of the compilation, I have a better understanding of the frustrations ppl had with changes Remake and Rebirth made. Even some of the things I liked got changed. But in the end, I did enjoy Rebirth, I got what I wanted out of it and its good parts outweigh the bad for me. I'd give it an 8/10.

[chriscdcase95]

My thoughts on “Teen Wolf: The Movie”.

So I watched the new Teen Wolf movie. Ultimately. I'm giving it a six out of ten. While there was more I liked about the movie than disliked, I had quite a few  gripes.  

I didn't see it as horrendous as a lot of fans say it is, but there are a few valid critiques I've seen. Maybe I'm just easy to please.

I think some of the issues could have been fixed if there wasn't such a big time skip; like instead of fifteen years, five years. Maybe instead of raising a teenager, Derek would be raising a toddler. Though I don't think we'd get the same kind of story for Eli that way, especially for this generations teen wolf. 

Spoilers below.

1. So I got into Teen Wolf back in high school, and I remember being a die hard Scallison stan back then too. I'm not as big of a Scallison as I was back then, but I am glad to see them be endgame, if it wasn't for one small thing.

My main question is if Allison aged a bit after her resurrection ? Like is she still considered a teenager or is she considered a young adult now ? I feel like this is a nitpick, but some In-Universe clarification would be nice! Feels like something the writers overlooked.  

Then again, werewolves are slow to age in the show's lore, so I guess you can apply "Vampire Rules" to these kind of romances. Maybe I'm overthinking it. I mean the show used to tease Parrish and Lydia, in season four; back when she was a teenager, and he was in his 20's. As if over half the fandom wasn’t shipping Sterek.

Actually, while I was working on this post, I read that Allison was eighteen when she died, so that's...better I guess.

2. Speaking of Parrish, his and Malia's relationship...I'm okay with it, more so than Scott and Malia. I mean they didn't do much with either pairing. Maybe that's the Malira shipper in me talking.

With Scalia, it felt like they just slapped them together because Scott needed a love interest for the final season. You could make the argument that a lot has happened over fifteen years that we didn't see.

With Malia and Parish, it feels like there's a whole ass story we didn't see, but y'know, show, don't tell. 

3. While I'm on that, the movie leaves a lot open ended, that it felt like it was setting up a follow up. This is were most of my problems come from. I was thinking maybe it would tie into Wolf Pack, but I've been hearing that the show isn't meant to be a direct spinoff (or even the same universe) as Teen Wolf. 

One thing I'd like an explanation of is Eli's mother, which again feels like they're saving for a follow up. Speaking of Eli, he became an instant favorite of mine, and someone I wouldn't mind seeing again.

Also, the cursing and nudity in this movie, I'm not saying it's out of place, and far from being prudish. I like that they’re being more risqué, but I’m also glad they didn't go too overboard with it. Still,  “Darkness, you motherfucker” absolutely killed me!

Another gripe I had was that Kira didn't return. Like this is a story where kitsune are front and center, and one of the antagonists is a monster her mother helped bring into the world. 

You’re seriously telling me she’s not up for another round ?

We're introduced to a new Kitsune, Hikari, who I have nothing against, but it really feels like Kira could have (should have) filled her spot. Especially since Hikari didn't have a proper introduction for a new player. "Oh, Liam has a new girlfriend who's a kitsune ? Welcome to the team I guess."

4. The villains...here's where I have more of an issue. So the Nogitsune makes a comeback. Which is fine; I saw that coming as far back as the trailers. 

But the movie's other Big Bad is Adrian Harris, with no explanation for his survival. I mean sure, a slashed throat/strangulation is an injury you can survive, but the chances are often slim.

I could have easily bought this Big Bad Duumvirate, if there wasn't something that stuck out; Stiles wasn't there. 

I can accept that Stiles isn't part of the story. I can accept Stydia splitting up (albeit begrudgingly). But Stiles was the Nogitsune’s primary tormenting victim, and the one Harris had the most beef with. You telling me he wasn't on their radar ?!

