Repost From My Old Blog - Tumblr Posts

2 years ago

Every Protest/Picketing sign from Moral Orel, Season One (in case you missed)

Episode 1:

• Against the theater’s showing of The Wizard of Oz

Every Protest/Picketing Sign From Moral Orel, Season One (in Case You Missed)

Chant: “Follow the yellow brick road, means follow the devil in code!”

Signs {left to right}

“Only God can kill witches!”

“Boycott this trash!”

“There is no place like HEAVEN”

“Offended and proud of it!”

“Flying Monkeys, more blasphemous Darwinism!”

• Bonus.

Every Protest/Picketing Sign From Moral Orel, Season One (in Case You Missed)
Every Protest/Picketing Sign From Moral Orel, Season One (in Case You Missed)

“ ‘Rotting’ unfair to zombies!”

[on ground] Illegible :(

An additional “no Place like Heaven” sign from earlier

Episode 5:

• Against Rod Putty

Every Protest/Picketing Sign From Moral Orel, Season One (in Case You Missed)

Chant: “Reverend Putty’s mind is smutty!”

Signs

“Rev. Putty put the sin in sinner!”

“Boycott this trash!”

“We don’t need an ir-reverend!”

“Offended and proud of it!”

“God isn’t your pimp, Rev. Putty!”

Episode 8:

• Against the theater’s showing of The Ten Commandments

Every Protest/Picketing Sign From Moral Orel, Season One (in Case You Missed)

“ ‘Commandments’ is thinly veiled pornography!”

“Boycott this trash!”

“Parting of Sea = Parting of legs!”

“Offended and proud of it!”

“Burning Bush = Unmentionables”

Episode 10:

• Against the theater showing of It’s A Wonderful Life

Every Protest/Picketing Sign From Moral Orel, Season One (in Case You Missed)

Chant: “Every time you hear a bell, an angel burns in Hell!”

Signs

“XXX-MAS”

“ZUZU BURNS in HELL!”

“LIFE ISN’T WONDERFUL”


Tags :
2 years ago

Some exhibits from my personal collection of Making Fiends screen caps that exude a mild-to-moderate amount of unhinged energy

Some Exhibits From My Personal Collection Of Making Fiends Screen Caps That Exude A Mild-to-moderate
Some Exhibits From My Personal Collection Of Making Fiends Screen Caps That Exude A Mild-to-moderate
Some Exhibits From My Personal Collection Of Making Fiends Screen Caps That Exude A Mild-to-moderate
Some Exhibits From My Personal Collection Of Making Fiends Screen Caps That Exude A Mild-to-moderate
Some Exhibits From My Personal Collection Of Making Fiends Screen Caps That Exude A Mild-to-moderate
Some Exhibits From My Personal Collection Of Making Fiends Screen Caps That Exude A Mild-to-moderate
Some Exhibits From My Personal Collection Of Making Fiends Screen Caps That Exude A Mild-to-moderate

Tags :
2 years ago

Doctor: “You’re not in any pain at all; you just think you are.”

Doctor: Youre Not In Any Pain At All; You Just Think You Are.

Doctor: “It’s all in your mind, try meditating and eating more hazelnuts! :)”

Doctor: Youre Not In Any Pain At All; You Just Think You Are.

Tags :
2 years ago
The Unfixable Thought Machine | David Firths Health Reminder, Episode Three

The Unfixable Thought Machine | David Firth’s Health Reminder, episode three


Tags :
1 year ago

Okay so this is not even a critique or much of a commentary but it’s just acknowledging some Sly Cooper… design choices that keep bouncing around in my head rent free

Like I’ve never seen anyone talk about some of this

- the boldness of making a full 1/3rd of the enemies to be encountered in Paris frog people

Okay So This Is Not Even A Critique Or Much Of A Commentary But Its Just Acknowledging Some Sly Cooper

- Speaking of Paris, apparently those flashlight guards kid me could only guess were some kind of scary cows have this entire time been warthogs.

- just always thought these cyclops squid guards from Relaigh’s level were interesting.

