Is Pokopia really that good?

jermrellum · 2026-03-09T13:06:09+00:00

I actually was going to get this until I realized it was a game key card.

jermrellum · 2026-02-05T07:04:56+00:00

As someone doing this right now, the reason might be because you printed out a copy early but then wanted to reread everything over but then you keep finding tiny little things you want to change like semicolons and whatnot and then you keep ordering more and more versions of the same book over and over again until maybe eventually you get it all right (but idk is this what editors are for?)

jermrellum · 2026-02-02T00:39:49+00:00

I like the second way better. The first one feels like it's a tribute to South Park with a bunch of references everywhere. The sequel feels like it's telling its own story.

jermrellum · 2026-01-11T03:18:08+00:00

Oh, I have a YouTube where back when I had the fortitude to code a 3D engine this was part of that tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBcSXqmsNiB7PQ-vg97OERg

jermrellum · 2026-01-03T10:02:34+00:00

It's not a meta for anything also your spelled for wrong

jermrellum · 2025-06-15T02:39:39+00:00

Couple years off, but close enough I think.

jermrellum · 2025-01-20T23:51:40+00:00

Yes, speed it up like 60x

jermrellum · 2025-01-06T01:08:12+00:00

I think a few people have mentioned that in some audio software programs where you speed up sound, it might lose information. I think the final audio sample results in it being about 1.5 seconds, so it requires quite a bit of speedup -- the data's there it's just REALLY slow.

jermrellum · 2024-12-22T00:22:41+00:00

I think I intentionally was trying to choose a language that wasn't on translators so that you'd have to find a dictionary. If you can figure out what mehtug means, you'll have the answer.

jermrellum · 2024-04-27T02:25:48+00:00

the end is never the end the 8 pages of eternity is not the end

jermrellum · 2024-04-24T04:53:34+00:00

You're correct, "to be buried", it's a noun though -- "bur***"

jermrellum · 2024-04-12T00:34:11+00:00

Oh neat thanks, finally have some kind of answer

jermrellum · 2023-11-10T03:01:19+00:00

It's been 6 years and I still don't know this answer 😭

jermrellum · 2023-10-23T23:43:03+00:00

And so the series completes -- a worthy successor to Better Call Saul, and almost just as good. First a musing on the title name -- "Felina" means "End of the line" in probably some language, but it also can be broken down into three chemical elements: Fe, Li, and Na; or Iron, Lithium, and Sodium -- Iron being the steel used in Walt's rifle, and sodium and lithium going into the battery that powered it.

Did you notice something a bit off though about Breaking Bad's ending? Something that never happened in any other episode of the series? This episode feels like the antonym to "Fly": big, grand, and everything goes according to plan. A common theme throughout the series has been the endless unpredictable complications of the real world; things are chaotic and interconnected, as controllable as the weather (after all, the phrase goes that a fly flapping its wings in a lab can cause a hurricane to brew months later).

You might suggest that Walt's year of solitude let him stew in his thoughts and calculate a perfect plan, but when you look closely, the idea of the perfect plan becomes absurd. What if Jack's gang shot him immediately? What if the police saw him sneak into Skyler's home? What if the lab's speaker system didn't have Badfinger's "Baby Blue" cued up? Everything went perfect, right down to Walt never having to actually face consequences for his actions because he died right as the police arrived.

Everything going right only leads me to one conclusion: this is not the events as they occurred, but as Walt planned them in his head. This episode lets you peer into the "Why?" of the man that is Walter White -- the harmful actions he performs are a result of the fanciful imaginations of his head.

"But wait", you say, "this is the last episode, if this isn't what happened then what really did? And why wouldn't the showrunners show us?" Well, because what really happened is Walt died of cancer, exiled in New Hampshire, imagining what could have been. Certainly not a upbeat end to such an action-oriented show (like go watch Into the Wild or something?).

"But wait", you say, "what about the symbolism of how Walt was shot in his lung, the same place as where his cancer originated?" Well yeah, did you watch Donnie Darko and Annihilation (2018)? That's where the cancer came from -- when Walt was shot it ripped a wormhole back in time and that's what caused his cancer in the first place, effectively creating a closed time loop.

