The Mind of Mzu

[hansoeii]

little thorin sketch to unwind

[toki-like-eat-kfc]

Merry Christmas! 🎄 Thank you for your support in 2025! 😊 See you next year!

[mzuark]

I think I'm just going to live the rest of my life bitter about Star Wars

Disney bought the franchise over 13 years ago. I'm almost 30 years old. I've lived an entire life since that announcement. And yet I still can't actually get over it. I still think about the old books, comics, games and shows that we lost. The stuff that got cancelled, the stuff that got ruined. Those Sequels which weren't very good. I can't even look at something with the Disney logo on it now without feeling an ache in my heart.

I know it's sad and pathetic but I really just can't help it.

[misc-headcanons]

Headcanons for SoI Fon and Bambietta meeting their shy male S/O's family for the first time and on Christmas. The family see and treat him as a disappointment. How do they react and what do they do for their S/O?

(Ooh, a Bambietta request! I’ve never written for her before :D)

Keep reading

[mzuark]

I love my wives

[schlongmaster]

Liquid Snake they could NEVER make me hate you

[mzuark]

We love Liquid

[saul-tortellini]

[xxxtylerworld-deactivated202508]

Arrow

Anime : Fire Force

158 .

[mzuark]

Best Girl

[mzuark]

I just watched all 3 Hobbit films for Christmas. It took 9 hours and my butt is sore but I had a lot of fun. They're still just as good as I remember

[chaossmith2]

Hopping on this meme 💀

[mzuark]

Destiny 1 was neat actually

I'm not opposed to the old Chosen One story, but every now and again a game comes along that doesn't really do that.

Recently I've made a habit of going back to OG Destiny and replaying the old missions and one thing I've realized is that the purpose of the original game wasn't that you were some grand badass whose existence heralds the coming of a new world. In the original Destiny, you are truly just a nameless, faceless, Guardian. One of many.

For one thing, the vanilla campaign isn't actually a "campaign" as you would understand the term. It's a series of disconnected and random events that serve as an excuse plot to take you across the planets available at launch. You start by fighting the Fallen on Earth, then by fighting the Hive on the Moon. Neither of these things are related to each other and the schemes you stop aren't master plans, just another evil activity on the itinerary. At the very end of the base game campaign, you defeat The Black Heart which is a thing. After saving the day, the Speaker has a nice little speech and ceremony thanking...somebody for all their hard work. Your character isn't at the ceremony, you don't have a medal or get any honor for the deed and that's when it all becomes clear.

You may be a Legend, but you aren't special. Every Guardian is doing something that is helping mankind survive another day. You are a cog in the machine. That speech was like a monthly "Hey great job gang." Yeah you killed The Black Heart but there are a hundred other problems that someone needs to deal with. Shaxx's ambient dialogue in the Crucible is talking about random extinction level events that he's stopped in the past. This is just life for these people.

Now obviously this aspect fades away as the DLCs go on and the player Guardian really does become a badass superhero but it's just neat the first time you see it.

[ailheim-art]

Crossbreed Priscilla for a change

[fyeahjakanddaxter]

Don't forget to vote today! This was an official promo poster for Jak 3! Source is Jak and Daxter Eco-mmunity on twitter!

[mzuark]

The Boondocks was kinda problematic

TW: N-word because Boondocks

I've been thinking about the Boondocks recently and I was wondering about how much of it aged well. Some of it did for sure, like the R. Kelly Trial, Luna, and that Obama episode, but there's a handful of things that I think were dumb back then and only got worse. Here's 3 big examples:

Ed and Rummy are two fan favorites who generally represented early 2000s politics via George Bush (Ed the face) and Donald Rumsfield (Gin Rummy, the behind-the-scenes guy). One running gag with them was that Ed was a fucking moron and Rummy was his straight man. Everything Ed said was meant to be seen as stupid and Rummy was supposed to be talking sense into him. One example of this was with the famous "Nigga Technology" bit, technology for niggas. Nigga, in this context, is used as a general ignorant motherfucker and not just black folks (Which has some wild implications right out the gate by the way). So Ed would buy something new on the market and Rummy would try to convince him that it's silly and superfluous. Some examples were texting, wireless headsets, and iphones. Aaron Mcgruder couldn't have been older than 30 when those episodes were written up but they make bro look like a fucking luddite. "New tech bad, old thing good." Now I don't know about you, but I think texting was a handy invention that's made the world a much more convinient place, headsets too even if they do make you look homeless. The iphone joke was made in season 3, which was around 2009 so I think the writers might've realized they would look ridiculous making that same argument for an objectively good device.

A second example that kinda rubs me wrong was Cristal, like the champagne. Now this might be a little spicy but I believe that sex workers are people. Cristal got done dirty as hell in that episode because they kept insisting that her life of hoing and being a human trafficking victim was self inflicted and entirely her own fault. Nobody fucking chooses to work for a pimp, no matter how funny he is. Oh but she's a trifling gold digger so it's okay, what a concept. Then there's the side joke about whether or not all women are hoes and it's just like...eh.

Finally, I want to talk about Return of the King. This is the jewel in the crown of Boondocks social commentary and I really don't think it achieved what was intended. The episode's climax was a speech by Dr. King taking down pretty much everything you can think of about black culture and entertainment, especially fucking BET, and causing societal change. If any writers are reading this, I regret to inform you that you can't get a bunch of black people in one room, call them and everything they care about stupid, and then expect a positive outcome. It's not that it's a bad message, it's just incredibly condescending and unhelpful. That speech does more to help racists than actual black people from what I've seen. The old "Black people vs Niggas" joke that Chris Rock once made is another example of that, appealing to "the good ones" and putting everyone else under an umbrella with very unspecific parameters.

So in conclusion, I loved The Boondocks but damn has it not aged quite as well as I thought.

[mzuark]

I've recently discovered that, when it comes to anime, I prefer characters who have much, MUCH less screentime than MCs. In fact I think it's JJK that helped me realize that. Maybe it's because they feel much more distinct or have to make a good impression.

Mai is a character I feel like got shafted pretty hard by the narrative. What with her death and several other important aspects of her story being completely offscreened. I took a lot of issue with how her death was only used to develop Maki and then she kinda ceased to be afterwards. So here's a numbered list of why I prefer her.

Design: Mai's initial design conveys a lot about her character in very few words. By wearing a sleeveless dress, you see that she's confident in her appearance, and is trying to maintain a "I'm too good for this" mean girl persona. This is of course a lie that she presents to keep her insecurities from public view. Neither of Maki's design are actually bad so this one isn't too egregious.

Motivation: We find out during the good will event that Mai actually really doesn't like being a Sorcerer. While Maki is motivated in part by her handicap of having very little cursed energy, Mai resents it and wishes she was the normal one. She hates fighting curses and even looking at them because they're scary. All she wants is to be with her beloved sister. We don't get much of an end goal from her but we do know that Maki seeks to become the head of the clan. Maki's goal is about becoming the best despite her circumstances, very shonen really. Mai either has no faith in her doing so, or she simply doesn't believe that'll improve either of their lives.

Personality/Relationships: This is the big one. As I touched on before, Mai is actually quite insecure. She uses her mean, bitchy behavior as a shield against the nagging truth that she's nothing special. But she does love her friends, being apart of the group that came to Shibuya to back up Tokyo Tech. She's also shown to have a lot of conventional teenage interests, like Idols (thanks to Todo of course). She can bounce around with other characters, even if it's just a side comment. In contrast, Maki's personality begins and ends at her being the black sheep. She does everything she does out of spite for her family, as far we know there isn't really a path for her outside of Sorcery. Outside of that, she's very rude and short with people. Post-Shibuya, she becomes a true blank slate because all that stuff about her clan is now irrelevant because they are dead. She's just kinda there, in Sakurajima we get a little bit about her becoming more used to her new body but that's not really something you can hold a conversation over. The only people she talks too now are Yuta and Panda, which is always akward because I don't think she really acknowledges the other characters. She's spoken to Yuji maybe twice? Both times about fighting.

Gimmicks: Maki used to be a weapons master, meaning she was proficient with Cursed Tools but defaulted to a naginata or Gentle Cloud. Not anymore though, now it's just the Soul Splitting Katana. Mai uses a gun, which is just funny to me so I like it better. Mai also has a really good technique but just enough CT to use it in very creative ways, like making an extra bullet. Which would've been really cool to see in action against an enemy instead of Maki catching it.

In conclusion, I really wish Mai was still alive. Well she is, kind of. She's the soul of the sword, but I don't think anyone really counts that.

[mzuark]

Vickers deserved better

Meredith Vickers is Charlize Theron's character from the widely acclaimed piece of shit called Prometheus.

Vickers is essentially a mixture of Ripley and Ash, the protagonist and secondary antagonist from the original Alien film. She's also what we in the trope industry call a "Designated Villain". That is to say that she's presented as a bad guy but never actually does anything bad throughout the film. In fact she acts more like the protagonist than the actual protag, Elizabeth Shaw.

There are two moments in the film that particuarly stand out to me as Vickers being presented as wrong, wrongly. The first is the scene where the character Holloway is trying to get back onboard the ship after beginning to mutate from the alien pathogen. Vickers refuses to let him onboard because they don't know if what he has is infectious. Everyone present is fighting her on this and when she does immolate Holloway, the sad music starts blaring and Shaw starts crying and its just a mess.

The second moment is toward the end of the film where the Engineer is awoken. So Weyland is killed after he attempts to ask the alien about how to extend his life, and Vickers whose monitoring his vitals decides to call it quits and get everyone left alive off the planet. After all, the crew has had constant misfortunes and there's increasing evidence that some kind of virus/bacteria is going around and will kill them all if they stay. Shaw radios back to the Prometheus and tells them that the Engineer is probably heading to Earth and intends to wipe out the planet with all the cannisters of black goo. Prometheus has no weapons, so the only(?) option is to ram the ship into the other ship and hope to God that that solves the problem. Vickers is trying to talk the crew out of this but all they do is jettison a temporary shelter that's stocked for a few weeks and say "Best of luck." 20 minutes later, Meredith is killed in the most contrived manner I've ever seen and then I turned the movie off.

Throughout the film, she's seen as very cold and calculating but what's actually happening is that she's pragmatic and cares about keeping the crew of the ship alive while also trying to oversee an expedition that was doomed from the start. The situation at the end is especially bad because suddenly there are no options aside from sucide. We can't even attempt to get to space and try to contact Earth or call for assistance or anything. But oh that fucking bitch Vickers, wanting to leave instead of saving the day. It really, really doesn't help that the film is written so poorly that almost all of the characters behave like simpletons aside from her and David.

[quortknee]

just some perfectly normal and not unhinged at all doodles of my frenzied flame tarnished

[mzuark]

Madness > Miquella

Yesterday I finally completed the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC. It was a hard as fuck, but we're not going to talk about that. Another thing I did yesterday was discover the Abyssal Woods area, this is a part of the Shadow Lands that have been touched by Frenzied Flame. Meaning it's home to all kinds of Madness infected wildlife and abominations that have been heavily mutated by it.

I'm prepared to say this is my favorite area in the whole DLC because the atmosphere is pure horror and it's so effective. After you navigate the woods, you end up in Midra's Mansa Musa where you fight a guy whose apparently become the Lord of Frenzied Flame. How did he get this way? What happened to his home and his subjects? My personal theory is that the woman he calls Nanaya is actually Shabiri in a human woman's body like Hyetta and it was convincing him to go down the rabbithole.

After I finished this area, I realized that I would've much preferred a whole expansion focused on this. On Madness, on Frenzied Flame, on Shabiri. Maybe even work Melina in there since her coming after a Lord of FF is a kind of sequel hook. This is far and away the best lore in the world of ER and I think my fellow Chaos Heads reading this would agree. It's not that I dislike Miquella but one single area got me more invested than the whole map dedicated to figuring out where the little boy ran off too.

Also, we need more Madness weapons.