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#SO MUCH THERES AN ENTIRE FAN WIKI PAGE ON IT
bardace · 6 months
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just watched a promare video essay where they said that they knew that the fandom shipped galo and lio but they didn’t personally see it, and while I respect not interpreting relationships as romantic, I don’t really understand how you could interpret two guys saving each other and then getting shirtless in order to “combine their wills” and exploding into a heart-shaped flame as just guys being pals
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cheylouwho · 10 months
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i’ve been thinking about this a lot lately and i want to hear someone from SPHS’s thoughts.
i know you’ve noticed the “tiktok” fan base- the ones that only watch clips of the show and then say they’re fans. i read one of your posts talking about these types of fans and making blatantly incorrect headcanons. that’s something that bugs me, but another thing that bugs me is the fact i do not believe south park is tiktokable. i’ll use family guy as a comparison for my points.
first of all, compared to family guy, the humor is different, pretty much everything they explained in the cartoon wars two parter explains what i mean, m&t are not fans of interchangeable jokes and are able to give characters emotional progression throughout the episode. that’s one huge factor, i hope you get what i’m trying to imply with that. m&t are passionate about their story telling and it pays off in their episodes. i know not EVERY SINGLE joke follows this, but there are jokes made better by understanding the characters and the circumstance of the episode. the episodes work best in their entirety. (that was difficult to explain so i fear it can be misinterpreted easily)
the characters are another thing i want to mention. i watched the episode TSST with two friends awhile ago, one of which who had never seen an episode and didn’t understand cartmans character. she kept asking questions about him, or said how weird his hitler obsession was. the other friend hadn’t finished south park and said he hated cartmans character and it’s hes one of the bad pieces of the show. i believe even if you don’t like cartman as a personal preference thing, you should at least appreciate him as a character and his placement, it’s hard to understand him (despite us watching an episode that really dives into him, they still didn’t know much about him before). with family guy, one episode is enough to grasp the character, hell, even a single scene is i’d say, while m&t are very good at developing and fleshing out character personalities over time. it’s why they can pull off making sad episodes (like kenny dies and assburgers), heartwarming episodes (like tweek x craig and even bits of episodes like in raisins) all while still being a comedy show. they understand how to make the characters react in a way that can make you feel something while maintaining a good amount of jokes in the episode.
i dont know, theres more i could add but i’m just writing whatever comes to mind first so it might make no sense or it might be wrong. also, i’m by no means an old fan. i’ve rewatched the series quite a few times, watched commentaries, researched through wiki pages and am constantly trying to better my knowledge of the show, but i know i’m not quite there yet and could just be making a mistake GAHAH
No anon, I actually totally get this and agree 100%. SP as a show is not something that works well with out of context clips (and even then, the ones that do work are usually from very early in an episode before the plot fully gets established and stakes as drawn). Until pre s18 when they started soft continuity (and then s19-21s full continuity, after that is a whole other discussion entirely), the shows syndicated nature did make it easier to hop into any episode and watch it in its entirety and enjoy it without much prior knowledge of the show or it's characters. However, even then, you really needed to watch the *whole* episode to get the big picture of it's message.
And I get it, SP full length episodes are not as accessible as they once were. People these days don't know how or aren't willing to pirate things if they don't have the streaming service SP is hosted on, and beyond that, south park used to be free to watch on their website. Like, that's how I ended up catching up on the show when I finally decided to take it all in other than a handful of episodes and scenes I'd seen during my childhood back in 2013. It was all entirely available (save for Super Best Friends, 200 and 201, which I had to go track down on other websites) for free, with ads unless you used an ad blocker, right at your fingertips. And that's how M+T wanted SP to be consumed, because they explicitly noted that they didn't care about making money on streamed episodes, they cared about getting their show out there. (I will have to go find that interview, I know it's somewhere).
But still, regardless of that, you're right. SP is not something that you can consume short form as a brief tiktok video, and that's why I think we have newer fans with such big gaps in knowledge that seem like they would be easy to fill in. It's not that they're being willfully ignorant, they're just being fed a very piecemeal version of the show through social media, which is how we get people thinking Pip is a he//llpa//rk OC (augh!!! dont get me started) instead of realizing this dude was actually in the fucking show, or headcanons that are very easy to contradict with canon itself by watching like 3 episodes. That's not me knocking HCs btw, go wild and do whatever you want, but these people don't even know it's ooc, and that's a little troublesome. I've made some outlandish character decisions in the past but I at least KNEW they were not evidence based.
What that means for the fandom down the road I don't know, and its made a lot of discussion and analysis more shallow-- it's so hard outside of my SPHS friend group to find good breakdowns these days. I'm hoping maybe something will change, but who knows.
