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[wyvernslovecake]

Check it, Mothra Vs Rodan…and Battra!!

I WILL NEVER STOP ADVOCATING FOR MORE BATTRA APPEARANCES!!! MONSTERVERSE, PLEASE RETURN MY CALLS!!

The bug buds compliment each other super well in aerial combat. Rodan just can't win when it comes to insectoid kaiju.

[kaelor0409]

Disregarding my endless obsession with Battra, this is just genuinely good animation. The fight choreography is great and the perspective work is really impressive for something someone threw together in their spare time. Most importantly, the kaiju actually feel like characters, which a lot of actual kaiju media can't seem to manage.

Even if you don't care about Mothra, Battra, or Rodan, I recommend giving this a watch. It's really good!

[dubiousculturalartifact]

The new Odyssey adaptation has inevitably gotten people talking about a Muppet version of it, and they’re frequently suggesting Kermit as Odysseus, Miss Piggy as Penelope.

I’m sorry but that’s thinking way too small, hear me out:

We need to have Miss Piggy as Odysseus, and Kermit as Penelope.

Think about it… who’s the more fickle, prideful, warlike one in that relationship? Who is absolutely ready to go ham, at a moment’s notice?

It ain’t Kermit

[anyroads]

Miss Piggy tied to the mast while Statler and Waldorf heckle her from the sea

[mindovermuses]

But who is the single human cast member in this tale? Who gets to put in an Oscar-worthy performance alongside the Muppets and what role are they to play?

[muffinflarp69]

There’s no single human, everyone is a Muppet except for one scene. Circe, played by Janice, turns Odysseus’s crew into humans who still behave animalistic and are all played by Academy Award winning actors.

[57checkeredcrows]

Saw a post recently about doing mechsplo from the rebel side of things and it got me thinking, I’d actually really like to see a mechsplo story about the rebel faction mindbreaking an imperial ace into a hound. I think I’d be fun to see genuinely good people try to reconcile their morals with the necessities of combating a numerically superior enemy.

Like, do you try to make the process as comfortable as possible for the hound-to-be, even though you’re forcibly dismantling their psyche? Do you just not view them as a person to begin with?

Idk it just seems like such a fun space to explore.

[kaelor0409]

I agree, this is a very interesting idea with a lot to explore!

Do you kill them with kindness? The Imperial Ace is the product of a totalitarian regime. They were raised by propaganda, taught that any sign of weakness, disloyalty, or empathy were sins to be punished, told that the rebels were subhuman degenerates of pure evil. They were trained to expect and resist drugs and torture, but not compassion. Slowly their indoctrination gives way, and they embrace the truths the Empire forced them to hide even from themselves. An Imperial icon must be a paragon of heterosexual masculinity, strong and independent and dominant. For someone to reach that ideal, only to deliberately reject it in favor of a "degenerate" queer identity? To submit through trust and choice instead of force and fear? Wouldn't that be the ultimate rebellion?

And then there's the darker path. The fascists had their chance and made their choice. Now they get what they deserve. The Empire tortures and brainwashes pilots? Time for the boot to go on the other foot. Grind their finest into the mud, as far as they can go. What's that? Sorry, I couldn't hear you over the sound of your hyper masculine ubermensch whimpering like a bitch in heat while she licks my boot. They'd do worse to us. She deserves this. She's earned this. This is revenge...no, not revenge. Justice. And it feels good.

Mechsploitation is about abuse, and both of these explore abuse from different directions. Do you want to tell an optimistic story about the healing power of acceptance and love? Or a dark story about punching down on someone when you are totally convinced they deserve it?

Or maybe something entirely different?

[is-the-battlemech-cool-or-not]

Even Lyrans dislike the Cicada.

[sprintingowl]

Stone Shall Bleed

Foolishly spent like half a year making this 300 page ttrpg.

Anyways it's a pulp supernatural game where you're an ancient stone creature that walks by night and has a complicated relationship with mortals.

Try to protect the people around you without ending the world.

Other features:

Simple d6 pool

36 types of immortal stone creature powers

100 page bestiary

Two scenarios and one campaign

Optional tactical and solo rules

Masks, aspects of your personality that fracture

Stone Shall Bleed by kumada1

Deathless Statues And Deadly Peril

[sprintingowl]

Bumping this even though I have accepted in my heart that this is not gonna be my game that sells lmao

I *do* think it's a fun system, though.

It's pulp, it's goth, it's a 90s cartoon, it's brooding about alienation and belonging, you can elbow drop a cyborg off of a low orbit satellite and into the streets of your city, the game as a whole is angrier about how much more militarized the world has become since the 90s than I was really expecting, the dice system is just roll some d6s and see if you get 5+.

