the feeling when, it's not your circus and theyre certainly not your monkeys, but you are, in fact, a professional monkey wrangler, who has trained since birth to become the fuckin batman of managing circus chaos, and you can see that whoever is in charge of the circus and the monkeys is not in control of jack shit and you goddamn know that this is gonna go poorly for the monkeys and the public perception of monkey wranglers. And you will inevitably have to listen to a poorly researched news story about the fucking monkeys and then see the Hollywood dramatization of circus disaster "based on a true story" where every goddamn thing is incorrect. And it's not your circus, and it's not your monkeys, and the person in charge doesn't want your help because they think they have it under control, even if they don't and they really don't. And they're gonna bitch at you if you offer. And you really do have your own monkeys in your own circus to manage. So you just kind of watch the unfolding catastrophe happen. Over there. To someone else. With an in depth knowledge of exactly what went wrong and exactly how little effort it would have taken to avoid disaster.
Not my circus,not my monkeys, but no one likes watching distressed chimps rip off people's faces
it's super easy to become That Person who's sitting safely removed from the situation and says, "wouldn't it be so much easier if you just did this one simple thing" and that is not what's happening. I've been shit on by the monkey before. I've had my circus blow up. I am aware of the skill and effort required. And I am not disregarding the existent skill and invested effort.
This is preemptive mourning of the monkey that is going to get shot by animal control and the circusgoers who are going to get mauled. It's possible they will learn from this incoming catastrophe and become a better ringmaster for it. But it's going to come at the expense of the capuchin.
Okay. So here's the deal. If the elephants get involved, it is a lost cause. JUST LEAVE. PRETEND YOU WERE NEVER THERE. HEAR ABOUT THE TRAGIC AND DISASTROUS STAMPEDE ON THE MORNING EDITION OF THE NEWS. FEIGN IGNORANCE LIKE YOU'RE BEING PAID. YOU KNOW NOTHING AND NO ONE.
If the clowns get involved, it's not unrecoverable, but i'm not stepping in because I don't like clowns. They're cantankerous little bitches. Tbf they really do deserve their kvetching but i'm not going to deal with someone else's clowns in order to save the day, feel me?
You told me I was being bossy and overreaching and rude when I told you to keep the monkeys and the acrobats apart from each other. So now that both groups of them are making each other insecure and freaking out, any extra advice I have to give you about how to separate them without losing fingers is going to be received as an "I told you so".
Sometimes it’s hard to read fanfic when you’re studying herbalism.. when they have the character preparing a tincture to use that same DAY!!?
Baby those dried herbs need to sit in that jar with high proof alcohol for at LEAST a month!
That’s why before the use of calendars ppl use to prepare their tinctures either on the new moon or full moon. A a full moon cycle is usually 28 days or so. And they would give the moon names so it’s easier to remember when/what month said tincture was bottled.
This is also why herbal medicine is prepare in small batches. You have to take your time preparing your bottles. Making sure everything is clean so you don’t end up with mold. Diluting your grain alcohol. Heckkk knowing when to pick your herbs for max potency! Drying your herbs! That takes a lot of time too!
Ok, so for starters, I want to state for the record, that this is a well-made game. It is polished, the writing, art, sound design, enemies, and character movement are all 10/10, without question. I will die on that hill and defend it heart and soul.
Actually playing the game though? The actual gameplay experience...varies.
ACT 1 & 2 are both hard, I won't pretend otherwise, but it is within reason. The game is well polished enough that it was demanding, but within reason.
(I should note here, once I got the wanderer Crest I did not use any other crest for 99% of the game, unless I was forced to.)
The problem was, there was so much stuff that the little things I did miss ended up leading to whole-ass areas (specifically Bilewater and Mist), that I did have to cave and look up how to do certain things or to remind myself of things that I had looked over in playing the game.
But for the most part, the game never asked for more than it was sure that you can handle.
Except Bilewater. Fuck Bilewater. I gave up and looked for a bench after like, the 15th runback to the boss because I was like "there's no way that is intended to be that long all the time" (it, thankfully, wasn't; there was thankfully a bench that was much closer to the boss, but in a spot that I would have never intuitively discovered on my own).
