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archer-kacey · 12 days

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Secrets of the Machine (Bendysplaining)

(Full disclosure: both of the computers I have access to WILL NOT TRIGGER THE LIGHTNING CUTSCENE therefore making B:SOTM unplayable for me! Watched a couple walkthroughs to get the gist of things. I found ONE easter egg on my own lol.)

Secrets of the Machine is so out of place to me, seeming almost unpolished. I'll give it a fair shake and go over the pros and cons, but if you want a short Bendy game to play, PLEASE play Boris and the Dark Survival, not this.

Pros:

This very important bird that makes me well up inside with a positive emotion.

Ragtime Guffie. Cute character that I feel has a charm similar to the original Bendy cast. I wouldn't have been surprised to see this guy walking around in BATIM back in the day.

This screenshot I can use for memes:

This ONE scene/"jumpscare" was executed well:

The Goofy ahh can dispenser laugh

My personal favorite, this random ass arrow outside that you can follow into the darkness for about a minute until you're spat back out by the entrance arch (useless):

And last but not least, the inclusion of Gaskette and an insanely niche nod to Nightmare Run?

FIrst off, Gaskette looks killer (pun intended):

And secondly, there are at least a couple hands around the map that open and close when you click them in a very similar fashion to a hand that could be found on the menu of Nightmare Run. I was actually excited about this! (Why they didn't they just go full ham with the Nightmare Run characters for this game?)

Cons:

The first glaring issue I have is *checks watch* the FOUR Bendy advertisements thrown into the game??? What???

I'm not mad about hyping people up, but it is............LAZY?? What was the point of this? These ALL could've been Tweets!!

In fact, Lone Wolf's Announcement nearly WAS a Tweet!!

I would feel differently if the presentation was better, but you literally throw a can at some flippable....plates(?) around a screen at random and get still images. I understand that this game is meant to be small like BATDS, but BATDS was more polished, more fun, and didn't throw four adverts in as gameplay/easter eggs.

This is also gives me a Bad Feeling because if you're willing to make your smaller content into a glorified advertisement, what are you going to do with your mainline games? How are you going to treat your content? Are you going to let things cook or serve it to us raw?

ALSO...

Riley.

Riley's story itself is fine. Not amazing, not awful. Riley's parents die in a car accident when she's six. She starts drawing disturbing content, and the school counselor catches wind of this and brings it up to her guardian. Riley goes to work for JDS at the same age as Buddy (17), and is subsequently fired for drawing more disturbing material pertaining to the accident.

While it sounds cliché, the way it was presented in-game was fine. There are obviously things that could be improved, but the point here isn't the story itself.

Let me ask the audience of this post a question.

Where the hell is Lacie Benton?

Or, more broadly, why aren't M+M fleshing out characters that have been with us since *checks watch* 2017?

I'm struggling not to start doing the Macarena, because adding new characters and slowly abandoning the old ones works in direct contrast with "caring about the lore", AKA what this franchise was built on, and it's something M+M like to bring up. When you remove that backbone, everything else falls apart. When you neglect the old characters, you're neglecting the heart of the franchise.

Riley having her story isolated to one game seems to be a blessing in disguise, I'll admit. However, this is ALL just BATIM: Red Flags. Disappointed, but not surprised. Scared for the future of this franchise, but trying to stay optimistic.

#bendy secrets of the machine #secrets of the machine #bsotm #gaskette #ragtime guffie #bendysplaining #archer writes #batim #batdr #batds #bendy 3

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finestcigar · 9 months

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My personal favorite lines from every DRDT character + explanations

Most of these are my favorites because they carry deeper implications about the characters or are thematically interesting. A few of them are just here because they're funny.

Fair warning that this is at least half just an excuse to talk about my subjective character interpretations and various cool shit I've noticed.

Spoilers up to CH2-11. Content warnings for DRDT-typical stuff.

It's a kind of funny part of J's character how genuinely vindictive she gets over her secret despite it seemingly being minor and almost completely meaningless. To be fair, I guess spending four straight days hanging out with Arturo does that to a person.

Xander:

This is very interesting to me because a lot of the cast feel trapped by "fate" or unfortunate circumstances they're unable to escape (well, besides the killing game...). Teruko is the obvious example, but so are David, Arei (at first), Rose, Ace... It's common enough among the characters that I'd argue it as a central theme of the series, and I'm excited to see how it gets explored. This line being coupled with Xander immediately trying to kill Teruko despite the fact he doesn't want to seems like a contradiction, so I'm curious about that, too.

Veronika:

A big part of her character is just parodying Danganronpa fans (think Shirogane but less insulting) and I think this sums it up well. David was my least favorite character pre-CH2 and I break out in hives whenever I hear people saying he was better before, so I unfortunately can't deny how accurate this is :p A healthy appreciation for morally bankrupt characters is a keystone of maximum Danganronpa enjoyment!

Nico:

Everyone knows this one, but still. I like how Nico's shyness feels more like a character choice to make them seem unstable rather than non-threatening. This is accurate to reality since it's mostly shy people who send death threats on Tumblr dot com. (just kidding)

Eden:

Sums up her entire speech to Teruko in 2-3. What she says here cements her as the only person to stand in clear-cut opposition to the cynical worldviews of people like Teruko and David, which is important, since they're clearly supposed to be in the wrong but would otherwise lack a clear source of pushback. Disturbingly convincing theories about her being the CH2 killer aside, I think she's the only character more likely than David to die in CH5, since she seems to be taking on a role similar to Nanami and Momota in the mainline games.

Charles:

I'm getting a degree in computer science. Gonna start randomly dropping this one into conversations with people. (not really)

Rose:

This along with the rest of her backstory is symbolic for how corporations take the autonomy from artists and suck the soul out of their work. (Can you even call it symbolic if it's practically word for word?) All I can say about it is that it's a creative's horror story and this is exactly how I would feel if I were in her shoes.

Ace:

There's very obviously a lot more going on with Ace than what meets the eye. This line is a particularly clear example and I'm curious exactly what he's referring to when he says "this".

Whit:

This guy has problems.

Teruko:

Teruko being a doomer who thinks everyone besides her is fated to die. Should be obvious by this point, but this is actually why she's refusing to get close to people more than physical self-preservation: she doesn't want to deal with the grief of watching everyone else in the cast die one by one. Also ties in nicely with the next one:

David:

Similarly to Teruko, on the inside he's in complete fatalist despair thinking everyone (including himself) is gonna die. This is very telling of why he gives up on surviving and tries to get everyone to vote for him in 2-11.

Hu:

The motive secret she got is "You only took on your talent to distract from your incessant need to harm yourself for fun." This is a pretty morbid secret, but she doesn't think it's odd because the secret doesn't apply to her; she only thinks it's odd because it doesn't have her name on it. Interesting tie-in to her actual secret being the "hopeless child" one.

Min:

As someone who is an exceptional student but mid in every other area of life, I feel this hard. Min's entire bonus story speaks to me.

Levi:

Pretty funny, I laughed. Levi hasn't had his development yet so he's really leaving me with a shortage of things to say about him.

Arturo:

Again, can't explain why, I just think this is a very funny thing to say for some reason.

Arei:

I love the way this kind of cynicism is portrayed in DRDT. If Teruko and David are super negative and pessimistic about other people, Arei is a visceral demonstration of just how miserable and wet-cat-pathetic it is to hold views like those. As Eden says, "Not caring about others is the worst way to live." Although the aforementioned two were the only witnesses to this scene for a reason, I think the point was lost on both of them. Very sad!

Honorable mentions:

Self explanatory. Teruko really wants to be loved; she just believes any meaningful relationships she makes are figuratively and literally doomed.

Also self explanatory. Another indication that there's a lot more going on with Ace than meets the eye.

I always forget he said this so I get jumpscared by it every time I rewatch the prologue. Like whoa man, you're in America, you can't say that word here.