You're telling me that even if Harris survived or came back, the first thing he wouldn't do was try to access the speed force and pull some Eobard Thawne buffoonery on Stiles ? 

Get out of town!

Anyways, the Nogitsune was a serviceable villain, but I feel like Harris could have been replaced with another past antagonist. Say Tamara Monroe, considering she was the series cliffhanger villain, and as of this movie her arc's unresolved. They probably wouldn't have been able to pull any kind of twist with her, but she at least would fit more. 

Hell, even Theo Raeken would have been more fitting; the guy such has a proud history of subverting whatever redeeming qualities thrown his way, I still have a hard time buying his “redemption” at the end of the series. Actually, it wasn't even a redemption, it was just the one genuine Pet the Dog moment the guy actually had.

Anyways, Harris probably would have been a better fit in a story that had Stiles in it.

5. Not gonna lie, Derek's death was something sorta I saw coming.

What I mean is, I certainly saw someone in the main cast was gonna die. That's like an unspoken rule in “Next Generation” sequels. But I thought it would be someone else. If not Derek, it would be one of the parents.

Who'd I'd probably have die instead would be Chris Argent. I mean if you're gonna bring back his daughter, you'd think one consequence would be that Chris would die in her place.

Derek's death, I'm more mixed on, but ultimately accept. I would have preferred if Chris was the one with the heroic sacrifice. I still think it would be a more fitting end than Derek’s.

I heard some complaints that Scott and Allison pretty much adopted Eli, but I didn't see it that way. When Scott and Eli interacted, I got more of an uncle/nephew vibe than any father/son thing. 

The way I see it, Eli just has a large support system following his father's death; a support system that just now includes Scott and Alison. And let's be honest, there's no way and hell Derek is gonna let Peter raise him.

I've been told this was intended to be the start of a trilogy, so if we get sequels, hopefully they'll fill us in on what we missed.

[softpine]

fjksjdskj this is awesome, ily and i love talking about tlou!! i’m splitting your message into pieces so i can respond easier and also so i can put a read more for spoilers :)

this is my BIGGEST gripe with the tv show so far. it bothers me how quickly they jumped into the ellie who isn’t scared of killing / death / infection / destruction. i really dislike how they make her seem unfeeling and even made her ENJOY watching joel beat a man to death. it makes me feel so icky like that’s not my ellie. it’s just not. that’s not even grown up part 2 ellie. idk i was really hoping that as the story went on, i would warm up to it, but it just gets worse and worse. luckily this is my only major complaint, so hey, i’ll take it

well i wouldn’t say he’s gonna die SOON, that’s not until next season. and i’m very excited for it lmao but yeah pedro is doing such a great job!! he brings a different energy to joel, more quiet and reserved (which i didn’t realize it was possible to be more emotionally repressed than he is in the game lol), but i’m here for it! his voice is great and i felt the same way about tommy’s actor - his voice sounds just like the voice actor

same, i’m overall not a huge fan of the changes they made to tess. i like the emotional layers they gave her, so that she’s not just the tutorial anymore and she’s an actual person, but i wish she was just a LITTLE bit less soft. it doesn’t sit right with me that they made her joel’s second in command when the game makes it very clear that tess runs the show. i loved her death scene (yes even the uncomfortable kiss) but i guess i wanted just a little bit more from tess

100% agree!

i actually really like the shaky camera, except in scenes where the characters are sitting or standing still, then it becomes really obvious and dizzying. but otherwise i’m actually a fan. i feel you about the lack of lighting, but i have the same complaint about almost every show i watch these days. everything is so dull and dark now :( i feel like the second and third episodes had more impressive cinematography so i’m hoping they were just finding their footing and it’ll get better with time!

