You could have a Wonka factory tour as Willy Wonka?
Then scare them with The Unknown behind the mirror (reflecting themselves)!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcvaadACp30
Later if they are still around offer them a single jelly bean

I know this is a meme sub. I wanted to post this in the main sub but I don't have clips for a claims and I was worried not being able to post it or being able to and then getting banned because I don't have clips for my quotes. I know I might get banned from here too but if I had to choose between being able to post and reply in a place it would be the his main sub because I'm not good at making memes or jokes but I'm ok at rambling in a self-important way. hopefully I wont get banned at all but we'll see.
Our boy is right about most things. Some things that he has dog shit takes on is 1. Kids protesting don’t have demands 2. If the USA stopped funding IDF the kids would be only 1% less pissed about the conflict. 3. They don’t know anything about the area or really anything about anything 4. Anti-semitism and anti-zionism are the same thing. 5. “We see that the killing will radicalize kids in gaza but we don’t see that on the other side with 10/07/23 or the 2nd uprising etc.” As I’ve said in previous posts here, I’ve been watching Destiny since 2016. He has made me rethink more things than I could count. He’s forced me to read on topics I never thought to read on. It’s for those reasons I expect much more from him than most humans and why I’m so passionate when I come down on him or go down on him or whatever the phrase is.

1. The student groups are demanding the campus they attend stops using their tuition money to fund Israel. That’s a straightforward, clear demand. In fact, it’s much more clear than occupy or mainstream BLM demands were. Destiny knows this. Rather than dropping this talking point he acts as though his quiver is low and he needs every arrow possible and has recently changed it to “They have no demands… or their demands are misguided.” So fucking silly. Divestment, as big Steve knows from studying more history than most people have casually read, is a political tool that has been used for decades with varying degrees of effect. As a capitalist I would think the idea of people ``voting with your dollar” would get him hard. Destiny has defended his support for the war against Hamas. I haven’t seen him defend his position that American universities should be using their endowments to assist Israel in their war. It wouldn’t surprise me if he has some really thought out reasons for this position but I haven’t heard it yet so until that moment I think his position is stupid at best.
   
2. “The students don’t really care about the USA or their college funding this war. If the schools and or the government stopped the funding the kids would only be 99% pissed rather than 100%”. I think this is a stupid take. The kids I talk to think they are/we all are funding a genocide. I know Big D doesn’t think we’re funding genocide… nobody is correct all the time. They want their school and/or government to stop funding it. Many of them don’t agree what the next step should be but they do know they want their school to divest. Brown is the one example that I know of where the school said, “Ok, we’ll vote on divesting in the fall.” The students didn’t say, “We’re staying until you divest.” They said, “Sounds good.” and broke down their encampment. They know what they want and when the school said that they would vote on it months from now the students walked away.
   
3. “The protesters don’t know anything about the area or the history” is something Mr. Bonerelli has said. He’s also said, “The history matters but at the same time it doesn’t matter.” By this I understood him to be saying, “Yes, X happened in 19XX or 18XX and that was bad and it shouldn’t have happened but what are we going to do about what’s happening on the ground right now?” When I see these clips of kids being asked questions they don’t know the answer to, the latter Destiny quote pops into my smooth brian. My second and third thoughts are, “I wonder how many clips did they get of kids answering questions correctly before they found this kid. I hope there were zero clips before and after this kid because protesters should know by now that talking to the media is something the PR people should do.
   

These kids don’t need to know what happened in the six day war to know that they don’t want their dollars going to arming a military that they believe is genociding a people. In fact, they don’t need to know where Palestine is on a map or if Israel was created in 1948 or 1848.

1. “Anti-Zionism and Anti-Semitism”are functionally the same thing” this is such a silly claim. It’s as silly as the blue trench coat. The most EXTREME form of anti-zionism that I can think of, that I’ve never come across naturally (meaning not searching for it), in the anti-zionist circles, would be the end of Israel and killing of every zionist. Even if 90% of jews were Zionists, even after they realized they could denounce their Zionism and not be killed, that still wouldn’t be killing jews because they are jews. It would be killing zionists because they’re zionists. In fact, if someone were to hold that position they'd be forced to, in absolute numbers, kill more American Protestants than Isrealies. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the largest population of zionists are American protestants. Obviously if the most extreme version of anti-zionism isn’t anti-semitism then the same is true for all versions. If I saw the 6mwe shirts being worn by some of the protestors on these campuses I would be concerned. What's more likely is some of these counter protestors at UCLA were wearing those shirts on Jan 6 in DC.

Anti-Zionism is no different than anti-facism or anti-capitalism or anti-communism. Immutable traits are not necessarily connected to one's ideology. Obviously if you're missing a leg you're likely to support the ADA. If you're queer you're more likely to support equal rights for queer people. That being said, most of the time, Ideology is not connected to things you can’t change about yourself. I know it would be convenient for the zionists if Anti-zionism is Anti-semitism but it’s not. In fact, IMO, a decent argument can be made that Zionism is anti-Semtic. “The jews can safely co-exist with any other population for an extended period of time even in today's international western world with international institutions like the UN, the ICJ and the ICC. It just can’t be done. They need to have their own place that was already partly inhabited.”

