#they're big and friendly

[ccycloneblogging]

I'll never understand my desire to cling on to cute fluffy horror game characters.

[ride-a-dromedary]

I hope Halsin's lack of mentioning Ormn in the epilogue means that he had him moved out to Reithwin as well. The poor bear really seemed to miss him at the Grove.

Halsin mentions needing to teach the children that not all bears are friendly (like he is in wildshape), and I think Ormn would actually be a great help with that.

[nostalgia-tblr]

one problem with getting into Fiction Franchises like, oh let's say the MCU, long after they started is that 1) there are things that refer back to things I don't know about and 2) i don't know what i don't know about, and in a way that latter is more of a problem at least for me.

i managed an episode of wandavision and was left thinking "this seems like it's good, but i have no clue what's going on here so it's not going to work for me is it?" and i am reliably told it's supposed to be Mysterious Mindfuckery but i, a noob, was unable to work out without external clarification what i wasn't supposed to know. if you see what i mean.

i notice the mcu movies (at least as it progresses?) don't have numbers on them, and we know when they're direct sequels because there's a subtitle. and if you come at these later you need to get a chart to work out whether you should watch thor: ragnarok before or after thor: the dark world. which is easily done if i am determined to get things in the right order, but any effort is too much for someone.

so while i am willing to consider the idea that the later mcu films/shows are just Less Good than the early ones (personally Doubt so far but I'm not opposed to the idea) it's very easy inside a fandom to lose sight of what your thing looks like to the casuals who make up most of an audience, and frankly the mcu is currently Very Large and confusing.

who are all these Mrs/Captain/Miss/etc Marvel ladies and which of them have already been in films I might or might not have seen? how many ant men are there prior to this one? am i supposed to know who the baddy in this or that film is? which of these side-characters are from something else?

doesn't-seem-related-but-it-is: i was surprised to discover that the general mcu fandom view of the loki series was not that it was some sort of AU situation that could be thought of an entirely separate from the main series of films. because that was pretty much why it was the one to hook me, i think - it explained the relevant backstory with clips and yet also this is a different loki so if i don't want to go and watch however many films he was in i don't have to. i would expect him to be to some extent "out of character" because it carefully explained to me that this is not really the same character as that identical guy with the same name who was in some number of films. there's a woman one and an alligator one but don't worry they're all from AUs anyway.

[heliosphere-underthesky]

Hi, i got question for Jupiter and Earth, are you two friends or frenemy?

Earth: Actually, I don't really hate him! I don't consider him an enemy.

Jupiter: Not a friend either.

Earth: Well, not too close of a friend! Like... just right. Maybe acquaintance? Friendly acquaintance?

Jupiter: ... Like I told you. Don't trust me too much. And doesn't your best friend hate me?

Earth: Yeah... I understand you both, but I guess keeping this safe distance is the best for all of us.

Jupiter: Out of respect for him, please do. (is also not into forming deep emotional relationships, maybe Saturn is an exception)

[thranduel]

"you drew stars around my scars."

[the-batacombs]

I had totally forgotten about the Bruce Wayne -- Ibn al Xu'ffasch -- Mar'i Grayson family circle in Kingdom Come.

[orchideae]

A few quick random tidbits about Yanshang Teahouse:

— Teahouse/casino. While said to be 'disguised' as a teahouse, Yanshang does seem to genuinely function as one, or at least during the daytime. And it's primarily during the evening hours that it functions more actively as a casino. Now I need to note, the latter is not public knowledge. Or rather, it's more so a rumor that holds a fair bit of truth to it. But a rumor is a rumor nonetheless. This is vital, because it is because of this that it is still running. I've spoken a fair bit about this behind the scenes lately, but Yanshang functions as a casino because it draws 'less than good people' into a surrounding that has everything playing against them, and through that, Yelan is able to gather intelligence that benefits everyone, especially Ning. So if the latter for example, Ningguang were to know its full ins and outs, it would actually mean that she'd have to turn a blind eye to something that is not fully legal, which spells all kinds of trouble for the person responsible for, well, the law in Liyue Harbor?

— Gambling. Yelan has gained a reputation for her gambling skills, and is even rumored to cheat when the need calls for it (though of course, this isn't picked up on, it seems!), as is noted in her fifth character story: "If there is a draw, that could only mean one thing: Her opponents are cheating too.", and so potential opponents are advised to steer clear of playing against her through word on the streets of the harbor.