Okay So This Is Not Even A Critique Or Much Of A Commentary But Its Just Acknowledging Some Sly Cooper

- boldness part 2: Pigs have consistently been the animal of choice to represent the wider police force behind Carmelita, up until only the third game

Okay So This Is Not Even A Critique Or Much Of A Commentary But Its Just Acknowledging Some Sly Cooper
Okay So This Is Not Even A Critique Or Much Of A Commentary But Its Just Acknowledging Some Sly Cooper

- Between the bats, the pigeons, the parrots, and the vultures I need Sucker Punch to answer me straight whether or not all the avians are actually typically capable of flight or not. In-game play seems to suggest they do have some limited form of flight and may just be weighed down by personal objects. Clockwerk flies, sure, but he’s a massive jet boosted android. But wait, Arpeggio’s entire sad backstory is that he couldn’t fly, so that MUST mean the norm for birds in this world is fully flight-functional wings. The reason I’m BEGGING to know is so I can say if it’s canon or not that bird people in Sly Cooper can just take off at any moment by flapping their arms ala Bojack Horseman, because it would be hilarious

Okay So This Is Not Even A Critique Or Much Of A Commentary But Its Just Acknowledging Some Sly Cooper

- sorry I’m actually not finished with the birds but seriously, are their wings functionally hands or not? Clockwerk has literally been seen to only grab things with his feet, the bats in the Contessa levels certainly don’t seem to get any manual dexterity out of theirs, but????

Okay So This Is Not Even A Critique Or Much Of A Commentary But Its Just Acknowledging Some Sly Cooper
Okay So This Is Not Even A Critique Or Much Of A Commentary But Its Just Acknowledging Some Sly Cooper

Okay! So that actually settles it- except in game vulture guards also… only ever… use their feet to handle those same crossbows.

I’ll try to tell the little hamster in my brain it should really stop asking questions about the birds at this point tbh

Okay So This Is Not Even A Critique Or Much Of A Commentary But Its Just Acknowledging Some Sly Cooper
Okay So This Is Not Even A Critique Or Much Of A Commentary But Its Just Acknowledging Some Sly Cooper

Tags :
1 year ago

Not to mention I’m still holding onto that Speedo Bob image

So uh

In case any of you wanted that here

h

Here ya go

Not To Mention Im Still Holding Onto That Speedo Bob Image

I always forget until I sometimes remember that this was the only time in my entire life so far that I drew any sort of Animal Crossing Fanart and I just sit there and marvel with pride


Tags :
1 year ago

Doctor M(andril), A Villainous Demonstration of Crafting the Perfect Sequel

Doctor M(andril), A Villainous Demonstration Of Crafting The Perfect Sequel

I’ll cut right to the chase, there is no baddie in the Sly franchise (to me) that has before and will ever again top the writing of this monke right here. That’s not to put down Clockwerk in any capacity. In fact, the majority of what makes M so amazing is not what he is in a vacuum, but what he serves to build upon the events that preceded him. Clockwerk is the giant who’s shoulders he stands on, the two games before him the backdrop that makes him shine so brightly. I’ve always been a strong believer that stories are in large part only as good as their antagonists, and this is what Dr.M has contributed to make Honor Among Thieves the narrative peak of the Sly Cooper franchise.

For minor starters, everything about this freak is downright unsettling.

A mandrill monkey was a great pick for a scary looking, vicious little mastermind. Even with a fresh coat of purple and his short stature, he looks about as repulsive and menacing as he is on the inside. He’s completely obsessed to the point of being consumed metaphorically by his envy and resentment of Connor. He gave us a lot of interesting insight into the life and relationships of Sly’s father while leaving us with even more mystery and questions to ponder. He’s meticulous and intellectually gifted in his ways, but it doesn’t do anything to overshadow the fact that he’s also an utterly deranged madman.