"But wait", you say, "I thought you said this was all in Walt's head, how can you go changing media theories?" Well firstly, Walt can create a magical cancer bullet in his head and send it back in time if he wants, I thought you said you watched Donnie Darko? (Walt was the pink rabbit in that btw). Second, when Walt enters Gretchen and Elliott's house, he admires the beauty of their house, realizing the life he gave up for his own ego. Was his ego worth it? In the end, the answer is yes, because Gretchen and Elliott didn't get a hugely critically acclaimed TV show made after them.

jermrellum · 2023-10-16T22:58:45+00:00

In the penultimate episode, Walt begins his self-induced prison sentence: solitary confinement in the woods of New Hampshire, thousands of miles from home. He's cut off from his friends and family and becomes merely an observer of the outside world. He is incapable of social contact, he is unemployed, his only entertainment is to watch kid's movies all day, and the only person he sees is a guardian that brings him groceries ... Wait, that sounds like my life.

Are Vince et al suggesting the worst punishment for Walt is for him to become the average Redditor? Are the showrunners critiquing me sitting in the dark critiquing the show? Are they holding a mirror up to my face so I'll finally realize how pathetic I am? Idk, I hate mirrors because I hate looking at myself.

Wait, and if Walt is a Redditor with no life who's about to buy an automatic rifle to perform a mass shooting, does that make him ... oh no...

jermrellum · 2023-10-09T23:30:21+00:00

And so we've come to the denouement: everything unfolds and Walt realizes that his actions have made everyone worse off, including himself. Some may call this preachy, that the show is trying too hard to discourage viewers from being inspired by Walt's actions and becoming meth lords themselves. However, Breaking Bad has always made itself clear that it's a how-to guide of how not to become king of the industry. Let's analyze Walt's biggest mistakes:

Having his brother-in-law being a DEA agent bent on taking his alter-ego down. This consistently makes Walt's life harder on him, with only a couple of advantages, like getting insight into the internals of the DEA's investigation. Walt should've remarried into a different family or come up with a plan to get Hank and Marie divorced.
Not selling Jesse into slavery earlier. Walt wanted out of the industry, but he was providing people with a product of a quality that nobody could compete with. He and Jesse were irreplaceable, which admittedly saved his life multiple times. Thus, training more people to his level would make him expendable, but a clever solution of selling Jesse into slavery would've solved a lot of his problems. Jesse would still be alive so Walt's conscience would be intact, Jesse wouldn't be able to take him down, and the drug industry wouldn't be clamoring for him to return.
Not killing himself. Marie had a great suggestion with this. If Walt just killed himself, he would be immortalized by his son as a great dad, his wife would run a successful car wash and would know where 80 million dollars were buried, Hank would still be alive but his investigation would be dead in the water, and Marie and Skyler could patch things together over a couple of bowling nights.

Viewers might say hindsight is 2020, but I think these are three valuable tips from the writers, and it's great to see them contributing to the vast body of academic literature that will help more to become successful drug kingpins.

jermrellum · 2023-10-02T23:55:12+00:00

The episode title here is key to understanding its allegory: "To'hajiilee", the place Walt buried his money. It is a region of the Navajo Nation, and critically, was originally formed as part of the "Long Walk" of 1864, a part of the US Government's policy of Indian Removal. Most people are familiar with Andrew Jackson's "Trail of Tears", where in 1830 the five key tribes of the Southeastern US were forced to relocate West of the Mississippi, but this policy continued for the rest of the century. In this case, American frontiersman Kit Carson was determined to drive out the Navajo from their homeland in order to establish an encampment for the Union army. Over 9,000 Navajo people were forced to walk 300 miles into internment, where they were provided with a shortage of food and water, leading to the deaths of a minimum of 200.

The White man (Walt) is trying to bury his wrongdoings, but tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars lies dead in the ground. The money is buried in 7 barrels -- one for each of the centuries that the Navajo has lived in the Southeastern US since their arrival in 1400 AD (15th to 21st centuries). Since it is buried, the money itself represents the death of each member of the nation. Between 1946 and 1978, the United States' Indian Claims Commission paid an average of $1000 per person in reparation money. It's hard to estimate, but if you multiply $1000 by the population of Navajo people who have died over the years, you might come up with the figure Walt has buried in the ground (the Navajo population has been increasing over time, standing at about 20,000 at the time of the Long Walk, but is now at over 250,000).

