#honestly i think the no.1 thing a game has to do to hook me is have brightly colored visuals

[sylvaridreams]

I'm going to try and word this better than I did at 1 am venting on cohost last night, and maybe slightly gentler. I haven't finished the SotO update from yesterday. I got home, played for a couple of hours, did some meta on the current map, triiiiied to get myself to go back to story... and I couldn't.

I was BORED. It was quite honestly boring. Any dialogue that matters is Peitha talking to her people. I am a stage prop that occasionally vocalizes expositional questions and fires arrows at grunt mobs.

I could physically feel myself losing any remaining interest in the story as I clicked "what does this mean? What do you think of Peitha's plan?" type questions (which offer a poor illusion of choice in conversation. Look! Dialogue options! You can click all of these in any order you like but you must click them all!)

Why should I care about this story? I'm being brought along as the muscle that Peitha doesn't really need. I'm not offering anything special I'm terms of skill. I'm not an invaluable resource. I'm not even being utilized as the leader that gw2 has ALWAYS made me! It's always been "You're out there leading the armies, commanding all the way from the front line to the supply chains!" Now I'm just kind of around. Run a few events and come back. Characters refer to me and I apparently have no in-game response. MY CHARACTER doesn't seem invested.

And so many new characters. Every drop, it's like, have a bunch more named people! I was learning names during drop 1, and know some of the Wizards off the top of my head, but honestly I’m not bothering anymore. Why should I? Even if Nexus isn't killed off in the next chapter I play, I'm never going to meet this character again after he stops serving the story.

And where IS the story? Where is the meat? Drop 1 was at least interesting to me. Secret society hiding demons from the Commander. Getting sucked into this strange and horrifying place. Getting the life beat out of Alba by a hulking, terrifying demon and crawling away in fear. Escaping into the arms of strangers and getting this unknown voice in Alba's head, talking to him, saying what he wanted to hear, teasing him. Him refusing to tell anyone she was in there, because he *trusted this unknown voice in his head over all these strangers.* The story lulled a lot and it wasn't like... prime gw2 content. But it had a few hooks. When in Amnytas, Alba GASPED "Peitha!" right outside of the next story step and said "I can *see* you," and I turned my camera and saw what I knew, what Alba had to have suspected, confirmed. That there was a demon using his mind as a lounge. THAT was a moment, it was SOMETHING!

At least it was fun at points, at least there was some small amount of intrigue and mystery. And from there it was all just, "take a backseat, Wayfinder. This isn't YOUR story." I'm getting nothingburger bites out of each new story drop. Oh we went into Nayos to take the fight to them and killed Peitha's model reskin cousin. Anything else that drop? Anything? No but next time we recruited some general to fight with us! Can I get a smidgen of story? Something to hang onto? The only thing this drop that hasn't been "Don't care didn't ask plus I've seen your character model elsewhere" was Alba being called "that ugly creature" by a kryptis.

That's all I've got. I'm not enjoying it. I don't like SotO. And it is not for lack of trying it, it's not because i just don't like change and don't wanna see something new and different! This expansion feels like an empty parody of Guild Wars 2, and it feels like a slap in the face to anyone who was invested in Tyria. Pre-release they really hyped up that "It's time for new places and new people! We're gonna get a new cast and explore a vast new world!" I CARED about that world, which we still had SO MUCH left to explore. Are the borders of the map even the ends of the world of Tyria or does it keep going? Who cares. There's shit going on above the clouds. I cared about those CHARACTERS. Does Alba get to see people that he loves and cares about ever again? Is he making it to the wedding? Does he get a chance to go home and see anyone? Like yes we are not chained up in the Tower between instances, we can still play the game in those old maps, but the characters have been written out of the story.

And frankly these new ones are shitty replacements. I don't care about these people. I maybe had some small amount of "OK cool its Zojja I know her!" but it's not like I had any deep care or feeling for her. Not personally. Peitha was interesting at first but being brought along as part of her nameless, faceless grunt entourage has made me lose a lot of interest. She's not going to be a core character post-SotO. She either dies at the end, or takes over as King, and at best becomes a very occasional callback. "Ah, King Peitha! It's been some time, how is Nayos!" She's not going to reclaim the throne and then ignore rebuilding her people's infrastructure to hang out in Commander’s brain all day or join them on quests. We are a temporary ally and a stepping stone for her story.