TLDR fuck tiktok and its watering down of media
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boypussydilf · 1 year
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i wanted to do a lightning round of assigning metal bands to keroro platoon members but it's too long for a comment so i'm making it a really long ask instead
keroro: this is the one you said doesn't like metal right? either way you're right this dude listens to weird al the heaviest song he's ever liked is his Angry White Boy Polka
dororo: i already did this one i gave him gothic symphonic stuff. and i wanna addendum power metal as well. i cant name any bands off the top of my head but you know the type where a guy dressed like a viking sings about slaying dragons and shit
tamama: easily the frog i know the least about but i skimmed his wiki page and decided he really likes scandinavian black metal. i'm also gonna project Strapping Young Lad onto this guy it's not black metal but i think he'd enjoy the album Alien
giroro: i think he likes the older metal genres. heavy metal and NWOBHM, generally more hard rock stuff than what you'd first think of as metal. AC/DC and Judas Priest vibes
kururu: torn between making him one of those thrash purists who picks sides with one of the Big 4 (Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer & Anthrax) and calls people fake fans for liking other subgenres, or assigning him Babymetal/kawaii metal for the lolz. why not both? both is good
hopefully tumblr doesn't eat this for being a small essay. enjoy
SCREAMING. LOSING MY ENTIRE MIND,. I DONT KNOW HOW TO REACT TO THIS (IN THE GOOD WAY) (STUNNED SPEECHLESS IN AWE) youre so fucking right. not that i know what most of this means or easily could but like *shaking your hands* youre right and i know it. Crying . i need to spend 500 years thinking about keroro who listens to weird al. in a better timeline theres a sgt frog weird al guest episode. Yeah kururu would defend kawaii metal to the death (however much you can defend something to the death without standing up or raising your voice) and everyone else assumes its like ironic or something but he really means it. I did enjoy
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So for AAW this year i decided to explore some QPRs since ive never done that before (does that even qualify for AAW?). So without further ado (i'll try to keep it quick) these are the relationships that give me the strongest QPR vibes theres no particular order just a attempted color gradient
1. Joan Watson and Sherlock Holmes (Elementary)
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Ive talked about these two before for AAW 2019(?) so ill touch on them briefly (and i'll put the link in the notes). Disclaimer: This is a show that i watched in bits and pieces, almost primarily from reruns. The longterm focus of this show is clearly these two's relationship. In the beginning they were stuck together, and then they chose to be together but they still had issues, at one point they stop talking to each other (like legit didnt talk one of them moved away and they didnt stay in contact), were together with issues again, and then they were primarily okay, and at one point left/fled the country together even though only one of them had to. Throughout the show there are these spoken moments that really tell the depth of their relationship, from either them or other characters. Off the top of my head theres "you named a species of bee after me," "i think shes the person you love most in this world," "i consider you to be a exceptional person. So i make a exceptional effort to accommodate you," "this is your home," "i'll stay. Of course i'll stay," and that line in the picture. They dont seem to struggle that much when it comes to describing their relationship and believe "partners" sums it up best. They live together, see each other as the most important/favorite person in their lives, and are raising a child together.
2. Aziraphale and Crowley (Good Omens)
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Im not sure these two count, being not human and all. In the show and in the fandom (and i assume the book) people, and they themselves, struggle to understand their relationship and on top of that they arent supposed to be on good terms with each other (one is a angel and one is a demon). Are they friends? Enemies? Boyfriends? Best friends? Crowley at one point comes to the conclusion that never having Aziraphale in his life again is worse than the end of the world. One of the definitions for a QPR is "undefinable relationship," which fits nicely here.
3. Mako Mori and Raleigh Becket (Pacific Rim)
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Disclaimer: i havent seen this movie since it was in theaters and therefore dont remember much. If i had know what a QPR was when i saw this movie it would have made so much more sense. One of the background themes is strong relationships (you cant power the robots without it) which includes familial, platonic, and romantic. These two were left ambiguous, all the shots were framed in that typical "they're gonna end up together by the end" way only for nothing to confirm it at the end. It was wonderful. You follow two different gendered strangers who become super important to each other and share all their darkest secrets and memories and give each other soft looks to not end up dating at the end. Wether or not you see it as a QPR its a movie that doesnt erase m/f friendship and thats just fantastic.
[sorry guys its 2am now these paragraphs are gonna be a little shorter]
4. Carol Danvers and Monica Rambeau (Captain Marvel)
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Before Carol disappeared it was clear she was living with Maria, her best friend, and helping her raise Monica, Maria's daughter, from a young age. Its clear her "death" greatly effected them.
5. Maka Albarn and Soul Eater Evans (Soul Eater)
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I recently rewatched this show and their relationship on the surface seems like Two Kids Who Are Opposites And Dont Like Each Other Are Forced To Do Group Project type relationship but its actually so much deeper. They're roommates and best friends and each think the other one is the greatest person they know. They both have arcs centered around protecting the other. Soul states on multiple occasions that he's not into Maka, and Maka compares their partnership to her parents' marriage but never actually expects or acts like Soul is her boyfriend. Its clear they're gonna stay together for a long time coming.
