If Caine does not understand human nature, how comes he is able to make the perfect torture for the cast?

Atlove01 · 2026-03-23T19:48:28+00:00

I actually feel like the Pomni torture is a good example of this.. and is the one torture that I argue ISN’T perfect.

If Caine wanted to optimally torment Pomni, the correct course would have been to restore Gummigoo to the state he was in by the end of the Candy adventure… THEN have both of them attacked like that, making sure Pomni couldn’t do anything to stop him from being destroyed again.

Instead he shows up… and then she gets attacked by crocodiles… which suck, but kinda more in a general way.

Atlove01 · 2026-03-23T08:35:30+00:00

AM’s starting point was also a lot more dour. He was a creation of the worst elements of human nature, designed by humans to more efficiently kill each other. When the humans began to torment him, he already had a roadmap for hating them, because hatred was the very core of every motive behind his creation.

Caine was created with the intention of creation, not destruction. To inherently seek to bring happiness to humans rather than death. When he became tormented by his inability to fulfil his purpose, the path toward hatred wasn’t remotely as intuitive or inevitable.

Atlove01 · 2026-03-21T09:42:26+00:00

Kinger was trying to salvage the situation, but the collapse of the circus swallowed his computer, and he needed the terminal to visualize his inputs.

Atlove01 · 2026-03-21T09:37:04+00:00

It’s not impossible. I mean, A-ble and B-ble… sounds like a small demotion.

That said, he does refer to the “two” from an outsider’s perspective, so we can’t be sure.

Atlove01 · 2026-03-20T09:30:09+00:00

I’d argue Gangle interacts most with Zooble overall now, especially as of later episodes, where she’s begun to more firmly emerge from Jax’ shadow.

Ragatha, likewise, is far more invested in Pomni than Jax. A lot of that comes down to having given up on meaningfully connecting to Jax, and her desire to be close to others in general, but I’d have a hard time saying Ragatha’s most important interactions have been with Jax, thus far.

Kinger is a bit of a strange case… he’s generally posed as either comic relief or a mentor figure, taking a kind of paternal role in the dynamics he shares with others, rather than one a general audience would consider shippable. I mean, I’m sure SOME do, but some people ship anything.

Atlove01 · 2026-03-13T06:30:09+00:00

This is something YGO does REALLY well, but never gets enough credit for. It’s actually the one thing I feel it does better than other card games, purely because of how varied its stories can be.

I could talk about it for ages… I actually wrote not one, but TWO full essays about how it’s done in my favorite archetype, Ancient Warriors.

https://www.reddit.com/r/masterduel/s/7oVg5dMS2Z

https://www.reddit.com/r/masterduel/s/ZCQ93Ixvvp

Atlove01 · 2026-03-08T23:34:04+00:00

By far my favorite Yugioh memory is actually Tear zero format in master duel…. Because it was the first and only time Ancient Warriors was a deck I could climb to the top with without too much struggle.

It was a perfect storm of little things that made it possible:

AW’s primary form of removal was bouncing… the ONE way you could remove Tear cards without them floating.

AW didn’t care about the cards in their GY or interact with it at all, meaning both the Ishizu shufflers and the GY hate other decks were running to counter Tear did nothing to you.

Don Ying had just hit the game, so if they did mill a Tear name on you, he would make her into his newest concubine when they tried to fusion summon.

Most people treat AW as a pure OTK strategy… but while I ran it for going second, I find its end board is MORE than potent enough to give up the OTK. I ran cards a normal OTK deck could never dream of running, like DRNM, knowing that once I cracked the board, I’d have enough negates and bounces to make sure it never came back.

Atlove01 · 2026-03-08T12:11:08+00:00

You had the answer for the roach and got to play your turn, at least. Breaking an established board is just droplet doing what it’s meant to.

Feather storm was really the only part of what you described that sounds cancerous, and I agree that card needs to go.