Anyway, thanks for reading this far. Feel free to ask me to elaborate on any of this if you want to, though be aware I might write an entire essay if prompted. See you next time! 🚬

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hishighnesstheprincess · 5 months

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MY HATER POST

literally made a hater post just to talk about stuff in the sonic series that I dont like ❤️ if you don't like this post then fuck you block and/or blow me. this is disorganized as fuck btw and i dont care

sonic frontiers was the best mainline sonic game in over a decade but thats really not saying much

i think tangle is kinda boring and whispangle is kinda boring by proxy. whispers cool tho

surge is the best rival sonic character since blaze and the only thing dragging her down is that sonic in the idw comics kinda sucks as a character

its great that we are getting more female characters in idw and the games but quite a lot of them are kinda boring and we still need more female villains

metal sonic is basically nothing but a jobber in idw rn and its really depressing

idw please treat the babylon rogues better, theyre goofy characters with serious storylines just like basically every other sonic character, stop making them NOTHING but a joke

lanolin is an interesting character, yall just cant handle women who are even SLIGHTLY rude to a fan favorite character

the worst part of idw is that its tied to game canon because they cant shake up the status quo too much or have character arcs for most of the main characters

rouge is ABSOLUTELY a sexualized character and always has been. learn to like a character despite the faults in how they are portrayed or shut up about it

sally was the best canon romantic partner for sonic and you cant change my mind

the second worst part of idw is the titular character himself

i dislike surg/amy because of the age difference andalso the fact that everyone wants to disregard surges character to have her be redeemed

if sega is going to keep teasing son/amy then they should just stop dancing around it and make them canon already, make the shippers happy and get the drawn out agony over with for the rest of us. also age amy up for the love of allthat is holy

also, sega should stop ship teasing ships they have no intention of making canon in general, its shitty and edges into queerbaiting when done with gay ships

the above does not apply to whispangle

idw art is overall much much MUCH better than any other sonic comic and its not even a contest

there are a lot of things i disagree with about the current state and direction of this franchise but we are in a much better place than we were even just two years ago and we should be glad for all this success

the worst parts of archie are the most atrocious things that this franchise has ever put out, in art, storytelling, basic morality, etc.

most of the popular ships in this fandom suck ass

unless sega stops rushing sonic team and actually gives some resources to them we are never going to get better than 7/10 games. corporations are not your friends and you dont have to thank them for giving you a mid product

sega should have been sued into oblivion for the literal seizure inducing state sonic colors ultimate was released in and we should never, ever let them forget it

remain skeptical about every single sonic game until release, we've had "WERE SO BACK" moments before that turned out to befalse

the edm in sonic frontiers cyberspace slaps but isnt as memorable as previous sonic soundtracks

stop ghosting sonics friends (sonic frontiers, sonic prime, sonic dream team) its kinda weird and puts way too much importance on sonic again. this is a good cast, USE THEM

sonic frontiers dlc being hard wasnt a bad thing, the jank, glitches, and lack of fairness were bad things that tarnished the experience

the games have never ever been properly translated from japanese into english and that is just an objective fact. but also dont shit on people for only having interest in the english version, you have to go WAY out of your way to get a good translation and that's on the franchise, not the fans

this franchise's "canon" has been fucked since the original classic games, trying to fix it in the sense that you can somehow make every little detail perfect is a lost cause. just pick and choose what you like

of all the characters that deserve a game to themselves blaze deserves it the most. girlie has a whole other dimension that we could explore can you IMAGINE an open world game in the sol dimension COME ON

if lots of people are criticizing something you like then you should give some consideration to the fact that they may have some points instead of just disregarding it as people being nitpicky and nasty. you dont have to listen to it but if you dont do that then you cant dismiss it out of hand either

the stories of sa1 and sa2 arent even the best stories in this franchise

06 sucks ass and no amount of "potential" means jackshit when it comes to actual quality. if we're just evaluating "potential" then congratulations everything ever made is a quality product have fun with that

its okay to games with goofier and lighthearted stories

team dark are just friends

i prefer amys hammer to the cards

let this franchise have its edge back. but also let sonic be cute. they arent mutually exclusive

keep good physics and momentum in the games for the love of god please its what this franchise was built on

sega of japan may do characterization better but the closest brushes to death that this franchise has ever had (Dreamcast, 06, Forces) were all on them as well

this might be the hottest take of all time but sonic team shares some of the blame in how a lot of sonic games turn out very bad, its not all on sega

stating that some sonic-inspired games (spark the electric jester and freedom planet) or sonic fan games (project 06) have turned out better than actual sonic games is kind of objectively correct but youre a dick if you say it just to make sonic fans feel bad about the games or themselves

if you ONLY consume sonic media you need to branch out more. for your own health please

flynn is neither the worst person to ever walk the surface of this planet or gods gift to the sonic fandom, practice some moderation in your opinions people

i think discourse is good, actually. except for when it harms people. and fictional characters do not count as people

sonic frontiers open world biomes are boring and nowhere close to most open world games, even ones from a decade ago

silver was never sonics rival

it would be nice if we could go back to having smaller games on handheld consoles coming out on a regular basis while mainline sonic games come out once every couple of years on a bigger scale and higher quality than weve been getting. and no locking games behind apple arcade PLEASE

sonic lost world isnt a terrible game or a good one. its just weird and boring

sonic riders was fun and its a travesty that it got downgraded into generic cart racing games

sonic unleashed daytime stages are the best boost stages in this entire franchise because they actually rely on quick decision making and reaction times instead of just smashing your way straight through the entire level with little to no effort

the werehog combat sucks ass and the fact that its super slow and super long and takes up like 75% of the time youre playing the game is why unleashed isnt peak. sorry

stop using green hill stop using green hill stop using green hill stop using green hill stop using green hill stop using green hill stop using green hill stop using green hill stop using green hill STOP IT

a lot of fans of sonic do not understand what they are talking about and that includes me a LOT of the time

sonic himself cant just be whatever the writer wants him to be. the reason characters are characters is because they have certain character traits and you cant just change that without getting a different guy, im sorry

archiehad the worst moments but the sonic movies are the worst adaptation overall

the above will change if movie 3 kills off shadow or tom. then the worst adaptation will be underground

game sonic being a static character is cool, actually

sonic fandom is sexist as fuck and that includes the tumblr side of it

sage getting revived in a post credits scene was lame. give us more time before confirming shes alive

the sonic twitter takeovers are not canon. no, not even if you think a thing they said on it was funny

they should let female characters be naked (dont make this weird) and give the boy characters outfits sometimes

amy having a crush on sonic is totally fine but they took it WAAAAAYYYYYYYY too far at many, many points. i dont care if its funny amy threatening chris in x or intimidating cream in various games (battle, rush) was NEVER a good thing

rouges design does not need to be changed, it needs to be framed and posed in less sexual ways

rouges heroes and prime outfits sucked ngl like just from a color and design standpoint like theyre kinda ass and overcomplicated and an eyesore

if sega is gonna age the characters up they should actually go ahead and post the new ages on some official channel, dont just leave us in this horrible limbo where we have to argue with weirdos online about who youre morally okay to thirst over certain characters and whether a different voice counts as a character becoming an adult

the fact that the main official english sonic account only posts memes and advertises hilariously overpriced """"""""products"""""""" kinda sucks tbh. i have to go to other language accounts to get stuff like concept art and celebrating the anniversary of a game the released a year ago. were well past the era of laughing at sonic just for being sonic, now lets act like it

stop harrassing people involved with this series even if theyre doing an objectively bad job. thats a real person and you should care more about them than you do a fictional character

the above DOES apply to ken penders. hes a piece of shit but still a person

criticism =/= harrassment. this goes both ways

cream IS a hero thank you very much

reference to a thing you like does not equal good character writing. critically, it does not equal bad character writing either

amys not a damsel in distress and hasnt been in over 20 years. if we count characters just getting captured as being damseled then congratulations, sonic himself is a damsel in distress (Forces), apply that shit equally across both genders

ryan drummond was the best english va, but jason got the better scripts. roger is getting better and most of the work hes been given is just. bad. so i dont feel okay judging his work. but he is my least favorite

gameplay>story when it comes to the actual games, every time. if you have a good story to tell its only hampered by being in a shitty game

worst game in the series is sonic colors ultimate. say what you will about 06, forces, rise of lyric, or whatever other game. at least they werent literally physically dangerous to play

all the main female characters in the games are asskickers, they just need to be utilized more. as does every member of the supporting cast

the sonic franchise fucking needs to stop having long gone ancient civilizations. please have new ideas

this is the end of the list. go away

#sonic #prin posts #sonic posting #long post #hating #trigger warning for uh. hating ig

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girlfriendsofthegalaxy · 5 months

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tuesday again 11/14/2023

twenty-nine, please be kinder than twenty-eight and the tail end of twenty-seven. phil update: unauthorized access

listening

Maisie Peters’ Guy on a Horse (previously featured with song Not Another Rockstar). headbanging indie rock off the spotify recced playlist. i would have liked this song much more in my worst misandrist period from high school-early college but the lines “Got this far and I’m Joan of Arc/And you’re just a guy on a horse” made me laugh. spotify

also off the spotify recced playlist (many bangers on last week’s) The Last Dinner Party’s My Lady of Mercy. all-girl baroque british indie rock, a dizzy quality i like very much in this small dose but would never be in the mood for a full album’s worth. spotify.