[kaelor0409]

I have always had a soft spot for gargoyles, both as a concept and as a show.

Also the price is extremely generous for such a large book and there are a LOT of community copies available, so there's no reason not to at least give it a try!

[hymnism]

happened to my good friend ass creed

[open-sketchbook]

the joy of team butterfly forever is getting to write a story which is a sequel to a fake series that absolutely reached this sort of book 5

so in the middle of largely mundane character drama, the characters just sometimes casually go like "hey remember that time we fought a volcano god? remember that time we met your future kid? remember that time you got abducted by aliens for 2 weeks and got false memories you still have of growing up in the 1950s as part of alien holodeck courtship? remember that time we got turned into cats?"

[ross-hollander]

You've mentioned before how there'd be a case for welding armour boxes onto mechs for infantry to shelter behind for use as instant close support for fighting in urban areas/ city areas ....

Respecting the 'rule of cool' - apart from jump infantry riding in, maybe hanging on to improvised grab handles (inner sphere pre-clan invasion) I suspect that the experience would be one of squishy meat pulp being quick fried on the mechs armour plate...

(Plus weapon heat, engine heat, missile exhaust plumes, jump jet heat.... seriously infantry lighting in helmet, flak jacket, helmet and underwear.... while on the swaying mech)

Anything armoured (vehicles or mechs) would draw anti armour weapons fire.... the pink squishy infantry would act as low grade sandbag armour...

Using fast light mechs would allow jump infantry a fast infantry drop off with way better mobility than ankle speed....

The pirate states, outer sphere and those backwaters planets that have an ICE powered mech would benefit from Mad Max infantry platforms welded on where needed....

It'd be a great dispossessed story, where the dispossessed pilot is now 'Riding Infantry'.....

It is an issue, most of what might hit a 'mech would be absolutely lethal to an infantry type perched atop it. The feasible scenario, I feel, is less one of tank desant and more like a ball-turret gunner- some specially engineered gunner's cockpit atop the 'mech, independent of the main control systems but allowing for moderate armor (enough for glancing shots, at the very least) for the person in there operating an extra laser or AC or rocket pod. More firepower than just a PBI sitting up there, such that the risk at least has some reward.

To get more ambitious with it, we can posit the notion of combining this with OmniPod technology, such that a 'mech so equipped would be able to detach this auxiliary turret and simply drop it down somewhere useful. You walk into battle, unhitch your autocannon aux-gunner, the newly-created gun emplacement holds down one angle while your 'mech can march off in the other. Very handy if troops need heavy support but the MechWarrior can't stick around.

[kaelor0409]

A very interesting idea, with some obvious lore reasons why it never gets used for main-line mechs.

Everything you put on a Mech takes weight, slots, or both. Welding an armored machine gun nest to the top of a Mech wouldn't cost slots, but it would increase the Mech's weight. The weight of the armor, weapon, and ammo would certainly have to be taken into account, plus extra for the gunner and some safety equipment so they don't get rattled to death the first time the Mech hits a bump. If you want Mech-scale lasers that's even more weight: they have to pull power from somewhere and can't plug into the Mech's reactor like weapons normally do. They also can't use the Mech's heat sinks. If you keep to infantry-scale weapons it's more reasonable, but these would have to have some kind of weight cost to maintain game balance. Deployable OmniPods would likely require actual slots in addition to weight, since they'd have to be self-deploying. A Mech can't exactly pick the pod up and gently place it where it needs to go if it doesn't have hands.

In short, this is going to cost as much or more weight and C-Bills as adding an additional weapon, and the weapon and its volatile ammo will be extremely vulnerable to incoming fire. Being able to shoot in any arc is nice, but in most cases this is a great way to waste expensive equipment you'd be better off storing or selling. Combined arms is a thing, just bring an APC if you need an escort!

Where it becomes useful is as an emergency bypass for crit slots. If you have a Mech with spare tonnage but no slots for additional weapons, go ahead and bolt them to the exterior if you want! They're probably going to get wrecked the first time you take a hit, but if you're desperate enough to risk the equipment why not try anyway?

It's exactly the sort of last-ditch solution someone might try if all they have is a Zombie Mech, some spare guns, and no time or parts for an actual repair. This makes it fantastic for games featuring Periphery groups, pirates, terrorists, and other unconventional forces.

