#automatuck9

[docholligay]

You know in the years lying in wait hoping to show you FMA one day I don’t think my wildest dreams included: “she will one day go to a con as an FMA character”

Please know that no one hates me more than me over this. So, I mean, I think you have basically won the "Doc liveblog lottery" that most people I think hope to win when they have me do something. i have lost my mind. I have gone ass over teakettle. FMA is both good enough to care, but sucks enough for me to want to mess with it, and has compelling characters who are sketched out just enough to have spaces I want to move into with them to play with. I have McLost it.

Old me would be so shocked, embarrassed, and humiliated by the fact that this show I hated on principle is now one of my all time favorites and more insultingly there is a MAN in the DOLLHOUSE. I don't know man, adults compel me, and the situation as they've constructed it manages to give me space for empathy without excusing it all. It's so complicated when it comes down to it, and also whatever weird thing Hawkeye and Roy have going on is just apparently CATNIP to me. They're so deeply damaged. If they kiss I'll riot.

Actually, hilariously, assuming the show does not nothing to irrevocably piss me off into between then and now, our preliminary plans are to go to probably Rose City Con next year with me as Roy, Beeb as Ed, and Jetty as Al. How the mighty have fallen.

[thoughtfulfangirling]

Oh also forgot to mention, it’s way too minor to actually be a negative but it did absolutely crack me up that Gideon is caught out as a fake cavalier because she didn’t know the One Flesh, One End phrase. Masterful undercover work, I actually put the blame for this on Harrow you couldn’t teach her the 4 words long oath?!

Oh ABSOLUTELY that's on Harrow. She put too much faith in her 'you're going to be mute' to a person LIKE GIDEON. Yeah... no way that would go wrong LMAO

[madegeeky]

@automatuck9 Did you know the whole "mine on fire for decades" in the Silent Hill movie is actually a real thing that has been going on for 60 years in Pennsylvania? There's not any ash in the air or giant holes in the ground but the fact that this is a real thing is fucking bonkers.

[docholligay]

Any specific thoughts on the dub of 25 or is it mostly lost in a haze of sleep deprivation? 😅

Guys I do not really remember watching this and I am so glad for that fact ahahah. I assume I was embarrassing and I'm too much of a coward to look so I don't even know if the video we have has sound. Or like, video. i have to go back into to find another way of posting it but I managed to have it all done without looking last time ahahahah.

Uh, I did re-find-out that Sloth is the name of Dead!mom! Which I had forgotten or lost track of somewhere. I remember Elicia's part was much more upsetting in English, that was firm, clear, "I don't like this thing" and I remember dragging Jetty into the camera because I refused to go through all this alone.

BUt it was a huge haze, I was drunk and heavily sleep deprived and also actually a little hungry.

[docholligay]

Quiet Christmas Eve- Haruka+Michiru

It never snowed in Tokyo. Well, perhaps not never--a few days a year they got a light dusting that rapidly turned grey and muddy and hideous, all the city covered with evidence of its grime. It was, quite frankly, better without the reminder. 

Michiru was not given to any kind of magic, Christmas or otherwise, and though time and love had softened her, certain things still remained true. There was a part of her mildly relieved that her children were all out of the house this year, finally, on Christmas Eve. M.A. with her husband, Kimi off on a premed winter program to try and boost her already-brilliant chances of a well-regarded international medical school. 

To top off the sense of winter cheer, Mina had decided to take Rei to Bali for Christmas, whether or not she would enjoy relaxation, with the promise of shoving her cell phone in certain orifices if she didn’t stop working for a few days. Not in a sexy way, she had clarified. 

So it was the two them in a house that felt rambling in these quiet moments, with nothing in particular to do on a Christmas Eve. Michiru had long unburdened herself of the requirement to attend most family functions, and while Haruka had insisted upon calling the girls and making sure they were having a truly magical time (though what sort of magic could be had in a dorm in Cambridge, Michiru was unsure) she was now contentedly snuggled on the sofa, surfing through a bevy of movie options. 

It had been so long since Michiru had no demands in particular upon her. It was, in a way, it’s own sort of suffocating burden. All that freedom and nothing to do with it. Since she was a child, there had been expectations, and she had followed all of them. With her children, there had been reasons to participate in all the things she never cared for, finding joy in the joy they felt. Now, she was free to do as she wished, on Christmas. 

She was not entirely sure what that could be. 

“Babe!” Haruka called to her from the living room, “Would you bring me that box of cookies on the counter?” She affected a sweet whine. “I’m already on the couch.” 