But for the most part, I could see what the game was communicating and was able to execute it, especially in the Sands of Karak and the weird plants that grew out before disappearing. It took some time, but I understood most of what the game asked of me.
Then I was finally able to make it to ACT 3 aaannnnnddd that is pretty much when the fun stopped for me.
I understand the thematics of it. Having enemies with a buffed health pool and a new move pool alongside all void-infected enemies dealing double damage does fit into the thematics of the void and the all consuming nature of it, and specifically how Hornet is not void and it hurts her especially hard.
However, where it backfires is when I am playing the fucking game, and I am attempting to traverse the world regularly, and get my character to one mask because I happened to run into two voided enemies that deal double damage when you run into them on accident, makes it an absolute fucking ass to deal with.
It is made worse with the platforming the game still demands of you, and the harsh punishments it enforces when you don't hit the standard needed. Especially the whole rising lava segment. That was a major skill issue I had was during that fucking section, I swear to fuck I did worse during that segment that I ever did in the Hunter's March. I did manage to get out of the Abyss, but sweet motherfucking mercy did it take a lot out of me to achieve.
It was at that point, beating the long lava rising section, that I realized I wasn't really proud or excited at the cool sequence that just happened - I was just really relieved it was over. I kept playing the game, and got to the part where you're supposed to beat the memory of the bosses.
I tried getting to the boss of the Sands of Karak and I just. I could not find the fun in it anymore. It had gotten to the point of not being fun for me. Because I had heard through the grapevine that there were 30 waves of enemies, and while I was sure I could get through it, I didn't want to have to beat my head into the wall just to get the Golden ending for the game. I managed to get a few more achievements, but I couldn't find it within me anymore to beat it.
TL;DR: SIlksong did reach the highest of highs for the hype, but like Icarus, it fell into a brutal and unforgiving fall once the game hit certain points.
One of my coworkers was telling me that they had seen these really cute trilobite plushies at another gift shop and recommended them to the store manager at our museum, which lead to us scrolling through the manufacturer's website together on shift today and SHRIEKING with laughter at the exact same moment when we simultaneously noticed that they sell a giant $100 eurypterid body pillow
#they released these at a conference i was at in 2019#i was working a table right next to the pri#people went CRAZY#they sold out in 10 min#and all these grisled old phds were carrying around 5 foot long eurypterids the rest of the day (@barrysjumpsuit)
Hello thank you for the most critical supplemental information I’ve ever received on a post.
Hey, y'all remember this post? Well the institution that makes these delightful pillows and stuffed creatures is hurting right now. Unfortunately, a major set of donations never went through, and the institution has been working its butt off to keep running. The efforts of the staff are amazing, but unfortunately it's a very small nonprofit organization so it can only get so far on hard work and dedication.
In spite of all this! Through some amazing marketing and philanthropy work, you can help them out right now! You can make a difference! They managed to get a lovely donor to agree to a match challenge for up to $50,000!!! So if they raise $50,000 they'll actually get $100,000. The match challenge ends on December 31st 2023, and they're already at $26,4448.10 which means they're halfway there!! Please spread the word, if you can't donate then a reblog to someone who can will help.
If the link above doesn't work, you can find the donation page here:
As we delve into the depths of Earth's prehistoric history, the Paleontological Research Institution (PRI) stands at the forefront of unrave
PRI is an amazing institution that has helped spread climate science education, provided free resources for teachers/educators/students alike, and works hard to aid their community however they can.
If you want to learn more about what PRI has done, and continues to do, check out their website here. They've got a museum, a nature center, and a research collection (which they're trying to digitize, and you can find it here)
Spoiler Warning, and full disclosure, I spoiled myself on the ending, and some of the parts, and I gave up on it. Just FYI.
I want to start this off by saying this isn't a bad game.
The core of the gameplay loop, combat, characters, soundtrack, and basic story narrative - all work within the bounds of the game and the narrative.
But I have some (big) issues with it.
But first the basic plot:
(Spoilers and full review under the cut.)
Edited on 1/3/2024 to finish the sentences I missed and correct spelling
The basic plot goes like this. You are Siffer, a rogue in an adventuring party that needs to take down the King that had come out of nowhere to threaten the country, because the King has been freezing people in time to protect the country.