Clockwerk’s hatred for the cooper line, as genuine and strong as it was, had this almost detached element to it, being more like a means to an end and fueled by superiority and rivalry competition. It was kinda hard to get your head around it, and the second game keeps him in your thoughts more like a slumbering eldritch horror waiting to rise again or a pure, immortal force of evil itself, rather than a person. He isn’t even really “anthro” in his design. Clockwerk is a monster, a robotic husk of a former individual.

Dr.M’s hatred for the Coopers on the other hand is… uncomfortably humanized. He’s narcissistic, yet he’s also paranoid and motivated by a rage that’s responding to his sense of inferiority and victimhood. He’ll use his warped justifications to stoop to the most heinous acts- not just because he wants to prove himself better- but because he wants to destroy/take everything Conner loves and accomplished. Clockwerk’s hate was cold and mechanic. M’s hatred is personal and boiling over with venom. Both of them were defined by little more than their loathing of Coopers, but while Clockwerk kept himself alive with his vendetta, M’s was the very thing that led to his demise.

Clockwork was “the enemy of all Coopers”, but he left the final member of the bloodline to wither and then bloom more vibrantly than ever to return and defeat him. He underestimated Sly, and was content to live on and continue his own work with the overconfidence that he had already won. I wonder in my head sometimes if maybe his power was actually starting to fade in the light of seeing that vendetta finally resolved. Or if that time-worn weariness and frustration was part of why Sly, barely an adult, was able to accomplish what generations of his most skilled family had failed to. He never knew Clockwerk during his prime, the great monstrous owl that his clan used to live in constant terror of.

Doctor M feels like he was really Sly’s own Clockwerk. A fresh and unfamiliar threat to truly test every skill he had spent a whole career of thieving to master, and someone who’s own history was far more entangled with Sly’s blood than he could have imagined. Clockwerk condemned him to death (or destitution) for no other reason than being a Cooper, but Dr.M actually wanted to watch the life leave his eyes because he was Sly Cooper, son of Connor.

And he’s not just fitting to compare to the old bird, but he’s more overtly a direct foil to Bentley’s character too. He’s a dark prophecy of the worst possible result of what would happen if the Cooper gang fell out with each other in a similar manner, or if some of Bentley’s foreshadowed insecurities (that started presenting after he became wheelchair bound) were allowed to fester instead of him finding support from others. That turtle is also the only character that Dr.M is able to speak to like an equal, because he sees himself in Bentley despite being on opposite sides.

He’s a really, really well-written main antagonist that does not try to take a whole new direction like Neyla; instead, he’s like a revamped version of Clockwerk’s “idea” done without milking out any more references or revivals of the bird and his role, which by this point was well-concluded and moved on from… The past of Sly’s family coming back to haunt him, the weight of honoring the legacy of his ancestors, and the struggle of exploring who he is both as a Cooper and the leader of his own found family, and Honor Among Thieves checked those boxes without ruining the closure he got back in Paris. Band of Theives will always be my personal favorite to return to, but all of what M represents, along with many other reasons, is why I consider the third to narratively be the best game out of the series.


Tags :
1 year ago

“We watched as Dr.M just stood there, unwilling to leave as the walls caved in on the vault.

We Watched As Dr.M Just Stood There, Unwilling To Leave As The Walls Caved In On The Vault.

He’d spent his life lusting over the Cooper Fortune, and he wasn’t going to give it up, no matter what the cost…”

We Watched As Dr.M Just Stood There, Unwilling To Leave As The Walls Caved In On The Vault.

Tags :
1 year ago

Exclusion Zone Makes My Eyes Sweat

KHS, it seems, possesses such an uncanny talent for writing the most underrated and downright raw narratives in general, but there's just something so specifically emotionally wrenching about what you could probably call the "climax" of Exclusion Zone- aka, my second favorite of the twisted tales within Haunted Cities, vol 4.

And therein Exclusion Zone lies an event that makes it stand out so far from the rest. There is a moment very, very far from the scariest experience I had in Haunted Cities, and yet this is still the one that haunts me most of all, and maybe that was the way it was meant. You simply enter the ruins of a long abandoned tower, and you recover a note written by a deceased researcher.