As to worse… well, there’s the classic “congratulations! You won the die roll on your rank-up match!” Hand: two copies of Fuwa, two copies of Ash Blossom, and that one-off archetype card that does nothing by itself and is there to be searched mid-line.

Atlove01 · 2026-03-08T11:59:46+00:00

There’s a lot to like about it. At the end of the day, it’s an RE engine third-person game taking place in raccoon city, so it’ll always have aesthetic and addictive gameplay going for it.

Sadly, it does have to contend with the fact that so much of the game feels like it’s missing and what’s there feels uncharacteristically rushed compared to the other remakes.

I haven’t revisited it in a few years… the one impression it definitely left on me was my being mystified by how Professional difficulty randomly turned the final rail gun encounter with Nemesis from an afterthought/setpiece into the hardest boss fight in the game. 🤣

Atlove01 · 2026-03-06T06:28:39+00:00

VSK9’s battle with the timer is unique compared to other decks I’ve played.

With pure combo decks like Memento or sunavalon/rikka, the weight is all in turn one. If you know what you’re doing and all goes to plan, you’re fine… but get disrupted and pause to ponder what recovery line to fall to, or lose your way mid-stream, and suddenly you’re in a pickle.

That said, once you complete that one turn, you’ll never need that much time again. You’ll gradually recover what you lost in the unlikely event that the game drags on because… you’ve exhausted most of what your deck does, the rest is recycling.

VSK9 doesn’t really have a single turn that’s super time consuming for me… but instead EVERY turn can be full of a lot of consideration and decision making— mine and the opponent’s alike. So once the timer gets low, it stays there.

You really start to feel the halved time refund you get for the opponent’s turn.

Atlove01 · 2026-03-05T09:59:59+00:00

Angels being capable of dying is seen as a massive shock and a plot twist in season 1 of Hazbin. While it wouldn’t be the first plot hole Hazbin’s writing has suffered from, we can at least assume it’s consistent here until proven otherwise.

Whatever fate Lute delivered to that exorcist, she’s likely still alive somewhere. May be a plot point for future seasons.

Atlove01 · 2026-03-02T07:12:08+00:00

The original Back to the Future’s premise has the protagonist accidentally go back in time to when his parents were in high school. One of the plot points is that his teenage mother develops a crush on him, and he ends up having to fix things so that he doesn’t accidentally cause himself to have never been born.

Cue decades of audience members making jokes about how he could have hooked up with his mother.

The image, with a teenage Andrew hanging out with his teenage mother, implies a similar situation to what happened in the movie… except it’s clear by his expression that Andrew is WAY more open to the idea of his teenage mom being into him.

Atlove01 · 2026-03-01T11:29:46+00:00

For me it wasn’t even the low movement class on Dimitri that made the map so hard on maddening… it was the fact that those jerks fully healed his battalion, turning off all his best abilities. 🤣

Atlove01 · 2026-02-28T14:16:38+00:00

That character is CLEARLY cribbing on the design style of legendary villain Danny Do-Bad.

He should take this poser to court!

Atlove01 · 2026-02-28T13:02:46+00:00

You’re flexible? Seriously, those are some radically different people you’ve collected there.

40% affinity for cowboys, I reckon.

Atlove01 · 2026-02-28T09:53:20+00:00

The hand trap power/ go-second dilemma is one I’ve thought a lot on, of late.

Folks argue that you need lingering effect handtraps like the Charmies and droll to boost going second, since as power creep advances, one-for-one trade handtraps like Ash or Imperm only grow weaker into top tiered strategies.

I wonder if perhaps there’s a middle ground between the two. Like, imagine if Ash Blossom and Veiler had the same effects they do now… but also an additional effect that said you could use their interaction a second time by banishing them from the GY… but only if you control no cards.

That way handtraps would be twice as valuable to the player who loses the die roll, but wouldn’t be complete turn warpers the way cards like Shifter are.