1. While in debates sometimes people bring up the fact that the IDF is creating the next generation of Hamas by killing the families of all these kids. If Destiny is given time to reply he says that we talk about it one way but we don’t ever talk about how the rockets and 10/07/23 might radicalize young Isrealies. He’s correct that not many people talk about it but they should. I think it’s very important to point out that if you grow up hearing rockets flying over head, are told in school about all the violence Hamas and those that came before have committed against Israelis (but for propaganda reasons they’d probably say jews rather than israelis) and and that the Gazains have always wanted to kill jews (calling them jews not israelis) and then you’re trained in the IDF and sent into Gaza you might make statements via humorous skit or whatnot about enjoying killing Gazians or that not enough Gazians have been killed while in a bombed out apartment complex in Gaza. What I assume is happening a little bit more than TikTok posts being made is people shooting rather than not because they've been radicalized. Destiny is correct; we need to talk about the radicalization that if Gazians are experiencing then young Iraelis must be experiencing too.
   
2. “Americans don’t care about foreign policy. They care about domestic policy. The college kids ‘care’ about foreign policy because they’re still suckling on the mommy and daddy teet. Domestic policy doesn’t impact them so they look to the most morally loaded thing they can, which currently is foreign policy.” is something I heard Destiny say in a tone of disgust. Destiny also recently said he might stop saying he’s progressive or far-left. IMO His perspective on the above mentioned topic is a perfect example of why he should stop thinking of himself in this way. It says so much to me that when people in a society have their basic needs met they think about the world broadly. They look for international injustice and they do what they can to try to minimize it. From Destiny’s comments it seems as though he prefers for Americans to be so wrapped up in their own survival that they aren’t thinking about international affairs.
   What makes Steven valuable to online politics and philosophy is not that he’s a progressive but his desire to put in the work, show that work being done, to become educating about topics and then expose others for not being educated. 99.9% of factual matters Destiny knows and remembers about this conflict than many scholars. That’s impressive and very important to show people that if you can put in 7 hours a day, 6 days a week, not just read but study for those hours you can come close to having nearly scholarly knowledge on the topic. Obviously there's a difference between having the knowledge and bringing new knowledge to the academy’s attention, that realm is still best left to the scholars but it's incredibly empowering for us all to know that if you put in the work it is possible to know more than 99% of the population on a topic in a short amount of time.
   It would do Destiny and the far-left good if he was more clear about the fact that he’s a classical liberal who’s influenced by The Founding Fathers, Adam Smith, Ricardo and the Marquis de Sade.
   

I have an idea for a comedy skit involving two men (the type of skit you might see on a show like Key and Peele). The skit idea is solid comedy gold. What do I do with this idea?

I used to be addicting to watching whose like is it anyway skits, but I usually watched the LIVE or compilations.
I am looking for a scene where it is Colin and Ryan I believe doing the Infomercial (But maybe not) as Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen. At one point Colin says something and Ryan responds with "Huh(Shocked) that's a question Mary Kate" ...and moves on without answering it. Any idea where i could find it would be incredible!

The scene starts out with Khan's ex wife wife admitting the affair partner is the heavyweight champion in the world and berating Khan telling him he is the champion of nothing. Khan calls A.J. and goes on a tirade against him for cheating with his wife, it flashes forward a couple hours later with his ex wife calling someone and asking them if they are on it to go to dinner tonight, a voice that is Wilder's says most definetly and it shows Wilder smiling while he talks to her and the end credit song from Dexter plays.

Okay so I was watching a TikTok skit about the current run of Spider-Man and MJ getting the Jackpot powers etc
The guy mentioned something a bit odd like it was a joke but it’s also curious
Has MJ taken her bracelet thing off since she left the dimension with Paul?
Like what if Paul put a whammy on her? Like idk probably TOO dumb of an idea, but so is most of what we’re reading in Peter’s life so idk what do you guys think

O.J. Simpson is gone-dead from cancer earlier this year. Rewind back to the 90's. O.J, or not O.J. depending on who you ask, stabbed his ex-wife and her boyfriend to death in Los Angeles. The whole country was subsequently held hostage with round the clock O.J. coverage in the wake of the murders*. Its all anyone talked about and there was no way to escape it. There weren't thousands of channels to flick to, or dozens of streaming services available to seek refuge-in far away from the insanity.
However, after his acquittal he seemed to simply fade from public view-absorbed back into the stained fabric of American society. That was of course before he was locked up for nine years in 2008 for attempting to rob his own memorabilia at gunpoint. So what was he doing with his freedom in the years prior?
Nothing. Well, almost nothing. In 2006, executive producer Rick Mahr, famous for the highly-cerebral Backyard Wrestling series, decided it would be a good idea to tap into the reality show boom with an MTV Punk'd themed prank show featuring O.J. Simpson.
It was a one-hour special that featured O.J. himself engaging in a series of pranks ranging from dressing in rags while selling oranges on the side of a highway, to him serving and insulting fat customers in a fast-food drive thru. At the end of the gig, he'd come clean and tell the victim with a smile "you just got Juiced!" Most of the pranks fell flat on their face: people sometimes didn't recognize O.J. or didn't understand the prank, or the whole idea was just too damn stupid.
But the icing on the cake was the skit where O.J. attempted to sell a replica of his white Ford Bronco, which incidentally was discontinued for years after the murders (but that's another story, you can see below for a few more details). The Bronco even sported a real bullet hole, which The Juice himself signed right above it.
O.J. seems to reflect on the whole Bronco chase as simply comical. Is this some dark type of new-age therapy? "It has great escapability!" he keeps informing customers. Does he admit that there was a dead body in the car? Was it him who placed it there? I have never heard O.J speak so candidly about details from the aftermath of the murders.
Here are some exchanges between O.J. and potential 'customers' as reported in the NPR This American Life episode 564-Too Soon?:

Man: Is there $10,000 in here?
O.J: Nope, Nope. No $10,000,
Man: ...You were carrying it, you know?
O.J: Naw, naw. They say that, I was carrying about $3.
Man: $3?
O.J: Yeah, that's why they never brought it up in court.

In another exchange:

O.J: It was good for me.
Man: Yeah?
O.J: Got me out of harm's way.
Man: ...Ok, I'll sit in it...there was a dead body in there.
O.J: Yeah. Well, um, hopefully there's no bodies in this thing. And I can guarantee you, the car has escape-ability. I mean, if you're ever getting into some trouble, and you've got to get away, it has escape-ability.
Man: (Laughing)

He'd be locked up soon after this aired. Apparently only about 100 DVDs ever sold, and there are no other details about the profits made from the pay per view event, or O.J.'s fee for appearing in the special.
All in all, it was a completely ill-conceived idea with even worse execution that somehow was spewed into existence. It reeks of a desperation for money from all parties involved, none of whom seemed capable of creating any well-written gags for the camera. However, it is memorable in the shock-value of seeing an accused murderer making light of the truck he rode in after he supposedly stabbed his wife and her boyfriend to death.
Most humans will live a rich, full life never knowing this even exists. For the woeful few who do see it, you can't help but leave with an overwhelming feeling that O.J. was a twisted and broken man at this point, straining to grasp at even the the slightest hint of his former celebrity and adoration.
\To most people born post 1980s, OJ Simpson was a famous athlete accused, then acquitted of murder who'd later serve time for a completely unrelated crime.*
But to the rest of us, OJ is the single most infamous athlete name of our lifetimes--the shockwave that was sent through the country when it was announced that his ex-wife and her boyfriend had been murdered in Los Angeles, was unprecedented.
Its impossible to recreate the magnitude of this mono-cultural event that was the OJ Trial, and words don't begin to describe the fall from grace of one of the most beloved sports stars ever.
We'll never be able to forget the image of the low-speed white Ford Bronco chase with dozens of police cars in not so hot pursuit, or the inhumanly long trial that fractured the country along racial lines, or the glove that don't fit (so you must acquit!).
To the younger generation: try to imagine waking up to read that one of the Manning brothers had been accused of bumping off their significant other. Maybe that serves to illustrate the disbelief that we were all hit with that one night in June, 1994.
After the 8 month murder trial (yeah, how many of you had forgotten it lasted that long?), OJ was a free man. Images of him happily golfing sent waves of anger through white America, who felt like justice was cheated by a slick defense team that highlighted the racist tactics of the LA police department. On the heels of the Rodney King video and subsequent riots, this was not only a brilliant strategy, but one rooted in a great deal of truth.
A civil lawsuit followed in which OJ was found responsible for the death of Ron Goldman and ordered to pay his family $33 million. To my knowledge, they never received a cent.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOEcsIghRpg

https://youtube.com/shorts/7EgTWXCRD64?si=yYyO4LBqONQ1CYdE
Ellie does the mute/unmute perfectly and Rowan sees. He decides to try it because its a great idea. But of course he gets it back to front so the customer only hears the swearing & insults.
Or maybe something like the noise cancelling headphones skit. Showing the customer how it works and they storm back in because they got fired for swearing at their customer.
I know the writers would do a much better job of coming up with the right idea than me.

Intro

It’s not much of a stretch to say that violence is the primary form of interaction in video games. With a handful of exceptions, most video games involve guys whacking other guys, with varying degrees of brutality. Even chill games fall into this - Stardew Valley has sections with combat in them! Considering the pervasiveness of violence in video games, there has been a ton of amateur and academic commentary on the topic. However, while this is a well-established school of thought, I haven’t seen people try to apply this to Fire Emblem specifically.
So, let’s do that now! In this post, I’ll be exploring how violence in Fire Emblem is implemented - what limitations are placed on violence, how it warps wider game and narrative design, and what it implicitly says and does not say. I hope this post doesn’t come off as too early-2010s “makes you think”-y, but I do think there are multiple interesting things worth talking about here!
Despite the length of this post, "a brief discussion" is an appropriate title, as we won't be able to go into depth on everything. After all, video games are holistic works, so the attitude towards violence is relevant to every aspect of their design. However, I have managed to wrangle some of these threads into the following structure: first a discussion on the fundamental mode of interaction in Fire Emblem, then how stories are constructed with regards to violence, and ending with the aesthetics of violence and how they relate to characters. Also, as FE is a huge series, be aware that I am gonna be making some broad statements which may not apply to each individual plot point of every game. I actually planned to write 3 case studies around Thracia 776, Fates, and Three Houses (which have the most interesting attitudes to violence in the series IMO) which point out these deviations, but this post is way too long and full of tangents already. If people are interested, I’ll make a followup to this post which goes into them in more detail. Also also, because of the nature of this post, I’ll actually give a useful TL;DR for once:
TL;DR: Nintendo games must be fun mechanically, and they can’t be too uncomfortable narratively. If you try to provide a counterpoint by saying “oh this Kirby final boss is super dark it eats 100 morbillion galaxies”, you do not deserve rights. IntSys has to keep to this as a 2nd party publisher, but they also have to deal with the fact that their games are at least nominally about ‘war’ (or at least they put their toes into that particular thematic pool). This conflict between making a fun video game for children/teens and the wider framing of the narrative leads to interesting narrative and aesthetic tensions. also fun is cringe, misery is based