6. Clint Barton and Kate Bishop (Marvel Comics)
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Okay so i could say so much on this but let me start this off with a big Disclaimer: i have not read these comics, all of my knowledge comes from fan works (like the entirety of ao3 and tumblr) and wiki pages. These two. THESE TWO. Ahhh i dont even know what to say because i dont know if this is a thing where fanon versions are entirely OOC. These guys have something like a 12 year age difference, so from the outside their relationship seems weird. People (real or fictional idr) keep trying to slot them into familial roles (big brother and little sister, uncle and niece, dad and daughter) but the truth is they're friends and partners. Ya its a little weird with their age difference but if they were both 10 years older most people wouldn't even notice the age difference. Clint makes it clear to us just how much he loves Kate. She's super important to him. Just looking for pics for this post i saw so many panels displaying how close they are. Idk if its canon or not but fanfic really gave the impression Kate basically lives part time at his place. These two give me vibes that they have the kind of closeness where they could cuddle on the couch together and it wouldnt be weird. And i mean full horizontal doing a balancing act in order to get them both to stay on the couch between the backrest and the edge so they could nap. Like if one of them was married their spouse wouldnt be surprised to wake up in the morning and find them both eating breakfast in their PJs. Like these two would kiss on the mouth but it wouldnt be romantic at all just a way to express emotion. They just give me this vibe thats led to so many headcanons and idek if its canon
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blookmallow · 3 years
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Can you do a rating on child animatronics like you did with the clowns
i sure can
welcome to animatronic nightmare preschool
theres a trend ive discussed about spirit before where all their female animatronics tend to be either the “old hag” type, or “creepy little girl” - and now that im thinking about it i actually couldn’t think of any boy characters ive ever seen. i dont know why this is exactly. theres something to analyze there but im not really sure what it is. i found a few but almost ALL of them are little girls. i dont know what to say about this but i did notice it 
there IS a boy in this group though: 
ring around the rosie
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enter the ritual 
just some nice kids having a fun time. it may be cliché at this point but i love the “spooky nursery rhyme” trope anyway (and y’know, ring around the rosie was already creepy to begin with. im not sure if the theory that it’s really about the black plague is actually true but its still highly questionable to include the line “ashes, ashes, we all fall down” in a childrens rhyme with no explanation either way) 
for some reason the fact that none of them have hands and its just their sleeves tied together is really funny to me and i dont know why. they also dont have feet and im not sure if its a technical limitation for convenience purposes or if they’re supposed to be little ghost children but it definitely comes across like they’re little ghost children who tied their sleeves together to try to feel like they’re holding hands which is very cute. 10/10 big fan of this one 
i already mentioned harriet hustle in this post, shes fantastic 
angeline
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i LOVE this one shes SO cute
i dont really understand how she's supposed to be scary, the description is like "she'll scare the lights out of your guests" or w/e but like, she's just. a kid who can see ghosts. she herself isn't even a ghost. i like her id adopt her i think she'd be a fun addition to a graveyard scene 10/10
abandoned annie
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ok technically this one is a doll but im counting her anyway, shes one of my FAVORITE spirit animatronics bc A) i love creepy dolls B) shes cute and most importantly C) her entire fucking face unhinges i need y’all to watch the video on this one its so good 12/10 ive said this before but animatronics that do something completely fucking unexpected are my absolute favorite 
broken girl 
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completely batshit. horrifying. shes actually initially standing upright and then snaps backward and screams and the image does not do it justice i highly recommend the video for this one. not much there as a Character but as “really effective way to scare the shit out of someone” its, i would imagine, incredibly effective. 9/10
there’s also menacing molly who looks similar and has the same kind of “facing away from you but then snaps backward” scare but is on a swing and sings “I see dead people, I see ghosts 💖i see the things that hate you the most” before she does her jumpscare which is incredibly funny to me 
double trouble
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creepy little girl trope meets creepy twins trope, at first glance i thought this was just like, discount grady twins (which it looks like they also have, in blatant knockoff form. they’re uh, not good) but it looks like their description backstory is that they killed their mother and disappeared with their rumored-insane father so its slightly different. one of their phrases is “daddy says we have to play outside :( he doesnt want any more blood on the floor” and i love it 
they have a pretty good sense of personality and character to them even if its not necessarily groundbreaking. 7/10
ellie hatchet 
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i love this one bc so many of the creepy little girl animatronics are just pretty much standing there being creepy but not ellie. she’s fucking DONE with all of you. you come near her she will swing an axe at your face. 6/10 not really a big stand out but i appreciate her undying rage 
lunging lily 
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shes spooky. she jumps out at you. thats about it. i dont really have anything to say about this one. that sure is a creepy little girl that jumpscares you. i like that she goes “help me... help me...” before she jumps out but i feel like it would be hard to get the timing right for that to actually work as a lure to make guests curious where the sound’s coming from since most of these are motion activated. anyway 6/10 shes just not very interesting 
johnny punk 
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one of the rare boy characters, i have actually seen him in store and just completely forgot about him because he was that uninteresting. he doesn’t really do much and his backstory on site is just like, “He's got a nice house, loving parents and a severe attitude problem.” 
