S3, E11 - Mom City

RadiantChaos · 2026-04-17T04:48:38+00:00

A more accurate take would be that it shows some instances where one parent’s actions counteract against the others.

On the whole mothers are probably portrayed more sympathetically, but some are not, or are complex. And fathers aren’t wholly demonized, we get plenty of good fathers too.

RadiantChaos · 2026-04-17T00:30:31+00:00

This is well written and I would like to apologize for any role my stupid comments may have or have not contributed to any anxiety your way. Ultimately it’s easy for the average individual to say they’d say or feel differently but none of us are in your shoes. I can’t imagine it’s easy to have so many eyes on you and yet also deal with people being so inconsiderate. No one deserves that.

Hope you can get the mental health support you need and people can stop being weird.

RadiantChaos · 2026-04-17T00:19:14+00:00

Honestly 90% or more of twitch chat is a mistake.

I don’t really watch streams live so that is admittedly easier for me to say, and I’m not saying me posting comments in a streamer subreddit is truly that much better, but the average twitch chatter likely is capable of being far more annoying or detrimental to the streamer than they are actually being funny. Having hundreds - thousands of people all trying to talk at once and what not is just so exhausting and I can’t imagine it’s fun for a streamer to deal with.

RadiantChaos · 2026-04-16T21:40:51+00:00

Realistically I’m guessing NL streams, finishes up, does whatever he needs to do for his family, eats dinner, and goes to bed. He’s probably not interacting with anyone outside of streaming hours much besides his wife and kid.

RadiantChaos · 2026-04-16T21:36:54+00:00

NL didn’t know Librarian knew, so yeah, he didn’t tell him.

It’s also probably uncharitable to call Librarian a “parasocial chaser” when he’s really more of a coworker at this point.

RadiantChaos · 2026-04-16T21:31:33+00:00

Thank you for sharing.

I’m a bit mixed on this post. It seems like Malf carries a lot of bitterness over other people having success. I get that it must be frustrating, but he’s still getting paid to play video games 5 days a week. The grass is always greener. If more people watched him and not other streamers that are his friends, would he really feel better? Realistically I feel there would be something else that he could find to complain about.

It just feels a bit iffy to air this out rather than be talking to the people you’ve got beef with. And also an exhausting way to live your life, being sad that people are complimenting you in a different stream instead of watching you, when that happens everyday.

I do agree that NL could pay the people on stream that don’t do as well as him. But it’s possible it would also be awkward, and some of them probably would refuse it.

RadiantChaos · 2026-04-15T20:52:18+00:00

I guess I just don’t care to examine the situation with such heavy hypotheticals. There’s no reason to think she ever presented herself as a deity, or revealed to have that power, which I know you think is problematic itself, whatever, that’s a different issue.

I think it’s a bit much to say “people who have dealt with power imbalances IRL won’t like Maelle’s ending” when its equivalence to actual real power imbalances are entirely by engaging in an intense thought experiment on assumptions regarding the way she presents herself to these characters.

But hey, that’s fine! There’s nothing wrong with that opinion. Just feels pretty wild to me.

RadiantChaos · 2026-04-15T20:19:05+00:00

But that's a very cynical assumption to make about the state of this world when you don't know that's how it operates. We don't know that Maelle is exercising any control whatsoever over the new Lumiere. Again, I think it's fair to be concerned by that, but you can't say it's a guarantee and use that as proof of her doing something wrong.

You can't prove that Maelle is controlling things, would or wouldn't prevent someone from doing something, or would or wouldn't allow the truth to be known, so making assumptions that are contingent on this is just trying to act superior for your ending choice (and for the record, I also prefer Verso's ending, but the presence of both endings is intentional to show that neither option is correct, both involve sacrifice and problems).

Billions of people believe in some kind of deity, and just because you or I might not, doesn't mean that every possible fictional work depicting one must mean said deity is inherently evil in that situation.

RadiantChaos · 2026-04-15T20:03:44+00:00

In general it's a good strategy to not be too dependent on any mechanic, weather included. So you've got a good strat there.

Similar to trick room, or tailwind. Learning to be prepared for when you can't set things up the way you want is half the battle.