You can even build entire campaigns around it. It's a desperate defense: your forces are cut off from supply and forced to improvise solutions with nothing but what you can scrape from the bottom of the barrel. You start with great mechs and regular military units, but they get worse and worse as the ammo runs out and the losses pile up. Eventually you're putting IndustrialMechs on the field with improvised gun turrets crewed by civilian resistance fighters, because you've literally got nothing else.

[kaelor0409]

Jod is such a wild character for a lot of reasons, but the fact that he is fundamentally unchanged from who he was before everything went down is a big one.

John remembers and still uses memes that are over 10,000 years old by the time the story starts. Not one hundred years. Not one thousand years. Ten thousand years. To put this in context, ten thousand years prior to our current date the hottest new discoveries were agriculture and crude pottery. Imagine someone who has been alive so long he predates written language by 5,000 years, and the only jokes he knows are from the Neolithic.

If TLT took place today, Jod would be elbowing people and going "Hey, remember giant ground sloths? Those sure were a thing, weren't they?"

[foldingfittedsheets]

All the owlbears at once! You can find them on fabric at Spoonflower, or a bunch of other stuff at Redbubble!

You can see the process gifs here, and find their individual links: Sun bear, Polar bear, Asian black bear, Kodiak bear, Spectacle bear, Sloth bear, Panda bear

[autumnarchfeyartwork]

A few of my favourite BattleMechs as I try to learn to draw more mechanical stuff.

[hemipenal-system]

oh to be a sexy crime boss and feed an underling who failed me to my pet dragons in front of the hero in order to establish the fact that i’m a threat for story purposes

[hemipenal-system]

i have received a reblog accusing me of breaching union contract for feeding employees to dragons so i would like to just go on the record and state that we at Death Machine Incorporated are actually extremely pro-union, both because union members work harder and with better morale than non-union workers, and because it makes them way less likely to desert us when things get tough than the “good” company’s workers, giving us a massive manpower advantage

my pet dragons’ diet mostly consists of strikebreakers, scabs, and other various anti-worker’s rights activists, as well as a proprietary nutritious mixture of protein and carbohydrates and fruit to pad out their diet. you can’t take over the world on your own, and we love it when our employees join Henchmen United to show they’re committed to the planetary domination game, so they never get fed to the dragons

[kaelor0409]

"They don't even have dragon feeding protection."

[hemipenal-system]

monsterfucker tumblr y’all make ur demons too human

[wolfpuppygirl]

And your angels. They both should be approaching Eldritch horror levels. And the should fuck nasty. With tongue. Like at least 2 to 3 feet of tongue.

[hemipenal-system]

so true. angels should be tall slim things with 3 sets of feathery wings and another one folded over their eyes and a tongue that is long and strong enough to pin your hands over your head that comes out of a jaw with teeth teeth why does she have so many teeth those shouldn’t be there teeth shouldn’t do that

she likes to lovebite you :)

[kaelor0409]

the teeth are made of stained glass that sing like the wet edge of a wine glass in a thousand thousand tones that all blend in perfect harmony they are arranged in perfect circles like the jaws of a lamprey circles that extend inward forever toward a single point of perfect light that is the dawn of the universe or the soul of God the gums are shining brass and there are eyes between the teeth a myriad of myriad of eyes from cat to snake to octopus to goat to human in every color imaginable they see through your skin they see through your flesh they see through your soul the jaws are wide wider than your head wider than your body wider than your world wider than your universe open to devour all and return it to sacred unity with the Divine-

*nibbles cutely on your neck*

"Tee hee, I gave you a hickey."

[orion-archives]

"I want to be a dragon."

[jp-nichts]

ur lego mechs are SO cool!! pls post other things u have made with lego if u have pics!!!!

Thank you 😊

You wanna see some other things I've made out of lego? How about my halo builds?

[secondsaint]

got the GtN name pronunciation guide on my dash, so now I'm thinking about how the way this is worded ("Ianthe and Corona were 'Cainabeth and Abella'", the deliberate placement of Ianthe first) has always made me wonder if Ianthe was/is intended to be Cainabeth and Coronabeth is Abella.

[cemetegee]

I only noticed that now but I find it interesting how in that guide the names don't switch one but every time they are brought up. "Goodtwin" and "Badtwin" but next it's "Badtwin and Lessbadtwin", the words are in reversed order... Either it means something or it's deliberately designed confusing so that it's hard to conclude who is supposed to be who

[oh-jod-dammit]

As per this interview on Reactormag, Ianthe is confirmed to have been originally Abella!

(Of course, this still leaves at least some room to question who's Badtwin and who's Lessbadtwin, though my money in generally on Corona being Badtwin, personally!)