like this isn’t an undead child back for revenge against those who wronged him or a crazed circus runaway or anything. he’s just a bratty kid. hes like a 13 year old who just saw Joker and has decided to make it his entire personality. this comes across less as a threatening figure and more just like some shitty kid who thinks he’s cool. i glanced at the comments on the wiki page and it turns out absolutely everyone hates him which is completely hilarious to me 
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2/10 nobody likes you johnny go do your homework and apologize to your mother 
i also found limb eating zombie boy, who is considerably better 
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gross. bloody. would probably be pretty effective if you had him like, placed among some boxes or something so people dont see him at first and aren’t expecting him there. pretty standard zombie. i dont have much to say. He’s Fine. 6/10
mommy’s favorite
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ive seen this one in the stores several times, I think we have her there now, and i just don’t. get it? she just moves back and forth with the “shhh” gesture and it’s like, ok, she’s vaguely creepy, but what’s going on here. she just says “don’t wake my mommy! she’s been sleeping for a long time!” so i guess the implication is that her mother is dead and she doesn’t understand, which is just sad rather than scary. the description says she makes mommy’s tea just how she likes it with five drops from the special skull bottle, which could imply she killed her mom, which would make more sense as a horror character, but if that’s How Mommy Likes It that implies the mother instructed her daughter to unknowingly poison her, which is horrifying but in a way darker sense than a spooky halloween prop lmfao 
anyway if i have to go digging into descriptions to try to figure out what this character is or what shes supposed to be or anything i just dont feel like its a very effective character design. and i did read it and i still dont really get it. 2/10 i just feel like im missing something here 
anyway there’s a bunch more variations of “scary possessed child” that are all basically the same, so im just gonna close this out with:
swinging skeletal boy 
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allo there, guvna 
look at this dapper little victorian child im gonna cry he’s so cute 
he just swings but has this surprisingly endearing soft little voice which COMPLETELY contrasts the weird shit he actually says. hes this precious little skeleton kid with a sweet little voice who goes “your skin is so nice :) can i have it? haha. that’s okay. I’ll take it when you’re sleeping” 
absolutely love animatronics with that “wait WHAT did that thing just say” factor to them i love this guy 11/10 good boy my new son 
i would also like to mention that people are also continuing to dunk on johnny punk in this guy’s comment section too fsadkflj people hate that shitty joker kid so much their hatred has bled into other completely unrelated swinging children
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autisticlalna · 3 years
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mmmmmmm the lore goes so deep my mind is going brrrrrr!!! this is all so cool im all mmmmmmmm, !!!!!!! Its So Cool!!!
ive now read the wiki page on the first wyatt masoning! i cannot believe how unbelievably cool the events are in blaseball! the whole frequency thing and some players didnt get their names fully changed back and!!! NaN!!! i see why you love NaN bc i now also adore NaN. that is. fantastic. AND i saw ur art on MaX's page its still so pretty ahhhhhh!!!!! bro all ur contributions to blaseball and MaX r so cool!!!! aw uve got such good ideas i cant wait to see the wiki page once its al done
aw but ye getting good pics of mc skins can be hard. if u know someone w a minecraft account they can equip em and then u can see them on namemc, which can give good pics, but then u need to know someone who has a minecraft account
a waffle house existing in another dimension is the least weird part of all of this lore. that fully checks out. MaX should enjoy xer time there, that is good vibes. and yeee, definitely all the wyatts hang out and vibe together!! do status effects never go away then? or they dont happen on purpose? i assumed any of the wyatts would have to, like, intentionally activate their echoes, so no echoing out of existence by accident
gfhfhdsHDSADD dont make me emotional abt original wyatt mason now the microphone!!! have hope????? i dont even go here and id cry abt that wht the hey!!! bro the coin is so mean, can't believe the true enemy to baseball was capitalism all along. do boss battles happen often? it sounds like a boss battle against the coin is upcoming
thats So Much Cool Necromancy Lore tho!!!! dude!!! this is the coolest baseball simulator in the history of both baseball and simulators!!!! the modifiers are so cool, im in awe of all the work the devs must do. that is such a cool series of things. BUT OH NO ON MAX ECHOING DEBT. that would be so dangerous. MaX isnt even the only one with echo, right, isnt it all the wyatt masons? that is so much potential risk, oh no. thank goodness for sure for siestas, that is a lot to unpack. this is all So Cool
GOD YEAH BLASEBALL RULES the most fun part abt the first Wyatt Masoning to me is like. it was a glitch! the Grand Unslam was a glitch bc the site broke and the devs had to roll it back. the Wyatt Masoning was a glitch that happened when the devs tried to do Something to Wyatt / the Tacos in general and everything broke. and now there’s this whole entire ongoing plotline that’s still a thing SEASONS LATER, and !! the devs are so fuckin cool when it comes to rolling with whatever the fuck happens. its like a ttrpg but its baseball
i love NaN so so so much,,, NaN is like. one of the fan favs fhgxkldhdflkf their lore is so cool and !! ive been super attached to them for forever now. which i lovingly blame my taco friend for, thanks aquelon MAN the fact that the Wyatts exist now so theres like 13 copies of who NaN Used To Be around and , fuckin. smth that came up in the lore jam was MaX is like, trying to figure out who xe is besides just A Wyatt, yeah? MaX looks up to NaN!! NaN has gone through A LOT, like a lot has happened in blaseball since the Wyatt Masoning and with how many teams they’ve been a part of and they’ve learned and grown and MaX hasnt yet because MaX didn’t exist until last season. so NaN is like, even though MaX is potentially older NaN is still more Mature and someone that MaX could Be Like and aaaaaaaaaaa
i have a mc acc so i should probably just. do that fhglxhkgf cant wait to forget to change my skin next time i stream mc so it’s two palanauts and then a blaseball