OH this feels like it’s probably on every griddlehawk playlist. one day i will read those things

reading

fallow week

watching

Sirocco (1951, dir. Bernhardt). it was on tubi and i wanted to watch a Bogart noir without hooking up my laptop and finagling The Big Sleep with the good subtitles off the dvd. Sirocco has…hm. aged poorly is an understatement. it is not internally consistent with character motivations (a truly fucking baffling ending) and the leads have zero chemistry. the leading lady didn’t have anything to fucking do to create chemistry. the hottest moment was when she absentmindedly gave him back a cigarette with a lipstick print, and he finishes smoking it with a thousand-yard stare. comparing this in marketing to Casablanca was criminal. stop fucking comparing everything to Casablanca it’s never going to be as good!!!

third most unforgivably, below the brownface and script that was once in the same room as fun dialogue, it could have been a singular half-hour episode of television instead of a feature length film.

playing

genuinely cried at the conclusion of the mainline Fontaine quest in g/enshin. this was a beefy fuckin update my god. i think the last act in the five-act quest was like two hours of cutscenes. i know how the fuck are they funding this (gacha) but still. any other company this would be hysterically cost prohibitive.

in other games: Luna Story Picross I, i am having fun but i think my brain has not yet picked up on the internal logic of picross yet. if there was a Good Picross paid app like the Good Sudoku paid app that teaches you sudoku strategy i would get that in a shot. this is a very millennial app, lovely gradients and extra chunky pixel art. very crossstitchable . ik pixel art is already crossstitchable but this lands somewhere between whimsigoth and every astronomy-themed gift on the marketplace and i find that compelling

making

horseshoe knife from the Dragon Forging Experience!!! at the ren faire. unrelated half pound block of beeswax for scale. i did not have enough upper body strength and got a blister :( but any excuse to swing a medium-sized hammer with malice aforethought. my initials are somewhat indifferently stamped on the other side bc again, upper body strength, but those don’t need to be on the internet

hung up all the cat wand toys. this is extremely not very hashtag aesthetic but hopefully seeing them every day will remind me to actually play with my fucking cats, bc they were in a horrible pile behind the futon and were a right bitch to detangle every time. we’ll see how this goes. mack has not ripped them all down yet bc she doesn’t want to stretch over the little samsonite train case i yoinked off the side of the road in mass. strongly recommend a big makeup case or train case like this one to hold all the cat bits and bobs like flea treatment and brushes and extra toys and the filters for the water fountain et al.

#tuesday again #tuesday again no problem #some real ringing musical endorsements

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pahrak-the-sinnoh-slizer · 2 months

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Okay so Pokémon Legends Z-A! What the fuck! Wow!

One big concern I want to get out of the way first: apparently the game is going to take place entirely within Lumiose City. And I mean, Lumiose is the biggest city in Pokémon, but what about the whole rest of Kalos? Also how will we encounter Pokémon? Surely they’re not all city-dwellers. I have to wonder if this was a miscommunication, but I guess we’ll see.

Anyway: YES!! Not only are we getting a new Legends game (PLA was immediately one of my favorite games in the series), but it’s set in the woefully under-utilized Kalos region! Kalos is a well of untapped potential, and this has the chance to be a very striking way to finally draw it out. They knew exactly what they were doing when they let that Z linger on-screen. AND, not only THAT, but the franchise is taking 24 off and saving this game for NEXT YEAR! Thank God, this is great news for GameFreak’s employees, and if Pokémon of all things sets this precedent it could have a HUGE impact on the industry.

As for why it’s “Z-A”…who knows? I’m sure at least part of it is the creators wanting to come up with a more unique name, which is fair. The hyphen makes it seem like a range covering the entire alphabet, which could signify something all-encompassing, and reversing it to go from end to beginning likely plays into the cycle of life and death represented by Xerneas and Yveltal (in this case, death must occur for new life to take its place, or something along those lines).

I’m glad (and amused) that they specifically showed Furfrou in the teaser, as it’s currently one of the last few Pokémon yet to be available in a mainline Switch game. After this, I believe it’s just Patrat/Watchog and the Elemental Monkeys? Maybe they’ll toss them all in to finish rounding things out.

Part of me does wonder if the prevalence of Unown in the Presents could be significant…but probably not. As the world’s biggest Unown fan I adored their sidequest in PLA, but Unown haven’t appeared in Kalos previously and it would make more sense to revisit Zygarde Cells for this sort of quest.

And Mega Evolution! Honestly it feels a bit weird to say it’s “back” when it’s remained prevalent in everything but the mainline games, but I’ll get over it, I’m still thrilled! Mega Evolutions in a Legends game! I have to imagine we’ll get some additional information on it; there’s a good chance the game will feature Kalos’s first discovery of Mega Evolution, too. On the chance of getting new Megas…I don’t want to get my hopes up, but it would make a lot of sense! Though I definitely still want new regional forms too. Maybe I’m being greedy. But speaking of forms, if the do give new forms to Xerneas and Yveltal, I hope they look better than Dialga and Palkia’s Origin Formes, those still bother me.

I’m personally hoping this one won’t be an isekai. PLA did end up utilizing it well enough, but I’d still prefer to stay as grounded in this particular time period as possible. Something about giving you a magic smartphone in ye olde past just feels…I dunno, patronizing? But since Arceus probably won’t be involved this time and I don’t see any of the XYZ trio opening time portals, I think there’s a good chance of avoiding the isekai angle. One related thing that brings to my attention is space-time distortions; they’d probably be a poor fit here on a thematic level, so I hope they’re able to come up with a good stand-in. Maybe Mega energy suddenly flares up in a region and affects the Pokémon? Will we encounter wild Megas? Wait, Alphas are still a thing, right…?

Come to think of it, how will the Pokédex be handled? I really liked the approach of creating the region’s first Dex; perhaps it could be an element of this “redevelopment” process? I hope so. Anyway I could list things I want to see for hours but I think this is sufficient to communicate what sort of headspace I’m in regarding this announcement. Hon hon hon baguette Prism Tower, everyone!

#Pokemon #long post

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breezeinmonochromenight · 2 months

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Question. Are any of the Final Fantasy mobile games worth it? I’m on the fence and don’t want to invest time or money into any of them if not.

Anything Squeenix puts out on mobile is…. a double edged sword. At best.

Some of their mobile games can be really fun (past titles FFRK and DFFOO come to mind for me), or at the very least a nice distraction if you need something to burn time here and there. DFFOO was notable to me in particular because it had very fair drop rates for items — I had most of the weapons and armor despite never spending a dime of real money on the shitty gacha mechanic, and I was an extremely casual player.

HOWEVER COMMA

Squeenix has a massive habit of killing their mobile games pretty suddenly, typically sooner rather than later. It’s only a matter of when.

If you genuinely want to play something like Ever Crisis or Brave Exvius or whatever, then I’d suggest either keeping it casual or, if you do sink significant time into them, do so knowing End of Service can drop whenever. If you’re just interested in cutscenes/story as it relates to the the mainline games, then I’d just hit up YouTube.

Whatever you do, for the love of god don’t actually spend real money on them.

#anonymous #if that even is your real name #misc. ff

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ashenmind · 8 months

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Welcome to the first ever Touhou’s Most Awful Mother Award or TMAMA

Inspired by the infamous drill tweet, I want to settle once and for all, “who would be the worst mother in all of Touhou?”

To do that, I plan on conducting a survey where participants will be repeatedly presented with two random Touhou characters. They must simply choose which of them they would rather have as a mother, before being presented two new characters. This repeats until the participant decides they’ve seen enough. Once enough people have participated, we will have the data to get our answer, as well as the less sought title of “least awful mother”.

The first step in this grand plan in simple: Creating a list of all Touhou characters. But hang on, there are over 200 characters in Touhou, depending on how you slice it. A large chuck of these are unrecognizable to even the determined fan (We love you Manzairaku!), so we first need to parry that number down a fair bit. Ideally we want a list of characters that fans will mostly recognize. Of course, nobody knows everybody, but this survey set-up allows participants to skip if they are unfamiliar with one or both characters.

Right now, the qualification criteria I am proposing is that characters must fall into one of two categories:

They appeared as boss or playable character in one of the mainline Touhou games.

They were ranked in the top 100 by the 2022 THWIKI Popularity Poll

This ensures that all the stars of the games get a chance, while also letting popular manga-exclusive characters take part.

What I need from you

I have created a table of all characters that I believe meet these criteria, but I would be shocked if I haven't made a mistake somewhere. Take a look through, see if your favorite characters are there, let me know if they've been missed.

I could also use feedback on methodology, particularly the qualification criteria. I aimed broad, mostly so I don't exclude anyone important, but that does catch a number of characters that I really doubt are going to give us any interesting results (looking at you, stage 1/2 bosses). Should I narrow the criteria? Are my criteria awful and doomed? Let me know.

#touhou #TMAMA

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danganronpasurvivoraskblog · 11 months

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PHANTOM THIEVES OF HOPE - A Danganronpa X Persona 5 Story.

Coming soon...

[Additional Details below...]

//So uh...yeah...Hello Tumblr audience/Survivor audience.

//I apologize for the lack of updates today, and I guess I should let you know that I had a job interview today which took up most of my time. I didn’t want to prioritize the blog over my own wellbeing so I ducked out today.

//But in return, I’ve decided that today will be the day that I unveil my next big DR related project, being Phantom Thieves of Hope.

//Now that I’ve finalized the party for the Persona 5 X Danganronpa AU, I got inspired by the work I put out and decided that I will create an entire fanfic storyline for it.

//I considered doing this for Murder Drones too, but since Murder Drones isn’t finished and not all the secrets have been revealed yet, I need to put that on hold, but given that I love Danganronpa and love Persona 5 just as much, this was something I was super excited to do.

//This story will be where all my other storyline projects are, and will be posted on WattPad. However, depending on how people like it, I’m considering letting it be my first ever Archive Of Our Own fanfic too.

//These will be posted on the fic itself once I upload it to the website, and I will be posting regular updates for it here on the blog as well, but if you’re interested to read it for yourself, there are some guidelines and important information below that I will list for you if so desire to read it:

#1: The story takes place in it’s own original timeline focusing on Danganronpa’s characters.

