#and yeah they are evil but they're also where all the intelligence and safety in the commonwealth is

[thewertsearch]

More confirmation that Vriska really did die - probably to Aradia - and is currently inhabiting her Dream Self. She's lucky she wasn't on Prospit when the Demon showed up, or she would have died for good.

ARADIA: its really weird that y0u keep antag0nizing me ARADIA: i c0uld snap y0ur neck with a twitch VRISKA: Yeah 8ut you won't!

You probably think that predestination will protect you, since Aradia won't violate it - but should you really trust your safety to the whims of the Alpha timeline?

I mean, it's already sanctioned the loss of your arm, your eye, and one of your lives. I don't think it likes you very much.

VRISKA: You saw the demon up close, right? You fought him! Or at least your doppelgangers did. [...] VRISKA: What was he like! [...] VRISKA: Primarily I'm interested in your take on his weaknesses, tactical disadvantages, stuff like that. [...] ARADIA: are y0u seri0usly intending t0 fight him

Throwing hands with a First Guardian is suicide.

They're not just powerful, they're also blindingly fast, and if the Demon fought intelligently, it could teleport Vriska into a black hole before she could blink. She simply has no answer for a technique like that - not unless she's been holding back this whole time, and that definitely isn't Vriska's style.

Vriska could always cheat, though.

She may be overconfident, but she's not stupid. I have no doubt that she's fully aware that in a traditional battle, she's screwed - so if she's actually serious about killing the Demon, she must have something up her sleeve.

For example, she could:

Cause him to use up his energy reserves, which might not actually be infinite.

Send him aeons back in time. We know they can live for billions of years, but how about quadrillions?

Trick or manipulate him into destroying himself.

Separate him from his First Guardian powers. Perhaps the MEOW code can be erased from his genes?

A superintelligent First Guardian like Doc Scratch would see through most of these plans - but a superintelligent First Guardian would have already located the trolls. The Demon is apparently on a rampage, and his attacks don't seem to be all that calculated - so I suspect he's a creature of instinct, like Bec.

It's also possible that the Demon isn't actually a First Guardian, and is just using their powers somehow. This could be a good thing, since he might be less dangerous than the entities he's mimicking.

But it might also mean he's Lord English, and I have a horrible feeling that English is significantly more powerful than a First Guardian.

Either way - good luck, Vriska. Make sure your corpse falls somewhere Kernelsprite-accessible.

She might only play Chaotic Evil, but I do appreciate that Vriska's willing to roleplay with Nepeta.

NEPETA: :33 < i changed my mind, why dont we just not do any roleplaying instead VRISKA: ::::(

Half of Vriska thinks she's better than everyone else, and the other half just wants to be included.

VRISKA: [...] I demand that you spend the next several hours mastering stairs. [...] VRISKA: [...] Now hop to it, and don't think twice a8out it, or I'll know. We don't want to have to do it the hard way now, do we?

Kanaya is ten feet away, and she's pissed off enough as it is.

Vriska had better be careful, or she'll be buried under a Load Gaper Pile to match the Horn Pile across the hall.

I love that Vriska's quarters are just, inexplicably full of spider webs.

Like, where did she get them? Did she alchemize them for the aesthetic?

Who knew that something so terrible was stalking the depths of this laboratory?

This poor chess mutant didn't, that's for sure.

Wait.

Literally?

God damn. Well, she clearly wasn't kidding about having all the luck.

Vriska, the Thief of Light, steals favorable outcomes from her opponents, leaving unfavorable outcomes in their wake. Light represents luck - or, perhaps, good fortune.

I'm not sure how well that gels with Rose, though, since Jaspers didn't allude to luck when he was explaining her Quest. I'll have to go back over his speech.

...wait. I just realized something.

This really was an impossibly lucky roll! I was suspicious of it at the time, but so much else was going on that I forgot about it.

The probability of this outcome was less than 0.00001%, and Vriska still forced it into being. The ramifications of her being able to do this are staggering. Vriska can make miracles happen, and she's now the most cracked character in the entire comic.

She might actually have a shot at the Demon. This changes everything.

#homestuck liveblog #full liveblog #act 5.2 #s72 #2792

[aro-aizawa]

lol i love dipping my toes into the fallout fandom but i feel like a fake fan sometimes bc honestly i don’t vibe w any of the factions at all so i hate making the choice to and eventually just end up going w the institute bc even tho they’re made to be super evil, the sole survivor is put in charge of the institute and controls it. no more mega evil bad guy.

