I guess THAT'S a new low for me, huh?

Motherfucker!

A whole year, only two posts?

 Holy shit.

Well, I know what my resolution for this year's gonna be... Actually, no, stop. See, if I suddenly promise you that I'll be more productive on this blog next year, that means this blog will fizzle out of existence.

No, there's only one way to ensure this blog's continued existence. Is it perseverance, introspection, a reevaluation of why I'm doing this, and where I want to take the blog from here?

Pfft, fuck no! It's time for a blood sacrifice.

That's right, we’re doin’ this shit Aztec style: to nourish the lifeblood of this blog, I'm going to look through previous entries, and ritualistically slaughter an entity described in one of the posts. First, I’m going to round up some potential candidates for the slaughter, and each one is going to make its case as to why I should let them live another day.

Paphvul's Fan Theory Commandments

I was watching one of those fan theory videos, and while it started somewhere interesting at first, it fell apart in the second half. That prompted me to think of a set of commandments for fan theories to follow, in order to prevent so much of the bullshit I keep seeing everywhere:

1. If the text doesn't prompt you to doubt whether its events are supposed to actually be happening to the characters, assume that it is actually happening. No "dream theories", or coma creepypastas.
2. Only source from canon. If your ideas can't be supported by evidence from the text itself, then it has no place being a theory. If you want to write fanfic, just do that instead.
3. Related to the above rule, do not bring other texts into the fold unless the original work is explicitly tied to them in some way. For example, The Legend of Bum-bo is acceptable material for fan theories about The Binding of Isaac, since the two share a continuity. Trying to tie Earthbound and Undertale, meanwhile, would violate this rule since the two have no explicit ties and are made by entirely different creative teams.
4. No outright denying or contradicting the text; you can’t say a story takes place on Neptune, when it’s consistently shown to take place on Earth, and vice versa.
5. No diagnosing fictional characters with mental disorders the text doesn’t either state or intentionally imply they have. I don’t care what degrees you have, Princess Peach does not have Borderline Personality Disorder. Christian Grey is a lot of things: a liar, a manipulator, and all-around abuser. What he is not is diagnosed with Antisocial Personality Disorder.
6. Word of God is law. If the author explicitly contradicts or denies the thesis of your theory, throw out the theory.
7. When others point out flaws in your theory, any amendments you make to it must NOT make any leaps of logic that violate commandments #2 and #4.

Now, with these laws established, let’s run through some popular fan theories and see which ones stack up under them:

Important PSA, Please Read

There’s an… entity loose on the web.

On a video streaming site, you might see him- no, it under a name like PaulPLAYSGameCraftToyRhymes.

At first glance, any video it produces will seem normal; an intro with a phrase like “Hello, everyone, it’s so-and-so”, and a little facecam in the upper left or right corner.

The first sign that something’s awry is the game being played; random gameplay elements and assets from other games will show up, and even things that aren’t even from a video game.

Kharorekh

Well, it’s that time of year again, everyone. Granted, I’m a little late in starting this, but I figured I should write something this month, to make up for the radio silence that was November.

I’m sure a lot of you’re wondering, “Do you celebrate Christmas, Paph?” Well, yes and no. I do have my Terran friends over for the 25th, and we call that Christmas, but it’s more of a cursory gesture on my people’s part than the major event other peoples make it out to be.

The Lion King Ramble

Fuck me, another month wooshing on by, and more last minute content.

Alright, so I’ll admit I haven’t brought out my A-Game on this post or the last one, but perfect is the enemy of good, right? Hopefully, this will prove at least a little entertaining to read until I come up with something better.

 So, let’s talk about The Lion King. Given how everyone’s already talked about the obvious monarchist and racist/classist (race-as-classist?) themes that the film espouses (and its godawful remake magnifies), we’ll take those as a given rather than the premise.

“What is the premise?!” I hear you ask. Well, it starts by looking at the film’s world through a purely Watsonian lens.

The more I thought about TLK's obvious exploitation of prey inherent to the monarchy, the more I wondered why the prey animals honored it at all; what do they have to lose by not doing so? They're being hunted and killed on the regular by the lions either way, so fear of that obviously isn't the motivator.

Then, I thought about the hyenas being inexplicably banished to their boneyard ghetto, and I realized: that isn't some weird, random policy they royals implemented as part of their regime. It’s the whole point of the regime.

Thoughts on Creepypasta

 So, I've been reading shitty video game creepypastas lately, and as I noted all the common tropes, I started to really look at why they're there. This led me to a few interesting thoughts.

One common thing I notice is that the protagonist almost always has a nostalgic fondness for the game in question, but seldom has reliable access to it. They always either lost it, gave it away or sold it. Thus, they have to buy or otherwise obtain it used from another source.

Now, in the days before the re-emergence of the internet and accessible ROM fullsets, looking through old video games was something of an adventure. As far as little babby Paph was concerned, anything could turn up in these places.