MORE TRANSPARENT WONDERLABBERS

It's extremely funny how all of Regill's companion quests are some sort of trick or surprise (of the secret test of character variety). It's like his brain is forcing him to inject whimsy and gnome pranks into his life but he treats them 100% seriously. Like, if a Golarion gnome arranged a trial, spoke in favor of the defendant, then challenged the defendant to a duel afterwards, it would be seen as whacky anti-Bleaching antics. But Regill plays it totally seriously and it rules.

girls love her for her poor posture and pathetic demeanor

on a night of wint’ry fog, the rune of death was stolen

hiiii mdms (moby dick mutuals) do you guys know about power moby dick (funny name). it’s an online annotation of moby dick that provides explanations for allusions and definitions for outdated terms/whaling jargon. it is so fun i am clicking around and exploring and learning a lot of new old-timey maritime words <3

GUYS? Martin Scorsese’s daughter Francesca told him about Goncharov and he said he made that film years ago I’m fucking crying.

Gif version of my Angela cat breakdancing video lol

Link to video

Elden ring or God of war for game of the year?

Oh boy, it's a close close call. I’m gonna rant. 

In some ways, Ragnorok is an infallible game, it’s so perfect that poking holes in it seems so nit-picky that you just come off looking like a little jackass creature. I loved every second I played of it and I can't think of a better written, better performed, more charismatic experience. I've seen morons complain that the game has too many cutscenes, as if they didn't know what type of game they were buying into. I would whine about the cutscenes more if they sucked or if the game lacked actual gameplay but it most certainly does not. This game is CHOCK FULL of things to see and do, and all the flavor-text and optional dialogue is insane, on top of that, the game feels amazing to play and the move-set is sexy. When everything is going crazy, there are few games as exciting as this one. At the end of the day I can't think of a more satisfying experience, with one of the most thematically satisfying endings ever in a game.

Elden Ring on the other hand has its problems. It has a difficulty-scaling issue, it's buggy on every platform, it most certainly looks worse than Ragnorok, it has less endearing characters, and what little dialogue it has is pretty mediocre. That being said, Elden Ring is my GOTY. This game is kinda like my dream-game made real, an open world souls-like made by Hidetaka Miyazaki the legend himself - a game with the mystique of Breath of the wild without the shortcomings of content and variety. This game, in my eyes, is the single best example as to why a game should be open-world. So often in games I feel like an open world is a crutch. -- In ghost of Tsushima the open world disconnected me from the pacing and character-growth of our MC, the objectives felt so systematic and ubisoft-esque that it 'gamified' itself as you played, removing the atmosphere and experiential qualities of the experience over time - this effect can also be seen in Horizon Forbidden West, and Dying light 2. Elden Ring uses the open-world to surprise you, you learn so much, you need to be aware of your surroundings, understand the lay of the land, and find things without guidance. It does what Dark Souls did to adventure games and it removes the handrails from the experience, in this case, Elden Ring unlocks the open-world experience. As a result, there aren't many games that evoke such a CANDID experience in me. I've never had so much fun exploring a world, and I've never been so surprised by a game's sheer amount of content. I could go on and on but ultimately it removes the burdensome systems that typically plague games of this scale. I think the game has the best reward-feedback-loop ever, where every item is invaluable, versus the generic inundation of materials in other games, etc etc etc... At the end of the day, Elden Ring just another valuable lesson for the gaming industry; I feel like Fromsoft pops up and teaches the whole industry a new lesson every once in a while - like they know what people want at a fundamental level.

On paper, Ragnorok could be seen as the better overall package but as a result of it being linear, it lacks the candid experience that Elden Ring delivers in spades and I think, despite Ragnorok being one of the best-ever narratives put into a game of this caliber, Elden Ring captures what it means to be a video game better.

Is anyone else obsessed with how subtly important eye contact is in Goncharov?

Have you noticed how many times he says some form of “look at me” to katya? How, whenever andrey is in a scene his eyes seems to slowly maneuver from object to person to object, as if he’s scanning meaningless information, UNTIL goncharov is in the scene and suddenly his eyes follow him like he’s something worth studying? And what gets me most, how katya, the person who refuses to look at goncharov in the eye unless he all but begs, the woman who has never had the opportunity to yearn for a man because the men do all the yearning for her, looks at sofia like she’s hung the stars and moon, to the point sofia even says something!!! THE DIRECT PARALLELS BETWEEN GONCHAROV’S “look at me, why can’t you ever look at me” AND SOFIA’S “you can’t look at me like that, why do you insist on stopping my heart,” like yeah it was probably meant as a throwaway gag, the way it was said after sofia found katya drunk (don’t even get me STARTED on how katya hid the fact that she was prescribed medication for a preexisting condition from goncharov because she refused to be seen as weak but as soon as she sees sofia’s face in her weakest moment she collapses into her arms and sobs, like???) but that aside it paints such a lovely picture i can hardly stand it.

Heteronormative speculation in the film critic industry has always painted that scene as proof that katya really does care for goncharov because of the flashbacks to him in the middle of her talking to sofia and moments before The Kiss™️, i’ve seen the same take so many times “she was hallucinating that it was goncharov in front of her, not sofia,” but that makes literally no sense considering the way she acts around him for the rest of the film.

The flashbacks were all times that we’d already SEEN in the movie, except the beginning few which were of a younger goncharov, before the beginning of the movie, perhaps before they’d fled russia even. It showed a story, each change in memory was one of him mentioning her always being in her own head, or not paying attention, or even the one scene everyone knows and loves where he asks her what she’s thinking about. The way the first few were grouped together, then became broken up by glimpses of sofia, because the answer to the question “what are you thinking about,” changed as soon as sofia stepped into the picture. She used to dream of freedom from familial pressure, from her husbands line of work, from her countries political agenda, but recently freedom feels less like a pair of wings and more like long brown hair and warm eyes that she can’t help but stare into.

Katya’s character being so underdeveloped in favor of goncharov and andrey mentally fucking for a few more minutes is absolutely deplorable, all i want is for her to find gay peace!

(Btw if you remember any scenes that have to do with the importance of eye contact in the movie that i forgot to mention here, feel free to add on!)