a joke-y thing is that MaX works at the Elsewhere Waffle House and might be the manager? bc of being stuck there over siesta. like, xe has nothing else to do, xe might as well. i have a semi-shitposty twitter rp acc for xem and xe ate grass bc xe was bored and Coolname Galvanic, pitcher for the Tokyo Lift, told xem to
status effects are like!! so there’s several kinds of mods, some of which are permanent, some of which only last a season, and some of which are like. have a chance to fade. Elsewhere is one of the ones that has a chance to fade, like each time the player that’s Elsewhere would normally have a turn there’s a chance that they’ll show back up. MaX got sent Elsewhere late in the season and we didn’t make it to the playoffs, so xe didn’t return before siesta and won’t have a chance to return until next season the Echo modification is permanent, but it only activates in Feedback and Reverb weather (w/ the Echo copying the modifications of the opponent team in Feedback and the mods of their team in Reverb) and when it activates it just like. Goes. in xer first game, MaX echoed like 3 times back-to-back and all of us were going WHAT THE FUCK???? bc that was us finding out what Echo DOES lmao. like any time MaX is up to bat in Feedback or Reverb, xe has a chance to start echoing and then will copy other players until xe gets an out or a hit. the lore on how intentional echoing is is a bit wiggly rn but i hc it as involuntary bc it really does just fuckin Happen and MaX gets stuck with shit mods fghlkxfhlkxf
IM GONNA FUCKIN CRY OVER THE MICROPHONE!!!!!!! i went through his twitter today bc it got pointed out that he mentions Wyatts, plural, a few times and i got super emotional bc he’s just!! he’s doing his best!!!!!! he wants to help his friends but he’s Stuck and the entity he thought he could trust to keep everyone safe has probably just tried to fuckin, either assassinate him or at least cut his connection!!!!!!! and we dont know what happened to him or if he’ll be back or what and aaaAAAA capitalism is very much the enemy. fuck the Coin, at least the Peanut was upfront abt hating us fhglkhdxkghf the Coin is like. gatekeep gaslight girlboss. mostly girlboss. so far the only boss battle has been against the Peanut-- there was like, two rounds? there was Season 9, Day X when the Charleston Shoe Thieves won the championship and then got fuckin Obliterated by the Peanut coming down, pulling together a team, and curbstomping them, and then Season 10 Day X was the Peanut kicking the shit out of the Baltimore Crabs before the Monitor and Jaylen, with help from the Microphone, were able to counterattack. that’s been the only instance so far, but the fandom is Definitely gearing up for a fight against the Coin. there’s some theories that the Absurd Amount Of Wyatts is gonna lead to another situation of like, the Wyatts are gonna end up being a team on their own? vs a Coin-led team. im not really sure on that one myself bc it feels too much like a repeat of vs the Peanut but either way the Coin is going the fuck down
the amount of work the devs do is honestly Staggering, especially w how much of this is practically on the fly? like, dude. blaseball is a fucking marvel. AND YEAH LIKE,, ALL THE WYATTS MASON HAVE ECHO,,, only MaX and Ivy are still in play right now but uh. you know how i mentioned the Receivers? so, it turns out, whenever a Wyatt echoes a mod, that mod gets copy-pasted across all the Receivers (there was, like, four of them. we are now down to three because Something Tragic Happened). so if MaX echoes Debt, which could be very possible if we play in Reverb weather because of us having a necromancied player on our team, that could get spread to NaN, Moses Mason, and Sixpack Dogwalker. NaN and Sixpack are both in Mild High rn, but Moses is in... Wild Low, i think? Moses is in Wild with Ivy. so, uh, even Wild ain’t safe
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meiizumi · 5 years
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Castle of Shikigami: An informal rant nobody asked for about my most obscure obsession to date
STOP i spent like 2 days writing this post and im only posting it on tumblr because it’s the one website i’m a member of that can hold the most text. i wanted to infodump somewhere...... read this to learn something i guess (´・ω・`)
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Bad voice acting is the Peak of comedy to me, and while I was looking for something to laugh at one day, I found this game called Castle Shikigami 2 for the PS2. The US version of the game's dialogue is rife with machine translated text that makes no sense, and awkward voice acting to boot. They even have voice actors saying the wrong lines, voice actors speaking implied commands, and a few voice lines are left in Japanese. Apparently, Roger Craig Smith (Sonic the Hedgehog's current voice actor) was in this game but I don't think he's even credited?! I think I know which character he voiced but I’m not exactly sure.
The history behind this game’s localization is REALLY weird. Castle of Shikigami/Shikigami no Shiro was originally an arcade bullet hell shoot em up game. The series was created by Alfa System and it was one of Alfa System’s main IPs. There are three main shmup installments and a text adventure game for the PS2, Nanayozuki Gensoukyoku. Nanayozuki was practically fanservice for whatever number of CoS fans there were back then. Each main game in the series was originally an arcade cabinet, but they were all ported to PC and home consoles. In CoS 2′s case, it came out on the PS2, Gamecube, and Dreamcast, but only the PS2 version got localized. The western publisher, XS Games specializes in publishing quality budget titles such as “Bass Pro Shops: The Strike” for the Wii. I theorize they didn’t care too much about the actual content of CoS 2 and were more focused on selling a game quickly for a low price, so they just machine translated it and adjusted a few things. If you’re wondering if Castle of Shikigami 1 was also translated this badly, the answer is No. XS Games instead removed all the dialogue from the western release of CoS 1, and released it with the title “Mobile Light Force 2″.
“Wait, what do you mean ‘Mobile Light Force TWO’ if Castle of Shikigami 1 is the first game in the series?” If you want to know what Mobile Light Force 1 was, it’s GUNBIRD; another shmup game, but by a completely different developer than Castle of Shikigami. I don’t know why they did that. What really kills me though is that both MLF 1 and 2 use the same boxart, which is COMPLETELY unrelated to the actual contents of either game. AFJQHJFOKLJFDS look at this
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There’s more hilarity behind Mobile Light Force that isn’t hard to find so you can search that up if you’re interested. But thankfully, Castle of Shikigami 3's Wii edition got more of a proper localization by Aksys Games.