Which sucks.

In terms of the rest of the SotO cast, it again feels like a pale imitation of prior Gw2 content. Like they're saying "remember season 1, meeting all those people one by one who would become your best friends and allies in life? 🤔 " and then they didn't even do it that way. Season 1 was a gradual introduction to these characters that you were given time, story, and Reason to care about. If Braham, Rox, Marjory, Kasmeer, Taimi, Rytlock, and Canach had all shown up and said "oh we're the Best Friends Patrol. Come along with us stranger!" I would have felt like a tag along. Not an equal in the group. Instead we met on level ground. We became a team together, we became friends together, each of us a vital part.

Which is opposite to how it feels now. These characters have deep history going back AGES. I just showed up, no one respects me, I'm not privy to any information or details on who is who and why should I care, I don't Get story time to ACTUALLY hang out and meet these people and develop my OWN relationships with them. When I leave, they will not care. I'm just being brought along like a lost kid at this point, until we reach customer service and they can drop me off, or until I wander away and find another deep group to follow.

I don't like this story. I don't like the setting. I don't like the characters or the group dynamic. I don't feel like an EQUAL in this expansion, I don't feel like I matter. Anyone could stand here and ask supporting questions to drive the dialogue between the 2-3 characters that actually matter, which again, does not include me.

And FRANKLY I hate that no one can say anything that isn't glowing praise of GW2 and Anet and every little detail is just scrumptious don't worry I love it, without a bunch of vague posts filtering in about "so much Negativity, everyone is a HATER, you just don't support The Writers and want them to FAIL, well then stop playing the game and delete your account and blog and go away forever, REAL fans LOVE nothingburger" to shun whoever dared say "I didn't like some or all of it." I'm happy for you if you're liking SotO but I am not. I'm sorry if you don't understand that criticizing something that I've played for a decade doesn't mean I hate it. I'm sorry if you can't take the MILD CONFLICT of me or someone else saying "I love this thing that you love too but I don't like how the new part feels" but most of us learned about conflict in kindergarten or at least through children's picture books and TV, so idk. Maybe you just need to cope at that point.

As it stands I don't like the expac. I don't see Anet turning it around and blowing my mind with the ending. And I really don't even care how it ends. I was asked the other day "how are you going to handle Peitha?" (in terms of the canon that I write, which has already moved past the end of SotO.) And frankly I was like. I dunno. It doesn't matter to me. She's either dead or on the throne, I don't care much either way. We could get the huge plot twist at the end that Peitha was the big bad or Isgarren or WHOEVER THE FUCK, and I wouldn't care. None of this matters to me. I'm going back to Tyria with my writing. The rest is filler.

#soto spoilers #gw2 spoilers

[sandrayofsun]

I may be Team Top??

As promised in my last post, I'm making a diary entry for TopMew!

I'll start by saying that I have not been a fan of this couple throughout the show, but I did like their characters separately. Something that I felt a lot throughout the series was the lack of chemistry and awkwardness surrounding TopMew. Mind you, I've watched "A Boss and a Babe," I KNOW ForceBook has chemistry.

In saying that, episode 8 has officially changed my mind on the TopMew train hehe.

Specifically this scene

Mew's revenge era is honestly what made me like him the most... Unpopular opinion maybe, but I found it really relatable that he is doing things he normally doesn't do and becoming someone different. Top did a really shitty thing to him. Despite him being "perfect," being a virgin, having good grades, and being respectful, Top still cheated on him. It opened his eyes to the fact that no matter how "good" he is, people are still capable of doing shitty things to him.

So why not do all the things you've never done in the name of being hurt. No matter who he is, people can hurt him no matter what, might as well go out with a bang.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The bathroom scene was interesting because it's the first "civil" conversation they've had since the whole fight blew out. and Top is now seeing the effects of his affair with Boston reflecting on Mew. Even with Mew rubbing Ray in Top's face, he still is only worried about Mew and what is happening to him.