//To make it easier to understand what I mean by this, this is not a crossover that features characters from the Danganronpa series ONLY. It’s not a story where the Ultimate’s meet the Phantom Thieves, or where the Phantom Thieves steal the hearts of some of the Hope’s Peak students and characters.

//Take Dreams of Acedia for example, which features Joker as well as the cast of Omori. This isn’t like that.

//Instead, the story will feature the main protagonists of the mainline Danganronpa series as Hope’s Peak Academy students, all of whom change the hearts of the rotten people around them in hopes of averting many of the tragedy’s that were displayed within the core series.

//As for the setting, it’s within the same timeline as Danganronpa 3′s Despair Arc, with a few changes. For example, to canonize the V3 characters, they are first years in Hope’s Peak, while the 78th Class are 2nd Years and the 77th Class are third years.

//As for the DR3 class, they are also students at Hope’s Peak, but part of Class 77B instead.

#2: The plot follows similar story beats to the original Persona 5.

//The story is primarily told from the perspective of Makoto, who takes Joker’s place as the protagonist in the story.

//Any and all similarities between this story and the original plot of Persona 5 are more than likely intentional, as I based the original game’s plotline and story beats off of this one.

//For example, there are 8 Palaces in the story, Mementos is relevant, the team gets acquainted with the other world after meeting a weird cartoon animal, and Makoto has his own fair share of confidants from all 5 iterations of the series that he can meet and greet and grow from.

//Obviously it’s not a copy/paste, since the characters will need to have their own conflicts and stories, but the similar progression of plot to the original game is intentional.

#3: This fic is UNNASSOCIATED with any of my other works/the works of others.

//Whether or not Survivor is the first of my stories or the only one of my stories that you’ve checked out or not, it’s important to know that DRSurvivor’s plot and characters are completely separate from PToH. The same applies to all of my other Danganronpa-related works, including ReCaptured and ReProgrammed.

//In summary, this means that Kuripa Kurafto is NOT present in this story. Nor are any of his friends or any other OC’s from this blog, like Matta or Uchui.

//And yes, I know that I made an artwork of him, but that was just because the original art was made for the followers of this blog, who would KNOW him.

//The story however, WILL feature original characters that I’ve created. For example, the third Palace ruler (who shall not be named) is

//Of course, it also goes to say that anyone else who has made a fic like this, and any similarities between the two, are purely coincidental.

//Some of you may know of a story on AO3 by JustRookie called Danganronpa X Persona: Mirrored Selves. I will state right now that I take no influence from JustRookies’ story, and all the writing in this fic is purely mine own.

//I ain’t no Madarame.

#4: The story is based on SPECIFICALLY Persona 5, not the rest of the series.

//Which effectively means that any integral aspects of games 1 to 4 won’t be

//Persona 5′s style specifically is what I’m going for here, with the Phantom Thieves and the masks.

#5: There will be shipping and romance elements in the story, but not as many in Survivor.

//Just to manage your expectations, much like with Survivor, there will be some personal ship and romance elements in the story, most notably Naegiri, Saimatsu and Tokomaru, but only the far latter will really come into play with the main story.

//Also, as for Hajime, this story will be more Hinanami geared than Hinazumi.

//This isn’t really important at all. I just know that I a lot of you like the pairings in this blog and I want to manage your expectations.

//That’s all the important information that comes to mind. If anything else comes to your mind and you want to ask about it, feel free to do so through the ask box.

//As things stand right now, I have currently almost finished the first Palace of the story, and I hope sincerely that you all check it out.

//I have been experiencing a bit of writers block with ReCaptured lately, so I’m taking another break from that and focusing on this and Survivor in the meantime. I will also be working on PToH during my break following the end of the current arc.

//And I would just like to say I’d appreciate it if you read the story. You’re all such an amazing audience and I really want to show you more of what I can do.

//Thank you for lending me your time, and stay tuned, fellow thieves~

-Mod

#danganronpa survivor #danganronpa #persona #persona 5 #persona 5 royal #persona 5 the phantom x #p5 #p5r #makoto naegi #komaru naegi #toko fukawa #crossover #IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT

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edgy-ella · 6 months

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A new era begins!

(It’s hard to hear, but Sebastian said “criiiiinge,” which is why I told him to shut up)

I’ve wanted to play Sonic 06 for a long time. Not because it’s good, obviously—this is one of the most infamous video games of all time, perhaps the most to come out of the new millennia. No, I wanted to play it because I felt obligated to.

Of course, everyone “knows” 06 is bad, but how many people have actually played it? I hadn’t, and I don’t think it’s fair to shit talk a game no matter how bad its reputation is. I mean, I have my fair share of games that I like that have been critically panned as well as my fair share of games that I dislike that have been critically praised. No amount of lets plays and reviews can substitute actually experiencing a game for yourself. So, play it I shall. I also see it as a sort of hazing ritual as a Sonic fan.

A few years back, I got a used copy of the game on PS3 at GameStop for $10. Problem was, I didn’t have a PS3 to play it on. I thought one of my friends had one, but it turns out that she has basically every Sony console except the PS3 (as it truly had no games). This turned out to be a common trend with more and more people. But now, finally, I have a console to play it on—the PS3 at my college’s gaming club. So every Friday from 5-7 from this day on, I’m gonna be playing Sonic 06 until I beat it.

(A lot of people have asked me why I don’t just emulate it; you don’t understand. This isn’t just any game. This is Sonic 06. I don’t want to even for a single second blame any of the game’s…quirks on my computer’s poor specs or the emulator not being properly optimized. I want to play 06 the way God intended.)

After having played through Sonic’s campaign up to White Acropolis, I can say that it’s definitely the worst mainline 3D Sonic game that I’ve played. Wow, shocker I know. But, I think there’s a lot more to talk about here than just saying “game bad” and writing it off entirely. As someone who grew up hearing horror stories about how bad this game was, it is absolutely fascinating to analyze now that I’ve gotten a chance to actually play it.

I don’t think that Sonic 06 is inherently a bad game. A lot of its biggest issues are technical—the camera is awkward to control and often gets stuck, Sonic‘s physics paired with the awful camera make him a chore to move around with (though I don’t think he feels as sluggish as I’ve seen some people say; it’s more that everything else is fighting against him to make him feel slower than he actually is), the frame rate is HELLA inconsistent, yadda yadda yadda. With all that being said though, I don’t think the game is full of bad ideas, just bad execution.

The level design so far is okay. I’ve played through worse levels in a Sonic game, but I am also not very far into 06. Once again, the poor technical performance of the game is what holds the levels back, not their layout or geometry. Fun loop de loop sections are held back by Sonic being flung off them into the ocean because he was one degree off center, and the game doesn’t correct you on it like in similar parts of other Sonic games. I think the Mach speed sections would genuinely be a welcome addition to Adventure style games if Sonic had better handling (especially in the air). So the ideas there aren’t inherently awful, it’s just their execution (though you could argue that Wave Ocean plagiarizes Emerald Coast enough to say that the level design is lazy for taking so much from a level in a previous game).

Perhaps my most controversial example of this good idea, bad execution philosophy is with the boss fights.

Let’s talk about Silver.

The first boss fight against Silver is one of the most memorable things from Sonic 06. When people talk about the game, if they don’t think of the cutscene where Elise kisses Sonic or the more recent Real-Time Fandub, this is what they think of. It’s no use!, Silver’s voice line where he grabs Sonic in this game, ended up becoming something of an unofficial catchphrase of his (though the comics often have other characters say it to Silver instead). I remember seeing multiple Top 10 lists back in the day where this fight ranked among the worst video game bosses of the 2000s. Not just for Sonic. For all video games of that era.

Needless to say, I was not optimistic going into the fight. I expected to get stuck, to rage, to curse the day Italian hedgehogs ever gained telekinesis. But I have to say…

The fight really wasn’t all that bad.

Granted, I had hindsight on my side going into it. But for a fight that I expected to suffer through death after death after infinite loop after death for upwards of twenty minutes, I ended up getting through it in a little less than five minutes. And I know that exact number because I had someone else at club record me playing from the second Silver showed up in the cutscene to the second I saw my A Rank after I beat him.

(In case anyone’s wondering; I don’t want to post the video since other members of the gaming club appear throughout it, and I don’t want to publicly post a video of any of them online without their permission)

The fight is annoying for sure, but that’s more the fault of the game’s preexisting issues. Sonic's poor physics and camera control really work against you in boss fights. But this is nowhere near the worst boss fight in a Sonic game, let alone of any game in the 2000s.

Now that I've actually played through the fight, I can kinda see what the devs were going for here. You start out right in front of both Silver and a circle of rings, both of which you are naturally drawn to run towards. This will prompt Silver to grab and throw you when you get too close to him, but the timing of how long it takes each of you to reach the circle of rings means that you should have at least one ring on you before Silver catches you. The devs likely wanted to use this as a way to safely teach you how to fight him: keep your distance and wait for him to pick up something else so he can't pick up you.

