Incidentally, the woman who did the infamous "Monkey Christ" restoration died yesterday. (RIP, she meant well.) Ecce Homo was painted in 1930 and "restored" in 2012, and couldn't the same have happened to the statuary? The ugly paintjobs (if at all real) could feasibly be ancient Monkey Augustuses.

I can't stop thinking: let's say these particular sculptures WERE painted as garishly as that. But is it impossible that the painter was a random hack hired for peanuts decades or centuries after the original work was completed?

(I'm not an archaeologist and have no idea what I'm talking about.)

Giving a published adventure the benefit of the doubt and running as written even if something seems off (while being open about that) is a perfectly legitimate approach. Unless the GM is the adventure's author, there is no equivalence whatever.

Being gargantuan is the whole point of DQVII. It's a magnificent journey where even in the middle you look back in awe at how much has already happened, how many people you've met, and how many stories you've taken part in. Streamlining it is not a great idea

Ha-ha this is like asking your therapist to make reality TV of herself actually having friends. Instead of just "talking the talk."

Sound a bit too American. How about this:

Dracula: Oi mate, fancy seeing your bloody mug again!

Bond: U wot guv??

Happens in all art forms: video game designers who disable the controller to show a CG cartoon, prose writers dreaming up "fight choreographies" and designing protagonists' "color schemes" etc. It takes a whole lot of skill and insight to copy the EFFECTS of one art form via the TOOLS of another.

I was promised a cute animal—has the horrid reptile eaten the cute animal?

"Solar eclipse" and "2024 eclipse" also work!