yessss i’m SUCH a nerd for anything regarding fungi and i especially love the mycelium lore. i love that they did their research and it shows

i actually think it was smart to cut the execution scene and replace it with the scene of the infected child being killed and burned, because man... it doesn’t get any more brutal than that. and to see joel throwing him in the fire with no visible emotion.. that was powerful. FEDRA does seem way more capable here. in the game, we see their skeletons everywhere, implying that they’re being picked off easily by the fireflies, but in the show, it feels more like a war going on between them, with both sides being equally powerful.

i really hope they keep this scene the way it is; this is one scene that i really don’t think needs any changes

yeah i’m super curious what he’ll be doing now that his purpose has changed so much! i don’t even have any guesses yet, i’m just waiting to see what happens

assuming you mean dina and yesss i really hope so! i wanted to see glimpses of abby, lev, dina, jesse, etc. but they probably won’t show any of them in season 1 because they didn’t know if they’d be renewed for season 2. but who knows!

overgrown cities and towns are my freaking jammm. i love seeing the earth take over

yes omg tell me how you liked it!! episode 3 was probably my favorite so far because of how unexpected it was. and don’t worry, i will never stop talking fjksjds i couldn’t even if i wanted to stop.. i hope you have a wonderful day too!! 💖

[justsomeectoplasm]

Honestly thinking of skipping this season as well.

(small rant)

It just feels so.... boring.

The cosmetics are fine, I guess. The only cosmetic that grew on me was the overly big cape fron the elder spirit cause it looked comfy. The rest feel watered down tbh. I get that TGC was trying to add backstories to spirits, and the whole "look how bad the war was" lore, but they didn't even choose fan favorite spirits or tried to actually make the spirits stories serious. The memories don't even feel connected to a theme even.

Every seasonal spirit has some connection to each other. The dreams spirits alll helped the skater girl in achieving her dream, the abyss spirits were all somewhat involve in the questgiver spirit and the performance spirits where all part of the same troupe. Hell, even the prophercy spirits were kind of connected to each other because they all taught students, despite neither showing up in their memories. It makes their story cohesive and it makes the area feel more alive. Kind of like saying that "look here. There was a community that lived together here."

This season spirits had no connection whatsoever with each other. Why are they all here? How are they connected with each other?

Why not make each spirit connected with each other in each of their memories? Why not make each spirit be a stranger that somehow connected to the other like a link. For example:

Grieving elder heard the news about his son/grandson's death from injured solder ->Injured soldier was the one who took away the pleading child spirits mom -> Teamaker served tea to the injured soldier -> Teamaker was trying to help grieving elder spirit while trying to hide from spirits.

And another gripe I have is how childish these memories almost seem in some way.

Like the whole point of our emotes being exaggerated is that skykids are children. They interpret the world around them differently. The best example of a serious memory and being an exaggerated emote is the fainting warrior memory, where we all know that TGC hinted at something much more darker to it.

It just feels rush and the lore they gave us felt very mocking in a way. I feel like this season was hastily put together because TGC forgot to plan a season ahead.

It's not entirely bad. The area and the music is well made and thought out. The rest is just not that strong in comparison. It doesn't add anything much to the lore or the worldbuilding like season of flight or season of shattering/prophercy.

It's just a really, really boring season.

[munchflix]

HELLRAISER TIER LIST

Munch: This is, I say regrettably, my favorite franchise. That being said, my version of my favorite franchise ends abruptly at the fourth installment.

Biscuits: This your boy??? This your man???

M: Yeah...I know.

B: This one took a while because...we had to watch the movies. I wish we hadn't. I wish I had not watched the movies. I will never forgive me for making me watch ALL OF THESE FUCKING MOVIES. Each one took years off my life span. I'd already seen the first four but...

M: They're bad. They're direct to video bad. They're 3 dollar bin at Walmart bad and I still want my money back. 

B: They'd be walk out of the theatre movie bad but you can't because most of them weren't in theaters. They're turn it off and watch some porn bad.