You make a wish, and then - after entering the he dies in the deadly room due to a trap, before resetting back to when you started the game, laying down on the grass. There's a Star that informs you that you are stuck in a timeloop, and that they (the star) informs you that they are there to help and be an ear to you.
Eventually you do beat the king, time resets, and Sif is back where he started; clearly, defeating the King doesn't work by itself, so clearly there must be something else you have to try.
During the entirety of the time loops, not once does Sif communicate with his party about the situation. Eventually, you reach a breaking point, lashing out at your friends in a flawed attempt to rush things along, and go on to take the King down by yourself, because there's nothing else left for you to try.
The party - with help from the star - was able to follow and locate you, and it all culminates in a big moment where the pressure valve is released and it's revealed that Sif wished to be able to spend more time with his friends, his family.
And it's a big moment, because he's finally communicating with the team, and they're with him, he's with them, and the story ends there.
By itself, with the gameplay being as tight as it is, that is not that bad.
The combat is basically rock, paper, scissors, with each member of the four party members have some utility towards that, and it's really good! The fast forward and looping mechanics are also handled well, and it just ties everything together nicely, on a surface level.
What bothers me is the set dressing, it's the extra details thrown in, it's the King's backstory, it's Sif's backstory, and it's an NPC who sometimes does and does not have a sister-
Because a sizable element to the story is that there are things Sif cannot read, there's an NPC who's sister left to go to a foreign country but the NPC can't remember the name of it before the world resets itself to allow the NPC to be an only child, and the King mentioning - when you beat him - that he can't go, because he can't say the name of it yet.
As you go through the game, it's revealed that there is an island that just - straight up and down, unironically, disappeared from the world, within the last eight years in game story, given that Bonnie - youngest member of the party who's about 11 or 12 at most - is able to remember people talking about it for weeks when it happened. What's more, is that no one is able to remember anything from the island. Not the culture, the language can't be read, and - most telling of all - the name of the island cannot be said. It's both implied and then outright confirmed that the King and Sif are both from that island, hence why the King is trying to hard to preserve the closest neighbor and why Sif has no real past to speak of, because they can't say/remember their home; that NPC's sister I mentioned earlier? The NPC's sister was almost certainly on that island when it disappeared.
Additionally, remember when I mentioned earlier
The Head Priestess, she would - after to talking to Sif, thanking him for his help - immediately state that the world was 'breaking apart' that the world was dying prior to Sif resetting back to the grass.
There was also a tiny detail of like the world not having color as it disappeared slowly, day by day, until it was just gone and the world was in black and white.
All this, in my mind, while I was playing it, was building up to us being able to bring back the island, bring back color, and basically fix the world of whatever was wrong with it.
I was in the later half of Act three at this point? And that's when I looked up a video, just to try and find where the secret room was.
It's ten hours long, but it was the only one up at the moment, and beggars couldn't have been choosers.
So I watched it, at the point where Sif and Mirabelle were talking and saw where it ended at like Sif talking to the Head Priestess, at the very end of the game.
And I was hyped! I was like, wow, what an ending, the art direction was sound, the music was nailed, everything was very cool and interesting and I couldn't want to wake up the next day to get to it myself.
But I kept turning, turning, and turning it over in my head, and the more I did that, the more I was realizing - I don't really like how it ended. Maybe I had too high expectations, maybe if I had actually played it through to that point I would have seen the vision, but like.
Why were those extra details in there that didn't amount to much? Because like. The island - everything about it, from it being unable to be named, from it just disappearing one day, from the NPC's sister who was on the island country when it was wiped from existence - didn't actually come back? Like. That's still not fixed? Not to mention the chehov's guns that never fired. I mean, yes, the team was there for Sif, but none of them were ever able to realize something was wrong with Sif, at least not to the point of actually confronting him about it until the last go around (there were hints, but there was never any follow through, again, from the point I played and the point I watched - I fully realize I missed things as a result of my skimming).
The King was unable to say it's name, even as he died/was frozen in time?
Sif still doesn't remember any of his past - and he can't remember the island/old home at all, or his own childhood, because the island is still gone! The block is still there! There's no explanation for why that happened to begin with!