This is a fine idea in theory, but there's a few things that hurt this approach:

1) It's extremely unlikely that you will beat Silver on your first try. The more you replay the fight, the more you are conditioned to avoid Silver—meaning that you will want to avoid the circle of rings he spawns right in front of at the start of the fight. This makes it much easier for Silver to come in and one-shot you, since you most likely won't have any rings to back you up. I fell into this trap once, and I'm sure there's video evidence of a bunch of YouTubers doing the same. Though, with that being said, there is a Ring container in the southeast corner of the arena (if Sonic starts facing north), so if you’re clever you can book it there at the start of the fight. Which is easier said than done, because of…

2) THE CAMERA. Once again, the game's awful, awful camera control really bite you in the ass for boss fights. This was also an issue I had with Egg Cerberus, but Silver's smaller character model and faster attacks really elevate the issue. Since there's no way to lock onto Silver and turning the camera is so clunky, he will often manage to sneak up behind you and grab you before you have a chance to find him. In that sense, Silver almost feels like an enemy in a horror game here; you'll move the camera around a little bit, get jumpscared when Silver comes into frame, and hope you react fast enough to not get instakilled by him.

3) The homing attack has a habit of locking back onto Silver even when you try to homing attack away from him, so keeping your distance after you hit him once isn't as easy as it should be. This isn’t that big of a deal because you can just drop down and walk away from him, you just really need to fight muscle memory to avoid it

Once again, this is a case of 06 being hurt by its execution and technical implementation rather than just being full of bad ideas. There’s other examples of that in the fight too, like Silver desperately needing a cooldown after he grabs and throws you. This would fix the infamous loop where he traps you against the wall as well as the problem I ended up running into where he throws you towards the sky then grabs you again before you can reach the ground and grab more rings.

Is Silver secretly the best boss fight in Sonic history? No! But I understand what the devs were going for with this fight. If the camera and controls were more polished, I don’t think anyone would think twice about fighting Silver, wall loop or not. I can see why the Project 06 mod has been lavishing in such high praise from the fandom; buried underneath 06's rushed, sloppy coding is a solid framework.

So overall I’m…cautiously optimistic for the rest of the game? I can’t believe I’m saying that about Sonic 06. Sure, the physics and camera is a mess, but the game isn’t unplayable like so many others have claimed in the past. Maybe it’s because I have a soft spot for the adventure games, but I’ve played worse games than this. I understand that the worst is yet to come, like Silver’s ball puzzle or the multiple one hit kills in the Final Story, but hey, if getting past “one of the worst boss fights in video game history” was a cakewalk for me, then maybe being pessimistic about the future is just no use.

The story is still hot garbage though lol

#sonic the hedgehog #sega #sonic 06 #sonic next gen #project 06 #shadow the hedgehog #silver the hedgehog #princess elise #mephiles the dark #gaming #Ella essays

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megaman-r · 8 months

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Hello! Welcome to my rather extended effort to make a classic-style-ish Mega Man game. My name's Nevi, my main is @afniel, and I'm here to be everyone's problem. I used to be tracking progress for this on Twitter, but we all know how that went, so now I'm here instead.

First, the top 3 questions I tend to get:

What is this?

A fan game, created in the NES style. Well. Eventually it will be. Making a game is not a quick or easy task.

What's it about?

When I was young, I always thought it was boring of Capcom to not give Roll her own game. I got older and I still think that, but I've also thought other things along the way, like, why do these games always raise such alarming existential questions and then completely forget they happened? How long would it take to learn a functional amount of music theory? Is it Metool, Mettaur, or Metall? Whatever they're called, why aren't there a lot more of these little guys in the games?

Basically, I'm giving Roll the game I always thought she deserved.

Can I play it?

Currently, there's really nothing to play. I've got the basic engine functioning quite well and a good chunk of the visual assets finished to a working degree, but refining everything, getting the gameplay as tight as it needs to be, and making sure nobody's AI breaks or sucks is a pretty big job. That all said, my first real roadmap goal is to have a single-stage playable demo. While I don't have any notion of a release date for that, I am working steadily towards it, so please stay tuned!

The rest of the FAQ is long and maybe less interesting, so I'll stash it under a cut to save you a little scrolling.

The Game Itself

Is it going to be girly?

Probably not as girly as you're imagining, if you're asking that. After all, there's still explosions, boss fights, insta-death spikes, a ton of weapons to choose from, and quite a lot of shooting. Just because the main character is in a dress won't change the core feel of the game, nor will it be easier than other MM games.

Also, a thing being girly isn't bad anyway. It's just a style.

What makes this different from any other MM game/fangame?

Fair question! I'm going to be a little secretive about it though and just say 'choice.' It's a thing that the MM series isn't known for giving players, outside of what order you want to explode the robot masters. I think it could be more interesting than that.

That said, the mainline classic MM games don't have a whole lot to distinguish them from each other, and they're still fun and each one of them is someone's all-time fav game, so even if it just ends up being Another MM Game, that's still not a bad crowd to be in.

Are we fighting Dr. Wily? What's the plot?

Some of that will come with the eventual demo release. The rest will be on full release. I don't want to spoil it up front, you know?

You will get to see some familiar faces for sure, I'll say that much.

Will this game be accessible?

I want it to be! I think games in general have a lot of work to do to become more accessible to disabled gamers, and as a disabled gamer, I want to try and do my due diligence in that.

It is playable on both keyboard (not comfortable) and controller (a lot more comfortable), and while the controls are fairly simple, there is already a fully-functional option to switch between classic MM style down+jump to slide, and MMX style dedicated single button slide.

Remapping buttons is somewhat beyond the scope of the engine I'm using, which is unfortunate, and all the more reason for me to learn something more flexible like Godot.

I'm trying to choose palettes for things that should be eyestrain-friendly. Flashing will be kept to a minimum in the default game mode, and I plan on having a sensory-friendly mode with no flashing whatsoever and certain other effects lessened/changed/removed. Of course, I can't guarantee that certain patterns won't affect sensitive people regardless, but I'm going to give it a good try.

Depending on how easy the game engine makes sensory-friendly mode, it may end up being a separate download version, but I hope not, that's just not as good.

Alternate difficulty modes are also something I want to do! I just haven't looked at implementation yet, but it should be pretty easy.

Game Development Stuff

What are you using to make MMR?

The engine itself is in Pixel Game Maker, which is kind of an underdog DIY game engine and if I'd really been thinking I'd probably have started it in Godot or something, but I'm already here and honestly, I like how it works, so I'm keeping it. The assets are entirely made in Aseprite, and the music is entirely Famitracker, with a little use of Audacity to make sure tracks loop properly and to get things into the right format.

Very few visual assets are taken from the games directly, mostly some enemies and all of the sound effects (because those are not something I want to try to recreate using only Famitracker—I only have so many hours in a day).

How NES-like are we talking, here?

I'm aiming for NES-like in the way that Sonic Mania aimed for Genesis/Master System-like: the style matches, the limitations are mostly observed, but certain limitations are disregarded when it would be extremely awesome to do so.

Some examples: I'm very fastidious about color palettes per tile and per minor enemy sprite; I'm less fastidious about color palettes onscreen at a time and color palettes per boss sprite. I'm not trying to replicate the sprites-per-scanline flicker. Number of frames per animation isn't something I'm really considering as long as it looks visually appropriate. I'm sticking with 2A03 music, except for where I mean business, and then I may whip out the VRC6 channels instead.

So no, this wouldn't run verbatim on an actual NES, even if you recoded it in 6503 Assembly, but you would be able to get quite close.

How did you learn to make pixel art?

Well, when I was a wee little neurodivergent child, one of my favorite hobbies was making tiles and characters in MS Paint and building big collages out of them. I made a lot of beehives, for some reason...

Then I became a medium-sized neurodivergent teenager, got really into RPG Maker 2000, and the sprites and tiles were not to my liking, so I started editing them and eventually making my own from scratch.

I'm now a fairly normal-sized neurodivergent adult, and making pictures out of little dots is still a lot of fun, especially with a harshly constrained palette. Doing NES-like graphics just kind of comes naturally after all that.

How did you learn to make music?

Honestly? I just began throwing myself at it. My first attempts were unabashedly bad. When things didn't make sense and I couldn't get them to sound right, which was all the time, I looked them up. Starting with general chord theory was what really made it begin to click. The first thing I composed and kept was the Lagoon Stage music, and not coincidentally it's been through the most refactors as well. Coming from an art background where I'm very used to the Ugly Painting Stage of any given piece has definitely helped with patience, too. The important thing is to just keep beating your head against it. It's frustrating, but you only learn to make music by making music.

Every track on the OST represents about two days of feverishly slamming notes together for four-six hours a day, preceded by one-four whole months of tapping and humming random things until one of them ignites something in my brain that goes, "Oh, I know how the rest of this should go!"

How did you learn to code?

Well, honestly, I didn't; PGM is a visual scripting engine, so everything pretty much looks like flowcharts, and the number of functions is kind of constrained. Every object in the game is a state machine, so that's pretty much the paradigm I understand. I could not code my way out of a paper sack in any actual language.

That being said, I do understand the core concepts of what programming is, and most of that I learned by watching Retro Game Mechanics Explained on YouTube until I suddenly understood what 6502 Assembly was all about and everything else just kind of made sense. I don't know either! It's a little weird. But it did work, so I can't complain.

