DVDmitri

Wimsiless

[dvdmitri]

I sort of wish the Odyssey epilogue mission hadn't brought Herodotus back. We already had a touching goodbye with him, and it was implied that he wouldn't live much longer, as he was departing for Thurii, his place of death. She could have sent the broken spear to him by mail or something.

Also, at the end of it all, Kassandra said her farewells to her two closest friends and... took Barnabas with her? What was the point? I'm not insisting he should die, but Kassandra should certainly part ways with him.

I suppose, if you want, Barnabas sticking around could be interpreted as a "hold on to your loved ones while you can" kind of message. But that would work better with Kassandra's family. However, involving them would require writing a dozen permutations of that story that differ by who is with her at this point.

As it stands, they drop off the face of the Earth as soon as the main story ends, unless you count the brainless fight puppets on board the Adrestia. That's another way the multiple endings sort of fucked the story.

[dvdmitri]

I suppose, there are essays written about the character of Sarah Jane Smith. I'm not here for that. I do these to record the reasons for companions departures. For some reason.

But still, I'd be remiss not to say that she's the most iconic of all the classic companions, at least as influential as Jo. Definitely better known. She started off in the Third Doctor era as a feminist icon of the time, a willful and pushy journalist. A Lois Lane to the Doctor's Superman, maybe minus the romantic tension because I insist that the classic Doctor is aroace. The Fourth Doctor era had her shift to a familiar mold of semi-competent semi-damsel, as the plot demands, but leaning more heavily toward the competent flippant snarky professional.

While Ben and Polly have the distinction of the first companions witnessing the Doctor's regeneration, Sarah Jane is the first to lose a Doctor. Ben and Polly didn't know One all that well and when Two came around, they mostly shunned him initially, suspicious of him. Obviously, Jaime and Zoe had their memories wiped, so there was nothing to miss. Sarah Jane had Three die in her hands. And she mourned him.

The reason she left the Tardis feels messy. It started off as a rant after another run-of-the-mill adventure about how she's tired or constant danger, trauma, and neglect and how she wants simple human comforts for once. She certainly packed her things with an intention to leave in a huff until the Doctor told her he has to leave her anyway due to Time Lords being assholes. She immediately back down and started asking him to take her with him but that was that. So I don't know how genuine were her intention, but I think we all agree her frustration was real. Despite her enjoyment of space/time travel.

[dvdmitri]

Modern Doctor: Goes out of their way to avoid hurting absolutely anyone. Classic Doctor:

[dvdmitri]

Shale's pre-golem gender was supposed to be a bit of a reveal. But it wasn't. Not to me. The female gender was pretty easy to assume based on the effeminate matronly voice and maneurisms. I have already filed Shale under "female" by the time we were leaving Honnleath.

And yes, to nobody's surprised Shale was voiced by a woman.

Imagine if they had a dude voice her. A dude doing his based macho and/or robotic voice. Imagine if golemification went as hard at removing secondary gender characteristics as Fallout's FEV.

[terpsikeraunos]

ancient greek word of the day: κακοθερής (kakotherēs), unfitted to endure summer heat

[aphilologicalbatman-deactivated]

this literally means “bad at summer” pass it on

[zipstick]

Reblog if you, too, are bad at summer

[worldheritagepostorganization]

World Heritage Post

[chungledown-bimothy]

bodies should have crash logs. why the fuck did that just happen.

[dvdmitri]

It's called autopsy.

[parkayquarts]

[dvdmitri]

How is this California when all the cars are clearly based on Zhiguli or some other AvtoVAZ models?

[dvdmitri]

Did you ever had a BM that actually threatened to clog the toilet? Like, it would have to be hard enough to not mix with the toilet water, but soft enough to serve as a waterproof seal, and the quantity would have to be huge.

So you'd push the flush button, the water'd rush into the bowl and it would start to rapidly fill up, because the water has issues actually pushing the fecal matter down the pipe, before mercifully receding.

It's never fun for me to shit those out because they usually mean something's wrong with my bowels, but I'm always impressed with the result.

If I was famous in any way, I'd never be able to post anything like that.

[hometoursandotherstuff]

Smallest apt. ever, in Sweden. Where does the shower drain, in the toilet, maybe?

[ajarofpickledtears]

Sims 4 Tiny or Micro Home Challenge irl

[foldingfittedsheets]

I like to imagine someone stood on the toilet rim trying to make sure their shower water goes into the bowl instead of soaking every single thing they own at once.

[dvdmitri]

There's 100% chance I'd piss right into the bed at some point.

[dvdmitri]

Last scene of the last currently released ASoIaF book? Daenerys shiting herself half to death due to dysentery.

Last line of dialog of the last currently released Dunk and Egg tale? A mention of a dwarf crawling through the castle's shit tubes.

Coincidence?

[agottamndelight]

Look at Pratchett, predicting enshittification.

[dvdmitri]

It's not a new phenomenon, just a new word for it. So, less "predicted" and more "observed and described".

I love and respect sir Terry as much as the next guy, but sometimes I feel like his readers - especially new ones - are overeager to give him too much credit.