And the NPC's sister is still also gone! The NPC will never fully remember their own sister, because the foreign country she went to was wiped from the world and from memory! The color is still gone! Why include what the Head Priestess said about the world rotting and being corrupted when it was just the wish magic functioning? Shouldn't she have been able to do or say something different when Sif interacted with her?
Like, ok, the color thing about colors fading from the world - cute detail, nothing crazy.
The book series in the world - nice detail, not much to mention.
It's the disappearing island that is the biggest offender of this. That is the one thing that needs to gtfo, that's the one detail that is PLOT RELEVANT and stupid!
(Edit: I failed to mention; it's only not the island disappearing part I have an that much of an issue with, it's more the context I take issue with more. The fact that not only was the island was just gone, but that anything even tangentially related to it were suppressed, from the language, to the culture, to the memory of it, to the extent anyone that was still on the island was forgotten about, except in tangential glimpses and stone hops. And that's not going to the people that actually LIVED on the island, like the King and Sif, where they can't remember their past - their parents, their friends, their loves, the food that comforts them - ANYTHING, it's suppressed and rewritten over by the universe. That is demented - that is dark and heavy sci-fi dystopian level stuff, and for the take away to be 'let it go'? To forget the crumbs that you have of your life before, your family, the life you lived, the decisions you made? I don't know, that feels bad, and that doesn't feel satisfying to me, particularly. I admit bias here. Especially because that one NPC, even after everything, won't be able to remember their sister, whom they clearly really really loved.)
If you've read this far, come take a walk with me down a hypothetical scenario, on another path.
Consider if you will, instead of just - fucking disappearing and being blocked from memory for some reason that is NEVER EXPLAINED - it is instead destroyed by nature (think Earthquake and/or Tsunami). Many people die, the island is just destroyed/gone, and what's left of the people get scattered to the winds because who wants to live by the place where your life was destroyed?
And that way, it be less about this weird block on the memory and more about Sif actively avoiding any mention of his old home or Sif not remembering the name of his old home due to trauma, and the King's motivation would make more sense; he wants to protect the people of his country that still exist, and the majority of them are in the main story's country, as well as preventing any changing nature to affect the country that houses most of the people! ( I don't care enough to look up the name)
It would have been 1) more fulfilling, imo, 2) would have given him more depth and more of a religious crisis, 3) he would have to confront the King, this person from the home he can barely remember, every time, and kill a real part of his past, 4) it would give him more reason to want to not lose the family he currently has because he's already gone through it once, 5) It would actually be relatable to people who have/are currently losing their culture to time and just not being able to practice it, 6) it wouldn't be so fucking bizarre!
And the fact that it didn't is...not bad? The developers were still able to tell the story they wanted to. And on a basic character level and overarching, they did succeed, I won't discredit them that! But like. The setting lore - feels like cardboard, like you poke at the setting hard enough it'll break. Especially with the disappearing island that's just- blocked from people's memories, again, for reasons that the story never explains how or why that even happened. Especially with all the other details in the game it's just. Bad. It tastes like Ash.
TD;LR: This game is not a bad game, but it's not internally strong enough to be considered Indie peaks like Hades, Slay the Princess, Undertale, and I personally would not recommend the game.
✨ Please reblog the polls to make them reach out to as many people as possible, but KEEP IT SPOILER-FREE to make people listen to the music with an open mind 💖 Artists and titles will be revealed after the poll's conclusion ✨
omg what do you MEAN Schinder said the n word you dont even know hos situation???? Like he LITERALLY grew up in the same neighborhood as an italian ur literally being soooo insensitive..... omg hes NOT racist !!!!!!!! Its like??? You havent even listened to the album they wore war bonnets for a REASON it was part of the symbolism???
lan wangji and spock are basically the same character in different genres and for that reason if they met they would either be best friends or mortal enemies no in between
i just learned about a scam in the 1960s where the crux of the scam was filling barrels with water and topping it off with a layer of vegetable oil. so when inspectors opened the barrels they thought it was 100% oil, which the scammer would use as collateral for loans. genius shit
As De Angelis stock of warehouse receipts increased, he began to replace the soybean oil in his tanks with water. Some tanks had special compartments, while others were hooked-up to a maze of pipes to shuttle oil from one tank to the next to fool inspectors.
