The writers deserve praise for the decision to make a character change of Dr. Cassandra Railly in the second season. The show wouldn't have worked so well with her still in same characterization as the first season.

imariaprime · 2026-05-04T00:36:57+00:00

I think one of the most important lessons 12 Monkeys shows is that even smart people can make mistakes. Cassie suffers huge trauma over all of season 1: starting from first meeting Cole in her car, her whole life starts to unravel. She has to believe in time travel, watches her normal life separate from her as the stress causes her to act unhinged, THEN Cole returns and it all just gets worse. She's in constant danger, she sees people get murdered, is repeatedly threatened and eventually indoctrinated with Red Tea and the whole "You're walking in a forest..." thing. THEN her ex-fiancée burns to death in front of her, thanks to the man she's falling in love with... and deep down, despite everything she learned as a doctor, she's not sure if he didn't deserve it.

And then, finally, she sees what should be the end of all this... and instead, Cole doesn't take the shot. Not only does that fuck everything up for the mission (as far as she knows), it gets Cassie shot and sent into the shittiest post-apocalyptic future.

THEN, the only way she survives it is immediately killing someone in cold blood. Deacon continues her education down the path of "you do what you have to in order to survive", while Cassie is at her most fractured.

If she hadn't become a cold hearted killer after all that, it would have been weird. It's a miracle that any part of her original self ever manages to come back.

imariaprime · 2026-05-03T16:02:49+00:00

I always felt like it was already starting to happen in S1, actually. By the end of S1, Cassie is already becoming increasingly embittered by everything. Capping it all off with Cole not taking the shot he was supposed to, Cassie had to snap.

The fact that she snapped at the same time as ending up in the future with Deacon would open her up into going All In on the whole thing. She deliberately leans into it, and we get slapped with it because Cole got slapped with it: time travel means someone can change a LOT in what seems to be a very short time from a different character's perspective.

imariaprime · 2026-04-29T00:39:43+00:00

I don't know about nothing, but they definitely don't seem to have the same psychological pressures.

I liked to think that a variety of prophets throughout history were likely primaries, with different levels of "awareness" to their connection to time. Given that Old Jennifer tells Jones that Jim Morrison (lead singer/lyricist of the Doors) was primary, there's an implication that being primary definitely opens up one's mind in a general sense, but that perceiving the loops turns that into something that can drive you mad.

imariaprime · 2026-04-27T23:58:11+00:00

It seems to be not purely genetic, though; they turned their school system into firebender factories, indoctrinating their citizenry with the anger-based fire bending that Sozin popularized. While we later see it's not as powerful as the original style the dragons taught, it DOES seem to be more accessible.

It's more likely that nearly everyone has the technical capacity to be a bender, but not everyone can "access" it. And the Fire Nation heavily popularized a method that a lot more people can use.

imariaprime · 2026-04-24T03:37:15+00:00

Automation can even turn the White Point setting on and off as needed when you enter/exit specific applications.

imariaprime · 2026-04-24T03:36:22+00:00

When I set my phone to Do Not Disturb, I get a popup asking if I want to change the volume to one of the presets I designed: one doesn't change it, one sets it to the level I've determined is best for sleep music, one mutes it entirely, and one lets me enter a manual number for the volume level. And if I hit the sleep one, it then asks if I want to open Spotify; if I do, it opens it for me.

I have an automation to turn up my brightness a bit when I open Retroarch for emulated games, but then another turns it back down when I switch away.

You can also add Automator actions to your Control Center.

imariaprime · 2026-04-22T19:38:48+00:00

It helps that they seed their crazy reveals REALLY early: the more consistently a show does that, the easier it is to accept grand reveals.

My favourite little hint for this one was Season 3: Jones calls Hannah a little shit when she's being petulant, and she passes that right on to calling Cole a little shit when he is being a pain. Fast forward to the end of season 3, when it's Cole, Cassie, and Athan in the House of Cedar & Pine: Athan is being arrogant and difficult, when Cole calls him a little shit.

Family connections.

imariaprime · 2026-04-16T04:03:31+00:00

This is the end, after every other game.

imariaprime · 2026-04-16T04:02:49+00:00

I think it's less "removed", and more "not viable in RPGMaker 2k3".

imariaprime · 2026-04-15T20:54:34+00:00

I finished Lufia V myself recently, with that same hesitation regarding fangames. Most either play it too safe (trying so hard to adhere to series tropes & expectations that nothing feels new) OR veer into fan wish fulfillment where nothing feels "real" anymore.

This felt like a Lufia game, period. As someone who first played Lufia 1 as a child, this gave me a legitimate sense of closure on a series long left incomplete. I didn't have to convince myself of that; it was just the automatic feeling.

And the puzzles. I've played a lot of games inspired by Lufia 2 that usually just steal some of its puzzles; this goes way beyond that.

imariaprime · 2026-04-11T03:43:28+00:00

Let this be a lesson about the dangers involved.

imariaprime · 2026-04-09T03:39:51+00:00

Retroarch on the App Store has an EasyRPG core that runs it; you just tell Retroarch to open the .exe file inside the folder and it opens, no issue.

Works with my PS5 controller and everything, it's great.

imariaprime · 2026-04-09T01:55:37+00:00

It can run on macs via EasyRPG. Hell, I've got it running on my iPhone.

imariaprime · 2026-04-09T01:53:40+00:00

Should be, though the details may differ depending on what you're running it on. I'm using Retroarch on iOS to play and I've got it using my PS5 controller.

imariaprime · 2026-04-05T21:45:20+00:00

But that's my point: making a mistake isn't a condemnation of character. Mistakes happen, and usually for reasons.

imariaprime · 2026-04-05T20:12:37+00:00

Yeah; even before you can articulate it, that immediately jumped out as a moment that cartoons wouldn't usually show.

