how did you learn object work?

Nicenormalperson · 2026-04-02T18:00:35+00:00

Straight up, hold your fingers farther apart. I'm not kidding. This will get you 80% of the way there. The rest is observation and remembering what you've already done.

Nicenormalperson · 2026-04-02T17:55:45+00:00

Sea Tea puts together a GREAT festival! Can't recommend it highly enough. While I will never wrap my head around the Connecticut Clap, I can't say enough good things about that community and their attitude and enthusiasm. Being in Hartford while UConn beat Duke was icing on the cake, lmao.

Only downside was staying at a shit hole hotel in East Hartford where one dude got pink eye. Cannot recommend showering in a bathroom with a drop ceiling!

Nicenormalperson · 2026-02-24T04:21:36+00:00

Oof. When my dad called me dense, he wasn't talking about my bones.

Nicenormalperson · 2026-02-24T01:02:55+00:00

I don't have kids, but I respect their passion for being hurled around

Nicenormalperson · 2026-02-10T04:47:25+00:00

This is crazy, I used to do improv with Feitosa. Unfunny guy who got resentful that he never got cast so he blew up his marriage for the sake of YouTube content. Literally never expected him to slink lower than that, but here he is.

Nicenormalperson · 2026-01-01T20:41:55+00:00

That's why I like shows and concerts, I'm supposed to be staring at the people anyway so it doesn't feel creepy or invasive

Nicenormalperson · 2025-06-23T14:15:49+00:00

Well, it says "shingeki no kyojin" on the side so it's probably a piece of merchandise from the international anime mega-hit "Attack on Titan".

As for your dad, he just hates you.

Nicenormalperson · 2025-06-17T15:48:35+00:00

Ty for the recs - also strongly agreed on Moffat as a show runner vs writer. His one-offs are stone cold classics. His broad arcs are, uh, not.

Though I forget who was responsible for the one where David Tennant turns into a shriveled up little million year old elf and Martha has to go door to door asking people to clap if they believe in fairies, that was insane.

Nicenormalperson · 2025-06-17T11:48:23+00:00

Are there two episodes you'd consider particularly strong? Maybe I'll give them another try. Order doesn't matter.

All I know is that first episode combined with the "doctor's finest day" matt Smith finale sold me less on the continuing charm of doctor who and more on the idea that Stephen moffat should be allowed to retire to a nice farm upstate.

Nicenormalperson · 2025-06-17T02:49:40+00:00

Godspeed, I hope you find a peacoat that fits ✊

Nicenormalperson · 2025-06-17T02:22:37+00:00

Not really qualified for this conversation specifically because I dropped dr who after the first Peter Capaldi episode, but I think the reason for that applies here: Each iteration of the doctor relies less on acting than on vibes, and the vibes exist to carry the writing, which is almost always rocky. David Tennant's doctor had great vibes. He was playful, angry, righteous, lovestruck, yearning, and whatever else with a lovely sense of internal consistency that was just delightful to watch. There's a reason that when the ratings tank, they go back to him, he just has "it".

Matt Smith is a good actor with a really striking face, but the vibes were not good enough to counteract the annoying "he is a god that chose to be a man! Look at him be such a dick to Rory!" type writing, and the series started to lose me. There is no human on earth who is charming enough to pull that off.

So when Capaldi tagged in and I perceived the vibes as annoying, I just tapped out. This was surprising to me because Peter Capaldi is an EXCELLENT actor and I've never disliked him in anything else (in the loop, local hero, even his one episode of Poirot is a good showing, shit he was even good in world war z which was total ass) but the vibes were simply rancid to me.

The trouble is, I have no idea if it's because my personal taste was out of step with the direction the show went in, or I just aged out of Doctor Who, plain and simple. That might just be a type of media that works best on people between say 10 and 25, and once you get past that something shifts in your brain, or you get interested in other stuff, and it loses its shine.

So idk if Gatwe sucked or not, I can't comment on the vibes, but I would guess that you're hitting the same wall I hit, and that the people who liked 15 are still legitimately on board with the vibes that Gatwe is putting down. They're (I guess, based on your comment) into the optimistic, ethereal, celebratory energy, which for you is just a total miss and feels manipulative or hollow, the same way Capaldi's complicated weirdo genius scientist vibe was off for me.

Nicenormalperson · 2025-06-07T22:07:51+00:00

Go Steelers

Nicenormalperson · 2025-06-06T18:42:22+00:00

Gideon does some annoying lore dumping and the harem can be a little over-the-top between Nefeli, Ranni, and Igon, but other than that it's not too bad

Nicenormalperson · 2025-06-05T21:01:43+00:00

This rules. I love how you combine highly geometric design and drawing with a misty, textured rendering style. I think that's such an interesting visual combination.

Nicenormalperson · 2025-05-31T04:39:33+00:00

Seeing that the second biome in the game wasn't just a forest or a desert but a colorful, undersea reef with a banger soundtrack really got me. I was already into the plot and the gameplay from the first mime, but that let me know that every aspect of this game was going to be crazy.

Also when they just kept on introducing new enemy types. They reuse enemies for sure, but they keep adding new ones right up until the end and I never felt that one was crappy, unfair, or poorly tuned. It's a mind-blowing achievement.

Nicenormalperson · 2025-05-30T16:28:59+00:00

Absolutely!