“Do you like hurting other people?” (or The Fundamental Mode of Interaction)

OK LISTEN I KNOW I LITERALLY JUST SAID THAT I DIDN’T WANT TO COME ACROSS AS A EARLY 2010s “VIOLENCE IN VIDYA BAD :O????” PERSON BUT I SWEAR I’M GOING SOMEWHERE WITH THIS
The best place to start when talking about violence in video games is to think about the primary form of interaction in said game. In the case of Fire Emblem, this is in the in-chapter gameplay. Sure, in objective terms the player moves arbitrary objects across a 2D grid which perform subtraction on arbitrary objects controlled by the computer, but this is always framed as controlling a squad of soldiers to engage in (typically lethal) combat with enemies (who are normally also soldiers). When you’re not doing this in-chapter gameplay, you are preparing for the next chapter of combat. This involves surveying the area of combat, preparing weapon loadouts, etc, however more recent entries also include light life-sim-esque elements. To summarize, Fire Emblem’s interactivity involves ordering violence as well as the preparations to order said violence.
For players, this strategic thinking is extremely fun and is the primary draw of the series! You have all these tier lists of who’s better at killing, discussion of the maps where you do the killing, complaints about the length of gameplay sections where you don’t do killing, etc. This is by design, as while I don’t know the core brand tenets of Nintendo, I imagine the Reggie quote “If it isn’t fun, why bother?” is carved into a solid gold statue of Mario in the office lobby. This then is enforced on all associated studios, including IntSys and so Fire Emblem. While I would disagree with that Reggie quote (especially the bit where he says “If it’s not a battle, where’s the fun?” which is a wild statement to make about an entire medium), this approach to making games is ultimately fine, and so IntSys tailored the strategic gameplay to be satisfying to your dopamine receptors. You could analyse what the normalisation of violence even in ‘just for fun’ games says about wider gaming culture, but I won’t get into that here. In any case, let’s dig into a few specifics of FE’s interactivity.
One thing that’s interesting with regard to strategy games is the detached perspective of the player. You order units and observe the resulting violence, but it’s not tactile, you don’t directly swing the sword or shoot the bow or cast the spell like with action games. This adds a layer of separation between the player and what fundamentally happens, at least within the framing that the game provides. It’s not like Call of Duty, where your relationship to the violence is very visceral, where you view everything down the barrel of a gun. OK, I probably shouldn’t use a series that I have very little personal experience with (I only listen to the supplementary lore material, so let’s talk about Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. While you’re not directly in the driver’s seat, John Sekiro reacts to your every input with extreme responsiveness, so overcoming the game’s challenges i.e. stabbing people is incredibly visceral and satisfying. While this violence is fantastical in nature, there is sufficient blood and explicit sword-action to clearly say “oh yeah you are violently killing all of those bozos with a katana”. Coming back to FE, not only are you far more detached from the violence, it is presented in an extremely cartoony manner… but let’s not get ahead of ourselves here, we’ll get to the aesthetics later. Point is, Fire Emblem gives the viewpoint of a stoic commander, who Does What Needs To Be Done™, and not the viewpoint of an actual soldier who has to do the actual killing.
Now let’s view the player’s perspective on violence from a different angle. Fire Emblem intends for its combat to be relatively relaxed on the player side of things - the turn-based nature allows the player to calmly think through all of their moves, and you typically have perfect information on the enemies. The only exceptions to this are Fog of WaSame Turn Reinforcements, which are rare and typically unpopular amongst the fanbase. This leans into ‘combat as sport’, where (going back to the Reggie quote) you have a fun time picking apart a puzzle with the tools you have, and we all collectively enjoy this! This is a valid way of designing strategy games, and I like what IntSys has done. However, it’s not the only way of making these games - for example, in Total War you have to juggle all your battalions in real time whilst the enemy is bearing down on you, and the XCOM games always have Fog of War and limited information on the enemies, with you never knowing what kind of awful new monster is going to suddenly charge at you. Don’t get me wrong, neither of these follow ‘combat as war’, the principle that violence should properly mimic the stress, tension and unfairness of actual conflict. Hell, neither of them are particularly mature either - Total War is the strategy game equivalent of smashing action figures together, and XCOM emulates a pulp sci-fi alien invasion story. However, the additional pressures these games have make them hew slightly closer to actual conflict, putting you more in that mindset in a way that the clean fun Fire Emblem doesn’t really do. Again, I want to say FE’s approach to violence in in-map gameplay is fine, but when all three of these franchises have an explicit narrative framing of ‘warfare’, it does make Fire Emblem’s narrative a little more… stretched.
Finally, I want to briefly mention the maps. To steal from a brilliant Jacob Geller video, these are Worlds Designed For Violence. At least outside of the Kaga games, the maps you fight on are primarily designed around how the player interacts with them, i.e. fights on them. While I imagine the narrative designers and artists at IntSys are involved throughout the map design process, the gameplay flow probably takes precedence most of the time. Maps are not designed to resemble realistic places that you have to fight through, they are instead designed primarily to provide fun gameplay experiences before being dressed up by the artists to look realistic/fit the specific story beat. This is a more consistently entertaining approach to map design - heaven knows we have a lot of Kaga castle assault maps which are as fun as actually assaulting an entrenched position IRL - but this lack of friction could potentially take the bite out of the intended vibe, neuter any commentary on violence throughout the story.
You may have noticed that we’ve only talked about the “in-map” gameplay for now, when there’s an entire second half of these games, i.e. all the gameplay between the maps. Don’t worry, we’ll get to all of that, but this may fit better in:

Something something “ludonarrative” something something (or Narrative Implications)

(To clarify, here I’m going to talk about the wider plots and narrative structure as opposed to characterisation, as that fits more into the aesthetics of the series)
It’s not bold to say that the narratives of games have to warp around the core gameplay structure. Especially in AAA video game production, the narrative designers usually have to take a back seat to the systems and level designers, at least outside of the initial rough outline they provide in the original game pitch. In this case, the job of the writer is to form vaguely coherent connective tissue between individual levels, setpieces and expensive pre-rendered cutscenes. This must be a very difficult job, and is probably the reason why most video game stories are the way they are. I am not privy to IntSys internal meetings, but I imagine they abide by this paradigm, trying to give a reason for why you fight 20 battles which roughly align with plot beats that were decided years ago.
Put another way, the writers of Fire Emblem must contrive a reason why the characters fight a vast number of violent battles in a strategic manner. This has a pretty easy solution - war! We have found something it’s good for, as whenever the gameplay designers decide that an extra map is required, the writers can just insert “oh no there’s a blockade of enemy soldiers in the way, guess you gotta kill them all”. This is the case for almost all the games and is a fair enough narrative choice, as it’s frankly one of the few scenarios where you could reasonably contrive so many battles, but it’s worth examining this in a bit more detail.
Even in the framing of warfare, there are still a lot of skirmishes, which sometimes the narrative or tone fails to support - or at least, their presence means that violence isn’t taken that seriously. Let’s take an example from early in Awakening: Emmeryn sends the Shepherds to negotiate an alliance with Regna Ferox. On the way, they are ambushed by Risen on the Northroad (1), have to fight the border guards who think Chrom is a bandit I think??? (2), and then after arriving they need to take part in Regna Ferox’s ritual combat to secure their alliance (3). These beats aren’t necessarily bad, and I actually think Awakening uses these opportunities quite well: the Risen are established as a constant threat to the world (except not really in the main story but that’s a whole other thing), “Marth'' gets more development, we set up Regna Ferox as fighty people who like to fight, and while the middle encounter is very tenuous it does set up a funny joke in Cynthia’s paralogue. However, I want to communicate that if the map/encounter designers need X maps between plot points A and B - in this case, needing low-stakes trials in the tutorial period - then there’s gonna be a fair bit of narrative filler. That is to say, there must be multiple combat encounters that kinda just happen, which makes violence a lot more casual in the narrative. See also the myriad examples of “oh shit random bandits attack!”, used to have a lower stakes map, with bandits appearing and vanishing as needed. This works fine enough in the context of ‘combat as sport’, allowing your favourite scrunglo to build up a triple-digit body count, but this casual attitude circumvents potentially interesting ideas with regards violence. Taking the example further, banditry and its causes are never seriously explored, as bandits are just treated as a filler enemy (except in Based As Hell Thracia 776).
Another narrative consequence of needing so many fights is that… you need to fight. That is to say, any anti-war sentiment or appeal to diplomacy in the series is fundamentally undercut by a) strategic combat being a core appeal of the series and b) narrative beats needing to be structured around fighting enemies. It’s a struggle to have moments of diplomacy and reconciliation when you had a fight within 3 minutes of said moment, lest some people start screaming that things are getting boring. This also makes any appeals to pacifism kinda moot. Xander’s quote about “war bad” in Conquest is utter bullshit, as a huge part of the marketing around that route focuses on the coolness of the tactical combat and its challenge. Eirika and Ephraim can never be equal, because Ephraim’s “fighting is fucken awesome” is encouraged by the gameplay, and Eirika can NEVER save 11037 because we need a final boss and no-one else fits the bill.
Speaking of, in video games it’s best practice to have a big bad guy you fight at the end of the story, the toughest mechanical challenge coinciding with the narrative climax. In Fire Emblem, you have one grand final battle which decides the fate of the war and/or world, before cutting to a brief wrap-up and then credits. This is an attempt to make these games satisfying, which is fine, but this is at odds with an anti-war message (which FE often gestures towards) - that is, actual wars tend to be deeply unsatisfying in a narrative sense! Oftentimes, after a decisive battle, things just kinda keep going for a little while afterwards with casualties continuing to pile up until peace terms are agreed. In the few cases where there is a final battle, it’s more of a formality as the decisive moment occurred months ago. See World War 1 and… World War 2 for examples of each, not to mention a whole host of war-related books and films. The problem with doing this in a video game is that it would require having multiple one-sided fights past the most climatic fight, which would be unfun, and we return to that fucking Reggie quote again. While video games can effectively explore this anti-war narrative space - This War of Mine is a fantastic example - it just doesn’t gel with the fun games that IntSys wants to make. I bring this up in the context of FE because Fire Emblem has such an aesthetic focus on warfare compared to other video games, so it sticks out even further. Even in FE6/FE9 where the war is effectively over in the final few maps, the enemies still remain extremely challenging, because if they didn’t things would be boring.
A few minor things that didn’t fit in above before we wrap up this section. First of all, in making an action packed story, Fire Emblem neglects an important aspect of army life in warfare - the “hurrying up and waiting”. In the majority of cases, the breaks between fights is under 10 minutes, it’s just glossed over. Fire Emblem Three Houses is the exception to this, but there it’s more framed as school life. Some people may say “what’s the point in having large amounts of timewasting where nothing happens in my game about war” and to that I would say fuck you, I want to play Jarhead Emblem. Next, Fire Emblem involves fighting people AND monsters, but these targets are typically given equal narrative weight, outside of maybe a funny line of dialogue about someone being afraid of monsters. In 99% of cases, enemy soldiers you fight have no more humanity than literal monsters. The death of any of your beloved soldiers is a tragedy with big sad death quotes, the death of those poor fuckers is quite literally a statistic which is proudly used to rank how well your guys have done at the end of the game. Finally, the limited scope of the violence the series can show limits the potential impact of scenes. In some cases, this is good as the implication is enough, e.g. the ‘Monica’ scene in Sacred Stones is wonderfully grim and would be weakened by anything explicit. However, a number of other scenes are neutered by the limitations on violence. This fundamentally relates to the aesthetics of the series:

insert prozd tweet/skit here (or Aesthetics, Tone, and Characters)

I’ve been talking a lot about ‘the violence committed’, and this might have seemed a bit weird to you. It’s a true statement, but because the violence is mostly cartoony and abstracted - bad guys disappear into nothingness, there’s no blood, etc - it’s hard to think of it in that way. It’s basically impossible to place Fire Emblem in the same artistic sphere as, say, All Quiet on the Western Front. This aesthetic sense was partially tech-limited in the early NES and SNES games, which was grandfathered into the more graphically complex titles, but it’s also related to how the aesthetics unavoidably warp the tone of the work. IntSys needs their games to be relatively lighthearted and unconcerned with the consequences of its violence, as one of the core appeals of these games is the charming cast of characters. As you would expect, it would be a lot harder to appreciate your goofy blorbos and their lighthearted chats about nothing if you could see the brutal consequences of their triple digit body counts. If violence was more realistic, there would be a lot less “ooh I like training and/or this one hyperspecific food” or “I like peace, but I guess violence may be possibly needed sometimes” and there would have to be a lot more trauma and dourness. There are also age rating concerns, as you can’t exactly sell Come And See Emblem to pre-teens. And once more, to clarify: Fire Emblem as it exists now is fine! I like the lighthearted tone of this series, and I like the characters that reside within it. However, a few problems do arise from IntSys’s approach to violence, as occasionally they brush up against darker ideas but (due to similar reasons to the above) they can never commit to them, which neuters their potential impact. This is especially troublesome with regards to characterisation, as the little dudes are a core appeal, so if something is off that could cause problems. In a sense, at points we have severe aesthetic tension.
A fairly useful case study to see how this affects characterisation is with Mozu in Fire Emblem Fates. Mozu is a charming character, a genial country bumpkin with a bit of an edge at times, who has fond memories of her hometown. This lines up with the lighthearted tone of her recruitment paralogue, where (checks notes) her entire village gets massacred by inhuman monsters, with her mother literally being murdered right in front of her, and she joins up with Corrin’s party because there is literally nothing left of her old life. I understand that people who experience extreme trauma do still manage to live meaningful lives, and that IntSys wouldn’t want to have a character who is a barely functional traumatised mess for 90% of the campaign. However, this doesn’t explain the sheer dissonance between the relatively normal and well-adjusted Mozu who quietly remembers her lost loved ones, and the fact that her village got My Lai’d a handful of weeks ago in the game’s timeline. IMO this would work a lot better if there were a few survivors (instead of literally everyone else dying), with Mozu actively choosing to leave her old life to help others instead of being forced to leave by circumstance. This reduction in scope would mitigate the dissonance between the character and what actually happens to her. This is by far the most extreme example in the series, however I’m sure you can think of others. My issue here is not with having ‘normal’ characters, or with them suffering tragedies, my issue is the dissonance between the two when viewing the scope of said tragedies. This is just one way the series wants to get into darker territory, then swiftly backing off instead of delving into the consequences.
This aesthetic restriction also affects the potential impact of dramatic scenes in the main story, limiting what the focus of these scenes can actually be. This little bit will involve heavy spoilers for Genealogy of the Holy War and Spec Ops: The Line (I KNOW THESE GAMES ARE VERY DIFFERENT WITH VERY DIFFERENT INTENDED DEMOGRAPHICS IN VERY DIFFERENT CULTURAL CONTEXTS, SHUT UP). Both have a very important narrative moment around their midpoints, involving fire magic/white phosphorus respectively. In each game, the deaths that occur are utterly horrific when you think about them. In FE4 the focus is on the drama of the plot twist and effects on the characters, with the actual effects of the violence being left to implication. We don’t know if this was the original intent of Kaga and the team, or if this was enforced by various tech- and publisher-related restrictions, but in either case we do not see anything explicit. In any case, in Spec Ops: The Line, the horror and graphic nature of the violence is completely inescapable, and therefore forms the core of the turning point of the story. The specifics of the violence itself are crucial - the game does not work if you don’t see the consequences of the white phosphorus - and it leads beautifully to the complete descent of its endgame. You may be saying “of course you couldn’t show that violence in FE, it’s a kids game” which is true, and in any case the scene in Genealogy is very good, even without showing the violence. I imagine if we get a remake in the year 202X we wouldn’t see anything explicit anyway, partially due to the publisher but also because the scene doesn’t necessarily need it. The point I am trying to make is that the aesthetics form a limitation on what Fire Emblem can explore, narrative space that the series fundamentally cannot reach.
One more thing, and this isn’t really about the games themselves but the impressions leading into them, and how the aesthetics can affect that. Do you guys remember when the intro cutscene of Three Houses was released a few weeks before release? I do, and I also remember the collective shock of the community when seeing the early previews. It was so drastically different to everything that had come before, and consequently was really intriguing - you can see a lot of speculation in the above comments. To clarify, I don’t want to pretend that 3H is some kind of super mature ultra gritty war story, or that blood = good game, but that beginning cutscene gave one hell of a first impression. Even though the game isn’t that much darker than any other FE game, the sheer unexpectedness put people off-kilter in a kinda awesome way. Does the game actually deliver? YMMV, but I think this (and some of the later cutscenes, such as the mid-game Dimitri one) work quite well. Sometimes, a little injection of harsher violence can go a long way.

