Y’all I just realized that safe haven would absolutely love this thing
Apparently they’re called playground parachutes? The more you know. I remember playing with one of these in school and it was so much fun :D I can imagine everyone in safe haven all grabbing an end and lifting it over their heads to create a big ol’ tent or maybe even playing “Cat and Mouse” where one person tags people from the outside while everyone else is hidden under the parachute.
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guys i don’t think yall truly understand how much BRAINROT i’m probably gonna get over this new main campaign cast of characters. like i’m looking at norman “japanese silver fox who lost control of my life and is having a mental breakdown and being a real dick about it” takamori and gunthrie “i felt the call to adventure and it ended with my guts getting ripped out and drowning in debt just to stay alive” miggles-rashbax and “my species literally do not lie and i can’t fathom the idea of people intentionally hurting one another so my pilgrimage immediately started with me getting duped into a mlm scheme” riva and sundry “i was designed to be an android that could do everything you needed and that was the exact thing that made nobody want me” sidney and big barry “i thought i understood the clone squad that were my family and my life up until one killed them all and left me alone” syx and margaret “i sold my soul to the evil megacorps but my quasi-romantic bestie/worstie might’ve sold her soul even further” encino and like!!!! LIKE!!!! I DON’T KNOW HOW I WILL NOT BE LOSING MY MIND OVER THEM FOR THE NEXT LIKE 17 EPISODES???
the things from The Batman (2022) that made me go fucking ballistic in theatres
a long, long, long rant bc i can’t stop thinking about this movie that feels like it was made SPECIFICALLY for me. spoilers under the cut of course!
the entire intro sequence with the monologue that felt like it was lifted straight out of the comics. the perfect visual representation of the batman being the shadows, the way seeing his emblem in the sky is enough for bad guys all across gotham to get scared and think twice, think they see batman in every dark hallway. like it literally felt like the live action embodiment of THIS:
the little details like how the new initiate in the gang (SHOUTOUT TO TIM DRAKE’S ACTOR IN THE TITANS SHOW I GUESS) only has half the face paint, both to distinguish him from the others as perhaps not a full member of the gang just yet but also to show his humanity that the others have covered up.
also the fact that this batman hasn’t established himself yet, so the people he saves are still terrified he might hurt him, and all the cops distrust him and think he’s involved in crimes too.
i’ve been gushing about this forever but FINALLY we get a good depiction of gotham since, like, batman returns. the city is just as much a character in the batman mythos as anyone else and portraying it as just another generic metropolis will always be such a missed opportunity. so much loving detail was put into this movie, from the rich wood and wallpaper of victorian-styled old money mansions, to the graffiti-covered subways, to the cobblestone streets mixed with Times Square-esque billboards. the moody atmosphere perfectly merges the neon gothic city architecture with bruce’s absolutely batshit looking genuinely gothic manor in a way where it all makes sense.
also, my absolute favourite small detail is the fact that all the downpours and rain makes sense. like yes, it helps make gotham feel moody and noir with all the umbrellas and hazy neon signs and all that, but it also means that the flooding in the climax doesn’t come out of nowhere. we just watched like 2 and a half hours of scenes in the rain, of course the riddler could so easily flood the city.
rpatt just KILLED it as batman. i love the nolan trilogy as much as the next batman fan, but christain bale’s batman felt composed and collected right from the start. he had shit basically planned out the moment he got back to gotham, and he figured out his gear and his tactics pretty quick. rpatt’s batman isn’t like that. he doesn’t get everything perfect, he makes mistakes that ends up with bad guys getting a hit in, half of his fights feel like he’s just letting his anger take over and force him through the pain. he’s clearly so much angrier and traumatized, he’s emotionally withdrawn and disconnected from everybody, and the way he’s just such a silent batman works so well in showing just how intimidating and off-putting he is to everyone. and it’s GOOD! the scene where he’s finally showing vulnerability to alfred is so poignant and bruce can’t even look at alfred as he says it, it felt so raw and real to me!
speaking of batman being silent, i looooved that first scene where gordon takes him to the crime scene. the way he’s putting together all the evidence on his own without saying a word, but he does it so slowly and deliberately that forensics eventually start following him so they can take pictures of the right clues. like, yeah he’ll help them out, but fuck you if you think he’s gonna sherlock-style spell it out for you.
honestly i don’t think i even have to say too much about zoe as selina kyle, she OBVIOUSLY was incredible. she channeled year one comic!selina perfectly and her origin story here felt so grounded while also leaving enough room for her to become the antihero thief we all know and love.
paul dano as the riddler was great too! i’ll always have a soft spot in my heart for cory michael smith’s absolutely perfect campy egomaniacal riddler from the gotham tv series (JUST LET HIM WEAR THE STUPID GREEN SUITS AND BE FRUITY), but this version of the riddler as a completely unstable zodiac killer was great as this more detective-like batman’s first rogue’s gallery enemy and imo still leaves enough room for the riddler persona to evolve further. this was also an origin story of sorts for him too, after all.