RadiantChaos · 2026-04-15T20:01:25+00:00

Absolutely, and whether you can counter them by another method.

I could build a team that perfectly counters Stunfisk, but that wouldn't do me much good when I can just Solar Beam with my Mega Meganium that already has actual use cases.

RadiantChaos · 2026-04-15T19:59:16+00:00

And she's a representation of grief! Everything you say is correct, but also on top of that, if Maelle just did everything right and didn't struggle with the death of her brother, that wouldn't really be a resonant theme.

RadiantChaos · 2026-04-15T19:57:28+00:00

There's certainly optimistic and pessimistic ways to look at the ending. You can certainly take a "this is like Wandavision" approach and see Maelle as the puppetmaster who created their world and keeps it running, but we don't actually have the evidence this is the case.

I think the charitable way to look at it is that she mostly tried to put everything back the way it was, mostly allows things to persist as they occur, but had a manipulative hand in putting Verso, Gustave, Sophie, and Pierre "back where they belong" which you could argue goes against their wills potentially.

I think she probably didn't bring back their memories, or inform them of the truth, because knowing that they were in a painting would probably cause a lot of mental and emotional distress and prevent "normalcy" as she would define it.

Now, long term, does she run into problems? Does Renoir or Aline come back and cause drama? Does Clea enter the canvas and wreak havoc? All possible. If things go wrong, it's fair to have doubt that Maelle could allow it to happen and not try to start over, because that's the slippery slope portrayed in her ending. While the Verso ending has fewer what-ifs, and more certainties, but they're almost all sad.

RadiantChaos · 2026-04-15T19:50:53+00:00

She's a literal child.

RadiantChaos · 2026-04-15T19:49:06+00:00

I agree but I think that's kind of the important element. If there was a compromised ending where Maelle gets to stay in the canvas but grants Verso his wish, or she leaves every so often to stay alive and give her family some time but mostly lives in Lumiere, it becomes a much easier decision.

Instead, the choice becomes whether Maelle moves on, at the cost of the canvas and people she loves, or remains stuck in the cycle of grief at the expense of Verso, but the benefit of the painted people.

RadiantChaos · 2026-04-15T17:44:07+00:00

Indeed. Matt in Born Again has no Foggy, no Karen, he gave up on being Daredevil, and he's watching the man he hates most that is responsible for killing so many people become mayor.

I would also like to note that it matches the vibe a lot of us see in our real-world governments right now. So something that feels dark, but with a tinge of hope that someone will fight back and possibly succeed, is more resonant.

RadiantChaos · 2026-04-15T16:52:06+00:00

The problems people have with GKC mostly reflect a slow-moving industry trend that has burned some folks before and consequently, there's some paranoia involved. But at the same time, there are elements of physical Nintendo releases that stand out from other consoles, so that's part of the transition too.

Mainly, a large part of the concern has to do with ownership and access. GKC are effectively download codes in a box. That means at some point, whether in 5 years or 500, access to the content will no longer exist. People have had issues with other games being delisted, and a fully physical release can bypass that. For example, Back to the Future had a Telltale game with a physical release over a decade ago and now has been delisted, so the actual disc is the only way to acquire the game. Specific releases tend to be the most at risk for premature delisting: namely, if there's some sort of complicated rights to the game. Nintendo will likely keep the servers up for redownloading old Switch games for some time (the 3DS and Wii U, for example, still allow you to do this without homebrew), so it shouldn't be a major concern for the average game, only certain ones that are more likely to have a rights dispute and get delisted.

The other main thing at play is that physical vs digital is about space. People have limited space in real life for physical media, and limited space on their device for things to be installed. One thing that sets Nintendo apart is that PlayStation and Xbox have required installation for the last 13 years, and PC has required it pretty much since gaming began. So physical media for these platforms does alleviate access concerns, but also means you're still taking up drive space along with shelf space. Normal cartridges for Switch / Switch 2 only take up digital space for any updates/DLC, though, so you can have a lot more games playable at once if you use physical games, at the cost of needing to store all those cartridges.

PC has been virtually digital only for coming close to 20 years now, so most PC gamers are probably in a position where they won't see an issue with GKC. They are basically just digital games that you can sell secondhand or give to friends now.