For example, pretty much every time a turtle falls on a bald head and kills a guy in fiction, I see people describing it as a Discworld reference rather that what it actually is.

[dvdmitri]

Took me a while to get to it, because I'm taking a break from the show, but I got to Terror of the Zygons, the final appearance of Harry Sullivan.

Not sure why they added him to the show. Maybe because Jon Pertwee, unlike Tom Baker, had an impressive physical presence and was believable as the Doctor who could handle himself and resolve things with a bit of violence if the situation called for it. Before the Third Doctor, that role was given to Jamie. Maybe Harry, a military man, was supposed to occupy the same niche. It didn't work out.

Ultimately, Harry is like… just a guy. He has military and medical training, but he's probably the most relatable companion up to this point. He has his bumbling twit moments, he has his heroic moments. He's clearly over his head with the TARDIS shenanigans, but that makes him more recognizably human than anything else. Which makes it that much more jarring that he becomes the target for the Doctor's ire so often. Maybe the Doctor's view of humanity is skewed because he keeps running into remarkably competent, brave, and resilient people all the time. I'd be throwing up and shitting my pants in half the situations that become routine on the show.

He has a rather peculiar exit from the show. At the end of the serial, the Doctor offers to give everyone a lift to London (which, naturally, doesn't work out due to how the TARDIS steers). Only Sarah Jane takes him up on this; the rest opt for more mundane transport. Including Harry. I'm not sure if he knew he was saying his goodbyes, but he was left behind nonetheless, accidentally or not. At least he was brought back to roughly the same time and place he was taken from.

[dvdmitri]

Follow-up, I guess.

Harry also appears at the end of The Andriod Invasion. And he clearly has zero regrets being left behind. Good for him.

[dvdmitri]

Saying I am overstimulated places the responsibility on me, and it's not like I can do shit about it. Saying everyone needs to fuck off and leave me alone places the responsibility where it belongs, because fucking off and leaving me alone is very achievable for them.

[dvdmitri]

I heard you love to celebrate Ceasar's assassination.

[dvdmitri]

First the Invincible cartoon, now the A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms series. It's wild, watching huge swaths of audience going crazy over plot developments that I've gotten over years ago, but that also have just been adapted to screen and released to a wider non-reading audience. Must be one of the signs of aging.

Mind you, I actually watched neither of the shows, so seeing reactions on my feed always comes out of the left field. Imagine seeing someone freaking out over Sputnik getting launched into Earth's orbit or Chernobyl exploding like it just happened yesterday.

And it's always some inane take followed by some dumbass cringe shit like "😭😭", just to confirm in my mind that this motherfucker never read anything longer than the back of a cereal box.

I can't wait for the 14-year-olds to build their entire personality over who they think they'd support in the Blackfyre Rebellion.

[dvdmitri]

I have zero issues with violence in video games and absolutely no compunction against opening fire on the police in any other game, but fighting Victorian London’s Metropolitan Police Service in AC Syndicate makes me feel uneasy, and here’s why.

It’s a combination of factors.

First and foremost is the overall image of a goofy, bumbling, old-timey British bobby that was formed in my mind by mass media. ACAB or no ACAB, unleashing bloody violence against comic relief feels wrong, especially with the combat animations we have. There are no non-lethal takedowns in the game. Even with knuckle dusters equipped as a weapon, Jacob and Evie would invariably put their Hidden Blades to use to slice the mooks apart as a finisher. That can feel excessive if the target seems undeserving of such brutality.

Syndicate is not the first AC game to split your foes into two teams in free roam, separating them into nominally “legal” and “illegal” factions. Revelations had Byzantines and Ottomans; Unity had the National Guard and radicals. Much like the Blighters and the cops, it’s quite easy to goad them into fighting each other. The difference is that in no other game do you work as closely with the police: Abberline is your close ally who works with you to clean up the Blighters from the streets; in Dreadful Crimes you solve murders for them; in the Jack the Ripper DLC Abberline helps you a lot in tracking Jack down. Police is your ally more often than not.

In fact, I don’t think there’s a single mission in the game where the cops antagonize you. The main reason they’d come at you with their clubs out is that they saw you cutting some Blighter into ribbons or sneaking into places you’re not allowed to be in. That’s valid.

And finally, there's no evidence that the cops are under the Templar control. They might be paid to look some other way sometimes, but among all the factions in all of the AC series, they can be most easily described as just regular guys doing their jobs. Which I know applies to a lot of mooks in other games in the series, but here it applies tenfold. Assassins literally have no beef with the cops outside of the whole ideologically motivated murder thing which, again, is fair.

So I just sort of feel like smoking out and running every time I'm in open conflict with them instead of standing my ground and ending up with a pile of corpses in blue uniforms. Maybe that’s just me, though.

[dvdmitri]

I suppose, my biggest issue with Unity is the way the side-missions are structured, timeline-wise. It's is often the case that the consequences of main-story events are handled in co-op or other sidequests before the events in question occur. I'd rather they were more syncronized.