Is this related to [Other Fan Project]?

Nope, it's not part of or related to any other fanworks. I'm a solo dev working on just this one project right now. (However, if you're making a classic or MMX-style game and need pixel art assets, I'm open to talk about that!)

Your robot master has the same name/concept as [Other Fan Character].

Sorry if that's the case! There are so many really stellar MM fan characters out there that a little name/concept-sharing is basically unavoidable. No infringement is intended, no profit will be made from this game, and I'm uninvolved enough with the general fandom that I can pretty confidently say I didn't even know about your character. Take it as a case of Great Minds Think Alike, if it happens.

Do you have anywhere else I can keep up with this?

I sure do! I've got a Discord specifically for it where I toss a lot of WIP sprites and such, and that's where eventual playtesting will happen too if you're into that sort of thing, and a Trello that I don't always remember to update, but it exists at least!

Mega Man R Secret Gamedev Clubhouse Discord

Trello Roadmap

#mega man #rockman #mega man classic #mega man fangame #game dev #game development #fangame

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actualaster · 8 months

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I really want to get into tales of symphonia because you have increased my background exposure to it enough but is the anime a decent place to start??? Or should I go find ye olde emulator?

I haven't actually checked the anime out myself, so somebody who's actually seen it should be better able to tell you but from what I gather it's better to give the game a play if you can.

The original game is available on GameCube, PS2 (Japanese-only), PS3, PS4/5, PC, Xbox One, and Switch--though from what I've heard and seen the Switch version is a mess of a port with genuine major performance issues. So you've got options for which version you're interested in (regardless of if you emulate or not). Just, like I said, maybe steer clear of the Switch version lol.

The sequel didn't ever get an anime adaptation as far as I'm aware, and the game is sadly only available via Wii and PS3 (and considering the quality of the TOS Switch port, I'm thinking it doged a bullet there lol). The PS3 version is good, no major technical issues in it or anything.

The sequel game did also get a manga that was part prequel, part interqeuel which ran in the Tales Of magazine (then got published in 2 volumes), of which there is a scanlation though I would suggest avoiding that unless you play the game first due to massive spoilers. But if you do check the sequel game out, it fleshes out a character significantly vs their in-game appearance (which makes sense for plot reasons I won't spoil for you here!)

The sequel is personally my favorite game, I liked the cast more than those in the original though many people like the original more (and an annoyingly large number of them are very rude about making sure people know it). But I would definitely suggest, if possible, checking out the original game first because it will give a lot more depth to things. Though you definitely can jump into the sequel if desired and not be totally lost. But it will dramatically change your perspective on various early-game events depending on what you know of thr first game and it's cast.

That said, expect it to be a fair time sink (especially if you want to try for the multiple ending variants--they aren't for the most part wildly different but there is one specific route that will change if a character kives or dies) and also as it's 20 years old now, it'll have some various technical limitations on the gameplay that aren’t present in more current entries in the series.

The sequel isn't as much of a time sink--however, while the restructuring of how Bamco classifies the games now puts it on more equal footing with the original, it was developed as more of a side sequel and not given the full resources of mainline game and it shows at various points. It does, however, have 2 different endings (and a "bad" game over end unique to one specific part of the endgame sequence) which are determined starting earlier in the game. So, if you want to go for both that's still more of a time sink than just one.

You could, though, if you opt to play one or both just do one playthrough on each or either and then look up alternate scenes via YouTube or something.

(Also, however, keep in mind when deciding if you want to play them or not that both games do have missable side quests that will flesh out characters and such so having a guide handy may help--or, again, you could probably find YT vids of them)

#tales of symphonia #tos #tos2 #dotnw #dawn of the new world #anonymous #questions for kage

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ghoultyrant · 1 year

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The Legend of Zelda: Music is Magic

One of the elements I've always found striking about the first six mainline Zelda games, which other fans seem to respond to but not consciously recognize, is that each game places music as having power in its own right.

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In Ocarina of Time, you of course get a magical musical instrument, the title Ocarina of Time. It's easy to thoughtlessly fill in with the idea that it's not that music is magical, but that this specific musical instrument is magical -it is, after all, and you explicitly need it in particular to open the Door of Time, and the most obviously magical set of songs (The warp songs) are simply not available to the player until after they've acquired the Ocarina of Time.

Similarly, it's easy to gloss over several of the pre-adult songs as not really intended to be magical. Epona's Song is just a song Epona likes, and the fact that she teleports to your location when it's used as an adult is pretty clearly a convenience or simplification, with the camerawork and all attempting to make it look like she just came running when called. Zelda's Lullaby is largely used as a password to prove you have a connection to the royal family. The Sun's Song shifting day to night and night to day is easy to read as a convenience for the player that isn't really meant to be true in-universe. Saria's Song invoking telepathy to let you talk to Saria is similarly easy to excuse as the devs wanting you to be able to get hints anywhere, rather than really meant to be in-universe fact, especially since playing Saria's Song prompts Navi to ask if you want to talk to her. (To get a reminder of what to do next)

But actually the Sun's Song, while its day/night effect can be excused as player convenience, additionally has the ability to paralyze the undead; that's not player convenience given a thin in-universe justification. Furthermore, the backstory of the Composer Brothers developing this song makes no attempt to suggest that the song requires a specific instrument to have its power: the song is explicitly said to have this power. And you can use it with the Fairy Ocarina, which is never suggested to be magical.

So actually, no, this song is magical. And there's a fair argument to be made that the warp songs are implicitly in the same boat; the player doesn't explicitly see Sheik warping in with these songs, but Sheik's ability to jump about as needed -including somehow getting to the Desert Colossus without having the Eye of Truth!- makes a lot more sense if you assume these warp songs work for just anyone. And if Sheik has been using them, that neatly explains why she knows them to teach you them; you can run with all the 'destiny' stuff for why, where Sheik only bothered to learn them to teach them to the Hero of Time, but the story really just makes more sense if the magic is inherent to the songs rather than the songs being a passcode to trigger the Ocarina of Time in particular to do magic things.

And I started out by saying music has power in its own right rather than using the word 'magic', because while for example interpreting Saria's Song as not having supernatural power is probably fair, it's still a key part of the game's progression that you use it to get Darunia out of his bad mood and actually help you. Other uses of Saria's Song -like proving to Mido that you're a friend of Saria's- can be waved off as not the power of music, but Darunia breaking out in dance and feeling better is just... the music helped. Simple as that.

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Majora's Mask is both even easier to thoughtlessly fill in with 'I have a magic instrument' and yet is actually more consistent about clearly signaling that the power of song is the power of music, not music as a passcode to activate a magic device's capabilities.

After all, in Majora's Mask you never have a musical instrument other than the Ocarina of Time, and your first task of the game is retrieving it so the Happy Mask Salesman will teach you the Song of Healing to break your curse. It's fair to interpret this as that the Happy Mask Salesman can't break your curse with just the song, where it only works because of the Ocarina of Time. And it's so easy to then thoughtlessly assume all other songs similarly are just causing the Ocarina of Time to do magic stuff because you put in the right password.

But that's not actually how the game presents its songs.

When Igos Du Ikana teaches you the Elegy of Emptiness, he doesn't suggest he realizes you have a magic instrument: he talks as if the Elegy of Emptiness just plain does this when played. The Song of Soaring is presented as a magic song, simple as that. The Sonata of Awakening's effects are not blamed on the Ocarina of Time. The Song of Storms reprises the circumstances of the Sun's Song in Ocarina of Time as a song presented as inherently magical, invented by Termina's Composer Brothers. The Goron's Lullaby and New Wave Bossa Nova aren't presented as magic in the supernatural sense, but their effects are presented as intrinsic: Gorons fall asleep because they hear the lullaby, period, as indicated by the Goron elder talking about singing it to his son to put him to sleep; it's not putting Gorons to sleep by virtue of the Ocarina of Time being magic.

And even the Song of Healing is presented less like 'the ocarina of time's magic makes this possible' than I think players tend to assume. Among other points, the Happy Mask Salesman presents getting your curse broken as payment rendered for returning Majora's Mask to him; it's entirely possible he could break the curse himself, and just isn't because this is supposed to be a trade. (Albeit a trade where he delivers his payment before confirming you've held up your end of the deal, oops)

The Oath to Order is the only major song of the game that probably isn't meant to have power in its own right in-universe, as its only function is to call the Giants. (Who, for one thing, have conspicuously large ears)

That 'probably' is doing a lot of work in that sentence, though.

And let's not forget the Ikana Canyon family keeping the restless dead from clawing at their doors with music. No ambiguity there: the music protects them.

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Like Majora's Mask, Link's Awakening has an obvious explanation to fall back on, but doesn't actually suggest that possibility is relevant. It's so easy to blame a lot of odd things about Link's Awakening as it all occurring in the dream of a magic whale.

But while the game draws attention at various points to the oddness of things about the island, its inhabitants, their experiences, etc, it actually doesn't do that with the songs. Nobody hint-hints that Manbo's Mambo functioning as a teleport is weird or dreamlike, nor that the Frog's Song of Soul being able to bring life to things not alive is somehow 'not canon'.