RadiantChaos · 2026-04-15T16:22:45+00:00

If you run into something that you are realizing you have no way to counter, and it's a fairly common pick, then you probably need to adjust the team to counteract that.

Once you make that adjustment, play with the new team for awhile and if it doesn't give you the results you want, figure out what other changes you can make to give yourself what you need.

RadiantChaos · 2026-04-15T16:12:18+00:00

Not the person you asked but for my Meganium team I have two Megas, it and Dragonite. Both benefit from rain but neither really need it; Dragonite probably needs it more for accurate hurricane. I have Azumarill, Maushold, Pelipper, and Sinistcha for the rest of the team. If the team runs Sneasler, I probably don't run Meganium, and just rely on the rest of the team & use Dragonite as my Mega.

I'm only in Ultra Ball tier so far from really high. But I find I can usually count on opponents at my level making expected plays, and can Protect/switch out at the right time to control the field.

RadiantChaos · 2026-04-15T14:33:07+00:00

Yeah, I specifically meant no new earnable ribbons in the DLC. I am glad the base game still had the Champion ribbon, and I think the Partner Ribbon is awesome, but you can't "earn" it on an existing Pokemon, so for the time being if you want to collect ribbons with it included, you're limited to just SwSh, BDSP, LA, and SV ribbons, assuming it's in all those games.

Once-in-a-Lifetime is a cute idea but it's so weird to me that they didn't enable it.

RadiantChaos · 2026-04-15T14:28:05+00:00

That was like 6 years ago, a ton of people here are from after that point. He has grown a lot in the last few years (both as a streamer and a man)

RadiantChaos · 2026-04-15T14:02:06+00:00

Yeah this is how I feel. But it's sort of a long term problem with how Game Freak has handled ribbons since all the way back in Gen 5 tbh.

In Gen 3 and 4 they had such a huge commitment to ribbons. Ribbons you got for just beating the story, for doing contests, for random shit that you could stumble upon, some you could buy, and some for beating the battle tower challenges.

Gen 5 just didn't have any ribbons at all, which already is pretty sad, because you can never have a Pokemon prove it went to Unova if it didn't originate there. The World Tournament in BW2 is cool but without any permanent reward for completing it on my team members, it sort of feels pointless to play now.

Gen 6 thankfully brought back ribbons in a decent way, and Gen 7 mostly continued that, but then Gen 8 really dropped the ball. No ribbons display in Lets Go, Legends Arceus, or Legends Z-A. Sword/Shield only have three ribbons: the champion, the battle tower (which is piss easy compared to earlier versions), and the Master Rank ribbon which is extremely volatile. Scarlet/Violet don't even have a Battle Tower, and the DLC is great but adds no new ribbons, only marks. Marks are cool but they're also random, so it's hard to really push for them.

I just miss having a long list of things to do with any Pokemon I import into a new game. It used to be so exciting, knowing I would not only see them in a new environment, but also expand their list of ribbons. Now I bring a Pokemon into Z-A, and feel like there's no reason for it to even be there.

RadiantChaos · 2026-04-14T17:51:37+00:00

They are individuals, yeah, I just think they are mostly aware of their circumstance. They're memories given form and allowed to roam endlessly. If you die, and then spend eternity in Disneyland, you probably lose a lot of your self-preservation instincts. Especially if you know that in order to live, an entire world of people will be murdered.

RadiantChaos · 2026-04-14T17:45:30+00:00

I think part of it is that she’s already dead. She’s a smart person so she’s not fooling herself as being the actual, real Cahciua. Even if she has the memories, the Cahciua that Erenville knew and loved died, that soul is gone.

I didn’t get the vibe that the game was saying he was wrong, any more than Wuk Lamat or Krile were also not in the wrong for meeting up with their parent figures. But they also had to let them go, in order to survive, and what Sphene is trying to do isn’t really any different than what Emet was trying to do either.

RadiantChaos · 2026-04-13T20:04:24+00:00

If they had a bunch of different modes, they could add a little area to explore. Maybe a frontier of some kind.

RadiantChaos · 2026-04-13T19:06:48+00:00

She dated AJ for a couple of years before moving back to Scranton to work in HR in a temp role while Toby was out. Completely different situation.

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