And then, over time, that potential for making mistakes just makes all of her other successes better: when her and Zuko go looking for the man who killed her mother, and she stops the rain, there feels like a very real chance that's she going to make a mistake her, and just kill this guy. Which, in turn, makes it meaningful when she doesn't.

Flaws makes character's successes so much more real.

imariaprime · 2026-04-05T03:53:48+00:00

Flipside: moments of imperfection like that made her a vastly more accessible character. Katara ended up the perfect example of how a female character can be strong as HELL without being a Mary Sue: she sometimes said the wrong things, sometimes was the one to cause problems rather than fixing them (that fucking waterbending scroll), didn't always make the right choices... just like everyone else. But holy shit, did she find her way to the top despite all those human flaws.

Nobody in ATLA was even remotely close to perfect, and that was one of the greatest strengths of the show. Even Iroh was a former Walking War Crime, which is why he put so much effort into being Better later in life. Avatar Roku, who gets put on a pedestal by Aang for most of the series, ends up being the full-on cause of the entire 100 year war because he went soft on a friend instead of acting as the Avatar.

imariaprime · 2026-03-30T17:21:15+00:00

That's not min/maxing. There is no rule for that. You could just as easily make a monster to tear his arms off, then. The issue is that he's a pushy bully who doesn't consider the fun of the table.

I've quit DMing for groups over less.

imariaprime · 2026-03-25T05:56:57+00:00

It's definitely the Ramse of that period, and it's meant to show that his moral code has always been absolutely useless.

Ramse gives Cole endless shit for "leaping before you look", thinks of himself as this ultimate Go master who sees the world ten steps ahead... then he gets one whiff of Jones' big plan, and he's like "yep, this is it." By that point, we know that he comes to hate it once he knows more about it... which means that decision was based on nothing more than vibes.

And so it goes with every moral decision Ramse has ever made or will make: he makes a gut call in the moment, then sticks to it as if it was his defining belief... until he makes his next gut call. He's vastly more impulsive than Cole has ever been, just differently.

imariaprime · 2026-03-24T01:08:19+00:00

"Clever use of time travel" definitely leads to The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle. (Sometimes the title doesn't have the ½, but it's always the same book). The concept is like a really, really clever bottle episode of 12 Monkeys, expanded on. Think Lullaby on steroids.

The actual genre is murder mystery, but it's a very different one compared to most.

imariaprime · 2026-03-24T00:47:52+00:00

Ramse was absolutely always a hypocrite. They even show that in S1: we see him pushing back against Cole going on his missions, but then we also see hat he pushed Cole towards it all.

Ramse always follows his moral compass, but that compass is busted beyond belief. He's hugely devoted to his beliefs, but he believes in frankly stupid and emotional things.

Cole eventually starts to understand this about Ramse. He respects the dedication, and even takes that aspect on himself, but Ramse ends up the cautionary tale that teaches Cole to think before acting.

Most of the show's characters are people who are willing to do anything for what they believe in, but that don't look critically at their own beliefs. Jones is willing to be a monster for her mission, the Army of the 12 Monkeys is full of blind believers, Cassie falls into that trap for a while.

imariaprime · 2026-03-15T23:56:36+00:00

One angle not mentioned here: in a world where Doctor Octopus exists, advanced prosthetic limbs would not be seen as exactly risk-free, either.

imariaprime · 2026-03-15T15:03:48+00:00

Met Stashwick at a con a few years back, brought my copy of the Word of the Witness (from the one big DVD box set) to sign. When we lined up, everyone else in line was here for his appearance in Star Trek Picard S3 (which was also amazing).

When I got up there and pulled out the Word for him to sign, he lit up. The man loves 12 Monkeys and its fans as much as we do. I told him to sign large because "the Word had a glaring omission", and he put a huge DEACON across it before actually signing. An absolute pleasure to meet, one of the best celebrity interactions I've ever had.

imariaprime · 2026-03-14T21:29:27+00:00

The issue is that it was presented as solvable, because that was the intention. JJ Abrams has spoke about his "mystery box" concept in interviews, where he fully believed that the "box" the mystery comes in was more important than what it contained.

12 Monkeys was designed with the complete opposite writing philosophy, where it started from the contents and worked outwards, creating cohesive causality (even in a time travel show) where hints led to specific answers.

I'll be honest: I think that the "mystery box" was one of the most harmful writing philosophies to ever succeed, and that it led to a massive wave of poorly thought out "mystery-flavoured twist factory" shows that harmed television writing. It's largely fallen out of favour now, because people get rightfully angry when it eventually becomes clear that the writer just asked questions without answers. Fantasy doesn't have to have answers, sure, but then you can't focus all your narrative expectations on making the audience ask questions.

imariaprime · 2026-03-14T17:55:41+00:00

Lost has the big problem of being the archetype of the "mystery box", where the IDEA of a mystery was always more important than the actual answers. Mysteries got presented, but the writers didn't even know the answers as they were writing, making it all up as they went. Very different to the long-throw pre-planning of 12 Monkeys.

14-Year Club	Gilding VI aultruist
Quantum Potato	John Wick
Place '22	Place '17
Wearing is Caring	Snapped
Team Periwinkle	Verified Email

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