M: That being said...I am a huge Hellraiser fan. I love the lore, I love the mythology. I own the comics, I own the movies, I love Doug Bradley so much. Pinhead is my absolute favorite boi. But alas....we must review this shit. So here we go. PART THE ONE. A woman discovers the newly resurrected, partially formed, body of her brother-in-law. She starts killing for him to revitalize his body so he can escape the demonic beings that are pursuing him after he escaped their sadistic underworld. That's a weird version of things IMDB. 

B: Those are things that certifiably in the first movie, if you've never seen Hellraiser you're probably confused. 

M: The first, arguably the best, our introduction to the cenobites, to Kirsty, to the entire mythology and the Lament Configuration ( the iconic box ). My only gripe is that like so many of the Hellraiser movies, not enough Pinhead. The special effects, for 1987 are off the fucking chain, and they still hold up, honestly. This movie still looks better than most of the shit we watched. S tier shit.

B: The fx are really impressive for the time it was made and the fact that they didn't have much of a budget. You know what I liked about this movie? Stuff happened in it. There was a plot. The cenobites, the Lament, it was part of the plot. It was significant to the story.

M: Well this one was actually made to be a Hellraiser story, unlike six others in this series. PART THE TWO. Kirsty is brought to an institution after the horrible events of Hellraiser (1987), where the occult-obsessive head doctor resurrects Julia and unleashes the Cenobites and their demonic underworld. This one is probably my favorite, ten times more crazy cenobite shit, way more Pinhead.

B: We get to see their weird liminal space hell and Leviathan, the giant rotating space diamond. It's weird and out there, and that's pretty cool. Clive Barker created such a unique impression and aesthetic of Hell. So weird and distinct.

M: It's amazeballs, some more really iconic lines from our boy Pinhead, and nobody but Doug Bradley could say that shit and make it sound cool. We know, we've heard other people try. It's bad. Also S tier.

B: Yup.

M: PART THE THREE. An investigative reporter must send the newly unbound Pinhead and his legions back to Hell. This starts the eternal trend of fucking detective/investigator/reporter nonsense in this series.

B: Like they couldn't think of ANY other plotlines. This movie is balls out, batshit insane. It's hard for me to delineate in words how bizarre this movie is. There's a guy who looks like Hulk Hogan who gets turned into a cenobite who kills people with his telescoping eyeball lens? There's Pinhead in a statue in a nightclub that just happens to be an art museum?? And Pinhead is just like, hey Nightclub guy you should just kill people.

M: It's fantastic. It's just utter chaos from the moment it starts. Pinhead spends half the movie trapped in a statue, he's so great. Sassy and unhinged Pinhead. The main character is some redhead named Joey who does stuff but we don't care because there's a fucking dude shooting cd's out of his cenobite mouth hole. I love this movie. Tons of Pinhead, tons of cenobites, some of the most iconic lines in the series here. S tier as well.

B: That's understandable. I'm willing to put it in A tier, but I like it an S tier amount. I will acknowledge it's not a great film, but it's fun as hell.

M: PART THE FOUR. In the 22nd century, a scientist attempts to right the wrong his ancestor created: the puzzle box that opens the gates of Hell and unleashes Pinhead and his Cenobite legions.

B: I can't lie...this kind of H.R. Giger shit that happened in the 90's...I fucking hate it. It's so fucking visually boring. Alien movies were good but ugh, I watched Event Horizon and it was BORING. This movie falls into that trap and I don't like it. Compared to the other movies in this franchise after this one, this movie is great. It's high cinema.

M: You're entitled to your wrong opinion about Giger and Event Horizon. I love this movie. It's so stupid. Hellraiser in space, c'mon. Most of the movie is about LeMarchand and we don't really care, but Pinhead has some of the BEST lines in the whole series.

B: " Do I look like someone who cares what God thinks?" I love how Pinhead is this like, very serious Hell priest but then at the same time is very sassy.