#shut up danni #fallout #yes this includes your faves in the railroad #like realistically the only faction i like is the minutemen but it's just so TEDIOUS to play with that i almost never go to concord #like straight up i always bypass them directly and go to diamond city #and i love some of the companions i'd love some more if they weren't faction aligned tho #like deacon is one of my faves but the railroad are kinda pretentious #and DiMA's put down of them is true scaring synths into hiding and forgetting their struggles isn't freedom #and the brotherhood are dicks who force their ideals and beliefs on everyone otherwise they're put to death #not to even mention how backward thinking the brotherhood are when it comes to technology #'ah yes technology is dangerous and therefore only people who are in our organisation should use it' #???????? #no????? #again would love danse a LOT more if he weren't so 'the brotherhood is perfect and infallible' #maybs i'm like this because when i thought of new vegas i always thought that house was the ideal ending #after all the legion are savage and the ncr is a military leadership #if anyone's gonna manage a nation like vegas successfully it'd be house #and i get the same kind of vibes w the institute except they're portrayed more as evil #and yeah they are evil but they're also where all the intelligence and safety in the commonwealth is #just get rid of the head honchos and put those weak scientists to work for you #like they've ALL been raised outside the courseness of the wasteland #if you take away their synths they've got nothing else to hide behind #anyways bc the fandom is all 'x faction of nothing!!!!' or 'if your go-to is institute you're evil!' i always feel like a fake fan lol #tdlr; the companions are fun and interesting but half of them need to stop talking abt their faction

[sevdrag]

hey hey I appreciate your intentions with taking a softer stance on personal preferences -- it definitely helps show you're the bigger person and able to be compassionate and intelligently measured in comparison to terfs that can only ever spew stupidity and hate.

just be careful tho not to cede too much ground to terfs in the process. genital preferences aren't harmless, especially in cis lesbians where they're intrinsically an instrument of transmisogyny. the idea that penises are male is directly linked to our deaths, and cis lesbians become terfs when they constantly get away with expressing that idea as a harmless "preference" that's anything but. part of being a good ally is unlearning those genital -> gender associations completely, including personally.

I think a lot of this is about unlinking concepts in general. Obviously for a TERF, the concept that penises don’t always belong to men and vaginas don’t always belong to women is the first basic step to acknowledging that genderqueer people do in fact exist (and aren’t, as so many of them say, lying about it for Reasons). You start by learning to de-link a person’s body parts with their gender and pronouns (which also aren’t always linked!).

But there’s also this conflagration between genitals, sexuality, and sex acts that’s that needs to be disconnected as well.  The idea that penetration is always “male” and always done with a penis is just plain wrong. And I think that’s what I mean about personal preferences -- I have vagina-owning friends who just plain don’t enjoy penetration; I have cis lesbian friends who routinely praise the strap-on. Hell, I know cis het vagina-owners who enjoy anal, and cis gay dick-avers who don’t enjoy it. Sex acts aren’t inherently gay or straight or gendered at all, and TERFs can’t seem to wrap their minds around that one either. When I’m talking about preferences, I do mean personal ones, related to the sex acts people like and don’t like, and that’s 100% their business.

I do agree that it’s important to recognize that it’s a problematic area, yeah. TERFs defend their anti-penis rhetoric with the personal preference umbrella, and they’re usually using it to gatekeep and make inflammatory statements. But: Do I think my vagina-having friends who don’t enjoy penetration are TERFs? No, it’s just an act they don’t enjoy; they don’t then use the preference to apply harmful labels and concepts to penises, while TERFs then do. 

So yes, TERFs are full of this bullshit, and the fact that they use “penis = male = trans people are lying and are evil” should be reflected on and made more public. But I’m careful about not making statements condemning TERFs (which i like) while also invalidating other people’s experiences (which i don’t like). It’s a curious line to walk sometimes. Let me say: you’re not wrong, at all. And my careful-ness is intentional, but may sometimes be too delicate for most people to deconstruct. So I will make your point and mine both.

Speaking of de-linking things, the conflagration between personal preferences and fandom -- that’s also a mess. A big TERFy mess. I don’t give a fuck what kind of sex you like to have, or not have, with what kind of genitals and preferences and persons; as long as y’all are safe, enthusiastically consensual, and OSHA-compliant, go at it or not as it pleases you. But the second someone barrels on into fandom making “rules” about what gender / genitals / preferences / sex acts a fictional couple do or do not have... well, that’s what’s likely to get you on my radar. 