— Home? While this is not Yelan's home whatsoever, there is an upstairs area that is something akin to her 'private quarters'. It holds no personal affects that are tied to her directly, but to an extent, if one were to ever intrude/break in (past The Halbert and the Fang, somehow), you'd find the 'guise' tied to this notorious woman who owns Yanshang. But this guise is not quite her. Again, she works in personas, some much more realistically than others (the art of it, is knowing what of yourself you put into personas as to add to their authenticity's longevity). Either way, there is a comfort and peace that she finds in it, and the room is somewhat styled into a decorum that Yelan appreciates, beyond the 'keeping up appearances' aspect to it. It is hers in the end, to some degree.

— Finances. While one would be led to believe that Yelan gains a lot of financial benefits through Ningguang, Yelan's second character story might beg to differ: 'The way (Yelan) sees it, she is not so much working for Ningguang as making good on her end of the deal, or rather... she is honoring a certain pact. She plucks the fruits of intelligence from the tree of danger for Ningguang, and in return, all she asks for is danger itself and the sense of achievement.' While I'm decently certain that Yelan might occasionally stand to gain some sort of financial gain through the Qixing, it seems evident that it's not what her primary motive is. Yelan seems to not be interested in luxury by default (she lived in a hut for a long time), and more so seeks a sense of freedom, thrill and personal achievement. Now do I think that because of this, she's not well off? No, I simply think that the majority of her income may actually come from Yanshang Teahouse, and, to put it not-so-eloquently, ripping off bandits, and hopefully, specifically some Fatui in the process.

[thewastelandlosers]

I haven't played F04 in about 3 years and had forgotten how to get to Goodnieghbor, I stupidly decided to go there very early game. It took me over an hour, cause most the time I was running away from Supermutants, camps filled with Raiders, pissed of Talon Company goons, feral ghouls and dogs, or I was being killed by them and being sent back to my last save. All cause I didn't want to be a weeny and look it up or use a quest icon to help. I don't even know why anyone would want to live there, no sexy Ghoul mayor is worth getting lost in a death maze of a city with each corner housed by some kind of monstrosity or asshole raider ready to shoot you dead 😭 And if you do somehow scramble your way to the entrance door, screaming Let Me In! as supermutants and company dudes are having a turf war behind you, you finally enter only to have a bald asshole ready to extort you. I'd be throwing hands, crying and throwing hands.

[rosescries]

I've always wondered, why did the Mobtale, Underlust and G! Skeletons move out of the lodge? Were they kicked out? Did they all decide to leave because they felt unwelcomed? Did they all feel ostracized and form a little group of their own and decided to all leave together or did they leave gradually and ended up meeting each other again randomly, find out they'd all left the lodge and decided to help each other out?

Though I'm pretty sure you've mentioned somewhere that the Mobtale skeletons are responsible for every skeleton that doesn't live in the lodge so if they all left at different times, the Mob skeletons must've been the first pair to leave and then maybe when the other two pairs of skeletons decide to leave they find/call the mob skeletons and ask for assistance so then the Mob skeletons just make it their duty to help any skeletons that want to leave the lodge.

Either way, I've always wanted to learn more about these skeletons and how their lives have been ever since they were pulled from their universes into the original one. Especially since some seem to be on rocky terms with the lodge skeletons sometimes. So if you're willing, will you talk about their pasts before they show up in TSM and DC?

The Mob skeletons are in charge of keeping track of everyone outside of the lodge, but it was more just a responsibility thrust onto them because Sans couldn't do it himself. And they're good at organization and tracking people down.

Guns and Ace never stayed at the lodge, they weren't dropped near enough to the others for that and they immediately started getting to work once they realized they weren't in their own universe anymore. So they already had a place and no desire to live with a bunch of duplicates in the first place. They like their space (and privacy for, ya know, obvious reasons). G doesn't like to sit still very often, so he wasn't going to stick around even if he was dropped by the rest of them, and Aster needs his own room for his own projects and things, plus he likes his privacy too. Where no one will mess with his things. Lilac and Charmed basically were ostracized from the Lodge, they didn't get along with them very well thanks to the rules and norms of their universe. But they wanted to travel and the secrecy of the lodge was very stifling to the two. So they figured it was better for everyone if they just left to do their own things.

The group was formed more out of convenience than anything else. G helps the Mob bros, so they're in close contact, and G and Aster are some of the few that get along well with the Lust brothers. So things just kind of happened there.

[yours-the-author]

Spoilers for My Friendly Neighborhood? And Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Maybe? IDK I'm just putting my thoughts down.