Michiru smiled, but picked up the pink box of cookies, overfrosted and smelling of a newly-stocked bath and body works. She considered a moment, and then grabbed a bottle of wine from holder, nimbly balancing the box on her other arm. Haruka was vassilating between two options, both of which looked to be some horrifyingly cheerful claymation affair. Michiru set the box down on her lap, and Haruka smiled warmly. 

“Thanks!” She opened the cookie box and looked at it seriously. 

“Would you mind terribly if I joined you?” 

Haruka looked up, eyes sparkling. “Of course not! I’ll scooch.” 

“Oh, don’t bother,” Michiru turned quickly, “I will manage quite easily. If you’ll allow me a moment.” 

She went upstairs, quickly pulling on a pair of silk pajamas. Maybe it was silly, the notion of watching some ridiculous movie and smelling Haruka’s terrible shortening based nightmares, but Michiru had no Christmas traditions that belonged to her, and so, there was no reason not to create her own. Mincing quickly down the stairs, she took two wine glasses out of the cabinet and headed back over to the couch. 

“May I suggest cremant as a pairing?” She snuggled in next to Haruka and handed her the bottle. 

“Oh, a very good year.” Haruka grinned as she deftly removed the cap, and poured her the bubbly. 

The wine was not vintaged, but Michiru did not see the need to bring it up. Haruka began to explain the intense complexities of the children’s cartoon on the television, and Michiru nuzzled into her. Years, they had been going forward, and the years had been happy, but here, in this moment, she wanted nothing more than to enjoy the slow passage of time, that paused breath everything seems to take the night before Christmas. 

It never snowed in Tokyo. It was never anything but a way of framing the dirt of a city. And yet, as the two of them snuggled in a quiet and empty house, big flakes began to fall. The city would be shut down for days. 

Perhaps there was magic in Christmas, after all.

[docholligay]

Thinking of how you said you turn failed cake into parfait, are there other foods that are easy to rework into something edible assuming you haven’t ruined the recipe TOO much?

Oh yeah--I make overbaked or old cookies into crumbs to make pie/cheesecake/tart crusts! I take old bread and make croutons or breadcrumbs or bread pudding.

Then you get people saying stuff like "Oh wow! I NEVER would have thought to make a sugar cookie crust for a chocolate tart" yeah me neither until i got fucking distracted when the cookies were in the oven.

So much of being good at cooking is just an ability to pivot and think fast! Let me think what else i do, sometimes i don't think about it until I'm in the moment going "fuck"

Oh! i made that failed custard thing from last year into a SCREAMINGLY good ice cream. I would not have thought about that until I was standing with something with 4 cups of cream and 8 eggs in it that was basically just slop.

Some of it is learning about components that make up other dishes. So cooking a lot will actually teach you more about how you can take failed stuff to make other stuff. Poverty helped me a lot ahhaha. Being unable to fail made me better at either learning to fix shit or eat a mistake.

[docholligay]

Reminder for your thoughts on the dub massaging Hughes’ speech

I have NO IDEA if I'll trip onto anything that might involve later episode, but to this point I ahve only seen up to episode 26 of the original, none of FMAB, and none of the manga, PLEASE do not spoil me in any way big or small!

God I'm so glad I don't watch this show at speed because I worry Hughes' stupid little speech in 23 might have dulled my sorrow at his death, I was so fucking annoyed--at this point I knew he was marked to die, but I thought it was going to be much later than it ended up being, and after this episode I WAS READY TO BEAT HIM TO DEATH MYSELF.

This episode like, sucks. ahahahah. As far as doing the things that really fucking annoy me in FMA, a show I ostensibly love but also infuriates me. Speedrunning the way Ed's fucking attitude sucks and ruins things with the people he loves. ANYWAY.

My big hate in this episode though, is Hughes fucking "boys will be boys' speech to Winry at the party. I went over why I hated it so much while I was doing the episode, but YOU'LL HEAR IT AGAIN! Not only is it lazy-ass early oughts shounen bullshit, but coming from MAES???? HUGHES????? Girl, what? "Men don't ever talk about their feelings" he says, describing to Roy in detail how Gracia is so sexy and he can't keep his hands off her. Is the emotional reserve stored in the giant billboard of your daughter you forced an entire base of men to stare at before they could get their stupid wizard battle? I swear the only man it makes possibly less sense to have give this speech is Armstrong. Hughes is a stupid character to have saying this unless we believe he's an idiot. Roy? Outside of the fact that I don't think he would give a shit if Winry was sad, sure. "It's very manly to be a withholding asshole" is the kind of thing Roy could get behind. He's a prick. I even floated the idea of having Hawkeye give this kind of bullshit advice, though admittedly I removed the weird gender element.