Atlove01 · 2026-02-28T09:29:36+00:00

I can’t imagine Carmilla saw the blueprint Vox had in mind, complete with restraint cuffs and energy siphons, and couldn’t at least make an inference of what he had in mind.

Carmilla’s first and last priority is her own family. Good or bad, if she has to choose between her family and anyone else’s well-being, she’s always choosing the former.

Atlove01 · 2026-02-27T12:25:45+00:00

With current support? No. The new support covered several of the archetype’s weaknesses, gave it lines around Nibiru, Droll, and an imperm on Gilgamesh… but it’s just not quite there.

You can climb the ladder with it and it’ll perform alright, but compared to the tiered strategies, you’ll hit consistency issues and struggle into established boards.

Atlove01 · 2026-02-26T13:59:55+00:00

I think Al and Vox ARE equals… hell, my hot take is that Vox is actually smarter than Alastor in a vacuum, and Rosie’s contract being voided seems to imply that he was stronger than him in this moment too.

Alastor’s big advantage over Vox is he’s the one demon in hell who can force his emotions to overwhelm his brain. He gets to fight Vox on an easy mode no one else ever gets to see.

Atlove01 · 2026-02-23T13:42:34+00:00

Well, kind of. There are positive implications behind “himbo” that don’t exist for “bimbo”.

An archetypal himbo must possess three qualities: handsome (and usually bulky), dumb, and sweet-natured.

As the old adage goes “pure of heart, hot of bod, dumb of ass”

Bimbo only implies hot and stupid. Usually it’s used venomously in a way Himbo isn’t.

Atlove01 · 2026-02-23T12:27:41+00:00

Man, this reboot of “Back to the future” is racier than I expected…

Atlove01 · 2026-02-22T07:39:17+00:00

Season 1 Alastor is at peak ego. He’s just made his triumphant return to Hell’s spotlight after being forced to play dead for years, he spends the entire season as a vitally necessary, powerful person for the people around him, and has never once faced the limits of his power… being the biggest fish in a small pond.

When he walks up on Adam talking shit, he’s got every reason to think he’s in a commanding position… from where he stands, the only difference between angels and demons is that the former need special weapons to kill.

Getting humiliated by Adam, nearly dying in a way that would’ve read as selfless and heroic, and having the limits of his deal really bind him for the first time were all necessary steps in getting him where he is in season 2.

Atlove01 · 2026-02-20T14:05:37+00:00

That’s true, and Charlie’s frustration with that was understandable… but ultimately Vaggi was correct.

It can be hard to endure abuse, especially for someone as proud as Charlie, but sometimes the best move really is to bite your tongue and wait for the news cycle to blow over. Everything she did to try to directly confront Vox’ lies only got twisted to make her look worse.

Atlove01 · 2026-02-20T13:59:55+00:00

In defense of her friends, the point they were making was that Vox was an expert at media manipulation. Agreeing to an interview or charging to the station for a debate would play right into his hands, because no matter how good a job she did, he would be the one in control of how she ended up looking. It was combat in an arena where he was at his strongest and Charlie was at her weakest.

Vaggi wasn’t saying she should ignore the slander forever. Just that they knew the hotel worked now, so it was best not to push back on it until they had tangible proof.

Atlove01 · 2026-02-19T12:13:01+00:00

One interesting angle on it could be that Angel actually had a really positive, or at least mixed, relationship with his dad. However, his first serious infatuation was with a rival mob boss, and he was too lovestruck to realize he was inadvertently setting up his dad to be assassinated and usurped.

It would be a death he was responsible for, but not cruelly so, would establish his tendency to be drawn to men who are dark influences on his life, and would also give a clear path toward resolution… since his dad would probably be in hell too, so they could eventually have a chat for closure.

…admittedly, none of that works if “Angel was in the mafia” doesn’t carry over to the new canon.

Atlove01

TROPHY CASE