See and NOW i'm in the buffy season 2->season 5 rabbit hole, which is infinite. thinking about how she tangibly fails giles by waiting to kill angel: she protects her heart for just a few extra weeks, and so destroys his, and after that their adult/child dynamic is shifted forever. After that she understands herself as the final arbiter of every fate-of-the-world back-to-the-wall decision. Never again will she throw a tantrum like she did in the Season 1 finale, demanding that he construct a different reality, that he make something be Not Her Job. After Jenny dies Buffy knows she is responsible for Giles, not the other way around. The bargain she makes in the season 2 finale is for his life, and the resolve she finally finds in herself that Angel will die by her sword is in no small part for him. Buffy doesn't really mourn Jenny Calendar! But she knows by hesitating she cost Giles something that she'll never be able to get back for him, and she will not hesitate again. And she doesn't hesitate again, and what she does in the Season 5 finale is not hesitation. She doesn't argue with Giles in the runup to the Season 5 finale. She doesn't throw a tantrum. She doesn't throw a book of prophecy at him. She doesn't beg him to find a solution. She doesn't do any of these things because she figured out a long time ago that what happens is not up to him, it is up to her, and so what she does instead is inform him of what is going to happen. The last thing she'll see is me defending her. You try and hurt her and you know I'll stop you. And we could talk for a couple pages worth of text about how buffy gets from the person who stabs angel through the heart in season 2 to the person who says this, and some of us have already done so, but right now I'm just on the fact that it's Giles saying it to her. Saying it's your job to kill her. The fact that Giles never has another serious relationship after Jenny is so key to this analysis by the way. No one recovers from anything. The cost is forever. And if she hadn't found her loophole she'd have let Giles die for this, and that would be forever too. She looks him in the eye and says dawn's life over yours, no question. A couple extra minutes of Dawn's life for yours. After she pulled a punch and it cost him his heart, and then she ripped up her own to follow the next punch all the way through, three years later, he tells her this is what it is your job to do, and she looks him in the eye and says, no.
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I umm uh minific
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Lance glanced down at the small drawing of swords on Keith's notes (Lance couldn't be bothered to write anything down and he doesn't remember shit so he's stealing his boyfriend's notes even though he could barely read his handwriting). Well, not really the drawing. His eyes skipped to the lazily scribbled, "K.K." in the bottom right corner.
"Your initials are KK?"
"What?"
"You signed your doodle with K.K."
"And you didn't realize those were my initials in the entire time that you've known me? If I remember correctly, Iverson called me by my last name in Garrison."
"Mmm.. Shut up, K.K. Slider. I didn't connect the dots until now."
Lance leaned back to lay on his back, his head on Keith's pillow and kicked Keith in the thigh. It wasn't really a kick. From his position, he couldn't really do anything more than a slight jab with his foot. Keith let out a stifled chuckle at the attempt.
Lance turned on his side to put the meeting notes on Keith's bedside table then turned back to Keith with a faux scowl.
"You're not allowed to laugh. You're Keith Kogane."
"Mhm, ok, Pumpkin."
Lance crossed his arms and "kicked" Keith in the leg again. Keith didn't laugh this time, though he did send Lance an amused look.
"What're you doing?"
"Just stop opening your mouth."
"Aw, is there something wrong with the way I talk, Bubblegum dear?"
His Texan accent was bleeding into his speech, making everything about this situation about 10 times worse. Lance could definitely feel his face get hotter.
"Yes. Shut your pie hole."
Keith turned his body to face Lance and leaned toward him, putting his hand next to Lance's leg to stabilize himself.
"Whatever happened to please?"
"Whatever happened to you acting- normal?"
Lance attempted to motion with his arms to no avail. Keith tilted his head like a confused dog.
"Normal?"
"Poor choice of words."
"Do you want a thesaurus?"
"No, I hate you."
"You're currently laying on my bed."
"Shush!"
"I'll shush when I want to, Ranger."
Keith shifted to lay on his side next to Lance. He propped his head in his palm, looking down at Lance.
"It is getting pretty late though.."
"What are you trying to imply, Mullet?"
"Nothing, just we should probably go to sleep. It's a shame that the lights are on."
"I see what you're doing. You're trying to get me to get out of the comfy bed and turn off the lights for you. Well good sir, I say-"
"Not it!"
Lance gasped.
"You sneaky snook!"
"Go turn the lights off."
"How dare you!"
"The less time it takes for you to turn the lights off, the more beauty sleep you can get."
"Urghhh! Fine! But you owe me."
"Just go turn off the lights, you dork."
Lance got up and sprinted to the light switch, flipping it and running back in the dark. He hopped onto the bed and laid back into his previous spot.
"What's my time, coach?"
"I dunno but you were very speedy."
"It's absolute bullshit that I have to turn the lights off when Galras can see in the dark. You can see on the way back to the bed."
"Who lent you their meeting notes because you don't want to admit to Allura that you can't remember anything she said? That's right, me. Ungrateful."
"Who can't write legibly and spent the majority of the meeting drawing in the corners of the paper? That's right, you. Humble yourself."
"Ungrateful."
Keith sighed and plopped his head on the pillow. It really was late.
"We really should get to sleep."
"Whatever you say, Texas Red."
"Good night, Bluebell."
"Sweet dreams, Keith."
While Lance can fall asleep in seconds (a real skill) it still takes Keith a little bit longer. He allowed himself to relax, letting the tiredness consume him. But before he let himself fall asleep, he put his hand on Lance's cheek and thought about how lucky he was to be the one who snagged this dumbass.