Anyway. One of the the things I adore about the dub is the way it makes an extraordinary effort to remove the sexism from the anime. And WOOF did they have their work cut out for them.

It is incredible the magnitude of difference changing it to "Guys LIKE THEM" from #yesallmen makes in the tone of it all. It makes it so Hughes is talking specifically about Ed (And Al presumably, but let us all be SO for real here) and what Ed is like. Ed does NOT talk about his feelings, he plows forward in everything he does because he would rather fucking kill himself trying to fix it than apologize.

When I did this episode, I was trying to wind this around to make it work for me and one of the things I put forth is that some of this is about Hughes' guilt at not telling Roy what the fuck is going on, so he is a little defensive here, like, "hey just because someone doesn't tell you something doesn't mean they don't love you!" And the dub really leans into that, with him going, "They like people to be happy, they do dangerous work and don't want to burden them with their problems" and even just the inclusion of wanting people to be happy makes the reading of it as being about Hughes and Roy so much easier, which makes it make more sense to the character.

Even the end point, where instead of "give in and complain" he says, "When the pressure valve breaks" and, "You're the one they can count on WHEN THEY NEED TO" has this sense of, "When they are at the end of their rope, you are the one they trust" rather than "Lol but they think it's fine to dump on you" which if I'm reading this with my own take is also about Roy, but I'm not going to assign that to the text it's just what I know is true in the core of my soul, but it's just these small changes that do so much to reinforce how much this is not about a men v women thing. This is a "Sometimes loving a difficult person is hard, but it says something that they rely on you, because they trust nobody else in that way" thing. (This is also about Roy, I don't care if Winry is in frame and thinking of Ed lalalalalalala)

Now, we still have the "You have to be there and be strong" thing but I'm actually fine with a character giving shitty advice (Though I would argue the show is not holding it up as shitty, just me) as long as it's not insanely sexist unless the character is supposed to be sexist.

ANYWAY LONG LIVE THE DUB WATCHING IT IS ALWAYS MY PRIZE.

[docholligay]

So glad you liked the game and thrilled we dragged it over the finish line! Thank god for the bonus session during the 24 marathon. Would love to hear your thoughts in more detail, favorite aspects, etc.

Pentiment is probably the best video game I've played since Bioshock Infinite, in terms of games that will stick with me.

One of the things I don't like about playing games is when I go to write about them, it's really difficult to go back and find something to look at and check your thoughts on it. So, bear with me while I try to talk about this.

One of the funniest things was when I killed Lucky because I was so curious in his story and then ACCIDENTALLY HIT THE BUTTON TO ACCUSE HIM. But I had collected so much evidence on Lucky that it went through immediately. And, for the record, I do think Lucky did it! But I wasn't going to accuse him because I thought he was more or less...maybe not in the right, but not quite in the wrong, either. But then I rocked too hard in my rocking chair and hit the mousepad and killed Lucky! Even though I didn't want to!

Which kind of dovetails into a favorite thing about the game: No matter what you do, there is a cost. Sometimes even doing the kind thing costs you. I killed Caspar because I treated him kindly! He tried to save me because he loved me, and because he knew how much I loved the books he tried to save them, and so he died. He died because I was kind, because he felt love and loyalty for me. Nothing is without cost. Even when you do something good, you cannot control the outcome.

I loved that so much of it was about trying to do what seems like the right thing, but you have no idea what the consequence will be. It's like life! And like life, it can be hard to tell what to do. I got Brother Guy killed because he was a motherfucker and I hated him, and he WAS embezzling from the abbey.

To help save Jews.

Another great thing! The game posits that you can never understand everyone's reasons for the things that they do. Everyone has complicated motives and ideas, just like you. There are very few purely good or bad characters in Pentiment, and I think that speaks to the care of the writing, and the way it sometimes made me understand things that I don't really agree with. I love that! I love when something forces you into understand the complication of life, and I'm not used to getting that from a game.

Obviously, the way it handles Andreas' grief and depression absolutely kills for me. I am obsessed with the labyrinth and the way that Andreas has trapped himself. Andreas is the one who isn't letting Andreas leave. I love the end when it is all crumbling, and the only thing he has left in his court is his own melancholy. Possibly the best part of the game for me, the labyrinth, watching Andreas try to resolve his regret and grief because that is the only way for him to escape. The only way for him to help another person, who he wants to help, who he cares about, but he has to get past HIMSELF first. I will be thinking about that forever.