I don’t mean this to say, “oh, if only TERFs stayed out of fandom I would be okay with them”, because no. But fandom is a micro-example of the very real ways they also break into real life and do harm, for people who may not be able to broadly conceptualize the harm they do. If they do this to imaginary characters, just picture how they treat people in real life. 

(And sure, people are more likely to be nasty and cruel on the internet where they have the safety of anonymity -- and that’s why I do public bullshit callouts. Maybe it’ll make them think twice about doing it somewhere else in their life.)

Anyway, I am not here to be compassionate to TERFs. (But I am here to be compassionate to others.) This became very long and probably rambly, so the bottom line is, TERFs meet me in a Denny’s parking lot for an ass kicking.

#tw: terf #tw: transphobia #Anonymous #the good omens terf wank

[fly-pow-bye]

ThunderCats Roar - “Prank Call”

Co-Executive Producer: Victor Courtright

Supervising Producer: Nate Cash

Producer: Marly Halpern-Graser

Story by: Victor Courtright

Teleplay by: Marly Halpern-Graser

Directed by: Jeremy Polgar

I was expecting a lot less from this episode just from that title, that’s for sure.

This episode starts with Lion-O talking about how, as Lord of the ThunderCats, he will not give up on fighting the forces of darkness, as the camera is zoomed right into his face. Gee, I wonder if he's not fighting those aforementioned forces of darkness, but actually doing something really mundane.

Big surprise, that turns out to be the case, as Lion-O is repeatedly punching a TV trying to get it to work. He's not lying about the darkness, he's just fighting against the darkness of a non-working TV. There's more of a joke here than one might realize. This is a problem, because there might not be any TV stores on Third Earth!

Tygra, the down-to-Earth straight man of this reboot's version of ThunderCats, decides to bring out his secret weapon...a TV manual that says "How to Television." If the grammar error was intentional, it really wouldn't fit Tygra as the down-to-Earth and by-the-book voice of reason. Lion-O decides to take all of this to heart and read along with him...

...or, he can just hit it with the Sword of Omens, and let the Eye of Thundara do all the work. Hooray for simplicity! Cheetara may also have a point about there probably being TV stores on Third Earth, because it does get at least one channel that airs the Silverhawks. Kids, that's another show by the same people who did ThunderCats. Maybe if this reboot does really well, we'll get "SilverHawks Squawk."

Unfortunately, this fictional reboot appears to be truer to the original than this one, as it's too slow and boring to appeal to today's kids. At least, that's what everyone seemed to imply about the original ThunderCats. WilyKit and WilyKat aren't swayed by the majesty of Commander Stargazer, and they want to go outside and explore. Tygra tells them that they can't go out to the wilderness by themselves unless they have a chaperone, and he specifically chooses the guy that just hit a TV with a sword. Well, it worked, so I can't argue with that logic.

Lion-O immediately jumps at the opportunity with a audible and visible "heck yeah", but the ThunderKittens respond with an audible and visible "that stinks." Lion-O tries to make his case.

Lion-O: Just us cool kids hanging out, getting into trouble, fun stuff!

Wait, us "cool kids"? Are they or are they not going to go with the "Lion-O is still a kid in a grown man's body" plot point from the original? They never really confirm this either way, though Roar's version of Exodus implies he was an adult even when he was escaping from his exploding home planet. WilyKit and Kat say that if he's a chaperone, he's one of those grownups, with Kat calling him "basically the same as Tygra."

We get a zoom in of his brain at that comment, which is extremely small. This is funny because he's not particularly intelligent. Honestly, I'm surprised he even had a brain. Cheetara comes up, saying that it's also not that bright of an idea to let the "baby king" babysit them, and Lion-O responds that he's basically an adult, which still leaves the answer to the “was he calling himself a kid because he’s still a kid in a grown man’s body” question vague, and there's no manual for that.

Tygra then takes out a book called "How to Responsible". I get it, like how the last manual was called "How to TV". Again, if the grammar error was intentional, it really wouldn't fit Tygra as the down-to-Earth and by-the-book voice of reason.

But no, he's not going to read some stinky manuals; he wants to be cool and hip, not by someone who is literally by-the-book. Lion-O doesn't want to be just a chaperone, he wants to be the best chaperone ever and a general "cool guy". First, he's a cool kid, and now he's a cool guy. I guess that "baby king" comment got to him, if a little bit less than "you're basically Tygra."