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.
fighting everything cynical and spiteful in me because I still want to love and believe in people regardless of their flaws, but fucking hell I've hardly ever been tried on such a wide scale before. a lot of people, including people I really love, are making it really really hard to not only hold onto hope that there is a better future than this, but to feel like it's even worth it to try.
I had an inkling there would be a war on mental health on top of everything else going on, and thanks everything I am at a place in my life where it's not enough to send me tumbling down the deep end, but the thread remains thin. And it's genuinely super important to refuse to fall apart, it's absolutely necessary to find a way to persevere in the rise of a worldwide technofascist order because fuck them they don't deserve our despair, but. Yeah. I sincerely doubt it's going to get any easier any time soon, and given they're trying to destroy solidarity, to both monetize and punish self-expression and self-identity, mangle the essence of art and creation, force everybody into poverty and precarity, hunt down any indesirable in more and more unhinged ways and gradually restrict the consumption of everything... Yeah it's going to be a fucking nightmare moving forward.
My heart goes to everybody who's worse off than me on any of these topics, and who's already running on limited options and drained-out mental health. I don't know how to circumvent this entire situation we're facing, and specifically all the surgical ways they're trying to blot out hope and shut down solidarity. I just know it's absolutely necessary to find a way regardless.
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As someone who loves Inscryption despite its flaws I GOTTA know: what are your thoughts on its faults? I've seen you vague post about it and I'm so curious (also, hi!)
hiiiii :3 Lovely to see you reach out after you seeing you always pop up in the tags :D
To be clear, I still like Inscryption despite its flaws. It’s *interesting* as a piece of art, and that’s way better than a game that just technically checks off all the boxes of being playable. Like, I’ve been able to write several thousand words’ worth of a video essay script on this game, covering both the good and bad. It’s that fascinating to me.
Since I don’t want to unload 40 minutes’ worth of text on you here, I’ll just say my main thesis is that the game brushes up against a ton of genuinely cool ideas, but the developer never seems to notice them because he’s too married to the way things were done in Pony Island, and what people who like Meta Games expect. And Inscryption keeps so much info in the dark that you only realise this at the end.
The genre shifts are the biggest sticking point for me. If you know the developer already (or have watched someone else play the game), you’re perfectly fine with them being there. But if you’re someone like me who played the demo and then jumped in blind, you’re going to be burned by the shift to act 2 (and to Luke), which is nothing you would expect from the wonderful aesthetic act 1 mostly relies on. Even though I *like* both act 1 and 2, I kind of have to like them for separate things (i.e. a beautifully haunting roguelike based off forest folklore vs a deckbuilder exploring the worst art-kid polycule divorce you’ve ever seen).
The culmination of this is Kaycee’s mod, which I love, but is an implicit admission that the creator didn’t actually know his own strengths. An endless mode to only one third of your game is not a common thing to add in after launch, especially if you’re not early-access.
Then in act 2, outside of its lore, the game’s theme becomes the idea of games as art. The Scrybes are both multi-faceted characters in their own right and proxies of game design philosophies.
Leshy is the visceral experience of being in another world, while his actual game is pretty janky. Grimora is pure fun (which is a great contrast against her death aesthetic). P03 is the very specific way some designers get obsessed with game mechanics above all else and produce the most mid games you’ve ever seen. Magnificus is spectacle to the point it’s stupidly hard to actually play his deck.
Throughout both takeovers, there are always items or mechanics from the other Scrybes popping up. The stand-alone campaigns are arguably better than act 2 because they’re much more focused, yet Leshy and P03 both still can’t escape the influence of their colleagues.
This is all extremely interesting characterisation and commentary on game design that all goes unsaid. And as much as I dislike Luke Carder’s plot, I’ve spoken before about how the themes his story touch on would be a fantastic fit for that meta-commentary.
All this is great, self-contained within act 2. But the way the finale (and arguably act 3’s more lore-based segments) are written afterwards implies that wasn’t intentional at all. The culmination of this game is that all the Scrybes get deleted and go out in a sudden bombastic finale like in Pony Island and then 😱 maybe this guy shouldn’t have looked for secrets… Because now he’s dead IRL…
And it’s like. Okay? Sure. That looked cool I think. But what is the point of the story then, exactly?
So much happens in so little time in the finale. The writing is basically speedrunning all 3 of the remaining Scrybes’ arcs, and then has to reveal the OLD_DATA affecting Luke, and then has to show him getting killed. And you still don’t know what’s going on.
Then you go looking online for secrets and read that actually the evil glitch thing that was mentioned maybe twice in act 2 was important, and was the entire motivation for the plot. Also everything’s technically linked to the dev’s other games.
And I just. Do not think that is interesting at all, compared to the more carefully designed, and more character and theme-driven stories.
Daniel Mullins' work is unique in how whole-heartedly he includes meta elements, and I just think it's a shame he didn't take the opportunity to explore further beyond his usual comfort zone, as you might've expected from how different Inscryption's aesthetic is to his other games.
It should also not have taken that long to get to the point if the main story was a straight-forward evil artefact plot. Which the creator has already done in a more concise game years ago.
I think Kaycee’s mod tackles a lot of Inscryption's main issues, and I’m loving its smaller plot and more consistent pacing more than whatever the fuck was going on with Luke. But objectively I think it’s a big ask to force people to go through like. Everything after act 1. So they can play a potentially better version of the game.
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