I remember someone saying "mad scientists in fiction aren't scientists because there's never a control group"

I think if you've created an elixir that turns people into goat men you have sort have gone past the need for a control group. The control group is not going to placebo themselves into goat men. You can probably not run the control group, and safely assume that none of them would have turned into goat men. That said, having a control group for that would make the mad scientist seem extra crazy and be really really funny, especially if he was carefully testing them for goat like features from the dyed water they drank instead of the elixir

@aydascomprehendsubtext

biblically accurate snow angel

It’s nice to see Bill Watterson is still active.

@queenofbaws @kpdleo12

This is the kinda passive aggressive compliance inherent in all humans

Missing my personal favorite

life becomes so beautiful when you start cooking rice in liquids other than water

put that basmati rice in the cooker with coconut cream and chicken stock and an entire onion that you've diced and sauteed with garlic until transparent. and some salt and pepper. Trust me

"Uncle Benadryl's one minute rice" one minute what? awake? left to live?

1 minute til hatman

kill the lycanthrope in yourself [commission] still one of my own favorite artworks! Prints here: https://www.inprnt.com/gallery/weirdundead/reflection/

Tori black swan Ibara white swan (I know the other characters are right there but the gap Moe placement for these two is very funny)

Something something the black swan replacing the white swan thing

AND ANOTHER THING about finding enstars's stories that may be stating the obvious but regardless: music!! getting localized but basic! staying region-locked does contribute to what keeps enstars kinda niche, at least in the west.

have you ever tried to pitch enstars to an irl that's like, a weeb but a normie (for lack of better term) level of weeb? yes the app you got off the app store is actually the second version. yes the first one has 5 years of stories and has most of the character development for most of the guys in the game. no its not localized. or a rhythm game. yes you have to use google and the wayback machine to find the translations of all those stories now because the wiki got striked. yes there is an anime and no it's not a reliable plot source actually. welcome to ensemble stars get your shovel and start digging

i want a game that uses disco elysium’s same insanely well crafted narrative system and wonderful writing…. but it’s about a 6 year old named calvin and his stuffed tiger hobbes

PERCEPTION[SOUND]-The "WAP! WAP! WAP!" of hammer onto nail is consistent. You weild the tool with skill and precision.

HALF LIGHT- Oh, yeah! Destruction incarnate!

MOM- "Calvin!" She yells, dashing to stop you. "What are you doing to the coffee table?!"

YOU- You look at your handiwork. A dozen crooked and bent nails stick out at different angles in the wood. It feels pretty obvious as to what you're doing.

LOGIC[Trivial:Failure]- Is this some kind of trick question, or what?

New Ea-nāṣir lore just dropped and I don't know how to feel about that. I hate the meme but the guy having thugs coming after him for bad copper sales is perfect.

Wait wait WAIT

As someone who hard agrees with all your tags re: tired of the meem

BUT who is also invested in antiquities

Is it possible for you to drop the new lore

So the building in Ur where the infamous tablet was found (1 “Old Street” Ur Excavations VII) was actually full of similar tablets, all detailing how badly this guy's deals went. All of these tablets were collected and put into storage at the British Museum. Typically this kind of thing gets forgotten about, many of these tablets have been sitting there for a century, untranslated or partially translated.

The Nu Tabletum

This was recently partially translated and it's incredibly fragmentary, but it's a letter from the man himself reassuring a customer in Larsa about a bad shipment (a lot of goods were missing). He is upset that the customer sent thugs to collect (which is located in a different tablet). In turn, he sends his own to the customer's home. They are to make offerings at the temple of Šamaš together to symbolically "smooth things over". They are taking an oath.

He later goes on to blame the customer for the missing ingots. He (Ea-nāṣir) decided to employ a third party to deliver said ingots to the customer (all the way in the next city-state in the Sumerian cultural sphere). It seems like the third party either stole or got into a fight with the customer over the goods.

Ea-nāṣir now has to haul his ass to Larsa to deal with this personally. There's a lot of "Why don't you believe me?" "They don't listen to me!" "Please don't send-" going on in the tablet. But from what I can gather it looks like this peace offering (making an oath at the temple of Šamaš) broke down too. Everyone is blaming each other for the missing copper ingots and now the man himself has to take the three-day journey to sort out this issue. We have a name for one of the thugs: Mr. Shorty (kurûm). He seems to be a bit scary. The man from Dilmun got kicked out of the Merchant's Guild for a reason, he's had this problem before with copper shipments from Elam. Either he's the world's worst judge of character or he's embezzling, and badly. This is his side hustle stage where he's selling everything from used clothing to speculating (badly) on real estate. He may have dabbled in money lending too. He's your classic failed finance bro.

I did not think the story of Ea-Nasir could get any better, and yet here we are

miyako truly the best character in this series

THIS SHOW IS SO PURE!

It’s worth noting that Kenneth spent the entire episode making the game (and the subsequent fight) as inclusive as possible for JJ and his disabled friends (all of whom were played by disabled actors/actresses).

BONUS:

Bonus #2

Of course I had to show the best part:

The way that Shadows House is about how the rich exploit the poor and desperate for everything yet that exploitation isn't innate; the fact that exploitation is taught to their children and how the shadows are meant to dehumanize their """living dolls""" and try to stop them from maintaining individual personalities while the soot children themselves are given form in these poor children's likeness. The fact that living dolls drink "coffee" and that's what brainwashes them into being completely compliant and dependent on the ideology of the Shadows being superior to them in every way and thus the House cannot be questioned. The fact that shadows are meant to steal their human "doll's" very face in the process of becoming an adult. The fact that becoming an adult means killing someone deemed "lesser" than you. The fact that what's truly seen as radical are the shadow children who decide Not to exploit and harm their dolls, who treat them as individuals, cherished family, and dear dear friends. The fact that for a shadow to become an "adult" they have to kill this cherished person. I am Thinking So Many Thoughts

Send me a Ship and a Number and I will Write a Kiss