It's not a moment that puts the player inside the jaws of a hungry house. It's not a scene where dark angels are coming to gnaw off your skin, you aren't swallowed by any ravenous gardens, and if anything, the music in that tower makes it almost a calming moment. The atmosphere is serene and comforting, like a temple, or any sacred ground should be. You are, true enough, being bombarded with lethal amounts of radiation, seemingly to no immediate consequence, though.

And like that, it happens, and then you leave the site once you finish your exploration. You show up, do your job, and head back. Yet here I am still trying to put together what exactly about this game's conclusion makes me so deeply... sad and disturbed, in a way games have rarely managed to do, and I have my best guess:

“She was wronged."

As extreme and surreal as the story unfolded is, the feelings it immerses you in are something so grounded and relatable, to me- The sympathy and sheer powerlessness of being an observer in the aftermath of a great tragedy.

To stand there in the epicenter of so much death and sorrow, which happened all and only because everyone was trying the best that they ever could, and it just… wasn't enough. And no matter how much you can mourn for their fate, or wish you could even just say how sorry you are, maybe for them, or maybe for how cruel of a world it is at all, but there's nothing you can do yourself but just.. feel that empathy for them. So you do.

And the revelation itself is a jarring, shocking thing, especially if you save the tower for the last to visit on your run. These gentle, final words pouring with so much humanity in a setting that’s so lifeless and cold. I already had an idea of what was coming, I got the games purely because of the Jacob Geller review, and I don’t think my enjoyment was any bit lessened by the spoilers.

There’s no villain to blame for the tragedy of the fallen goddess and those people who built the tower, save those nameless sisters some unfathomable, untouchable worlds away. There’s no implication to some fruitful lesson or honoring of the disaster’s victims. If anything, your closure is only in the assumption that the pitiful girl will be demonized and remembered in infamy for her suffering. What became of her, whether a final peace or an eternity left to her pain, no one can even know. Your discovery of the truth? As ultimately meaningless as that of the corpse left behind in that cursed ruin. What could you be left to do?

You silently grieve, probably just because no one else will. Probably because of a strongly felt connection for the wrongs you've faced yourself, whatever times you wished someone had been there with the same message, as little as it would have changed. It's a very unique and specific thing to invoke in an audience and I guess I'm appreciative and impressed such a game did so in such a short and potent fashion. It's part of what makes Exclusion Zone one of my favorites of the collection. It vaguely reminds me of Looming, too, which is another indie game built around a similar theme of retelling a story through archeology. I just really found that neatly powerful, and powerfully neat, and I hope I'm not the only one that did.

“I'm sorry, sister. You deserved better. This was not your fault."


Tags :
1 year ago

Upon finishing S3//Ep2 of Moral Orel, “Innocence”, Orel’s morals finally clicked for me

As happens in a show this narratively rich, I looked around at some of the close-by chatter under comment sections. People were making these observations about how Orel seemingly just goes out of his way to interpret all of the lessons he’s given in the least charitable and most nonsensical way. Not an invalid view, and for the first good part of the show, you think this is just the function of an over the top comedic bit for the formula of each episode. It’s easy to ask how on earth a seemingly kind hearted, well meaning kid like this can be THAT devoid of the basic logical implications of what he hears, or any common moral intuition that virtually everyone has, right?

Orel’s not a stupid kid. But the entire problem with him up to the point thus far is that he legit DOES NOT in fact have that intuition we expect most people, even children to have. That knee-jerk repulsion to obviously harmful actions. That really vital sense of conscience. No, I don’t mean he’s some kind of psychopath. He has a bright and almost sickeningly sweet heart and it was part of how he broke the cycle despite everything. I mean that Orel has not had a coherent moral compass modeled to him through his earlier development. His ethical axioms are ALL rooted in divine command theory. To put it simply, he doesn’t believe “god is good”, he believes “goodness” itself is “what god says is good”. Most Christians, hell, most religious people generally do not literally, consciously operate in this way, and usually even the ones that do are (mostly) still functionally average people, because usually they were at least consistently conditioned to believe that axioms like human well-being are what God commands. To at least a fortunate degree, human empathy and socialization usually is allowed to and even encouraged to develop under mainstream religious upbringings.