M: Sassy Pinhead is the best Pinhead. Unfortunately after this, everything went straight into ass tier. I'm not willing to S tier this. This is at best B tier. Compared to the rest, this is still like...the best movie.

B: B tier is fair.

M: PART THE FIVE. INFERNO. A shady police detective becomes embroiled in a strange world of murder, sadism and madness after being assigned a murder investigation against a madman known only as "The Engineer". This is the first one where they made an entirely different movie and then slapped Pinhead into it. No really, they did that for like four movies. It's also the second movie that centers around a fucking detective.

B: I feel a visceral hatred for this movie. It is a GRUELING experience. At the beginning, I was like, I'll give this a chance. It's not going so bad, it might be alright. But no, it just drags on. It's so, so fucking boring. You stop caring about this detective like a quarter of the way in. And this is the movie that begins the HORRIBLE, AWFUL, I FUCKING HATE IT trend of having fucked up shit happen and then have it be like OH IT DIDN'T HAPPEN. It was a hallucination or something. That's half the movie, stuff that isn't happening!

M: The original movies had a ton of fucked up shit happening, but it was ACTUALLY HAPPENING. That's part of why it was so insane. This movie is....painful. It is blindingly dull. They bring in the chatterer but he's just a torso. They throw in the wire twins and some like...slenderman motherfucker but it's just the detective.

B: They quit making new cenobites after this, they just recycled the same ones. They got rid of chatterer and butterball and female cenobite, kinda rude tbh. There's barely any cenobites in this.

M: Pinhead is here for like...literally two minutes.

B: It's a four course meal of just Saltines. Bland, dry, and unfufilling. Hell tier. Piss hell tier.

M: Whatever the worst, lowest part of hell is, this movie belongs there. PART THE SIX. A shady businessman attempts to piece together the details of the car crash that killed his wife, rendered him an amnesiac, and left him in possession of a sinister puzzle box that summons monsters.

B: At least this time, he's a shady businessman!

M: There are detectives tho. This movie brings back Kirsty, but like....she's a side character. The movie would have been way more interesting if it was about her. She manipulates her husband into the cenobites hands but WE DON'T GET TO SEE ANY OF THAT. It's all told from her stupid husband's point of view.

B: I remember him throwing up a lamprey but that was the only gross thing. If I wanted to watch a white guy lose his grip on reality I'd just go watch Hannibal. Or go look in the mirror.

M: SELF BURN. This movie is so boring. AND - it does the fucking this didn't really happen bullshit hallucination crap even more than inferno. It's slightly, and I'm measuring this is in millimeters, less boring than Inferno.

B: This one does have a lamprey coming out a man's mouth. It's still bad though. I have a hard time putting this is anything but shit tier as well. If I had to choose between this movie and staring at a blank wall for the same duration, i'd pick the wall, because then I could at least imagine a better Hellraiser movie. Still D tier.

M: I agree. It's awful. And now... PART THE SEVEN. Deader. A journalist uncovers an underground group who can bring back the dead and slowly becomes drawn into their world.

B: The cover for this one also looks like ass, look at that fucking photoshop glow around the cube, now just slap that girl's face on it. Who's more dead?

M: Yet another fucking journalist detective and we don't know what's really happening and what's not.

B: This one actually feels shorter than the other ones. The pacing isn't quite that slow but it's better than the other things. There's one or two visually interesting things. The guy on the train was kinda interesting. The scene where she has the knife in her back is compelling, the stark white of the bathroom and the blood. The scene with the dead girl in the bathroom also has tension. That's more than any of the other shit movies in here.

M: You're gonna give a rank up for not feeling eternal??? It's still awful. It is slightly less awful, the plot is really out there, there are holes you could drive a mack truck through. This one, like the past two though was also just another fucking movie that they threw Pinhead into and called it Hellraiser. Like...why does Lemarchand's ancestor have the ability to raise the dead?