Now I would bluntly say something like “stan castle of shikigami” but:
1. This series’ lore is insanely convoluted. It’s an essential part of this expansive fictional universe referred to as “Mumei Sekaikan” (I don’t know what this translates to in English) where there’s like, 7 different parallel worlds. There’s more obscure ass games and manga that are tied to this universe, and I think there’s even a tabletop RPG made based off it. Have you heard of “Gunparade March”? Most likely you haven’t; it’s an obscure video game made by Alfa System that also got adapted into an anime, and I feel it can be described as Mechas x Persona. One of the characters in CoS 2 is just one of the GPM characters going undercover to find her senpai who traveled to the CoS world. Or something like that. The 7-world universe isn’t explicitly talked about in the game but they make so many references to it without defining anything that it’s like you Must know about it. There is NO documentation in English about the Mumei Sekaikan I could find on the internet, although there is a wiki in Japanese where I got a ton of knowledge from (GOOGLE TRANSLATE IS MY TRUSTED FRIEND) I feel like I might be THE person in the United States who has the most knowledge on the Mumei Sekaikan, and I could go on another tangent talking about what I know so far (and who this one specific dude Shibamura Yuuri is) but I won’t.
2. The writing isn’t excellent and can be pretty Unwoke ™; the first game came out in 2001 and the third game came out in 2005 if that gives you a sense on what era these writers were in. As far as the games dialogue goes, the characters appear kind of flat. CoS 1 and 2 Kotaro (i refuse to use the official “Kohtaro”) is stupid and driven by JUSTICE to a point where it’s annoying. I can’t tell if Hyuga is trying to be a Ladies Man in CoS 2 and 3. Kim, a religious tae kwon do instructor, spends CoS 2 thinking about how he should atone for his sins, then he turns himself into jail at the end. Sayo’s backstory is that she was a shrine maiden raised as a “human weapon” to have no emotions and her only goal in life was to kill god and then die, something like that. However, after CoS 1, she gets a crush on Kotaro because he actually treats her like a human and Of course that’s what you’d expect from the main teen girl and boy in the series. In CoS 3, Sayo's character is mostly played out to be a major tsundere for Kotaro even though surprisingly HIS character in this game changed a ton compared to 1 and 2 (he had to kill an illusion of his older brother, who he learned actually died earlier, and now he has to kill an illusion of his childhood sweetheart... damb that shit sucks :/). He’s still stupid though
There’s a gag in CoS 2 that I can’t clearly remember where it’s like, Niigi makes Sayo and Fumiko, who are both romantically interested in Kotaro, think that he’s only into little girls? Meanwhile, Fumiko’s magic goes wrong and her appearance turns to that of a child though in response she’s like “hee hee maybe Kotaro will like this”. basically more On-Brand early 2000′s anime unwokeness than average. Speaking of Fumiko, she’s a 400+ year old militaristic witch who constantly teases Kotaro (who’s like 16 or 17) and she wants to marry him for his magical potential since he’s like one of the candidates for becoming God??? From the official CoS 3 character descriptions, “Her hobby is to steal the men from other women. Her second hobby is trampling upon people.” She canonically stole her stepmother’s husband from her stepmother (the 3rd boss of CoS 3). I don’t get how that shit would have worked
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3. The game itself is HARD af but to be fair I’m a scrub gamer. I can’t get past stage 3 on easy difficulty without continuing. Yes i bought CoS 1 on Steam, Yes it has a port on steam i feel like i should have mentioned this earlier
4. Besides CoS 1 having a port on Steam, CoS 2 and 3 might be hard to obtain legally. The poorly translated CoS 2 was apparently super cheap back then, but since it’s an old game, its value might’ve increased. When I tried looking up prices for English CoS 3, all the listings were like at least $40 and being broke I wouldn’t want to spend more than $29 for a Wii game in 2019... honestly I just emulated CoS 2. shout out to PCSX2
Last month I was desperate, bored enough, and deep enough in the Shikigami rabbit hole that I tried to find the manga based off of it online. The CoS manga only tells the events of the first two games so I still don’t really get anything about CoS 3, like who Mihee, Batu, and Emilio are supposed to be. However, the plot events also differ. For example, Roger Sasuke exists as a character in CoS 3 but in the manga he literally Dies. There’s 11 total volumes of this; 3 volumes dedicated to CoS 1 and the latter 8 (the “Twisted Castle arc”) dedicated to CoS 2. Only the very first 3 chapters were scanlated to English all the way in 2011. Fortunately, I did find the entire manga uploaded though............... in CHINESE. So you know what I did? I “read” the entire thing using my phone’s Google Translate OCR app to take pictures of each page and comprehend the translations. Of course I still don’t understand CRAP because of the Mumei Sekaikan jargon + machine translation but I understood enough to get emotionally attached to some of the characters. I wish I hadn’t. At least through the manga I learned that the characters DO have some depth and pre-established relationships. For instance, the reason why Roger Sasuke became a ninja is because when he first landed in Japan as a kid, he was getting bullied or something and he didn’t know Japanese then Kotaro saw this and told the bullies to stop. Then after Roy /sorry i mean Roger learned that he was set to home-stay with the Kugas in the first place, he decided to dedicate his life to Japan in order to protect Kotaro back. I think. DO U SEE HOW ABSURD THIS SHIT IS Anyway Nanayozuki takes place between the second and third games and sets things up for CoS 3. There’s a full playthrough of it uploaded to YouTube and I think it contains a lot of juicy lore, but it’s just too much to go over with Shitty Google Translate OCR. There’s also Shikigami no Shiro novels which apparently contain the most backstory, but I have a 0% chance of finding these online for free. Not to mention that these would ALSO be too much effort to Google Translate.
