one of the things that really bothers me about modern franchises, and in particular over the last 5 years or so, is their refusal to commit. what i mean here when i say this is that it's not uncommon for a major franchise to make a decision, whether about the plot or the characters, that should have had huge, world-changing consequences... and then just never address that again or worse, immediately go back and undo it. and i'm gonna pick on star wars and the mcu here because those are the two big franchises i'm into at the moment (and i think they're kind of the worst at this), but i don't want you to walk away from this thinking that this is solely a disney thing. i've seen this happen with game of thrones and supernatural and plenty of other non-disney franchises. spoilers ahead, you've been warned:
in ant-man & the wasp quantumania, scott and hope make the life-altering decision to stay behind in the quantum realm and defeat kang instead of going through the portal to return to their world. this should have been a huge meta decision for the mcu, and when i first saw it in theaters, my immediate thought was wow, what is this going to mean for the mcu going forward? are we going to get a movie/miniseries about scott and hope helping to rebuild the quantum realm? how are cassie, janet, and hank going to react to the losses of their loved ones (in some cases, for the second time)? is cassie going to become the "first" young avenger because she has to take her father's place among the team lineup (and i only say first because as of this moment, none of the other young avengers introduced to the franchise are official avengers yet)? except nope, because less than 2 minutes later, cassie had fixed the portal that had broken way back at the beginning of the movie and brought scott and hope back.
and it felt like such a cheat. i was so disappointed in that theater, not as someone who was invested in these characters on a personal level (because yay, cassie gets her dad back!), but as someone who has spent years investing themselves in the story of the mcu. what was the point of wasting screentime on scott and hope accepting their new lives in the quantum realm if it was just going to immediately be undone? the entire scene could have been cut to scott and hope making it back bare seconds before the portal closed and it would have had the same emotional impact. there was nothing added by making scott and hope (and us) think that there was no way back only to rip the rug out from under us and go "gotcha! you really thought we were gonna give this movie a sad ending? haha! you're so dumb!"
and this isn't the first time the mcu has done this. one of the biggest complaints about endgame was the decision to set it five years in the future with no consideration for how that would actually change the setting of the mcu. characters were brought back to the exact place they disappeared from with no consideration for how things might have changed in the interim five years (like planes that weren't in the air anymore, buildings no longer standing, even just something as simple as a chair being unoccupied). and then the mcu didn't even really have the courage to address how this would have shaped the world other than a few jokes and making the bad guys in the falcon and the winter soldier people who cared about how the world had screwed them over during the blip.
and things like this happen over and over and over again. the accords are put into place in civil war, but by the time we get to she-hulk, they're gone with no explanation because, as best as i can tell, the writers didn't want to have to deal with the worldbuilding that went into the accords. gamora is killed in infinity war, but heaven forbid quill not have an emotional investment in a film he appears for maybe 10 minutes in so now she's back in endgame. steve got to go live in the past with his ex-girlfriend (which is in itself a refusal to commit after the mcu both gave her a different husband and had the woman herself tell him to move on) but we need to establish that messing with timelines is bad because that's what the entire next phase hinges on so actually his ending was predestined and it's only everyone else who can't change time. whoever took this entire town and also wanda hostage and forced them to live out a sitcom fantasy is bad and needs to be stopped but wait, it's actually wanda and she can't be the bad guy yet, we need her for doctor strange 2, so actually everyone's going to defend her now and say that no one else could ever possibly understand her grief. thor has decided to accept responsibility as king of asgard, but we can't use him for any more movies if he's stuck in asgard, so actually he's decided to pass it on to someone whose entire leadership capability is developed offscreen. i could list more examples but this is making me angry, so let's move on to star wars instead.