The only song that could be argued as really falling inside the nonmagical music framework is the Ballad of the Wind Fish, whose one concrete mechanical effect requires the eight Instruments of the Sirens to actually trigger. (You can play the song in front of the Wind Fish's Egg earlier than that and it will trigger your current Instruments to pop in and play, but of course the Egg won't open) But... for one thing, Marin singing the song in the Animal Village entrances the animals, returning to what I said before about music having power in its own right. For another... it's absolutely the case that in real life taking away instruments changes how the rest of the music sounds; there's a fair argument to be made that the Ballad of the Wind Fish only works with all the Instruments not because the Instruments are magic but because you're not actually playing the full Ballad unless you have all the Instruments.

Notably, Majora's Mask has its easter egg/callback where you play the Ballad of the Wind Fish in the Milk Bar. In that sequence, you assemble the song one instrument at a time while Ingo berates your efforts as senseless noise -until you have all the instruments played, at which point Ingo is suddenly swept up in memory and stops being a jerk. There's a consistency there, that the Ballad lacks its full impact when played without all the instrumentation -and in the Majora's Mask case, the power here is nostalgia. You're not making Ingo nice by using the Ocarina of Time's magic to bespell him. You're making him nice by making him recall happier times -with music.

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A Link to the Past, the Adventure of Link, and the original Legend of Zelda have these undertones as well, though I find it more understandable people gloss over their cases in particular. The Adventure of Link only uses its flute twice, and honestly I wouldn't be surprised if plenty of people who've played it forget it even has a flute. A Link to the Past's flute is used exclusively to awaken and call the bird that acts as the game's primary fast-travel mechanism, and that whole situation is never really addressed by the narrative directly. The Recorder in the original Legend of Zelda is mostly used for the fast-travel of calling a whirlwind to take you places, and it's an old, weird game with lots of oddities, obvious kludges, and so on, where it's difficult to tell how seriously a player should take assorted elements from an in-universe, narrative standpoint. (Is Link really supposed to be using Rupees as arrowheads? Or is that just a programming kludge?)

But they're still consistent with the undertone in Link's Awakening, Ocarina of Time, and Majora's Mask of music having power in its own right.

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I said earlier that it doesn't seem to me that fans recognize this even though they respond to it; the Zelda series not only has tons of musical remixes, but the way such remixes get constructed and framed is noticeably different from what I tend to see when looking into remixes from other series that also have excellent music. I regularly run across Zelda remixes that do things like try to tell a story purely in musical form, for example, where by contrast I think Relics of the Chozo might be the only Metroid remixes I've seen explicitly, deliberately shoot for such an effect.

Or I can talk about fanfic; I've read more than two dozen attempts at novelizing Ocarina of Time, and conspicuously not a one of them retained the power of music as a concept. Lightening Darunia's mood with music gets cut. Zelda's Lullaby gets cut. Following Saria's Song in the Lost Woods gets cut, and indeed Saria's Song itself usually gets cut. The warp songs get cut. The Sun's Song gets cut. The handful of these novelizations that got far enough to touch on Bongo-Bongo/the Shadow Temple/the Bottom of the Well uniformly cut the time paradox of Link learning the Song of Storms as an adult by virtue of having used it as a child. Only the Song of Time tends to survive into these fanfics -and even then, it gets limited to being part of opening the Door of Time. Y'know, when it isn't cut entirely.

(No, I don't understand why someone would set out to novelize Ocarina of Time and then endeavor to make the Ocarina of Time wholly irrelevant)

The handful of Majora's Mask fanfics I've seen are similarly extraordinarily reluctant to even acknowledge the central 'using the Ocarina of Time to play the Song of Time to travel back in time' plot element, let alone the Song of Healing, or the Oath to Order, or the Song of Soaring, or... well, any of the songs.

So on some level it seems to me that most fans, though they like the music of the series, they get choked up by hearing the Song of Healing, etc... they don't seem to recognize this undertone. Not consciously enough to think it too important to cut, at least.

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Unfortunately, the series itself seems to have lost the thread on this topic, too. I specified 'first six mainline games' because... it stops after Majora's Mask.

Wind Waker superficially hearkens back to Ocarina of Time, with the game named after the musical instrument that is plot-important and you use regularly -but Wind Waker really seems to be operating under the conceit that the Wind Waker is magic. Not music. The Sages have to play music to empower the Master Sword, at least, but on the whole Wind Waker seems to have a similar attitude to the topic as fanfic has to Ocarina of Time -not that music has power, but that the Wind Waker is a divine artifact that responds to the right passcodes by doing magical things, where said passcodes happen to take the form of music. Notably, it doesn't have a sidequest -or a substep of a main quest- where music is used in a non-magical way to get a result. You don't lift someone's mood with music, or remind them of better times, or get them to break into dance out of enthusiasm over the music you just played. You mostly use the Wind Waker for the very utilitarian purpose of getting from Point A to Point B.

Twilight Princess doesn't even have a musical instrument in your inventory, unless you're generous and count Epona's whistle. Which I don't, because there's nothing musical about it. You do play some songs from prior games in the form of howling as a wolf at stones, but only to make Ancient Skeleton Link appear somewhere to teach you a new combat technique. Just like Wind Waker, there are no plot beats where song has power, not in the main plot, not in a sidequest.

Skyward Sword actually does give you a musical instrument and make using it plot-important, but it's even more extreme than Wind Waker about putting the emphasis on the instrument and treating the individual songs you learn as passcodes to trigger specific results -once again, Link never plays music to affect people. It's especially striking given all the stuff with Fi singing and dancing without explanation while otherwise comporting herself as a Pop Culture Robot Character; it would've been so easy for the game to subtly reframe things and make it so music moves Fi emotionally when nothing else does, where she sings and dances because that's just the natural thing to do when hearing music, but... she just does it for no clear reason.

And on and on.

Which makes me sad; a big part of the strength of the games using this undertone is that they so clearly feel music has power, enough so to bake the idea into the story and (very effectively!) use music as a major part of influencing the player's experience of the game, and I think the games not running with this undertone are weaker for the loss.

Alas.

#Music #the legend of zelda #ocarina of time #majora's mask #link's awakening #games #power of musics

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docholligay · 8 months

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House in Fata Morgana: The First Door--1603

I have never reviewed a visual novel before, but @iscahwynn made me a very generous offer and a long line of patience, knowing that we are trying something very new. To that end: Please don’t spoil me for the game at all! If you are reading this, I have only gotten through the part written above, and I don’t want to be corrected, even if I’m wrong, even if I’ve missed something, i don’t want to have anything confirmed or denied, and I don’t need any trigger warnings or extraneous explanation. Iscah would like my pure, naive experience of the game. Thank you!

Non-Spoilery: Holy shit, I don’t think I have consumed a visual novel with this kind of fervor. In fact, the only other visual novel I think of where I was like, ‘I have to keep reading what happens” was We Know the Devil, and while I would say that game whups on this one prose-wise (I can’t relate to a lot of what people love about WNTD, but holy shit was the prose some of the most beautiful game stuff I have ever read. I wished the whole time it was a short story or novella instead. Still do!) this one has a lot of plot driving through it and the writing is also very strong--I am used to a certain amount of ‘anime gotta anime’ writing styles, and there is none of that here.

Spoilers below

I love a story that rewards patience. I could see some people saying that this moves too slowly, but I like to read a Meaty Tome, and so it doesn’t bother me to have to deal with a certain amount of setup, especially because I know this is a collection of short stories, sure, but it’s a collection of short stories taht are all driving at an ending. It might not even be fair to call them short stories so much as…episodes, maybe? I don’t know, they are connected but years apart. I guess i’m actually spitballing too much for having actually not played beyond chapter one.

So i am 98.6% sure we are in England (please don’t tell me!) Given the references to the Thirty Years’ War, the Golden Age, and winter being a rainy season, all packed into one. Also Rhodes is a British name. I might be wrong but I would be surprised if I were.

How do I organize this “progress reviewlet” or whatever I want to call it? Let’s just go with the flow.

Again, I love that this is unvoiced. It makes the game read so much more like a book to me, which makes me consume it voraciously, and also doesn’t take me out of the moment. Intensely aware that I am in the minority here, but when I’m reading something that I think probably takes place in late Elizabethan England, and I’m hearing Japanese, it takes me out of the immersion and it’s more like watching an anime, which is fine but doesn’t light up the same center of my brain, generally. Actually, the same would be true if it were English. I can’t mainline the story and let it play out in my mind the way it does when I read it. I read this like I do a visual novel, I barely pay attention to the art except in the “where is everyone standing” way, and that’s not even very helpful for this. So in reading it like a book, I feel like I saw Mell slap Nellie, I feel like I saw the light cross the White Haired Girl’s face as she failed to strangle Mell. It just makes the whole thing more immersive for me.

Speaking of Nellie, what a wild ride that was. I mean, we knew something was going to be up with Nellie’s level of spoiled when we heard that they removed the thorns from the roses in the garden so she would never be pricked. In that moment, we learn something about the fact that Nellie doesn’t understand what consequences are, she never learns that the things we may want can hurt us. And so she keeps going for the exact things she wants, and she has no sense of danger or of the need for pragmatism, or anything beyond the desires and whims of a spoiled child.

