pokelec

[pokelec]

i came here to save someone

#mob psycho 100

[pokelec]

If I had a nickel for every time an anime had a main character who was told to "read the room" in a scene that pretty much confirmed them being autistic coded I would have two nickels, which isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice

#dungeon meshi #mob psycho 100

[pokelec]

mobbu in chip bag

ok thank u

#mob psycho 100

[pokelec]

i need her

#dungeon meshi

[pokelec]

Congratulations! You are now a Magic-User!!

#polls #clockwork tattoos? 👀

[pokelec]

sorry for all the toshiro posting but i'm thinking a lot about toshiro and laios and how, even though it didn't happen cleanly or neatly, laios was exactly what toshiro needed in his life. laios's socially-awkward autism-brain, in the end, was not a bad thing -- it was something that, deep down, toshiro was jealous of and through that jealousy it showed him the path to being more open and honest with others.

if laios had been different, i don't think toshiro would have realized what he needed to change to be happy. he might have gone his whole life never being able to be himself because he was so convinced that he doesn't matter. because laios didn't just frustrate toshiro to no end, finally making him snap so he articulated his true feelings for once in his life -- he also told toshiro he cared for him, wanted to be his friend, and that toshiro needed to eat and sleep. that he needed to care for himself, too. and because toshiro accepted that he had his regrets and wished he was more open like laios... he was able to be more authentically himself.

idk. that's really special to me. that laios being the way he was wasn't bad, in the end, even though so often not reading social cues is seen as a damning negative. if laios hadn't been flawed, idk if toshiro would have ever come to these conclusions.

#dungeon meshi

[pokelec]

#alan wake 2

[pokelec]

Follow you into the dark

#alan wake 2

[pokelec]

Down

Down

Down

The

Rabbit

Hole

#alan wake 2

[pokelec]

happy rika pokemas day to all who celebrate

#pokemon

[pokelec]

i'm such a big fan of laios using being well fed as proof that he's serious. like there's so many techbros & etc who will use not eating breakfast as proof that they're productive & just in general, the idea of being "too busy to eat" is getting more common (which is exactly what toshiro is doing here!) but laios is like. no. i'm so serious about this i'm thinking about what comes next. i'm so serious about this i'm making sure my body can do everything it can when i need it.

the fact that everyone in the party took care of themselves & carefully planned out their route & when they'd take breaks is what made them so successful. they always made sure to understand their limits

#dungeon meshi

[pokelec]

Y'all, the world is sleeping on what NASA just pulled off with Voyager 1

The probe has been sending gibberish science data back to Earth, and scientists feared it was just the probe finally dying. You know, after working for 50 GODDAMN YEARS and LEAVING THE GODDAMN SOLAR SYSTEM and STILL CHURNING OUT GODDAMN DATA.

So they analyzed the gibberish and realized that in it was a total readout of EVERYTHING ON THE PROBE. Data, the programming, hardware specs and status, everything. They realized that one of the chips was malfunctioning.

So what do you do when your probe is 22 Billion km away and needs a fix? Why, you just REPROGRAM THAT ENTIRE GODDAMN THING. Told it to avoid the bad chip, store the data elsewhere.

Sent the new code on April 18th. Got a response on April 20th - yeah, it's so far away that it took that long just to transmit.

And the probe is working again.

From a programmer's perspective, that may be the most fucking impressive thing I have ever heard.

#science

[pokelec]

Animal reference photo compilation concept test!

I've been saving this project for a new website I'm planning, but that's been delayed by the grindstone of capitalism, so I'm going to set up this part early. This is the concept test for a repository of reference photos of a whole bunch of different species of exotic animals.

For every 50 or so photos I take of an animal, there's generally only a couple that I like and are also in focus and also framed correctly. But that led me to realize... all those slightly blurry or off-center photos are probably a great set of references for people interested in general shape/form/movement for their art! So I'm setting up of the idea before fully committing the time into making it happen.

I've been going through my photo backlog and pulling out the shots I think will be useful for art references. Lots of them show posture, facial movement, close-ups of feet or eyes, and walk cycles, but also other behaviors like jumping or drinking. They're not perfect - there's often stuff out of focus or reflections on the glass - but I think they'll still be useful for art?

The link below is to the Dropbox where I'll host these photos until I eventually get that new website/project up and running. Right now I've got folders of four species uploaded for this test: California Condor (CW for carcass feed photos), Jaguar, Komodo Dragon, and Moose. Please go check them out and tell me what you think!

~~WADTT Animal Reference Photos Dropbox Link~~

What I'm looking to learn from y'all is:

Is this type of reference photo repository useful / worth doing?

Do these photos work or are they too blurry/wonky/there's too many?

What things would make a project like this better? (Caveat, it has to stay on Dropbox for now).

If this turns out to be as useful as I'm hoping, and the photos work, I've got a whole bunch more species to upload.