I watched Super Horror Bro's let's play of MFN and I really liked it! Gordon is great, Ricky is great, everyone is great... but a lot of people seem to be over looking the whole "living puppets" thing? (or maybe I just haven't been looking hard enough.) And that got me thinking... what if the world logic of MFN is like that of Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

Like, the two have some similarities already (tough, down on his luck guy with a gun deals with the shenanigans of TV mascots while dark things happen around him), but let's put it like this:

In the world of Roger Rabbit, cartoon characters (toons) are alive. This isn't really explained in the movie, as far as I remember, but it's just a fact. The toons are real, they have jobs, they have a place to live, but they're also sort of considered "second class citizens" in a way; they don't really get a lot of variety in what jobs they can thrive in (they work in entertainment, usually), and they don't always get treated very well (Eddie Valiant, the protagonist, often responds to cartoon shenanigans by saying "toons" in a clearly derogatory way; and cartoon tools like singing swords and sentient shoes [which I think are safe to assume they're alive and sentient? less so than other toons, but you get it] are kept in boxes, seemingly for long periods of time). Toons also have their "Toon Town", their own separate place to live that, for much of the movie, is in danger due to the owner of Toon Town (a human) dying and potentially letting Toon Town get destroyed for the sake of a highway, and thus destroying the only known place where toons can safely live.

So, to summarize: 1. Toons are alive, an accepted fact by society. 2. Toons are citizens, and are expected to work to earn their keep. 3. Toons are citizens, and there is slight prejudice against them ("slight" may be putting it lightly).

Now, let's look at MFN:

Gordon J. O'Brien is a human, who is tasked with shutting off the antenna of the studio that used to produce and televise the children's show My Friendly Neighborhood. We see in a cutscene prior to gameplay that most television shows are hosted/acted by human players, except for MFN, which is primarily led by puppet actors. Nothing wrong there; it's a children's show, and as a lot of children shows go, puppets and other cartoonish set pieces are used to entertain. Most adult shows are filled with live people, and at the hour that the TV is shown, adult programming is more likely to be on than children's programming.

But consider what happens when Gordon enters the studio lot, namely when he first meets Ricky the sock puppet. Gordon is surprised by Ricky's appearance, but he doesn't really address it. In fact, he treats Ricky like he might be the owner/face of the establishment. We could argue that Gordon is just rolling with it: it's his last job of the day, he's on probation for a bad attitude and could get fired for failing to do his job or keeping up that bad attitude, so he's just playing along with whoever the crazy human behind the sock puppet is. All well and good, except when things start getting darker.

Gordon sees a puppet (Norman) bashing its head against the wall, seemingly of its own free will, and he offers little more than a "what the...?" Even when the puppets begin attacking him, he just carries on. Maybe he's just super dedicated to finishing his job and leaving so he can go home. But there comes a point, I'd like to think, when dealing with potentially deadly possessed puppets where a normal person thinks, "is this minimum wage job really worth my life?" and usually, the answer is probably "no, consequences be damned, I'm leaving while I'm alive."

So that begs the question: what sort of person carries on with his job when it's possible there are murder puppets after his life? Most people have said that Gordon is just "so done" with everything in his life that he doesn't particularly care, which makes sense; he seems to be a war veteran with little to enjoy in his life. But there's "being done", and there's "a strange but relatively normal day". So: what if puppets being sentient is just... a thing? A rule that the world doesn't necessarily question? Puppets trying to hug people to death is definitely unusual, but that's the only strange thing.

That leads to another supporting question: who owns the studio where MFN used to be broadcast? The buildings, for the most part, are all well maintained with working electricity and general power. It's a little under kept, but the maintenance is there. And yet, there are no people around. At all. All of the offices are empty, all of the sewer areas are empty, it's just puppets all the way down. But why? The show isn't being made any more, so why are all these buildings empty? Shouldn't they be filled with new businesses, new people, new lives? Or at the very least, if no one owns them/uses them, then shouldn't they be knocked down and the land used for some other company? A newspaper mentions a company that bought up a lot of land and buildings for their own consumerist purposes, often kicking tenants out of their homes to do so, so clearly it's not unheard of to knock down/take over buildings that have no obvious purpose.

But the puppets still live there. The puppets do their own thing, wallowing in their accidental trauma, but otherwise not going out and attacking people. They stick to their buildings, and don't bother anyone. So is the MFN studio the "Toon Town" for these puppets? Do they technically "own" the lot? I recall a different note mentioning that the tools and materials of MFN were the "property" of a different company after MFN was taken off air, but the puppets are still in the building, wandering around. Why, unless they have some right to the land?

It could also offer an explanation of why Gordon is tasked with turning off the antenna instead of any other company: the puppets refuse to turn off the antenna and stop broadcasting their show over the network, so they have to send someone in to do it themselves. Not just anyone, though: a down on his luck old war vet with a bad attitude who doesn't seem to have any real importance to the city. If he does get killed, fine, send someone else to do it. If he succeeds, great! In fact, everyone seems so happy to see him successfully disable the antenna that he gets promoted to manager in the "bad ending", despite being on probation. Why is he rewarded so much for doing his job, unless it was really important that the show was shut off? Maybe it's a weird political statement? Or a symbol of human dominance over the "puppet class"? Whatever the case, it's definitely weird that Gordon is so well rewarded for shutting down the show.