[kaelor0409]

We may be looking at this too simplistically.

Consider: what was the story of Cain and Abel? One sibling is beloved by God for their talents, and the other kills them out of jealousy. This is usually translated as Cain bad, Abel good, but as the quote stated it's more complicated than that.

Ianthe is Abel not because she is "less bad", but because she is the one who was accepted by Jod and she is the one who will be betrayed by her beloved sibling.

[corvidexoskeleton]

Mina harker is the steel backbone holding up the entirety of dracula's plot. Fuck everyone else, Mina is the single most important character in this entire book

[kaelor0409]

The show Wednesday certainly has its moments, but is not without its issues. I watched through Season 1 and didn’t bother to watch Season 2 after I confirmed that Winclair wasn’t going to happen. 

The setting is interesting, most of the side characters are fun, the actors are generally giving it their all, and even the showrunners realized the relationship between Wednesday and Enid was basically carrying the entire thing. So what went wrong? 

In my opinion, it was the Addams family themselves. 

The Addams family is a deliberate inversion of the stereotypical nuclear family so popular in the 50s and 60s. They are outwardly creepy, wicked, and deviant, but are inwardly incredibly wholesome. By ignoring what society claimed was important (conforming to social norms) to focus on what was actually important (genuinely loving each other), they managed to be a more ideal family than almost any other fictional depiction at the time. 

Another part of what makes the Addams family work is that they’re basically living cartoon characters. They can get away with being weird and non-conforming because they’re functionally untouchable. They have more money than god and despite their best attempts generally couldn’t fail if they tried. It’s core to how they work, because in real life most of what the Addamses get up to would be either suicidally dangerous or instantly lethal. 

The show ignores both of these traits for the sake of drama, and I think it’s lesser for it. Wednesday herself is the typical rebellious teen with overbearing and overwhelmed parents, which flies against everything they usually stand for. They also face realistic harm and consequences, which does play up the horror but also makes them not feel like the Addams family. 

In Wednesday the idea of Gomez going to jail for murder is a dire threat, but in most other iterations Gomez would have been delighted and would have turned the prison around inside of a week. A terrified Morticia having to be saved from a creepy stalker by an equally out-of-his-depth Gomez would be unthinkable in the original cartoon or 1990s adaptations. Previous versions of Puggsy have him being tied up and tortured on a daily basis, but in Wednesday he’s terrified just from being gagged and shoved into a locker. The very idea of murder being a bad thing for an Addams is anathema to their usual comedically inverted morals.  

Wednesday’s serial killer hobby only makes sense because the audience knows that she’s by far the most dangerous thing out there. In Wednesday, however, she is frequently out of her depth against threats both supernatural and mundane. This makes for dramatic scenes, but also makes her come across as a teenage girl who has no idea what she’s doing. It even makes her seem disconnected from her own family, since previous versions would have wistfully dreamed about being torn to shreds in the woods by a deranged monster. 

In short, Wednesday takes both the Addams and the family out of the Addams Family.

So how do you make this work? How do you write a teen horror drama starring Wednesday Addams that doesn’t nerf her into something unrecognisable? You do what every good writer does when writing for an invincible protagonist: you threaten the things around them. 

Wednesday herself has plot armor to the moon and would consider threats of imprisonment, violence, or torture to be a good time, but she’s also prideful. She has standards that she rigidly upholds and she delights in punishing those she thinks deserve it. As much as she might pretend otherwise, she does make social connections and she genuinely loves her family. 

The Addams family is immune to direct attack: they gladly feast on those who would devour them. The people around them aren’t so lucky. Wednesday might be able to walk away from anything without a scratch, but her fellow students will get hit by the collateral damage. Even if she doesn’t actually care about them (she does), her pride would never let someone else take the fall for her. The idea of someone getting hurt as an accident result of her actions is completely unacceptable. If she’s hurting anyone it will be premeditated, deliberate, and surgical. Anything else would be unforgivably sloppy. 

This is also how you get audiences to relate to a character that would otherwise be very difficult to relate to. 

As much as kids in the 90s might have wanted to pretend otherwise, you can’t be Wednesday. You’ll never be as cool as she is, because she’s a cartoon character and you aren’t. While you’ll never be Wednesday, you can be the girl Wednesday pulls from the ground, hands some black lipstick, and teaches how to cut the brakes on a TERFs car. 

Wednesday is a bad audience surrogate but an excellent paragon. Inspiring other kids into an Addams-style revolt is literally her subplot in Addams Family Values, which itself inspired the core premise of the show Wednesday. 

To demonstrate what this looks like in practice, have a look over here!