B: It has a bit more merit as a piece of cinema than Inferno, which has nothing. It's like that gold star meme that says - not as bad as you could have been.

M: But can we rank it above hell piss tier? I mean really. We have like two rankings here...the first four, which we can't even compare these to, and then the rest against each other.

B: Compared to the originals, it's not good. It could be C tier, I guess.

M: I'm willing to go along with that, but it's still really really bad. PART THE EIGHT. HELLWORLD. Gamers playing a MMORPG based on the "Hellraiser" films find their lives endangered after being invited to a rave, the host of which intends to show them the truth behind the Cenobite mythos.

B: I'm almost willing to move Deader to C tier after remembering this one. This one is piss hell tier. Plot, that word doesn't apply to this movie.

M: The plot is....shaky...at best. This isn't remotely a Hellraiser movie. This is the WORST offender here.

B: The entire movie only has a Hellraiser themed party until the VERY END when Pinhead shows up for like a cameo and cuts a guy to pieces. It has nothing to do with hellraiser. The plot is a dude who's mad at his dead kid's friends because his son killed himself and he's seeking revenge.

M: It's more like a Saw movie tbh. Henry Cavill is here tho. There's a lot of banging and even more of the fucking this didn't really happen trope and also Pinhead is wearing a neck brace.

B: And at the end it's implied that a ghost used a phone to save his friends? There's nothing at all to do with Hellraiser. You could remove all the hellraiser iconography and it would still be the same movie. You could remove Pinhead and it would be the same movie.

M: Piss hell garbage tier. It's irredeemable.

B: These movies feel like being tortured by the cenobites in real life.

M: PART THE FUCKING NINE REVELATIONS JESUS CHRIST. Imdb won't load the synopsis. We already reviewed this one.

B: Jerma cries a lot, the movie.

M: I hate that I have to elevate this absolute piece of shit in the rankings, but it's at least a Hellraiser movie??? It's at least about Hell???

B: This one at least has some moments that are funny bad and not just bad bad. The unnecessary baby murder.

M: That's funny??

B: It's so hamfisted, it's so edgy, it just becomes comical.

M: This movie was made entirely so that they didn't lose the rights to hellraiser. Clive Barker said - and I quote - "I have NOTHING to do with the fuckin' thing. If they claim its from the mind of Clive Barker,it's a lie. It's not even from my butt-hole"

B: The makeup is so bad. He looks tacky, like if I reached out and touched him, he would be sticky. I don't like sticky airbrushed Pinhead.

M: They also messed up his eyes, it's just weird. This movie is laughably atrocious, but at least it's laughable. You can't even laugh at Inferno. You're too busy pulling your hair out. Regrettably, C tier.

B: It's poopy garbage and I don't like it, but compared to the other fecal matter I've had to review, it's slightly better.

M: PART THE FUCKING TEN OH MY GOD. JUDGEMENT. Detectives Sean and David Carter are on the case to find a gruesome serial killer terrorizing the city. Joining forces with Detective Christine Egerton, they dig deeper into a spiraling maze of horror that may not be of this world. Hey guess what? Fucking detectives.

B: This movie is really gross but it just feels way overdone. It loses it's shock value when you're being nasty 24-7. and I would know. A lot of these movies I was like - not nasty enough! This one...maybe build up a little.

M: This is a different kind of nasty tho, like there's barfing. A lot of barfing. And playing in barf. And drooling, and splashing blood on naked chicks and it honestly feels a WEE BIT FETISHY to me.

B: You're talking about Hellraiser, it's always been kinda fetishy.

M: I don't feel like it was Hellraiser fetishy, I feel like it was director fetishy.

B: They blew their load way too early. You can't just come out of the gate swinging like that. It's not as bad as some of the other ones. There's some Hell stuff in it at least.

M: I kinda like the Auditor.