Alternatively, in the "normal" and "true" endings, Gordon decides to help get the show back on the air, legally. In the normal ending, he specifically makes a note of how he has to keep his head down, not telling anyone what he's doing and eventually not coming back to the studio because he thinks he's done his part and can move on. In the true ending, he's found out and fired, despite disconnecting the antenna as his job required him. Why would he be fired for doing his job? Unless the wire disconnect was meant to have some bigger meaning? Are the puppets considered "second class", or "other"? Is their show getting back on air and gaining a following some sort of problem for the company Gordon works for? Some people like the show, and some people hate it, but it does gain a following.

A recurring theme in this game is "darkness/meanness vs light/goodness", with modern "adult" television being dark and mean and more "appropriate" in the post war world, and the old "children" television being a bright reminder to be good and friendly, which doesn't correlate with the world that the post war city has become. Maybe the puppets are a living reminder of the "good" in the world that adults are shielding themselves from? I don't know, I'm kind of rambling at this point.

Speaking of the war- isn't it weird how they just refer to it as "the war"? Based on the context and the dates, it's fairly agreed by the community that the war represents the Vietnam War, a controversial event that televised the dark realities of war to everyone with a television, which was mostly everyone. If it's supposed to be the Vietnam War, why not just call it that? Unless it's not the Vietnam War, not technically, in this universe? Since the puppets are living beings (even if they aren't exposed to television and the horrors of war until after the show stops), maybe there are other historical differences in this universe, too? Different lands, boundaries, people, etc?

And when the puppets- no longer supervised due to a world going dark from the atrocities of war- watch television to find what they're missing that other TV shows have, they get traumatized by what they see, and inadvertently incorporate it into what they know. They're impressionable, like children- or a sheltered class of people. They all get a little intense- insane ramblings and hugging people to death- but some of them go so far as to physically change themselves (remove their eyes, give themselves human teeth, turn into monsters) as a screwed attempt to gain the love and attention that the "darkness" offers. Unless someone takes some time to talk to the puppets, to let them know that there can still be good and light in the world, then the puppets will all remain on that lot, by themselves, without an outlet, and will possibly be destroyed when the now pointless studio lot is without purpose. That's what Gordon's for: someone who has also been troubled by the darkness of the world, but can take the time and empathy to be a little bit friendly.

Sorry for the long post; it's possible there's more stuff I forgot to talk about, or some information I got wrong, but feel free to add your thoughts to this! I need to go to bed, I have work in the morning.

[fictionadventurer]

🐵

[boofbuck]

Thinking thoughts about alpha Robin again 🥰

[thingsmysplattershotjrtoldme]

also if they don't make sarcastic "oh look it's our fearless/intelligent/whatever leader" jokes whenever Shiver does something dumb I will be sad.

[acekindaneat]

Vee I hope you know your art is doing things to me!!!!!

i hope you know u made my whole day so much better with this ily thank you please take this serirei doodle i did for u

[kessielrg]

"Are you alright?" Aqua turned to see Terra come toward her. She had never felt so relieved and angered at the same time. "Ven is… with Sabrina." Aqua told him. "Pleasantly." "And you can feel it?" This man must be an idiot. Aqua bit her tongue, pursing her lips together and giving a nod. She contemplated telling the hunter that she could almost hear it too, but admitting as such would probably unravel her modesty by proxy. There had to be another outlet. There had to be a way to stave off Ventus's hunger for Sabrina with a different kind of hunger… A hunger Aqua could control- if she wanted to. "Terra… You can help me." Aqua said, holding his hand toward him. "How?" the man questioned as he moved closer.

-

bitch you gonna die xD

[coldgoldlazarus]

Think I have the loose beginnings of a proper Bionicle G3 concept.

Similar vibes as my "Mata Nui Prime" idea, (which was sort of an expanded version of the early years, same island but more villages and some G2 characters) but hewing less closely to G1's established lore overall while trying to be a coalescense of all the different arcs' vibes, rather than just retreading 01-03 specifically.

The Toa Mata play a more indirect role as figures of myth, revered but not believed to be real, while Jaller, Hahli, etc. are the main protagonist team, just recently made Toa, after some threat emerges that the [Protectors] and Turaga aren't powerful enough to deal with.

They must work to defend their island home from the many threats in the surrounding archipelogo, deal with fallout from the complex politics of other island-states and factions, and get to the bottom of a brewing mystery at home as part of a greater overall arc.

Eventually, they learn the original Toa in the legends may actually be real, and undertake a quest to find and reawaken them, and work together with them to save the day.