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in conclusion: You don’t HAVE to play Castle of Shikigami. Like, I’m not gonna recommend it for the content, but if you love shmups and are looking for a shmup game you haven’t heard of then I will recommend it for the gameplay (old touhou mutuals assemble theres a POWER-UP-BY-GRAZE MECHANIC). I’ve counted like 4 total fans outside of Japan that like this series for the story, and I don’t think that number is going to increase because I doubt CoS 2 will ever get retranslated and ported. I just want you to know that this series exists and that there’s a ton of wacky shit behind it besides the bad Castle Shikigami 2 dub. also if someone knows enough japanese or chinese and has an INKLING of interest in this series umm talk to me and help me decipher stuff
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I‘m kinda sad that the series is pretty much Dead though. This is the most recent piece of official Castle of Shikigami art I could find, and this was for the 2018 New Year. The next most recent piece of official CoS art I found was also drawn by the character designer Sonoda Miku all the way in January 2008, commemorating the end of the CoS manga serialization. Alfa System released a spiritual sequel to Castle of Shikigami on the Japanese Switch eShop called Sisters Royale, with character designs I think are still by Sonoda. By “spiritual sequel” I mean that it has some of the EXACT same shot types as CoS and the same mechanic where grazing bullets increases your power and score. This is the closest we’ll get to a Shikigami no Shiro 4. I wonder what the business decision behind that game was but it actually looks like fun and I want to play it so OK Go off i guess
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annieoftheshitposts · 7 years
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this post used to be a link to the old canons page but i’m turning it into a text dump of the revised one for people on mobile [or who have bad wifi/computers that the fancy schmancy script on the canons page wouldn’t play well with.] theres a lot sorry not sorry. here we go.
Canon Info
 Much more is said about Annie in external sources than the game itself, here's copypastes of all I know of and go by.
From the 3rd DLC Character Voting page:
As popular figures in nationwide folktales, a children’s television adaptation of Annie and Sagan’s adventures was inevitable. The show’s success lies in its pair of live action hosts, who are as convincing as their cartoon counterparts. Though what the public learns about the real Annie might surprise them. Annie is a seasoned fighter who has been around for a long time, acquiring many skills and powers along the way. Her sword is forged from a meteorite and can channel the power of the stars in its sweeping cleaves. Her right eye bonds her to her Remote Parasite and partner, Sagan, who grants her powers of a galactic motif. While some of her abilities carry more of a sparkly magical girl motif, Annie tries to execute them with the same sternness.
From "The canon info thread" on Skullheart Encore forums:
-Annie is several-century-old. Her immortality was gained when her parents wished on the Skull Heart so that Annie would never have to experience the hardship of adulthood, thereby making her forever a child. -She has had many different weapons and abilities throughout her life. - Sagan, her remote parasite. keeps her right eye in his mouth. - She’s physically not able to swear due to her condition - She is familiar with Double due to her experience fighting Skullgirls - Annie has encountered a lot of Skullgirls and has killed a lot, but not the same a lot. She’s seen the cycle multiple times and seen how they become stronger each time and is looking for the underlying source now. - The Annie of the Stars show is very similar to the Super Mario Bros. Super Show with live action segments with cartoons and PSAs and commercials in between. - Sagan can talk. Somehow. - Annie hides her immortality by getting a new hairstyle every few years. The show tells the audience that they have simply changed the actress. Eliza also pulls a similar trick
and finally some other misc. scraps that weren't covered above:
-annie has some kind of "super" or "powered up" form, in which she seems to fuse with sagan. it can be seen on her
move concept sheet, in the end of robo-fortune's story mode, and as a very tiny feature on one of robo-fortune's merch posters, but to my knowlege it's never really been talked about.
-she's been depicted with an "incognito outfit", presumably for going out in public and not being recognized by fans.
-sagan is named after renowned astrophysicist carl sagan. this isnt really relevant to anything but it's not on the wiki so i figured i'd share :b
-and this random pic of annie in the past with a different look, plus gun and minus eyepatch, apparently official art from the "digital art compendium". i haven't seen the source for this one myself though, and count this one more as speculative canon since that ingame image up there with her eye uncovered doesn't show a scar or any kind of damage from this.
-another canon fact about annie is she is strong and brave and i love her.
Headcanon (Annie)
this is pretty disorganized bc i come up with and revise random shit on a fairly regular basis, but the very least it should be all here and up-to-date. [though on this text post version i may forget to keep it updated oops.
she can still only normally see from the one eye in her head [and likewise probably has terrible depth perception lmao], but she can “project” her vision into the one sagan has if need be, during which time both he and her main eye are blind.
even though sagan’s vision is his own and she doesn’t actively “see” through that eye most of the time, the stuff he sees still becomes part of her memory and she can recall it if need be, though it’s far less tangible and kind of a surreal experience trying to do so.
the space where her other eye was is now just...space. like empty starry void stuff. yes, TECHNICALLY, you could put stuff in it but why would you. sagan can feel when something interacts with it and it’s really just weird and uncomfortable for both of them.as sagan is the source of their powers, the strength of her abilities is slightly dependent on her distance from him. something like long sustained flight is really only capable if they’re touching, but she still has ample firepower and ability to zip around for a pretty good range otherwise.