B: I liked the weird butcher guy. The auditor guy is kinda cool but you can tell he can't hardly talk with that makeup on because he can't move his upper lip. I hate all the detective shit. There's no explanation of why this one detective guy went bonkers. I don't like the angel chick, she feel really out of place.

M: The Pinhead is at least better, though I wish they'd never showed the actor without the makeup. He also looks way overdone, like they hit him with some flocking.

B: Way too airbrushed. His lips are kinda blue. Blue lips, pale face, I hate the entire human race.

M: Still...in the grand scheme of things...not the worst. I still can't even go to B tier. I could go C tier.

B: B tier has four, we're not going there. It's still bad and I wouldn't advise that you watch it, but comparatively....it's better.

M: And the bar is SO LOW. Like we got excited that Deader didn't feel six hours long. That's how low the bar is. I will never forgive these people for what they did to my boy, MY BOY! But thank you Doug and Clive for giving me the first four. We are tentatively very excited about the new Hulu version.

B: "Look how they massacred my boy!" - The Godfather, 1972.

[magnuficentwo]

1, 4, 6, 8, 9, 12 for Borderlands

[From this !] Thank u for the ask now I get to practice my VIOLENCE

1- The character everyone gets wrong

Hate hate hate hate hate how so many people write Rhys. Rhys is a character who's whole appeal {personally} is that he is very much Just Some Fucking Guy. Before the stories of Tales happened, Rhys was just some random dude who wanted to make it big, and afterwards, when he gets the opportunity to, he's still Majorly not his own person. He's influenced by the player in a meta sense, but also by Ugly John. This guy's identity is based off what the situation demands and what other people expect of him, and yet no one ever seems to acknowledge it, favoring instead his fucked up relationship with H.J as the sole atribute of his character [and this WILL pop up later trust me].

The guy has potential and the game acknowledges it (by the games own words, he rebuilt Atlas, became the CEO and even invented some cool new tech along the way), but he is NOT ALL THAT and I'm TIRED of people acting like there is that much substance to him. Just say you want the white men to kiss, stop putting on different hats on this guy and acting like hes all that

4- What was the last straw that made you finally block that annoying person?

Moxxi slander. I swear, anyone who says Mad Moxxi is "annoying" or "a bitch" is 20% of the time a misogynist and 80% of the time a Handsome Jack sympathizer who thinks that she should've had some pity on The Active Space War Criminal. And this person did exactly that so yk how it is

6- Which ship fans are most annoying ?

Rhack shippers. No doubt. Partly because of my own personal gripes with how this dude is characterized {see: number 1}, but also because it's genuinely just so boring 😭 you can write this ship a thousand different ways but ultimately it boils down to "We need these white men to kiss" and nothing else. Also the whole "this guy manipulated this other guy for the entire time they interacted and then tried to kill him" thing.

8- Common fandom opinion everyone is wrong about.

There's nobody who is good in this game I'm sorry to all apologists out there but all these guys suck ass. This isn't a competition about who's most morally correct it's about who your favorite criminal is ok

9- Worst part of canon.

The way they don't expand on lore, not even a little 😔 Please just tell me how ancient eridian people got their hands on an Atlas gun all of a sudden. Or at least tell me something about Sirens. How does the magic in this universe even happen. For the love of God HOW did Pandora GET LIKE THAT how is anyone there LIVING. PLEASE just CRUMBS OF INFORMATION you can't have me guessing everything you're presenting !!

+ How they don't expand on characters. Like come on let me hang out with these guys they're so cool :(

12- The Unpopular character you actually like and why more people should like them.

Tannis Tannis Tannis I love you cringe fail autistic woman. I don't see nearly enough appreciation for her. Matter of fact, I see a lot of people hating on my girl like :[ Leave her alone. Here's my comprehensive list of reasons why you should actually like Patricia Tannis.