Using his and Snarf's knowledge of the coolest things on Third Earth, he takes them out surfing on the waves of the Jade Lagoon, swinging across the Bottomless Gorge, and telling stories about how he convinced a caveman to give him a time capsule. Less than a minute into this outing, the ThunderKittens are already calling him cool...well, almost cool. He rubs his cheeks with enthusiasm at that.

WilyKat points to a big rock with a bunch of pointer fingers pointing to a sign that says "Danger! Evil!! (Bad Stuff Inside!!!)" When the exclamation points get more numerous with each warning, one knows its serious. Even Lion-O knows this, as we don't get the way-too-easy joke about him just ignoring the sign and saying, "well, it must be safe!"

Instead, he tells WilyKit and Kat that they should leave it alone. Snarf nods to this oath of safety, which is fitting for the original Snarf without the annoyance of Snarf's way of speaking. WilyKit is not impressed by this, and says "whatever you say, Tygra."

So Lion-O kicks through the walls into the evil "danger evil" location, and they find a giant crystal in the middle of it. Lion-O gives some pause to interacting with it, thinking that it must be the evil stuff that sign was warning about, but the ThunderKittens immediately go out and touch it. Lion-O tries to raise some concerns, but WilyKit suggests that he's becoming Tygra. They get a lot less subtle about this here; Lion-O outright says that there should be a manual for that crystal. He's just setting himself up for the inevitable "you're just being like Tygra" talk, and he shuts his trap.

In the opposite end of the "how much one shuts their trap" line, the crystal then lights on fire and reveals that it was calling Mumm-Ra. Those telephone sounds aren't just to sound cool; it turns out that this crystal is like a giant telephone, and it only has one number on its speed dial. Mumm-Ra answers what a "who dares to call the tomb of Mumm-Ra", and WilyKit and Kat know exactly what to do.

We get the titular prank call, with WilyKat declaring himself as the evil plumber. Lion-O, again, tries to get the kids to stop doing that, but they respond by reminding him that they did kick his bony butt. Wow, a hint at continuity? Say it ain't so! Well, okay, they're going to kick his bony butt in any other episode featuring him, so it could be a coincidence.

Snarf is even more the voice of reason even if he doesn't use it in this reboot, and Lion-O eventually tells him that he shouldn't be like Tygra. It's a good downwards progression for Lion-O in this episode. He starts out as kind of the voice of reason, and then he just decides to be the irresponsible caretaker that joins in on the mischief.

He does have a reason for that. After convincing Mumm-Ra to screw his cauldron to fix his plumbing problem, causing his lair to flood, they laugh it up. Sure, they angered an evil ever-living guy, but one of the kids called Lion-O the best chaperone ever, so it must be fine for him to do that!

While Lion-O has a brain that is easily breakable, Mumm-Ra's is a bit bigger, as he eventually realizes what's going on. This crystal has a few other abilities, including teleportation, as he's able to reach through the crystal and grab the ThunderKittens right into it. Turns out, this was a crystal he had that he forgot about, even with all the pointer fingers surrounding it, and he knows how to use it. Well, sort of; Mumm-Ra does seem to share Lion-O's hatred of using manuals, as even he doesn't know all the features of the crystal. He doesn't even know where he teleported the ThunderKittens to, only hoping that it took them somewhere nasty.

He does know one other feature of this crystal; it can store and give him evil energies, turning Mumm-Ra into his buff form again. He's not as big now, but at sunset, he'll be at full power. Lion-O would try to stop him, but he realizes that he can't fly, and he's way up there floating on that phone-teleporter-evil-storer crystal.

Mumm-Ra, using the crystal to fly away, goes right back to his pyramid, and Lion-O vows to go to the pyramid and fight him. But not before we get another close zoom-in on his face, getting a slightly off-model shot of him covering his mouth and saying "before Tygra finds out."

For the record, Cheetara guesses it, but Tygra and Panthro are kind of clueless. Hearing some commotion surrounding that evil pyramid outside, they go into the Thunder Tank and drive it, two of them assuming the baby king and the kids must not be there. Tygra may be the straight man in this episode and almost every other time, but even he is fallible.

Lion-O shows up at Mumm-Ra's lair first, and reveals that he found a way against the "but he's up so high" problem: use the robotic Snarf's ability to turn into a jetpack. Maybe he just assumed he had that feature, because he seems to do everything. One can even play video games on him, though they're too old-school for the ThunderKittens. Huh, I realize that's a continuing theme from the last episode, and thankfully for this episode, that's not something I'll say very often.