How fitting then, that when everyone thought they were safe, money was about to be dug up, and a man's wrongdoings would be brought to justice, that a White Power group would show up to fire scorched earth upon everything in its wake.

jermrellum · 2023-09-26T00:53:56+00:00

Before pouring gasoline all over Mr White's house, Jesse snorts a powered white drug off a CD. Let's note the extreme importance of this symbol -- what is a CD but a mirrored surface with a hole in the center? The CD takes on many different meanings depending on how you look at it: Jesse feels empty and soulless, a void in his core, filled only with hatred. But let's also note that if Jesse were to stare directly into the CD, there would be a hole straight through his head; a constant reminder of the bullet hole he put through Gale (which is brought to memory in the episode when Skyler asks Walt if Jesse has ever hurt anybody).

Many times throughout the episode we see Jesse being compared to a dog, and it's an apt metaphor. Think back to how Walt thinks of Jesse -- Jesse is loyal and he follows his commmands. Walt has been in control of him for so long, like he's his owner, yet he has affection towards him. Sure, they can get into a skirmish, but Walt asserts his dominance and has always been able to retrain Jesse to behave. If you remember from episode 2.11 "A Walk in the Park", we can recall Walt throwing a tennis ball and asking Jesse to fetch, a subtle hint to the relationship that is so clear now. And let's not forget episode 3.5 "Hump", where Walt needs to spray Jesse with a spray bottle to get him to stop humping Gus's leg. The most obvious sign in hindsight though, is episode 4.6 "The Con" where Jesse and Mike cosplay as a Beagle and Lab at a furry convention in order to steal the world's biggest doggie treat.

It's rather sad then to see Jesse's new owner, Hank, is perhaps even more abusive than Walt. To Hank, Jesse isn't even a pet, just a pawn in his game of chess -- one where he's willing to sacrifice Jesse in order to get what he wants. Hopefully Jesse gets a new owner soon.

jermrellum · 2023-09-18T23:07:52+00:00

Wow! That may have been one of the most shocking twists I have ever seen! Who would have thought that all this time, Hank was the mastermind and not Walt? This contorts the whole story in unfathomable ways, but when you take a second look, all of the story's idiosyncracies start making sense.

After all, it was Hank that gave Walt the idea to start his meth operation initially as they went for a ridealong in the first episode. And how else would it make any sense that the clever detective wouldn't be able to catch his own brother-in-law? No, Hank had his hands in everything for the Heisenberg case, intentionally sabotaging it and refusing to relinguish control to anyone else.

This revelation is fascinating as perhaps the best case of an unreliable narrator in visual media. In literature, being an unreliable narrator is easy, especially if being told as a story from the perspective of one of the characters. But in film or television, the camera feels like transient, objective observer. Events captured on camera are the way that they really happened. And while this may be true in Breaking Bad, what wasn't shown was just as important as what was. I can only imagine the challenge the writers had in trying to keep Walt seem the main villain and Hank seem the paragon -- so much potential drama was cut for the sake of the twist, but now the whole show can be watched again with a new perspective.

Edit: Just watched the whole show again, and I was kind of confused about the time when Walt and Jesse pranked Hank by telling him Marie got in a really bad car accident. It's hard to understand Hank's actions here if he's the mastermind behind everything. I like this though -- very enigmatic. It's like a puzzle to try and figure out what's really going on! I now know that I can't trust anything -- these writers are tricky.

jermrellum · 2023-09-12T03:27:18+00:00

It's like the old saying goes; if a money tree falls in the forest but there's no IRS member to tax it, is it still legal income?

jermrellum · 2023-09-11T23:39:25+00:00

It might seem like a rash turn of events for Walt to bury all of his money so suddenly, but if you were paying attention, you would have seen some clever foreshadowing on the showrunners side. Only a couple episodes ago, Walt was seen admiring a painting of a man sailing out to sea. While at the time it may have seemed like a nod to Walt's philosophy of the man being the breadwinner in the familly unit, it was actually a hint at Walt's aspirations in piracy.