1- So smart. She seems to be one of the only 5 people who know anything about the setting and who actively tell you about related history. She's one of the only sources of knowledge on Eridian culture we have in-game, which means this also extends over to Sirens, magic and the vaults. Relevant stuff yk !!! /// 2- She's COOL LOOKING okay. Her design is more down to earth and restrained compared to other characters, and it makes her stick out a little more imo. It's also just wonderfully practical which fits for her being a researcher and scientist. /// 2.5- Girl... pretty... /// 3- This woman is so autistic have I mentioned that yet. Because she is. She unfortunately does fall in some pitfalls in terms of stereotypes {I.E: nerdy personality with tendencies to be rude to people, the whole facts and logic thing, etc} but also damn she is so relatable. I too feel nauseous at the thought of a social interaction but still actively crave to have conversations with other people. I also struggle coming up with words at the time of most need. I too have like 3 people who actively take me places and make me feel comfortable (SEE: Roland, Lilith, the VH in some cases). I too humanize objects and talk to them because of loneliness. That's so true. She's so real for that.

[twistedtummies2]

The Devils I Know - Number 28

Welcome to “The Devils I Know!” For this spooky time of year, from now till Halloween, I’ll be counting down My Top 31 Depictions of the Devil, from movies, television, video games, and more! Today’s Devil asks an important question: what happens when two Princes of Darkness meet face to face? Number 28 is…Jason Isaacs, from the Castlevania: Lords of Shadow Trilogy.

As I’ve said more than once in the past, the “Castlevania” games are one of my favorite video game franchises of all time, right alongside “Kingdom Hearts.” However, one of my gripes with the classic era of the games is that their lore got increasingly more convoluted as the games went on. This is to be expected with a lot of old, classic series that are still ongoing: as time went on and audiences/players cared more about characters and stories, the games evolved, but as a result those same stories and characters could end up going in crazy directions that often caused headaches in hindsight. Between 2010 and 2014, Konami attempted to reboot and revamp the franchise with a game series that would, at least in intent, update the franchise while also giving it a less convoluted lore.

The result was “Castlevania: Lords of Shadow,” which was followed by two sequels: “Lords of Shadow II,” and an in-between kind of game called “Mirror of Fate” (which, coincidentally, happens to be my favorite Castlevania game, and I don’t care how unpopular that opinion may be). There were plans to make a fourth game, but for one reason or another, those have never come to pass, as of this date. Fans of the Castlevania franchise remain split about the reboot trilogy, and the loudest voices seem to be the most negative. I, however, personally really enjoy the reboot; it’s not perfect, but neither was the Classic era. I think both are worthy attempts at the franchise, each going in solid and intriguing directions, with their own pros and cons. In the Classic Castlevania era, the main antagonist of the series was Count Dracula. However, in the “Lords of Shadow” games, Dracula is actually made into the main protagonist for two out of three games. So, with the King of the Vampires as your main character, who do you pick to act as the big bad in his stead? Why, Satan himself, naturally! In those two games – “Lords of Shadow” and “Lords of Shadow II” – the Devil himself ends up being the ultimate evil which our anti-heroic vampire must defeat. In both games, the Devil’s presence is teased throughout the story, but he ultimately doesn’t show up properly till the last act, and becomes the final boss which the player must overcome. Much of what makes this take on Satan work is his voice actor, the inimitable Jason Isaacs. Let’s face it, when you’ve played Captain Hook, Lucius Malfoy, and the World’s Most Evil Redcoat, you’re darn well-prepared when your time comes to tackle the Devil himself. Isaacs brings a sense of smoothness and subtlety to the part, giving Satan a mixture of slippery cunning and grandiose power that turns what could have been a rather two-dimensional character into a very well-crafted villain. Though his time in both games is fairly short, Satan is nevertheless a memorable adversary. And seriously…Dracula vs. Satan? How can that NOT be an awesome confrontation?!

Tomorrow, the countdown continues with Number 27! HINT: He must love chaos theory.