You notice the glaring difference though when you see what happens to people who are molded entirely by Divine Command Theory and then become convinced that their God’s divine command is something that doesn’t happen to line up with conventionally good ideals, like those given earlier. This is what destructive cults do. This is what makes crusades. This is what causes anti-sodomy laws and stoning people to death for eating the wrong kind of fish or not wearing the right clothing to happen.

Understand that this is the hinge that Orel’s whole sense of right and wrong up to this point swings on. What it means is that this little boy can, and will, justify or excuse any and all directions given to him so long as he trusts the adult talking to him as someone who speaks for God. This combined with his craving for approval, plus the fact that he’s also had it drilled in his head to never question or doubt his elders’ wisdom makes for a child zealot that is dangerously easy to manipulate to do ANYTHING and with fanatical determination. It is less than no additional help that the Puppingtons (and the majority of the townsfolk) have never been golden examples for healthy social modeling, as well. Like, sure, he’s getting glimmers of actual goodness in there such as the Jesus loves you so love yourself and help thy neighbors messaging, but it’s being inconsistently contradicted by and juggled alongside at same hierarchical importance as “lessons” like beat the shit out of people who make fists, segregate the brown people, and be terrified of the same authority you expect safety and comfort from. Why on earth is it shocking that Orel seemingly has no sense of scale or priority when it comes to the rules? The rules he’s given are subject to constant and chaotic updates and are all treated with the same gravity. Follow X and you will be promised infinite reward. Disobey X and you will be met with infinite retribution. Not just even in a spiritual heaven and hell sense, but here in life too. Clay delivers the same punishment for getting hooked on crack or becoming a serial rapist that he does for the “sin” of using slang vernacular and meditating to relieve stress.

Everything that defines his life and virtues is a matter of constant anxiety and eagerness in order to appease a patriarchal tyrant that is portrayed as both ultimately benevolent and wise,

yet incredibly vindictive, sadistic, irrational, and petty.

And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this description can equally apply to Moralton’s conception of God and a certain alcoholic father.

No kidding when I say that Orel has so little consistent input to actually steer him in the right direction that it’s incredibly sad, to the point where he’s extremely fortunate to actually have such an optimistic and compassionate inclination at all. It only seems ridiculous how he can’t see obvious suffering and even personal detriment as any red flags to hesitate or question an action, until you remember that he’s so been domestically broken by Clay and his church that his Pavlovian response to pain is either gratitude, mild inconvenience, or, masochistic euphoria.

Nonetheless, all of this only backfires on every adult in Moralton because the one thing they can’t control or account for 24/7 is exactly how he interprets what they say, even when he’s trying his best to follow their command. It’s like a twisted Amelia Bedelia situation with him that no one actually wants to deal with, even though they all (except Stephanie) collectively played a part in creating this monster.

Censordoll was the first one who was smart and ambitious enough to see the potential for Orel’s blind subservience to be weaponized, and of freaking course she was.

Thing is, you bet the ONLY reason she stopped was because she also lost control of him, and we all know what the consequence of that was. He unintentionally yet absolutely destroyed her in the only weak point she has, yet exactly like Clay did during the “turn the other cheek” incident, she trapped herself in a situation where she couldn’t swallow her own pride in the name of reversing the damage.

What I guess I’m explaining here is that Orel’s collection of constant shenanigans, unknowingly, yet effectively, is literally a manifestation of the community’s own complete moral bankruptcy biting them back in the ass, and possibly even a divine punishment for it, depending on how you interpret the writing. Which is a HELL of a phenomenal, subtle twist to his whole premise that doesn’t abandon the original joke/satire, but instead builds upon it and adds a chasm of depth and intention.

PRETTY GREAT, HUH?~

Upon Finishing S3//Ep2 Of Moral Orel, Innocence, Orels Morals Finally Clicked For Me

Tags :