Lily Ingersoll

Interstate Bridge (Oregon-Washington)

Add to that the decision to stretch it into three movies, and you have a recipe for a bore. There is no saving that trilogy. The extended versions only make it worse. All the padding and backstory in the world cannot hide the fact it was written as a series of bedtime stories for children.

The Lord of the Rings is heavily informed both by Tolkien's experience in the First World War and also by the horror of watching the second unfold. The Hobbit, on the other hand, is so unconcerned with war that the titular Battle of the Five Armies happens off page and is merely described. Bilbo does not experience and thus his innocence is preserved. It is thematically inconsistent both with his arc in the book and also the hobbits' arcs in The Lord of the Rings.

It actually works against the notion of The Hobbit as a prequel to LOTR! Because Bilbo's participation flies in the face of the reputation Hobbits are shown to have as passive and pastoral, something which is repeatedly hammered home as a given to most of the characters in the Lord of the Rings films.

My Muppet Princess Bride drawings found their way to Facebook and from that came a ton of good suggestions for scenes. Rizzo as a R.O.U.S. has been suggested by a lot of different folks for as long as I've been doing these drawings, but I was never quite sure how to handle the scene until a commenter suggested Rizzo's line. Maybe it resonated with me because I can kinda relate to Rizzo in this moment (especially so soon after Valentines Day!). Thanks to Paul Adams who provided Rizzo's line, and gave me permission to use it in this drawing.

https://studiostein.bandcamp.com/ the first one was $4.13 with 10 songs. this album has an extra 5, so i thought it only fair to bump the minimum price up to $4.20 for absolutely no other reason whatsoever.

if you can't afford it but would like a download, genuinely just let me know! i can give you a code no problem

Which is all to say once again that no one is doing it like Mob Psycho 100. Because Mob is unambiguously the most powerful entity in the world and he goes "Okay but that's not very interesting. Being powerful isn't a personality. I'm gonna try to improve myself in ways that matter."

I love that changeling loser ☝️

and so, casualties unknown has a solution to this. you are not "playing as" the character. you are simply guiding a different unique and cute little critter each run.

this little critter is trying their best. they will respond to your orders, tell you what they want and how they feel. you will fall in love with your critter. this is not a "might," you will do this, as you learn the quirks of this run's expie. maybe this one is hopeful and optimistic. maybe it's anxious, or having a rough time out the gate

it turns out, i have a lot easier of a time resetting a downwell run when I take a hit or get a bad starting weapon than I do abandoning (explicitly, and diagetically) a poor little critter bleeding out and pleading for you to help after falling 40 feet through a cave onto sharp rocks and breaking its legs

as I get more proficient at this game, the knife feels like it keeps getting twisted deeper and deeper every run. it has an incredible quality of making me invested in a run incredibly early on. because yeah, it turns out that a broken leg, bleeding, and some brain damage is incredibly survivable if you know what you're doing. and yet, those scars, the hurt inflicted, won't go away. you can see the bandages and the splint well after the accident, and movement is going to remain impaired. this expie might not be as willing to trust you, and might have a more dismal outlook on the mission as a whole. it might become depressed or suicidal if it truly internalizes that its being sent here to suffer horribly and then die and be abandoned. it might begin outright refuse your orders out of spite, regardless of whether that's in its best interest

I find myself thinking about this game for hours after any run. this game would be interesting, but not a lot more than that if you were simply playing as a generic and personality-less protagonist. my reaction to this situation would be annoyance. I had an infected leg that had stopped responding to treatment, I was rushing through the cavern to try and find a way to amputate it, and missed a spike trap that functionally killed me instantly. that sucks. next run I guess. annoyance is not the emotion I'm feeling right now. I feel nauseous. adrenaline is still pumping through my blood, nearly ten minutes later. I feel the emotions the expie did, of realizing there was no way out of this, of hoping it got to die sooner rather than later as my screen flashed and I stopped being able to make out any of the geometry of the cave.