with star wars, i look at first the oft-quoted meme, "somehow palpatine has returned." yeah, i shouldn't really need to go into detail on how that counts as a refusal to commit but. the last jedi was a study in how johnson refused to commit to anything that abrams had laid down in the force awakens, but rise of skywalker was almost like abrams had looked at the franchise and said "screw you for taking it away from me, i'm going to come up with the most bullshit stuff just to spite you for doing that in the first place. and i'm going to start by undoing the most important plot point of the first trilogy: the emperor dies." and yeah, disney's kind of tried to salvage this by dropping hints into the bad batch and the mandalorian about cloning, but that only really works if you're watching the franchise chronologically and not considering that both of those series came out after rise of skywalker.
and then there's the mandalorian, my sweet summer child, who is, in my opinion, the worst at backtracking their plot points. i'm not entirely convinced that any of the higher ups for this show really knew what they were doing when they started working on it and i'm not convinced that they know what they're doing now. yeah, there's the tie-in to the last season of clone wars, but the mandalorian has managed to walk back pretty much every single major plot point it's had. din is this legendary warrior who can't be beat, but no one will watch this show if he defeats everyone too early, so he's constantly getting beat up (tbf, sometimes some of the fights he loses makes sense like the krayt dragon and the mudhorn, but a lot of them don't. at all). moff gideon is dead, no wait no he's not, now he's imprisoned, no wait no he's not, now he's definitely dead, you can totally believe us this time guys. grogu can use the force and must be placed with the jedi, but wait, the only person still actively teaching the way of the jedi is luke and all of his students will be brutally murdered ten years from now, and we can't have that, everyone will be mad at us for killing off such a cute character and no one will buy baby yoda dolls (and also we have to set up luke's character degradation from hopeful, believes-in-love cinnamon roll to "i'm going to kill my nephew") so in between seasons let's have grogu decide to go back to din (and don't even get me started on how frustrating it is that a casual mandalorian watcher also had to watch book of boba fett to understand why grogu is back). din has the darksaber now which makes him king of mandalore, that's totally going to be important and what the entire series has been building up to, right? wrong! he might have spent the first two seasons making connections, learning about the world outside his sheltered upbringing, and demonstrating the various qualities that would make for a good leader, but the entire third season will be about din realizing that actually he's super unworthy and the darksaber should actually go to someone who... saw an animal in the water.
and it's really, really frustrating as a viewer! because how am i supposed to get invested in any of these plot decisions when they almost always get reversed? why should i care that mj and ned have forgotten peter when ant-man 3 has shown me that they'll remember him the next time they're all on screen together? why should i care that tech is dead when half of the last season of clone wars was about how echo was actually alive? if none of these decisions have any permanence, then where are the emotional stakes? why should i watch your movie if all you're going to tell me is that nothing matters?
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Hello, all!
I wanted to share this here because when I'm not writing indulgent furry stuff, I'm making tabletop systems with a couple good friends :)
Agents of Fate is a system we designed to emulate the snappy, back-and-forth action of a choreographed fight scene, as well as the out-of-order, suspense-filled storytelling of movies like Bullet Train and Glass Onion. Another inspiration we wear on our sleeve is The World Ends With You: we thought the urban fantasy aesthetic was perfect for the kinds of stories we wanted players to be able to tell!
We geared it toward one-shot sessions and self-contained storytelling, so if you want to make a new, hyper-niche, gimmicky character for every mission, if you want to introduce new players to something rules-light, or even if you want to treat the system more like a party game, we hope it'll be a good match for you.
It only ever asks you to roll 2d4, so turns go by quick and there are plenty of opportunities to interfere with the other players at the table without it turning into a slow mess of simultaneous interactions. Plus, you can get narrative bonus points for MacGyvering environmental or circumstantial details into your actions!
Please check out the Kickstarter page!
We do a much better job explaining the system's highlights in the properly-scripted video than I did here with my little attempt at marketing, lmao
We hope you enjoy it!
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New indie animation project is in development and it needs your support! :D
We are a small team of artists currently creating The Epilogue of Endings, an 11 minute pilot about four strangers finding family during the apocalypse.
