@rare-vos-in-socks / rare-vos-in-socks.tumblr.com
Air Himbo
Water Himbo
Earth Himbo
Fire Himbo
@crvggio I’ve been laughing at this for 47 years
And the Avatar
Reblogging again because that last addition is IMPORTANT
But when the world needed him most, he pulled the wrong lever...
Why do they even have that lever?
Well done everyone, 10/10 post
Can't forget the Avatar's spiritual advisor:
Terry Pratchett's take on The Little Matchgirl in The Hogfather is both devastating and incredibly up lifting. Here's the thing, I've read The Little Matchgirl too many times and thought, 'hey, that's kind of fucked up. Why didn't anyone save her?'
Only to get told that 'oh, it's a tragic little story that's supposed to remind you to be grateful for what you have and also to show you the horrors of poverty. At least she's in a happier place now.'
And none of that ever sat quite right with me.
But Pratchett calls this out. He has Death ask the question of why no one came to help, about the reasoning behind letting this little girl die just for a sad story. It's poverty porn and also complacency in a systemic issue.
He doesn't leave you there though. Something is done to save her. Something is done to help. She is given a future. And no one knows who did it except for Death. She is given hope.
And this is something that I've found to be a through line on many of Pratchett's works, hope.
Yes things are fucked up. Yes things are awful. But there is always hope. There is always something that can be done.
And in just turning up your nose at an issue and saying, oh dear, that's very sad, you fail to take action and continue on with the problem year after year after year.
There is hope if we act. And there is no greater gift than a future.
Always reblog Sir Terry Pratchett.
April Fool's prank betrayal
Picured: an idiots last memories of taunting an avian dinosaur
sorry, but earl is too stupid and trusting to be a threat. he merely looked up at me to check if I was sure there was a treat in my hand, and then pecked my hand like maybe he just couldn't see it. Sweet, summer child, with circus music where his brain should be.
Here’s the latest Lordran and Beyond comic for early January, animated to life for the first time ever by a brand new artist, @nick-foo! You can read the rest of the L&B comics so far on the website, and help to keep them coming by supporting the comic artists on Patreon; every dollar pitched in goes directly to them!
They were a fierce and gallant duo
( Now colored )
I think this sequence is the best one in the whole book. It was this that proved concept to me. No matter where she is, who she is being raised by, Diana inherently is compassionate. Inherently cares for life and does what she can to preserve it.
There's something like this with Jesus in the Christian apocrypha, Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew chapter 18.
If you see this on your dashboard, reblog this, NO MATTER WHAT and all your dreams and wishes will come true.
Oh hey! Haven’t seen this in forever! Didn’t reblog it when it came across me before, not gonna skip it this time, I need some good vibes.
Sir Terry Pratchett awakens. A skeleton stands at his bedside, wearing a long black robe. He sits up. “Well, hang on, let me get my hat,” he tells it.
The skeleton reaches into its robe. From abyssal depths it produces a heavy book bound in sheets of lead and night. It is the kind of book that gets stolen by a rugged adventurer from a temple with more spike-traps than the average house of worship contains. It is the kind of book to which the word “tome” might properly be applied. Frost forms on its pages from the lingering chill of the void.
The skeleton coughs once and holds the book out to the man sitting on the bed.
WOULD YOU SIGN THIS? it asks. BIG FAN.
Oh this must be reblogged, 10 years later
Always reblog Sir Terry Pratchett.
Sir Terry Pratchett was not remotely in the vicinity of Fucking-Around, and had never even heard of that ridiculous thing some of his esteemed colleagues referred to as “Chill.” (1)
(1) In point of fact, he had heard of it, on numerous occasions, most often when a friend or well-meaning-but-politely-horrified acquaintance advised him to locate some, but he always studiously ignored this in favor of a much more productive righteous fury, which he kept hot enough to boil the kettle for his afternoon tea. If the world was not going to work as it should, then damn it all, he would create one in which people had some blasted sense for a change. And he did. Spite, as it turns out, makes for an excellent motivator.
Always going to reblog Sir Terry Pratchett.
Goodluck Pikachu
Okay, here’s an interesting one.
Before seeing your content, I’d basically only ever heard the term “power fantasy” used as a derogatory term to describe over-the-top protagonists who are strong and cool, but also boringly devoid of personality so the audience can project onto them. But then some of your League videos talked about skins letting characters like Gragas “inhabit more interesting power fantasies.”