It's honestly slightly refreshing that Top isn't taking the jealousy approach because he knows that at the moment he's lost that right. He can't blame Mew for running to Ray because Top set him on that path.

Top was presented to us as a selfish character, one who is used to getting what he wants, and not having much to work for (a little bit like Boston). Him going to Cheum and voicing his concerns for Mew, even taking a little bit of heat from Cheum (you go girl), shows character development on Top's part, and honestly gives me a little bit of hope for their end game.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I want to touch on Mew for a sec, and his "relationship" with Ray.

I think it is so intentional the way that they have framed this phrase for Mew and Ray. How Ray is someone that Mew "should" love, but obviously doesn't, because Mew loves Top and knows deep down that Ray will never fulfill that role in his life (the same way Mew can't fulfill that role in Ray's). Even hesitating to kiss him when they are alone is evidence enough that Mew is pretending.

Curving Ray's kiss and saying they should go and have fun is ultimate "get me out of here" behavior. Mew doesn't want Ray. Simple as that.

I also need to call out the fact that the next time we see RayMew kiss is because Mew is trying to prove a point to Top. Only then does he use Ray to make him jealous, but isn't actually willing to do it in private.

Top's face during this whole scene made me sad tbh. I really felt for him, he was manipulated by Boston and thrown under the bus by Nick. Overall, he did a shitty thing, but that doesn't mean he didn't love Mew or want to be a better person for him.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This scene called to action the fact that Mew is still jealous over Top. Calling him and Boston out for sitting next to each other and telling them they're free to hook up again was funny but also important to TopMew's relationship.

Top still being there for Mew, helping him when he was throwing up and then sitting next to each other on the floor gave me MAJOR SandRay Episode 1 parallels. But also look at Mew :(

He's asking Top why he has to be an asshole because he still loves him. He is in love with an asshole :((((( and I'd like to point out that this scene was the MOST chemistry that I have seen from these two thus far.

Both of them are hurt, and are hurting for the other. I think deep down, Mew wants to make amends, but also he needs to do this for himself. He needs to spiral a little bit to realize where he is headed. he needs to make Top hurt a little (as sad as that may be).

Top on the other hand is hurt because he did this. He caught feelings, and then messed up the person he loves. He doesn't know how to fix what he broke, but also knows that they are meant to be.

This is what really changed my mind on them. Before it felt like both of them had masks, and didn't really see each other, but now they're both at low points, and seeing each other for the first time. But still loving each other from afar despite the turmoil they're going through.

Top taking care of Mew after everything at the end of the night was so heartwarming. A man who probably has never been one to take care of others, spending what little time with Mew he can get.

I'm really looking forward to seeing where these two go, and huge props to ForceBook for the amazing acting job they're doing!

See you guys next week!!

#only friends the series #only friends ep8 #only friends #topmew #forcebook #sandray #firstkhao #bostonnick #neomark #send help #mewtop #ofts top #ofts mew #ofts ray #ofts sand #ofts nick #ofts boston

[juneviews]

1st quarter of 2024 shows ranked

n° of shows watched from january 1st to march 31st: 13

1. analog squad: 9/10

I deeply regret not watching this one in 2023 when it was released bc it would've been my number one favorite show of that year ;_; it's such an original and touching show with one of my favorite tropes (found family) and some of the best characters I've ever seen. definitely already an all-time favorite and a comfort show for years to come <3

2. cooking crush: 8,5/10

y'all know how much I love offgun, and while this was no not me or theory of love, this show really brought me back to my early days of watching thai dramas and freaking out over any cute interaction on my screen & I love it for that! while this show has a lot of flaws, most of them are easily forgettable when faced with such great characters & one of the cutest relationships ever! I truly thought offgun's chemistry had reached its peak in not me but I was wrong, these two never cease to amaze me they really can play any role to perfection <3

3. ready set love: 8,5/10

this show really surprised with how pretty much flawless its execution is! it's hilarious but also deals with very deep & interesting topics well, and day might be one of my favorite female leads ever! a super solid show that is honestly gonna become a classic for me, I can feel it :)

4. love for love's sake: 8,5/10

this was a super sweet show that's very well done, I was dubitative of the plot at first but it really managed to pull me in & make it worth my while! one of the best kbls out there :)

5. the believers: 8,5/10

this is definitely one of the most innovative thai shows out there, dealing with a topic (religion) that I didn't think anyone would dare touch. the story had me hooked all 9 episodes & the acting performances were amazing, however I have to say this didn't pack as much of a punch as I expected it would. it's a very good show, but it stays a little surface level & doesn't explore its characters enough for me...