he made a fucking. rube goldberg ass looney tunes machine. acme product ass scam
I think this person on reddit summed up the youtube adblocker situation perfectly. my reaction to this is not "oh man guess I'll watch ads." its, "well, I guess I'll just do something more productive with my time." I highly doubt any adblock user is going to willingly go back to watching ads. so what actually happens is youtube loses a functionally tiny amount of its userbase--because adblockers weren't even losing them a significant amount of money in the first place(!)--and a bunch of adblock users move on to something else. what a fantastic waste of time and effort
I really REALLY want a Zelda playable game that isn’t a spin off. Like, a genuine well made game where you can play as Zelda and her goddess powers shine through in her swordsmanship that’d be SO COOL (just ignore the fact Link literally face plants into the past btw he’s totally fine)
it’s sinple from 9 to 5 u just gotta be workpilled you gotta be emailcore focusedwave it’s true a neurotypical told me and they’re normal so I believe tgem
We have to up our productivity to meet our quotas and improve our metrics. We should reach out to our client base with surveys and user feedback. That's not my department, but we need to restate our core values and create an action plan for a strategy that'll greatly synergize our output. But let's circle back to that later. We need to focus on our product. We need to produce content. We have to think outside the box and be proactive with our traditional culture. We've gotta return to the drawing board and address the elephant in the room. Do we have the tools to succeed in our tasks? We need more constructive feedback. This could be a game changer. We need to leverage our influence to really push the envelope and improve our portfolio. No need to reinvent the wheel, let's run this up the flagpole and touch base with management.
So I'm no longer into the Second Citadel, but I want to Rant
Basically what the title says. This point will be divided into two parts: What made me ultimately give up listening to the show, and the spoilers I was made aware of due to the latest episode dropping.
Td;lr: I wouldn't recommend listening to the Second Citadel; you're only going to be disappointed.
So, let's start with the season 3. I'll be blunt and admit that I never listened to it, but I did read the transcripts and know the ending to the season.
Namely, Caroline leaves her position as Captain of SC, taking Olala, Quanyii, A'le, and Angelo with her.
Now, I did like Olala, as a character and as a concept, because she was cute, and brought something new to the world, but I wasn't the biggest fan of this move on Caroline's part; especially since the previous season she had just stated that "She had found peace there", but I was ultimately accepting of it, mostly because I knew Kevin was struggling.
Look, if you listen to the commentary tracks and listen to the storylines, you can TELL Kevin has a hard time writing multiple characters at once and keeping track of the plotlines. Which, fair, that's not a easy skill to master, especially with what is regarded as a ensemble cast.
But, at the time, I had had faith towards Kevin as a creator; I had thought that he would have been able to handle it well. Send Caroline away with the new cast, let them have adventures we can catch up on; we can then refocus on the other members of the cast!
Like Marc, who had finally become a knight, but was still struggling in his role, what did he face in his day to day? Was it actually what he wanted, or just the best way to gain respect and be treated as a 'normal man'?
Or Tal, who still needed to talk to Marc about what he wanted, or more importantly, what he didn't want in life, which was being a knight? How was he going to bring up the conversation? What would end up being the breaking point for him?
Or the Bonquet, still trying to work things out together? Or the Queen, trying to rule in a time of famine? Or Absolum? And finally figuring out what was up with Dampierre?
That didn't happen.
Instead, I found out that there was a timeskip of multiple years, and we were still focused on Caroline and her merry band.
I don't mind Caroline as a character, but why were we still focused on her? She - in an ensemble cast - had gotten PLENTY of her own episodes last season, alongside Angelo and Quanyi. Also, there was no mention or show of the characters we had previously known in the first part of the series. What happened to them? Did they all get killed by the Citadel?? Also, having briefly read the wiki to part 1 of the Perils, why was Angelo saying he had only learned to enjoy reading with Olala, when in S2, he openly read stories to Damien? Did he not actually like reading to Damien?
Hey, Kevin? Why did Angelo tell Olala that he had had sex with A'le? Why is an adult man talking about his sex life to a teenager? Why is that a thing the wiki fucking says for Perils part 1? How is that even remotely ok?
The thing that really upset me, and made me drop in it's entirety was the fact that in portion of the transcript I read - Angelo never mentioned talking to Damien within the opening paragraphs.