To support the official Kickstarter campaign, be sure to click the link in our bio! You can also visit Rainbott's YouTube channel for more information, where we will be premiering the video launch tonight.
Share this around and tell your friends! We're gonna make a cartoon! :>
Character art by @derpygirl_draws
Kickstarter hosted by @rainbott
Environment art by@twilight_sketches(on insta)
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once again thinking about limes very quick descent into madness surrounding the time when he realizes he might like mochi after the first night he spends cuddling with her. always love the slow start of "Okay she's kinda cute I guess. She has cute tendencies sometimes. There, you happy? I admitted it. Now leave me alone." which in the span of about 3 days RAPIDLY spills into being unable to think about anything else to the point he can barely hold a conversation with anyone because his mind keeps daydreaming back to holding her in his arms. All day feeling like "I can still feel her warmth on me..." and has to keep being snapped back to reality by everyone around him
he can barely even talk to mochi because he keeps thinking about it. has no idea what to say to her the next day. is very quiet. and mochi thinks hes mad/uncomfortable with her now, since hes always so standoffish to girls at school she thinks she might be in that category now. so the next night while lime is about to go to bed, STILL THINKING ABOUT IT, and he gets a text from her that reads something like: [Hey lime!! about last night- sorry i fell asleep on you!! i know your not super comfortable with that stuff!! it wont happen again!! 🙇♀️ see you tomorrow!] and he feels his heart drop to his fucking stomach. lays there reading it back over and over with his thoughts a mix of "Yeah I guess that makes sense, it happened by accident. It was never gonna be a repetitive thing." vs "Won't happen again...? Like....ever? Are you fucking kidding me? I never get that ever again?"
eventually after an hour of tossing and turning, thinks up some bullshit excuse to sneak over to her house and climb up over her little bedroom balcony, knocks on her window and says something like "Hey uhhh you forgot one of your socks over at my place so I brought it back." or something that is absolutely stupid and could've definitely waited for the next day. manages to weasel his way into crawling into her bed with her because every bone in his body is telling him to.
huheuheu love to see lime aching for her eheheh
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Ayo we're officially halfway through the @folkloretarot kickstarter so I can share my Full Piece, the kick-ass Death card as represented by the Phoenix!
This deck is full of a huge array of stunning cards that are so so fun to look at - a bunch are visible on the official twitter as well as the kickstarter page so I recommend stopping by to check em out!
As for the kickstarter we still have 15 days left and are less than $300 from our FINAL stretch goal!! You know we’re getting those fancy tarot mats hohoho
Link to the campaign below~
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/catstealers-zines/of-folk-and-fable-tarot
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24 hours left on my Kickstarter!
And JUST hit 20k - the amount needed to unlock the stretch goal me designing set pieces for the paper dolls PDF!
I'm so happy to have hit this stretch goal it's the one I really wanted
The black box is what the books arrive in! And each book will have themed outfits and a themed playset in the PDF for you to print and cut out!
But it's MUCH easier (seriously, trust me on this) to make me print and cut them out for you if you want to play with them, which is an add on!
Plus, it makes each box come with little themed cuties to play with! It's just fun
And, of course, the books!!! Aaa they are SO gorgeous, I can't wait to put together little themed boxes all year!
I love my comic so much, and if you love it too or want to get to, back the Kickstarter! 24 hours left!!!
(and, if you happen to see this after the Kickstarter is over, the Kickstarter page will have a link that will lead you to my site where you can preorder books!)
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So I put down my pledge for an Angel Hare plush from the Eastpatch kickstarter (which cost a fair bit due to the shipping XD) but now I’m conflicted on whether I should add a Zaggy plush to my pledge.
I don’t want Angel Gabby to be lonely and they would look SO CUTE sitting on a shelf together.
….I cannot be trusted with money when cute plushies are involved. The minute Build a Bear brings back the Snorlax plush with the pyjama set I’m a lost cause.
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