6. sing my crush: 7,5/10

this was very much adorable, however two things bothered me: 1) I didn't like the time jump from ep 1 to ep 2, I wish we could've seen the friendship between the characters developed more, and 2) I feel like them not revealing their feelings for each other felt a little forced & random. apart from that it's a very cute show!

7. intern in my heart: 7,5/10

this was a really enjoyable romantic comedy that I had a lot of fun in front of :) is it much more than that? not really. pretty basic but with charismatic performances that carried the show well!

8. perfect propose: 7,5/10

really sweet show that I wish was more developed & gave me more, but a good time nonetheless!

9. sukiyanen kedo do yaro ka: 7/10

this show got me, lost me then got me once again lol. I thought the chemistry for an established relationship was some of the best for a jbl, and the story was simple but endearing. but tbh something was kinda lacking for me, which made this ultimately very forgettable imo.

10. the outing: 7/10

I was SO looking forward to this show without much expectation but it still managed to disappoint me lol. the acting was very solid but there's too many characters that get introduced too late & I failed to really understand what the point or purpose of the show was. it seems to me as if this show took all of the worst points from remember 15 (the sex, the chaos, the betrayals & annoying characters), without the substance that remember 15 actually had. it's not a terrible show, and I was intrigued during it, but tbh it could've been so so much better.

11. love class season 2: 7/10

this had some of the strongest and most interesting ships I've seen in a kbl, however the writing & execution of the show was very frustrating. early on the characters barely get introduced & we struggle to understand how they're all linked together, leading to a lot of confusion on my part. it's sad bc it had a very solid story but bad execution imo :(

12. chaser game w: power harassment: 7/10

this had me very excited but sadly didn't deliver at all for me. the story is kinda all over the place & while the chemistry was really good and it's important to have japanese characters clearly labeled as lesbians, I found the acting kinda over the top as well... but it's a start for gl I guess 🥲

13. sahara sensei to toki-kun: 6/10

this is the kind of show that I managed to watch until the end... for whatever reason. but the age gap icked me out & I found that the main ship didn't have much chemistry. overall this story is very empty & didn't add anything for me, but I really liked the character of toki & would've loved to see him in a better show & ship.

#bypiningbisexuals #thought I'd try something new since my reviews have been kinda abandoned #cooking crush #ready set love #analog squad #love for love's sake #sing my crush #intern in my heart #perfect propose #sukiyanen kedo do yaro ka #the outing the series #love class 2 #chaser game w #sahara sensei to toki kun #the believers #the believers netflix

[sonakkisbrainrot]

read: playlists are super down below so keep scrolling!!

Our Life: Beginnings & Always.

Hello Hello! Welcome to my first ever post on tumblr that just had to be about my ultimate top tier favorite visual novel of all time..Our Life: Beginnings & Always or OL:BA for short.

This game has such a special place in my heart that im afraid I’ll forever be attached to it because at this point it’s not even a phase anymore lol. I still remember that heated summer day of scrolling down on my steam shop out of boredom and i kept getting recommended OL:BA but back then i really couldn’t care less and would not even spare a glance on it until i got so fed up of it popping up in my recommended for the next few days that i decided to finally check it out.

Reading what it was about made me curious but what really got me downloading it was because of the customization of our character/characters.

And finally into the game i was! I remember when the story started, i was very surprised already by the environment, narrative and world building of the game. It truly felt like i was part of it and i didn’t get bored at all. In fact right from the start i was hooked already!

I loved ALL of the characters that was introduced, i love the fact that it was SO multiple choice that it felt like you were really integrating yourself/oc onto the game and that you’re not just forced to say the same thing as a different choice or feel as though your options are limited. