The Snack That Smiles Back

I play Portal, I con langs Pretzel, she/her

[nalgeneofgatoraade]

jesse meets mike in the season 2 finale, when he helps clean up after jane's death. he doesn't see him again until 3x12, when mike knocks on his car window and says to come with him.

imagine how he felt at that moment. he doesn't know mike is gus's guy, as far as i remember. a specter from jane's death just appears in front of him with no explanation.

jesus

[airprime7]

she's called glaDOS because she's in Portal 2

[nalgeneofgatoraade]

all-timer post right here

[sunfoolery]

i hope their roleplay is STRANGE and GOOFY

[ID: A 3 panel comic with 2 images. In the first panel and image, Poison Ivy is laying on her side in a garden saying, "Oh noooo! I'm a Calypso Bulbosa whose stupid owners put me in Full Sunlight. Can't anyone help me from drying out? The second image contains two panels. The first one has Harley Quinn forcefully kick open a door, the second panel has her hold a water gun saying "Did I hear a thirsty little flower?" /END ID]

[femmegatsby]

If anyone wants to read the full paper for my sociology + fashion class final, be my guest, but I found that having to streamline everything into a proper essay flattened some background bits of research (which I consider the fun part).

Honestly, I chose Tyler Durden as my subject to study because I'm curious about this phenomenon I noticed around my campus- why do so many guys look "bisexual" now? The long story short, is that this is to be expected TBH. Men's clothing has been loosening its standards for the past century, and city's/ younger people are the driving centers of clothing experimentation. Thanks to social media making certain styles more visible & the slow progression of queer acceptance, guys (in cities or, more generally, progressive areas) are able to absorb whatever flavor of masculinity they want. And Tyler looks queer to me. He's not "Gay" (feminine), but he's too cool to be straight. Straight men are expected to perform masculinity in the well-dressed, well-groomed way or the, I guess, piggish route (no care at all). Either way, men are not supposed to care about fashion in the same way women are. Tyler's style is unbothered, but it's colorful & loud & playing by its own rules. It's this playing by his own rules that makes him queer, I think.

Because, see, another element to this is that Tyler Is Not Real. He fulfills a need in the Narrator (ie. breaking out of the passive monotony he's stuck in). The Narrator has no name; he's supposed to represent every man to some degree. As such, Tyler is that 'hey, wouldn't it be nice to go apeshit?' I always thought men's fashion was boring & that man just Did Not care about fashion. The former is false, there's actually some fun history nuggets & interesting developments to things, while the latter depends. I don't think every man wants to have Tyler's fits 24/7, but the Brad Pitt + dominant personality pairing made him Stupidly Cool. And wouldn't it be great if they could swagger around the same way? Wouldn't it be nice to get out of a 9-5 suit or some boring polo?

I didn't get to look much into the culture sphere of the '90s, but I do think Fight Club worked as some sort of blueprint for what's going on now. Tyler exists in a legacy of punk/ alt subcultures & film/ television influencing a lot of current culture. @365mentalillnesses

[nalgeneofgatoraade]

okay so bruce wayne famously has no sense of humor but what if he just hasn't discovered it yet

like, comedy has evolved a lot in the past few decades, and i doubt he's spent much time looking at it. what if, one day, dick sends him an i think you should leave sketch and he just falls over laughing

[nalgeneofgatoraade]

bruce, pointing at the screen: HE'S AT THIS HIGH END RESORT TO FIND HIS FUTURE WIFE AND ALL HE WANTS TO DO IS RIDE A ZIPLINE AND DROP TWO FEET INTO A POOL

barbara, who he has forced to watch it: yes, bruce, i can see it on the screen

bruce: *pounds table, hysterical cackling*

[nalgeneofgatoraade]

okay so bruce wayne famously has no sense of humor but what if he just hasn't discovered it yet

like, comedy has evolved a lot in the past few decades, and i doubt he's spent much time looking at it. what if, one day, dick sends him an i think you should leave sketch and he just falls over laughing

[plr-pipeline]

this clip has me cackling for no fucking reason

[nalgeneofgatoraade]

i really appreciate wayne being so surprised that he fully drops the gordon voice

[thehmn]

I have an ex who was very adamant that I should watch Fight Club with him and I flatly refused because I thought I was just a dumb movie about men beating each other up but he insisted that nono it was actually really deep and would totally change my view of society and that just made me want to watch it even less because judging by the type of movie I thought it was I could imagine what kind of worldview it had.

To this day I still regret I didn’t watch it with him because it doesn’t promote the worldview I thought it did and I’m pretty damn sure my ex didn’t understand it either. Knowing him I’m 100% sure he thought it was promoting the chaotic worldview Tyler goes on about when it’s actually criticizing modern macho culture and suggests that the only way for men to be happy is to accept their emotional side and live in balance and harmony with women. We’re told this at the start of the movie when the only way the narrator can sleep is when he hugs and cries with other men and again at the end when he and Marla stands hand in hand with almost identical silhouettes.

It’s like The Matrix. Stories made by queer people that straight guys then take the entirety wrong message from. I would have loved to turn to my ex when the movie was over and ask “You know it thinks macho culture is bullshit, right?”

[boasamishipper]

the entire kusimayu scene was devastating but to me the worst part was that by Joining she not only lost her individuality but her culture died with her. immediately the hivemind stopped chanting and singing and speaking the quechuan language and rolled up their blankets and packed up their things and walked away. the animals were set free and the goat that kusimayu had been cradling so lovingly just minutes earlier chased after the hivemind wearing kusimayu's body and bleated for attention and love and got none because there is no one left to care specifically enough to give it.

[nalgeneofgatoraade]

[badshah-cornelius]

Spec Ops: The Line AU where, instead of Dubai, Walker and his team are sent on a rescue mission to DashCon, and it’s just as tragic and horrifying as the game itself.

[badshah-cornelius]

[badshah-cornelius]

I can’t believe I didn’t reblog this on the anniversary of DashCon.

I made this 10 years ago, as that fabled Con was unfolding.

Happy 10 years, DashCon.

[nalgeneofgatoraade]

gentlemen... welcome to dashcon

[rabirayrana]

Now that I’ve had an afternoon to process the Jacob Geller video - Spec Ops: The Line did better with the option to let Martin Walker quietly move on and live with what he did in spite of the unfixable moral & psychological damage than FNV did with all of that self aggrandizing narratively vindicated mighty whitey bullshit about Joshua Graham put together. Because Martin Walker is also an irredeemable bastard, but unlike Graham, the narrative deals with the ethical weight of his crimes by directly intertwining his nightmarish selfishness & cruelty with the reality of his indomitable humanity. This is why Walker has the option to mercy kill Riggs, to spare him an agonizingly painful death even though he doesn’t necessarily “deserve” it. This is also why Konrad, the manifestation of Walker’s conscience, painted a mural of his/their victims in his final moments of existence. Because what Riggs and Walker and men like them individually “deserve” isn’t the point, and never should’ve been. The Walker we see in the final scene with Konrad is the real Walker, and he isn’t heroic, decent, excusable or redeemable, but neither is he a tooth gnashing monster. Instead, he is scared, desperate and confused, crying “I didn’t mean to hurt anybody!” in a manner so brutally infantile that the ocean of blood on his hands ceases to be impossible to comprehend. Of course, this is the true face of the game’s Bad Guy™, this fractured shell who it would be completely pointless to kill, by his own hand at least. Walker is evil, but he’s still a person, and in that context the full extent of his unspeakable guilt becomes possible to interpret and cope with. To reconcile internally, through understanding, if not externally through justice.

If Walker decides to live, he will walk out of Dubai regretting that he is alive, but he will be alive anyways. All of his convoluted internal justifications came crashing down, and he still had that awful, glorious freedom to just… stop. That was what was wrong with him the whole time, right? He just couldn’t stop killing. But he does stop killing. And he starts where anyone seeking to better their circumstances should always start, with themself. By choosing not to commit suicide, Walker makes use of the autonomy which the game previously chastised him for not using, and sets himself up to do so again. Martin did this, he can’t undo it, but he can still go on. He’s still got the air in his lungs and is entitled to that, by virtue of nothing but his own choice. By surrendering himself to the truth, Martin can rest inside of it. He built a life and tore it apart and the sun kept shining. For a game so notoriously bleak, that’s quite soothing.

[nalgeneofgatoraade]

this is a solid examination of the idea of deserving as it applies to spec ops! thanks for writing it.

i appreciate that someone else agrees with me on the best ending to the game

[carouselcometh]

If The Chair Company doesn’t actually have a fucking wedding in a haunted house I’m going to be so vaguely annoyed

[nalgeneofgatoraade]

dw they won't mess it up

[carolsturka]

wow..

[nalgeneofgatoraade]

he's just doing a slightly more grown-up version of a heart with w+m in it

[carolsturka]

wow..

[likeits95]

First four of my Disco Elysium inspired Better Call Saul portraits. There’s still a lot of characters to go if anyone likes them! First up my OTPs

[crushribbons]

“i swear i have the worst pillow in town!!!” lowkey funniest line of the year

[nalgeneofgatoraade]

"THIS THING IS MADE OF GODDAMN METAL"

[nonetoon]

[nonetoon]

I made this in reference to comic/game stuff but I’m glad to see this one’s going over well with all the writers

[sarroora]

Reblog to give your followers and mutuals the strength to continue