Not interested in anime
absolutely hates being called her full name; hasn't gone by anything other than "Annie" for longer than anyone that should be alive today should know.
part of her curse of eternal youth is remembering everything up until the point it kicked in and she stopped aging [i.e. when she was Actually a kid] exactly as well as if she hadn’t aged.
from that point however, a lot of it is hazy as shit aside from more recent times [as you’d expect from someone who’s been around hundreds of years]. this one's gonna be angsty as shit when i address it and you can thank @sandstriker for that. fucker.
also hates being restrained. by the concept sheet and beo's story, her fighting style is very kinetic and relies heavily on mobility; take that away and you get one very uncomfortable and very angry starchild. [this one's 'cause of y'all with the handcuffs asks. this is part of why she's so agitated rn.]
what's in the pouch? whatever is alternatively convenient. is it snacks? is it a quick incognito disguise? is it her whole entire sword? who knows. i think it might be infinite hammerspace in there.
i haven't put much though into this side of her story yet, but i've decided part of the mythos of the "annie of the stars" character as a figure of legend is that she literally lives, among the stars.
if there's enough folktales about her to base an entire show off of, i'm willing to bet she used to be less elusive when she was just about fighting skullgirls before dedicating herself to the whole "looking for the underlying source" thing.
Headcanon (Sagan)
tl;dr: as far as things go here, he's essentially a cat and/or younger sibling.
Sagan's canon information and characterization is basically nonexistant, so i got to do pretty much whatever i wanted with him lmao.
simply put, he's a little gremlin of a partner, but he is genuinely good-natured and a happy-go-luckly little dude. mischevious, loves to get up to Shenanigans, go off and hide/disappear to fuck knows where for several hours, climb and sit on tall things[or failing that, annie's head], etc. @sawkinator has described him, regrettably accurately, as "the Token Disney Animal Sidekick". he has a lot of mannerisms like an animal, but is still very much a being of at least average human intelligence. he's also surprisingly indestructible. far from invincible of course, but in canon he's been shown to be quite stretchy and...possibly have minor shapeshifting capabilities?? he's pretty much immune to being squashed and feels very little [if any] pain from most things. really, as far as i can tell he's pretty much a weird sentient plushie. like, if it's not going to damage a plushie, it's not going to hurt him; examples being: getting knocked back really hard or falling a long way? not a problem. fire? problem.
Sagan tends to be somewhat nonverbal and generally only uses a few words or short phrase at a time when he does speak, which sounds something like the voice clip below. that being how it is, he can be kind of inscrutable and more than a bit jarring to most people--though at this point annie's been with him more than long enough to be completely desensitized to it and doesnt quite get why anyone would be perturbed. fortunately, with that familiarity also comes understanding, and she can easily "translate" and articulate more from his expressions. this understanding is a two-way street, and on its other side is sagan's sensitivity to her moods. annie's not particularly...communicative of her emotions, but sagan can always tell when she's having an off day or something's bothering her, and is far better than anyone at helping her feel better. all things said and quirky antics aside, he and annie are exceptionally close and fiercely protective of eachother the moment it comes to it. they don't make a big deal of showing it outwardly, but they know they've always got eachother's backs.
he's taken quite a liking to beowulf as well, and beo defintiely shamelessly enables sagan's shenanigans.
as i see it, annie may be the passion and power of their operation, but sagan is the heart and soul. beowulf is like....comic releif and emotional support. not entirely necessary, but certainly welcomed to have around. yeah. listen im a big sap i just want them all to be good friends ok. i love them.
also sagan does like and watch a lot of anime.
Blog Canon
miscellaneous happenings that either have continued relevance/significance, or y'all just won't let die. there's not a overarching plot to this thing at all, but geez we’ve kinda gathered some history here huh?
taught sagan to say fuck [and other swears, in her stead]. he used to have to do it on command but he's gotten really good at filling in for her.has a
stoat fursona that beo helped her make. she thinks it's neat/cute but has no real attachment to it.
attempted to sue the crystal gems for ripping off her entire shtick [it didn't go well]
beowulf also taught her how to dab.
@sparkeletran is a nuisance and must be stopped
the 70$ pile of high school musical merch. sagan and beo both wear the t-shirts sometimes. she hates it. don't let her attitude fool you though this is actually the best and most important ongoing joke in this whole damn thing.
the first handcuffs stint. they’re gone now but they had a good ~30-post run, and she did take to learning lockpicking because of it.
this.
hey. guess fucking what lads. handcuffs ROUND TWO 'cause y'all just don't fuckin' quit. the first mini story arc sorta thing, in which she visits the cirque des cartes and has an aggravting encounter with taliesin. [currently ongoing][hopefully soon ending]
[[redacted for ""spoilers""]] due to said encounter with taliesin
sparkeletran is a nuisance,
"the official annie of the stars instagram is just cat memes but with sagan" it's canon but i haven't decided whether it's something she would have had already or a recent thing. [either way, hasn't been touched on yet due to the arc taking so long]
badart annie is sorta like her own thing at this point but nothing that happens with her is canon; she p much just shows up for exceptionally dumb posts. we did give her noclip though which is terrifying. on that note i may as well include the things that are Not canon but y'all won't let me forget
beo's animated belt thing. look. it doesnt talk.
spray-on boots.
the lawnmower weapon
uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh homestuck
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