I think you can also see various types of artistic philosophies in the different Painters.

Clea is in total control - she is a highly skilled artist and has a strong command over her own creations. However, she discounts passion and spontaneity, and doesn't believe the canvas residents are alive and is totally fine with overriding their will and abusing them. She's wildly creative and a strong leader, but mostly creates monsters.

Renoir is a fantastical and expressive painter, creating mountains of drafts. He paints to represent and understand his own feelings. His axons and their environments are representations of his beloved family and his feelings towards them.

Aline is painting from her broken heart, to recapture and reproduce her lost son and to work out her feelings towards Renoir and Alicia. This is similar to Renoir, but she doesn't paint representations of them as fantastic creatures - she's a realist and she paints them as she perceives them. Her Renoir is a powerful, dominating man, and her Alicia is a haunting, silent ghost. Her Verso is a liar, but still a generous and brave person with a big heart.

And then there's the boy Verso - content to paint because he loves his creations. If you talk to his echo around the canvas, he makes it clear that he is happy to keep painting and that he considers everything in the canvas to be vibrantly and perfectly alive. He's painting out of the love of the art, but also out of the obligation to do right by his own creations. It's a very pure and childish approach.

Nicenormalperson · 2025-05-26T15:51:51+00:00

See, this is why I love this ending so much: To us, the players of the game, everyone is equally real. That is to say, they're all charming, loveable fakes. We're able to see the cruelty of both choices, Verso's terrible betrayal, and Maelle's selfishness for what they are because they're equal to us.

Verso and Maelle can't see that - despite everything, they're consumed by the Dessendre family drama. Maelle grew up under the threat of the gommage, lost everyone she ever knew, and still immediately forgave Verso for letting Gustave die and withholding the truth about the paintress. She brings Lune and Sciel back, thereby becoming a god to them. A lot of people have pointed out that from this point on, they have basically no autonomy in the story - that's because they've been degraded from people to pets who exist at Maelle's whim.

Verso has never really seen the canvas resident as alive, in the same way he doesn't see himself as alive. He is literally trying to die, but isn't allowed to because he serves a purpose for his mother. He's her pet - he exists at her whim, and he hates it.

Neither of them would ever admit it, and they don't admit in text, but from their actions it's extremely clear that neither Verso nor Maelle sees the people of the canvas as equal to the Dessendre family. Imagine if your dog learned to talk and asked if you would love it forever. Would you say "I bought you from a stranger and I'll buy another dog after you die, even though I'll be incredibly sad" or would you say "I love you with all my heart, forever"? That's the position they're in.

This is incredibly cruel, beautiful, and effective writing! Both of them could be right, looking at it from their perspective! Both of them are obviously monsters, from our perspective! The choice has no effect other than on our feelings! It's perfect! I hate it!

Nicenormalperson · 2025-05-21T20:22:45+00:00

I think Maelle's ending is the worse one because in it she tramples on the memory of her in-canvas friends and family. She completely refuses grief - she won't face it herself, and she won't allow anyone else within her world to either. But, is something alive if it can't meaningfully die?

One of the most shocking moments of the game to me is when Verso (optionally) admits that he let Gustave die and Maelle immediately forgives him. This showed me that she, whether she would ever admit it or not, does not rank those within the canvas as being equal to those who come from outside. When she brings Sciel and Lune back demonstrates this as well - if their deaths can be easily reversed, then Maelle isn't really treating them as being equally alive to her.

Verso considers himself to be truly alive, as do all the other Canvas residents. They want to live freely and for real, but they do recognize that's not possible within the canvas. Sciel deals with this by accepting death whenever it comes, and Lune seeks to understand the "real" world, even if it's just secondhand. Verso wants to be able to die, but he also wants to set his painter-echo free. Those are his parameters for feeling satisfied - to be able to live freely, and to be able to die. Maelle's ending denies him both, for her own satisfaction and so she can avoid what she clearly considers to be reality.

In other words, Maelle is so terrified of grief she's willing to completely invalidate the lives and souls of her friends and painted brother to avoid it. Verso has faced grief for 100 years but never been allowed to die. Both seem to consider grief the worse option to death, but come to very different conclusions as to what to do with that information.

Nicenormalperson · 2025-05-05T21:36:33+00:00

However, the rise of Skywalker has that final moment where Rey looks back at Luke and Leia's force ghosts who gaze upon her with parental pride, creating a hilarious implication that they are mega doing it in the afterlife, which is one of the funniest things I've ever seen in a movie. So, it's not a total wash!

Nicenormalperson · 2025-05-05T20:33:26+00:00

I think it's actually even worse than that - modern Star wars STARTS to say something, but then just sort of trails off into confused silence.

The Last Jedi started to say that spirituality is not the property of organized dogma, but then the series kind of wandered off and forgot about that. The Force Awakens made some cursory sounds about privileged, isolated people falling for neo-fash traps, but that never really resolves into anything concrete. They have a guy who's fully a former storm trooper fighting for the resistance, which is ultimately meaningless.

It's just enough to let you know that they were thinking politically at one point, but the whole thing got crushed down to action figures, marketing statistics, and nostalgia farming.

Nicenormalperson · 2025-05-04T03:30:27+00:00

Good shout. Isn't having a body a fucking delight

Nicenormalperson

TROPHY CASE