His best friend? His favorite rival that he pulled out a tree for? That they read stories to each other? Hugged? Angelo being terrified when Damien handed him the letter to give to Rilla if he had died?? Those two guys??
And not once, in the many years, did either of them try to find each other, send each other letters, or even WONDER about each other?
I don't know if any one has a best friend before, but like, you tend to worry about them if you haven't heard from them in a while. It would probably be worse if there wasn't a way to instantly get in contact with them; they don't have phones in the Second Citadel.
And Damien IS an anxious worry-wart; he worried about his friendship with Angelo when he had given him a tree that was ONLY two feet tall? (Or was it too men tall? Can't remember, point still stands.)
Like. If you have listened to the second season of SC, with Damien's mind constantly going and assuming the worst, having to see certain things with his own eyes whether or not Angelo was ok -
You are very good at LYING to yourself.
Also, that's a hell of a long time for the things to be left behind, especially with the various event flags set up the previous season; such as, the war the monsters were attempting to kickstart, the huge bug that had just been hatching out (that could possibly have had functioning wings!!!), Dampierre, the lack of resources regarding wood and the famine previously mention, how Marc and Rilla's relationship was doing after she lost Olala (whether Olala had left willingly or not, Rilla still lost something Marc had entrusted her with, which is bad), Dampierre, what it meant to be a god in this world, the Kite and him being a former knight, the other missing Golden Age Knights, Dampierre, the previous characters mentioned in the previous season, the Saints and their whole deal, and did I mention Dampierre?
There's more, but, I think you get the idea.
That was not a problem with the characters or the world itself; that's an issue with the writer, and I was (fortunate to have) recognized that.
If the writer couldn't care enough about the characters to keep their characterization straight, why would - or, more importantly, should - I care?
That was the point I dropped SC, and the penumbra podcast as a whole.
Like, I had liked Juno Steel when I had listened to it, but SC had scratched an itch I didn't even know I had.
And now it had given me a rash.
For a time, that was it, that was all it was. I hadn't kept up with SC at all, and unfollowed a lot of the SC blogs I used to follow.
Then I happened to hear about the latest episode
And boy, a lot of the feelings I had regarding it came rushing back
And all the questions I had had nearly two years ago were still present!
Not once was it ever addressed Marc's ascension to knighthood and how he was dealing with that!
Not once was Tal able to talk to Marc1
Not once did Rilla kiss her Lizard!!!
So much is still left unanswered!
And it's still left unanswered!
We don't know who Marc and Tal's mom is, if their dad is even still alive, if Rilla's Parents are still alive, why Absolum has such a hate boner for Marc, whether Mira is actually a Lesbian or just trying to be a Good Ally (TM), how Caroline and Quanyii even met, whether or not Rilla and Damien will even be married TO EACH OTHER, much less Arum, how did Arum know so much about humans to begin with, what Angelo is - something like Olala or a monster wearing a human skin - and how come he's so strong,
or even at the bare FUCKING MINIMUM, how magic even works in this world!
And it's been three years since the show started! I shouldn't have to wonder about how magic works!! or have to wonder about monster society!! Like was Arum special because he had the Keep, or was he just given the title recently - in the story - for his work against the humans??? What separates Arum as a Lord versus the other monsters? Is it his intelligence? The Keep? The fact that he can talk? I don't know! I shouldn't still have this question, BUT HERE WE FUCKING ARE, I GUESS.
Honestly, I would have preferred an entirely new cast of characters working with Olala, because at least then, we could have gotten more world lore!
I am just now reminded of it, but we never got an explanation for why there was a monster sneaking into the Citadel, just to try and kill Damien. There were a lot of theories and talks about it, to which I contributed to in the discord, but we never actually got an explanation for why that happened. Did the monster consul send out a hit-job for Damien? Is Damien regarded as something like a demon to the monsters? What about Rilla? Are monsters scared of her for her closeness to Damien? Is Arum dating the SC equivalent of John Wick (Damien) and Hannibal (Rilla) to his people? I don't know!
The show never gave us the answers to begin with.
And it never fucking will, because all the answers and any legitimate care for the show, has been shot out in an airplane, into the night sky, like a shooting star.