Conclusion

Frankly I don’t really have a conclusion, sorry. As you can see, there are so many disparate strands, I can’t possibly make one grand thesis statement. Maybe the inherent contradictions of having warfare in a family friendly video game weakens the potential end result? I guess, but I don’t want to imply that what we have now is bad, as it is pretty good tbh. So, uhh…
…
OK, if I had to say something, it’s more about the process of making this. Having to try and think about how violence intersects with a video game you like takes you in a number of different directions. Ultimately, this process was really fulfilling for me, and I would recommend that you do the same (for FE or anything else)! Trying to analyse something you enjoy from a perspective not usually applied is pretty neat. If you guys have any thoughts (on the points above or your own), I’d be very interested to hear them!
Also, if people are interested, I’ll try to make a few case studies. I would focus on Thracia 776, Fates, and Three Houses, as (when thinking on this topic) I found that these games were consistently the most intriguing, with the most interesting relationships to violence. This would probably take a while though, as I am gonna be very busy in June, and I probably won’t have time this month either.

What’s up y’all! 🤠 (I’m sure you can guess where I’m from lol)
Looking for more people to expand my friends list and play some games with. Recently, I’ve been playing Content Warning but want to play other games too! Just to name a few that I have: GTA 5, CoD (all of them), Halo, Minecraft, Lethal Company, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Helldivers 2, and honestly I love playing indie games but always down to try other games. Teach me how to play Val, League, or csgo too been wanting to try those out.
Honestly, prefer people that aren’t competitive or argumentative just casual noobs like myself 😂 I like to play to have fun whether it’s a funny glitch we encounter or something out of pocket we say lol. I’m pretty laidback and not at all like to be mean but obviously friendly banter is in check! Hopefully, you’re a yapper cuz I honestly can be awkward if I’m the only one trying to talk but if there is a conversation going then I will for sure talk a lot too lol.
*Keep in mind, I do like to record for video ideas/skits so hopefully you are fine with that but if not thats cool too just let me know!
Let me know if any of you are interested! I have discord or you can ask for my xbox gt

Video Baba Production was a popular YouTube channel for skits back then during the 2016-2020. The channel first posted in 2015, started uploading frequently from 2016, reached their peak views in 2018 with "Deshbashito", a Despacito parody with political satire, besides other song parodies and skits. In late 2019 to 2020, they posted modest amount of videos, but not as much as before. But they posted about 5 videos in 2 years (2021-22) and finally stopped uploading altogether in 2022, 2 years ago. Y'all remember this channel? Any idea why they stopped uploading? Missing those skits very badly :(

Want help animating a project? Looking for a singer to jump on your song? Need an actor to help in your skit?
Well, leave a comment on this post saying who you're looking for, and what type of project you need them for, and hopefully you can find somebody! All projects are allowed.
It is recommended that you don't reveal too much information as some people could attempt to steal your idea. We'd recommend revealing just enough for someone to have a good idea of what they're getting into.