(and to quote barry keoghan’s cameo ((who was gonna fuckin tell me they got druig from the eternals to sneak in a lil joker moment??? i nearly screamed in the theatre??!!)) everyone loves a comeback story.)
also they got the point of batman. they UNDERSTOOD THE ASSIGNMENT. batman’s quest for vengeance did teach bad guys fear, but it also served to inspire dangerous ppl on their own quests for vengeance. the way he was going only continued the cycle of violence in gotham. when he falls into the water it felt almost like a biblical death, and when he re-emerges he becomes a hero, a literal light guiding the most thematically important gothamites (a little boy who obviously reminds him of himself and an honest leader who’s genuinely trying to change gotham for the better) to safety. they so beautifully demonstrated his growth as a person, and seeing him in full daylight helping civilians evacuate and seeing them put their trust in him for the first time was so fucking moving, and that’s always the best version of batman anyone can create.
Some things from Prey (2017) that make me go absolutely insane (based off my recent twt ramblings)
the fact that the player character is asian. it’s not a choice. the default isn’t a white guy. you literally are a mixed-race asian person & that’s IT.
(and also like yeah, smth smth hints of yellow peril whenever the only asian rep we get also comes with scifi futuristic evil unethical-experimenting tech corporations, but WHATEVER, it still made me extremely happy to see so much diversity & representation in a cool rpg)
the fact that mikhaila’s gender doesn’t change so i, a queer half-asian woman, found myself playing a canonically queer half-asian woman. the joy was real.
the WORK put in by devs to make TALOS I genuinely feel like a place people worked and lived in. the ttrpg sessions in the rec room. the whiteboards scrawled with both scifi mumbo-jumbo & dumb jokes from bored scientists goofing around. reminders of garbage days & food in the fridge. mr. glooey mcglooface. the entire existence of the huntress boltcaster being mostly used to annoy coworkers & play silly games.
on the subject of the people, how utterly BATSHIT it is that every single corpse has a name & you can theoretically track every single person down. that they all have full names, their own personalities, that you can read emails or listen to audiologs of them interacting w/ each other, asking each other out on dates, arguing, sharing secrets, making plans with friends. and with very few exceptions, you find them all already dead or brainwashed or turned into phantoms. the premise makes me go feral every single time and I can’t get enough of it.
the fact that this game in general really rewards you for exploration & also requires it on some level, given that by exploring you can find notes/clues to get into safes or locked computers, or keycards to access other areas of the map.
danielle sho and abigail foy. danielle’s last actions being to help you find her lover’s killer before she suffocates out in space. need i say more.
ok, this one really makes me go wild. emmanuel mendez. a single audiolog, a single email, in a dangerous room you technically don’t even have to go in.
“let’s say you discovered something dangerous. something everyone ought to know about.”
“i’d go out to that billboard and flash it big as vegas on the screen.”
again. this is optional. it’s not even technically a sidequest. you don’t EVER have to do this.
but you can. you can go out into space and fly yourself out to the giant billboards that orbit the station. you can find emmanuel’s corpse and the half-finished data he risked his life trying to transfer. you can choose to finish the upload.
ESCAPE PODS ARE FAKE
and for the rest of the game you see that flashing on the billboards every time you look out a window.
a top-of-the-line space station. conducting secret unethical experiments on human prisoners and aliens. and they sabotaged the escape pods.
I don't know how else to convey my love for The Locked Tomb other than:
it is an enemies-to-lovers bodyguard au where, regardless of enemies or lovers, the two are absolutely obsessed with each other from beginning to end and just didn't realize it
it is a sci-fi fantasy story that's entirely about gothic body-horror necromancy magic and everyone primarily fights with swords but it IS set in space
lesbians and hot women everywhere
every character is a morally grey, complex, messy person with their own ambitions and agendas and at absolutely no point do you get to know even half of them outside of confusing, out-of-context dialogue, and I respect the hustle
as someone who dislikes reading things that makes me think too hard, Tamsyn Muir has successfully made me fall in love with a trilogy that personally beats the shit outta me with a thesaurus in one hand and extremely dense worldbuilding prose in the other
at one point, canonically, one lesbian imagines a coffee shop barista fanfic of her and the lesbian she's in love with
the author wrote homestuck fanfiction and that shit ABSOLUTELY comes out in elements of the writing style, verbosity, and crucial plot points of the story
sometimes i think ppl need to write advice posts for uni/college students that just. suck. that are just complete introverted disasters who have no idea what they’re doing.
i need everyone to know that i saw the batman today and those 3 hours were singularly the most concentrated amount of serotonin my body’s ever given me in the past few years