#reference

[pokelec]

I'm seeing a lot of weird discourse about Toshiro and Laios, and nobody seems to have internalized the clear and wise lesson of the entire scene: that all festering conflicts within a community can be healthily resolved by punching each other's faces a whole bunch. We should all do that instead

#dungeon meshi #LMAO

[pokelec]

Saga Anderson, and Nordic rep in Alan Wake 2

Early on in Saga Anderson’s exploration in Alan Wake 2, she runs into Ilmo Koskela. Fiercely proud of his Finnish heritage, Ilmo gregariously makes note of Saga’s Nordic sounding name and the familiar design of her knitted sweater. Perhaps a fellow Finn?

Alas no, Saga’s mom is Swedish she informs him. Immediately Ilmo’s face falls. I’m not sure if it’s actually just the animated character defaulting to his resting face, but either way the timing is too perfect. Cue uproarious laughter from me. People in the Nordics are on friendly terms of course, but we gotta have the tiniest bit of… scornfor each other. All in good fun of course. It’s traditional.

Now, I’m Danish, not Finnish, but still, I feel right at home in the towns of Bright Falls and Watery in Alan Wake 2. All of the little nods to Nordic culture and mindset feel so wonderfully familiar to me. The melancholia, the irreverent sense of humor, the affection for the Finnish and Swedish quirks of the characters. The game feels all the stronger in tone and narrative for Remedy embracing the Finnish roots of the studio.

Which is exactly why it sucks that I almost immediately saw the charm of those narrative decisions weaponised against Saga.

I first watched the scene between Ilmo and Saga on a lets play when I was trying to figure out if I should finally dip my toes into survival horror and buy the game. Delighted by the writing I took a look into the comments to see if people were vibing as hard with it as I was. They were. But I also saw a comment that made me frown.

Paraphrasing, it basically went, come on, like hell a guy like Ilmo would make the assumption that a black woman is Finnish. There are a multitude of reasons why I think that person was wrong, mainly that Nordic people love it when we run into each other in other countries, but it also just made me sad.

Saga being black does not negate her Swedish heritage. Formally, she is American, sure (I assume, not sure how that works in the US), but she’s raised by her single Swedish mom, of course she’s going to identify heavily with that part of her herself. It’s a profound and essential part of who she is.

But hey, I’m a white potato Dane, so I’m not gonna argue that I know much about the experience of being biracial. I’m gonna stick to what I know, which is that Saga is a very moving and beautiful example of something that I’m actually not used to seeing much of - a story about connecting with your Nordic heritage and roots. And it’s part of why I love her so much.

When Nordic people show up in big, international productions, it’s usually as Vikings, and sure, it’s fun to see our wild ancestors, but contemporary questions of Nordic identity and heritage is not something I often see explored. Not even in our own productions.

So much of Saga’s story is about family. Fighting for her current one, Logan and Casey (and sure, David too, lol), and rediscovering her first one. Tor and Odin.

Her discovering her ties to Tor and Odin is profoundly moving and made me teary-eyed several times over. And sure, a lot of those ties are fantastical in nature, but they still feel very much grounded - and what makes us Nordic if not the ties to our myths and legends that Tor and Odin have made themselves the living avatars of.

While Saga’s mom, Freya, had good reasons for leaving the Anderson seer magics behind, seeing them as part of what made her family fucked up, she also cut Saga off from the fullness of her capabilities. It is only through Saga reforming her family, healing its scars and fully embracing the Anderson heritage that she becomes as powerful a parautilitarian as she is at the end of the game. That’s beautiful.

And in fact I think Saga being black only deepens the richness of those themes rather than negate them or make them irrelevant. Because yes, Saga’s story would have been moving if she was a white character too, but I am very well aware that a lot of biracial people of Nordic ancestry can feel alienated from that part of themselves. Not least because questions of who gets to claim a Nordic heritage can get pretty ugly around here. There are most definitely people who share the racist mindset of that commentator. It adds an extra dimension. Which is why seeing Tor and Odin’s eagerness to claim Saga as part of the Anderson heritage is all the more moving. Through her magics, she’s just so obviously an Anderson, and they’re so damn proud to call her theirs and fight alongside her. Because they all got that wild Viking blood in them. They’re part of her and she’s part of them.

Roger Ebert, the film critic once called movies empathy machines. I think games, when they’re at their best, can be an even more intense variation of that. Which is exactly why it baffles me that some people can play through Alan Wake 2 and still think Saga is a stunt-woke character rather than someone fully and beautifully integrated in the narrative. A narrative which, at its most basic level – in my opinion – is about the mystical bonds we form with each other and the rest of the world through art and love and blood and family and heritage. All the great horror doesn’t negate that either, it amplifies it. Kind of like that clicker.

#alan wake 2 #aw2 spoilers #man I love saga and I think her actress is fantastic as her #adds another dimension to her too

[pokelec]

the way dungeon meshi seriously talks about the importance of good eating is so so beautiful 😭

#dungeon meshi

[pokelec]

………………Marcille?

#dungeon meshi