Much work has been getting done behind the scenes. Our website redesign is about to be released with many new features to use and keep you entertained. We have several different types of AMAs coming up and several new collaborations being lined up with more being hunted all the time. We are here to stay, we keep showing it over and over.
We know what we hold and will continue to work both openly and behind closed doors. New ideas are being brainstormed every day and our meme game is about to pick up tremendously! I can't say much other than that because we have a one of a kind meme we're about to unleash on crypto that boosts our already strong story and will lead to a series of entertaining, relatable memes, skits and animations. It's terrific, I wish I could say more about it but I'll just let your imagination go wild on you.
There's no way this narrative will be suppressed as we work our way around the meme/0x/politifi sphere. We have a perfect trifecta of narratives and other narratives contained within them. We aren't messing around here, this is going to be a tremendous election season for #0x202447 and our dedicated holders and bustling community. Life is good over here, and it's about to get a whole lot better!
Buy a bag, come work for it, shill around with us, laugh make memes, stay active and I promise you we will do whatever it takes to make the world know that we belong among the top narratives in crypto for the election season and probably long after!

You know how it is, sometimes you’re just window shopping to pass the time. I’ve actually gotten really into Knights of the Old Republic recently after it being on my backlog forever, and find it absolutely amazing.
I had previously once downloaded the Pikman 4 demo, and played like a single hot minute of it, after having never played the series before and found it real charming with the art style of the cute chubby little round yellow dog, and being these tiny alien creatures on Earth.
I have a big wish list. There’s games that I dream about and long for and can’t wait until I get the chance to play em’ except I ain’t got a whole lot of money right now.
I was quite delighted to see a few games on my wishlist had demoes available to download on the eshop. I’m very excited to dip my toes into Unicorn Overlord, Pikman 3 & 4, Mario VS Donkey Kong, Another Code Recollection, the new Prince of Persia, the new Contra, Kakarot (RIP Toriyama), Big Brain Academy, Cadence of Hyrule, Monster Hunter Rise, Pocket Card Jockey, the new Princess Peach game, Captain Toad Treasure Tracker, Sushi Strikers, Mario and Rabbids Sparks of Hope, that new game that looks like Wario Land Antonblast, Dr Fetus’s puzzle game from Super Meat Boy fame, Clubhouse Games 51, and what I am most excited to dip my toes into— Nintendo’s Game Builder Garage.
In my own routine and backlog completion— I have just almost 100% Super Mario Wonder for the second time since I played and beat it shortly after it initially came out in October. I’m on the final badge test, and I just have to get the last three flower coins and the wonder seeds, and hit the top of the flag pole and it’ll be 100%ed for a second time, except this time around I don’t have Nintendo Switch Online service so I won’t be getting help from any good samaritans this time around.
I also just finally got around to beating the first Advanced Wars game in the Advanced Wars Bootcamp collection. And in Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate, I reached the three star level quests after not skipping any of the ones below it.
But here’s what I wanted to share… I gave a dip of the toe into the Clubhouse Games demo. There are four out of fifty one available for the demo.
There’s Connect Four, Dominioes, President, and Slot Cars.
The thing about Clubhouse Games is that when the original game came out on the Nintendo DS, I remember my reaction was oh great a video game based on all those boring card and board games that you play when for some strange reason you can’t play video games instead.
But the thing is as I’ve been gettting older, and growing to appreciate a slower quieter way of life than the cable television filled days of my youth.
I am quite smitten with the idea of playing card games or board games around a table, maybe there are libations like booze involved, cigarettes smoked, maybe beer maybe cofffee instead maybe tea, maybe instead of cigarettes there’s a hookah and maybe it’s a small group of friends or maybe it’s an awesome house party with lots of people.
Anyways, I played Dominoes first and I loved the interface of this software with the little skit and then the brief essential rules down to a bullet point, and even accounting for house rules and variations.
At first I was not quite sure I grasped the rules, but like playing chess on the computer the software will guide you and won’t let you make an illegal move, so essentially you learn as you play.
With dominoes, I thought I kinda knew how to play but the basic rules of Dominoes are so basic to me it sounded as fun as shoots and ladders.
But with the five up scoring variation where you get points for the numbers on the edge adding up to be a multiple of 5, then I saw some sort of tactics to the game, strategy and imagined those scenes I’ve seen of old men enthusiastically slapping down a dominos onto a winding line of them on a table.
Then I tried the card game President, and man that is a funny game with some odd rules that is deceptively simple, but there is more going on than what’s on the surface. I felt like the split personality artificial intelligence play acting as several different people around the table was playing mind games with me.
Anyways, this has been a blog post.

i made new chanell with 1 roblox skit, Chalocks, is making roblox skits like Kellan is good?

Saw other subreddits doing this and decided to join in on the fun.
For those unfamiliar with the concept, the idea is you post prompts for skits as a parent comment, and then other people reply with some sort of humourous quip an answer.
For an example of a prompt:
Grimmjow stays up all night reading Black Panther comics.
Keep things appropriate and following the rules.
And remember to have fun.
With that said...
OOOOOOPEN THE GAME!!!!!!!