It truly says something about the quality of the writing that pretty much my most hated squick came up and all I could do was go, ‘Oh girl what happens next” and just kept clicking. I mean, the game very much tips its hand to it, it is not trying to shock you because that’s not the sort of game it is. It wants you to understand that this is who Nellie is and of course this is how she’s going to act.

But for as monstrous as she is, you feel for her, or I do, when she says, not wrongly, that she was only ever, a “a doll for the family to play with”

The idea of paintings being alive, of being changed as they are painted, that really stuck with me, and I know the painting was the small mystery within the bigger ones contained within the game, I can’t quite get anywhere with it, but I do agree that paintings have a quality of life to them. This is why it could be some future girl, it could be Nellie, it could be another person in another time.

So witches. Let’s talk about this. I know that we have a lot of cross talk about the white haired girl, and if the white haired girl is the witch she takes herself to be or if she’s a hidden princess. And then we have the maid. These two are the unnamed characters within the story thus far, and I know they must be unnamed for a reason, but I didn’t really take the witch thing on its face until the rose turned in her hand.

Oh, Doc, so you think there’s a real witch, and you think it’s the white haired girl? One, yes, I suppose I do and two, no, i suppose I don’t. Remember, the Maid is with her, and I’m also remembering the that the title of this game is The House at Fata Morgana, and I also know, being the one thing I know from the start being about fatas morgana, that they supposedly come from Morgan Le Fay, A WITCH.

So, I’m wondering if the maid isn’t the witch, and if she isn’t creating all of this as an illusion, and IF she is creating all of this as an illusion, how much of it is the facts of that matter? Or the truth? Those are different things, but related. Is it all created of whole cloth?

I mean, i feel like the game of the story has to clearly be about the White Haired girl and the Maid, I can look at a title card--OH SHIT AM I THE WHITE HAIRED GIRL?? (Please don’t tell me but do put a pin in it) that would make sense, we’re both the two unnamed characters, we’re on the title card. Hm.

Is it better to know something, or to be happy? I mean, this is basically the core question and thesis of this segment, and it seems to lean heavily toward no. Everyone was happier not knowing, except, i do want to point out, Nellie. I’m not arguing she’d be happy knowing, she’s not, but I do want to say she would be UNHAPPY in either circumstance.

I don’t agree with the maid that his error was his kindness. His kindness was not his fuckup. It was his desire, and his drive, that came outside of any thought of the family (especially rich considering how he lectures Nellie) to HAVE this girl who captured him in her own flame. She didn’t even mean to, like the candle means no harm to the moth. But kindness, no, kindness was not the issue.

But I do love when she says that we have to follow the paths we’ve begun to trod down. He can’t change any of it, and so he has to go forward.

In all, I liked this section, I have no idea how it will stack up against the others but I can see it laying building blocks for the future of the story.

While being cautious of spoilers, please, if you have any questions, i’ll try to answer!

#Doc plays games #commission review #doc plays the house in fata morgana

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sadhorsegirl · 1 year

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need it on the official record that i do love moiraine and lan's relationship sososo much!!!

i love the implicit understanding they have with each other, based partially in the fact that they are both heirs separated from a crown for very different reasons. moiraine and lan are both people who cannot go back to where they came from, whether they want to or not. so there is this shared sense of loneliness, and drift that they share, wrapped up in the idea that they probably aren't going to survive the last battle (or even the journey to it) and would rather sacrifice themselves than have anyone they care for or, in moiraine's case for some people deem more necessary to The Pattern (although to be fair to her, this often still means having a certain level of care for them she just um. wasn't raised to know how to show any healthy positive emotion i don't think) moving in companionable silence eternally Searching™

i've grown increasingly haunted by this exchange they have at the end of new spring:

like............"surrender after you are dead. yes." is the sentiment set up as one of the core values of their partnership starting from the very moment she decides to ask lan to be her warder. surely, this will end well for all parties and will NOT have any tragic implications!

it sets up this really harsh poetic symmetry (surprise) when they have their Big Fight™ in the great hunt. moiraine LITERALLY invokes how they first met with funny little jokes abt him throwing her in a pond to get his defenses down so she can jump scare him w an intense re-examination of their relationship. the whole fight is basically her forcing him to think on his toes so she can examine him at his most basic emotional level in order to try and expose the truth abt how he feels, going from playful to painful at the flip of a coin lol. and he's aware of it!!! him calling her out on it and her answering back w patented Aes Sedai Speak, in a relationship that should be free of such manipulation.....

the real master stroke here, though, is the fact that the chapter is from moiraine's pov. we get to see her own inner thoughts about it and see that beneath the devastating chess game she's playing she's just as heartbroken at having to play it. the argument is really a crystalization of what makes her such an interesting character for me -- she is leveraging absolutely brutal social dynamics in order to, from her perspective, HELP someone she cares for deeply.

essentially, moiraine is saying that in his love for nynaeve he's found something to live for beyond sacrifice and that means that their bond to each other must be terminated. he can create a new life, and bc she thinks she understands how everything will play out moiraine thinks she is just cutting down the time before he realizes he can and will ask for her to dissolve the bond anyway. he isn't wed to death anymore, leaving the heavy implication that moiraine still is.

which sets us up for something really interesting for them in s2 i think! while their relationship in the show seems to generally be under less strain than it is where we see them in the mainline series, there remains another crucial difference btw the books and the show -- moiraine has siuan!!!!! im rly excited to see how that comes into play in terms of any potential interpretation of this fight/the breakdown of lan and moiraine's relationship bc it makes her decision to push him away feel even more hypocritical and rooted in her tendency to be self-sacrificing to the point of self loathing.

tldr for anyone just trying to figure out what this might all mean for season two according to one singular poster on tumblr dot com: in the books moiraine feels very........time to burn all bridges so no one can chase after me on my suicide mission basically and i can't say im NOT excited to see if that's where she ends up in the show (to live is to suffer etc etc)

#ch 22 of the great hunt is the assigned reading for todays post!!!! plz be prepared for the pop quiz at tomorrows lecture!!#yes it WAS necessary to break out some NOTES some PASSAGES #this fight drives me insane one of the best thing in the entire series i am not kidding #he knows what shes doing!! she knows he knows what shes doing!!!! and still!!!! she chooses to hurt him to try and save him!!!#guess queer platonic life partners doesnt have to cover an entire life together 👀😬🫡#lan mandragoran #moiraine damodred #wheel of time #wot on prime #wot books spoilers #meta

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prowerprojects · 8 months

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*nods* Yeah, it's fine if Tails likes stereotypical kids stuff, it's one of the fun [and funny] things about watching kid genius characters. (Can make planes but is the first to dive into a ball pit)

I think one thing I've noticed recently; not limited to him or this series, is converting everyone older than said character into parental figures. And it kinda results in making everyone act the same around them; in contrast to canon.

(Shadow treating Cream like a little sister/apprentice is a hc as old as time in fanon. Charmy canonically looks up to Shadow; whether the latter considers him annoying depends on the writer. Him and Tails however, has always been complicated that it's hard to get a concrete reading on their relationship, but it definitely wouldn't be similar to Tails' bond with Sonic, imo.)

Yeah! Actually, one Boom episode has this sideplot: there's a science fair at the village, and the winner gets to shadow Tails at his workshop. Tails is super excited about it because people aren't usually interested in what he does in Boom. A girl named Beth wins, but she's not actually interested in it either, and soon ditches Tails to go look at Knuckles either smashing stuff or throwing it really far, because she's a kid and it's cool. Tails is like "ok, I can turn it around, I'm gonna explain the physics of what Knuckles is doing". But soon he gets distracted and even ignores Beth when she actually tries to ask him how it works because he's also a kid and throwing/smashing stuff is cool. (Generally I find Boom did this balance between him acting like a kid and being a genius specifically really well)

I wonder how they're gonna go about it in the mainline series. It is one of the points of Tails's appeal as a character, but he's also had a whole arc in Frontiers about growing up and such. Honestly if I had one thing I could get from his characterization in the next games, it would be to make him a bit more upbeat and excitable. (I understand he's been going through some stuff recently). I like the way he's written in tmosth and I've been keeping an eye on the Sonic Channel stories, I think they both have a pretty good balance between his more upbeat traits and his insecurities that still pop up from time to time.

The parental figures thing... I guess I kinda get it. When you're a fan of the younger character, especially someone who had a hard life, you want to see them being taken care of. If you're a fan of the older character, you want to see them being soft or show how responsible they are.

I do enjoy that Tails and Shadow have a bit of a complicated relationship. I guess it's just that they're not very close so the way they treat each other depends on the situation, this is pretty interesting! (I mean a lot of Sonic characters probably aren't very close, but with these two we can actually see it in their dynamic rather than assume) (Tbh I don't really want them to get closer, I don't think everyone needs to be all buddy buddy with each other, I'd much rather see the development between the characters who are already supposed to be friends but don't actually interact much, like Tails, Knuckles and Amy)

#tails #sonic #sonic the hedgehog #project.txt #miles tails prower #tails the fox #project.ask

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