Unfortunately for Lion-O and fortunately for the TV-Y7-FV rating, he figured out that strategy too late, as the crystal has given Mumm-Ra enough power to be impervious to stabbing. The other ThunderCats show up, and they see that Lion-O just lost the kids.

Everyone knows where this is leading to, but Mumm-Ra has no time for "sorry I'm such a jerk" scenes. He immediately commands silence. Turns out, that crystal takes that as a command to petrify the others into not so flattering poses. One can see Tygra's now-sculpted behind, one cannot unsee it.

He then throws Lion-O and Snarf into the crystal. I would say that if he petrified Lion-O too, the episode couldn't continue, but it's more likely he wouldn't know how to activate that feature again since he didn't read that all important manual. Lion-O’s not the only person who needs to learn a lesson.

It turns out, the crystal teleported to this void, the same void that the ThunderKittens were sent to. They tell him that there's absolutely no way out of this void, which only contains carpet, and they begin to cry about it. It's really over-the-top, with them crying buckets of tears over this situation and blowing their nose with tissue paper. It's not played like a tear jerker scene, it seems more like a "huh, look at how much they're overreacting" joke.

They do throw in one plot-important aspect to that joke, giving it a point: Lion-O asks where did they get that tissue paper from. This scene isn't funny, so we can't use the Roger Rabbit excuse, but it turns out that paper came from somewhere. Let's see Mumm-Ra figure out exactly what it was, as he's gloating about how the ThunderCats are defeated without him even worrying about reading a manual.

Lion-O: You mean this manual?!

It turns out, manuals are good! That's the lesson of the day, kids: make sure to be educated, and Lion-O had to learn this by having every other option be unavailable to him. That's how lessons should be learned!

While he may have found out how to get out of the void thanks to that manual, the sun still sets, and Mumm-Ra's power is now at its maximum. He's big enough to use the ThunderCats base as a chair again. However, he does not c, because reading the manual gave Lion-O knowledge beyond knowledge, giving him the ability to just talk to the crystal to undo all of that evil stuff.

The joke, of course, is that this mystical crystal is more like one of those smart home devices. It's even activated by saying, "hey Crystal", and it talks to him like a Google Assistant or Alexa. See, even ThunderCats has to go with modern times!

We get our fight scene, and yes, one of the actions is a "mummy butt spanking" from Panthro. One can see Mumm-Ra's not-nearly-as-sculpted cheeks, and they cannot unsee it. Outside of that, it's a decent fight scene, with one particularly neat effect throughout it: as one of the evil actions the crystal did was give Mumm-Ra the power, he's constantly fluctuating between his skeletal form and his muscular form. The animation isn't as good as the last episode's, but I'd say the rest of this episode stacks up pretty well against that one. At the end, Lion-O shouts a one-liner to finish this whole scene, echoing the moral of the story:

Lion-O: You should have read the manual! (winks at camera)

Including that eye wink makes that line so cheesy, but I'll accept it. At least it's self-aware about it. He decides to destroy the crystal, which causes Mumm-Ra to revert back to his skeleton form as he falls into the cauldron. Wait, I thought the cauldron was broken! Never mind. In the end, the day is saved, and Lion-O has learned not to trust glowing crystals. That wasn't exactly the lesson, but Tygra accepts it anyway.

Also, there's a "The End" title card drawn in crayon? Cartoons seem quite satisfied with just ending abruptly now, including every other ThunderCats Roar episode I've seen. It's not like this was the end of a running joke, it's just there. Seems like a minor thing to talk about, but I just found it kind of odd.

How does it stack up?

This one feels very similar to Boggy Ben, but it feels a lot more connected. I had no real issues with this episode other than the over-reliance on wacky face gags, something the last episode lacked. It has good pacing, and there's even a moral somewhere in here that the kids could learn.

Again, I was wondering if I should give this one rating or another, but in this case, it's whether it's a 4 or a 5. So far, this is the best episode I've seen, including some episodes after this one, so I might as well give it 5 cats. Maybe there will be better episodes that will make me re-rate this one, and I hope that's the case, but as it stands...

Next, we meet Mr. Driller.

← The Legend of Boggy Ben 🐈 Driller →

#fpb tcr #fpb reviews #thundercats roar