So… when are power fantasies a good thing? The best I’ve got is that it only works in interactive media like video games so that the audience can more directly engage with the fantasy (essentially: Dante from DMC works, Kirito from SAO does not)
I mean, power fantasies are just endemic to storytelling as a whole. There isn't really a hard "this is when they're good, this is when they're bad," they are core to several genres of media and can't be extracted from them. Most video games are power fantasies, just by nature of their mechanics.
Power fantasy isn't a genre (usually), it is just a tool, same as any other trope or convention. It is a means to engage the audience with a story.
An RPG where you level up and become stronger to defeat more difficult enemies? That's a power fantasy. Undertale where you get the best ending by finding some way to spare absolutely every monster and end every fight mercifully? Power fantasy. The Tomb Raider reboot games that take an almost sadistic glee in putting Lara Croft through absolute hell both physically and emotionally? Those are power fantasies about overcoming and surviving those impossible challenges.
They're not just power fantasies, they have lots of other stuff going on, but power fantasy is an inherent part of them. Romance stories also often include power fantasies, specifically about the power of love. "He's broody, dark and broken, but my love can fix him" is a power fantasy, for example, as is "an unjust society keeps us apart, but we will defy everything to be together!"
Even being The Final Girl who beats the horror monster and walks away at the end of the movie can be a power fantasy, if a rather grim one.
If there is a general case where power fantasies become "bad," I think it is when the power fantasy is all there is, and it subsumes all other parts of the story. Shonen manga often runs into this as they get longer, and the power system and escalating battles against ever more powerful foes become the overriding driving force of the story, to the exclusion of everything else. Shaman King comes to mind for me as a particularly egregious example, or Bleach.
Isekai is also riven with this. You can't walk two steps these days without tripping on a "TRANSPORTED TO ANOTHER WORLD WITH MY SUPER OP CHEAT SKILL" premise, where the entire purpose of the story is simply to act out unchallenged wish fulfilment with no friction or tension or character development. Those stories get boring very very fast... unless of course the power fantasy being played out is your specific power fantasy. Yes, OP protagonists winning everything with no challenge is boring, but this OP protagonist is building a sapphic cottagecore witch polycule with an ever-expanding harem of emotionally damaged lesbians, so... y'know. Maybe I'll give it a pass.
It's generally less interesting and useful to observe THAT something is a power fantasy, than it is to observe WHAT KIND of power is being fantasized about. Zombie apocalypse stories are often power fantasies, for example, but there's a pretty noticeable difference between stories where the power fantasy is banding together and building a life with a found family in horrible circumstances, stealing joy from the end of the world in spite of everything... and stories where the zombie apocalypse is an excuse to enact paranoid right-wing prepper fantasies where the hero protects their property (home, land and women) against the verminous hordes of the monstrous Other, and is reified and uplifted by the employment of brutal violence.
I think this needs clarification, or perhaps an expansion on why they're common in video games and how it connects to mechanics.
A power fantasy revolves around the key question: what is the power? A good power fantasy reflects the answer. For example, Kai'sa wears a Void creature as a symbiote and they survive by preying on other Void creatures. The power comes from the Symbiote and its relationship with Kai'sa. The actual game play is... plasma blasts? Dashing? The power fantasy does not match the execution of what the power gives the person.
Gragas, meanwhile, is a great example of power fantasy done right. He's a big ol' bar brawler who distills hooch so strong it's "handle properly or it explodes" levels of sobriety-death. The powers are his mass and his liquor. His kit revolves around throwing exploding barrels of hooch and body slamming people with his big ol' belly.
I think one needs to differentiate between power fantasy and the goal of the power fantasy. There's definitely a lot of isekai with some very different powers that achieve the same end fantasy of a cottagecore polycule harem; in the same way there's a lot of isekai with some very different power that achieve the same end fantasy of killing a lot jerkasses in world full of jerkasses where the Protagonist was somehow the only not-jerkass. Consider Reborn As A Vending Machine I Now Wander The Dungeon. The Protagonists power fantasy is literally to be a vending machine. The power is literally "can dispense goods in exchange for currency." That's a fairly unique power fantasy, but the show is still monotonous and unoriginal in its fantasy: a growing harem of young women who all love the Protagonist.
"We are all Jaegers inside of which scared children live."
"You can overcome the pain and kill the monsters. We can vanquish the impossible if we learn to trust again."