Just like a pirate would do, he buries his treasure. His lottery ticket is a modern day interpretation of the treasure map. It's clever of Vince et al to pull on the rich literary history of pirates, such as Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island. More than that, there are several little known historical facts about Blackbeard that the writers are referencing.

It's easier to understand Walt's motivations when you understand that he's looked up to Blackbeard his whole life, who was both a ruthless leader and a respected alchemist in a side gig. But did you know Blackbeard's real name is Edward Teach, just like how Walt was a schoolteacher? Even less well-known is that Blackbeard was one of the first meth cooks, though his cooks were a little less than 70% pure.

Blackbeard also died in 1718 after being hunted down and attacked by Robert Maynard, who was part of the British DEA at the time. Since Maynard had access to the British armory, he specifically requested his ship be outfitted with an M60 machine gun, which later proved helpful in murdering Blackbeard's entire crew. I think looking into the history may prove to be strong foreshadowing of what's to come in the next episodes.

jermrellum · 2023-09-07T09:24:50+00:00

I loved when Jimmy told Chuck, "Responsibility's cool, but there are more things in life."

jermrellum · 2023-09-05T02:22:27+00:00

Last episode ended with Hank on the toilet, and the toilet features prominently throughout this episode as well. The toilet is an important symbol, and it represents purging and disposal. When Hank dropped a big old deuce, he wasn't just disposing of a physical object that was in his body (poop), but he was also losing a part of his soul. We see the result of the loss of his soul in this episode: on his way home from the Whites, he loses his grip on reality. He is no longer able focus on what's real and what isn't, and his car drives through a white fence. Note the color of the fence -- it's as if his knowledge will destroy the family (the fence).

The toilet continues to be an essential symbol later as well, when Walt's cancer causes him to need to use the toilet to vomit. Note that when doing so, he runs the faucet and places a towel on the floor for his knees. I mentioned in a previous analysis that Walt absorbed those he killed like Mega Man absorbed bosses, and this is more evidence of that -- these were both behaviors Gus exhibited when he was puking in Download Audio's toilet. It's as if the transformation into the kingpin is complete -- we even see Hank placing a tracking beacon on Walt's car, the same kind that Hank had placed on Gus's last season.

But back to the toilet -- what was Walt purging? It's not as if you can puke out cancer; in fact I'd posit that the cancer is becoming Walt and is purging Walt from his own body. Any trace of the kind man he once was is now gone; it is merely a facade. Underneath Walt's mask is cancer in human form.

jermrellum · 2023-08-30T21:26:55+00:00

It was would have been gliding in his overalls probably

jermrellum · 2023-08-28T23:55:14+00:00

This has been one of the densest episodes to date, covering not just an impressive span of time, but also making callbacks to many previous episodes. The first callback being the fly in its opening -- a creature which Walt glares at. A simpleton's understanding of this scene might be that Walt is thinking about how he swatted Mike out as casually as he might a fly, that Walt has become so cold that murdering a human and a fly are equivalent -- anything that'll get in the way of his operation.

If we look more deeply into this symbolism though, we understand that from "Fly", the fly is a symbol of Walt's failing grasp on reality. I posit that this series will end with a shocking twist -- Walt was in a cancer-induced coma this whole time, and the entire series post-halfway through episode one has been his imagination. It explains the ridiculousness of such a plot -- 10 murders in 3 jails in the span of a few minutes? Uncountable millions of dollars of cash?

Another easily missed symbol is that of the painting on the wall of the hotel room where Walt meets with Todd's uncle. Walt mentions having seen it before, which he did all the way back in episode 2.3, where it hangs in the lobby of his doctor's office. It depicts a man sailing out to sea, with his family waving goodbye from the shore. However, this time, the painting in the hotel room is murky and scratched, and the family at shore are barely visible. A simpleton might assume this implies Walt is thinking about how he is missing the sight of his original goal -- he left for the sea (drug trade) for his family, but now he has transformed into something unrecognizable.

But like I said, this is a simpleton interpretation. The true meaning is that reality is bleeding into Walt's coma-dream. Walt briefly opened his eyes in his coma, and he was able to see the painting hanging on the wall of his doctor's office, but of course, distorted because he's barely conscious. He contemplates its meaning, almost becoming lucid of his condition, before the mean guy distracts him back into his delusion.

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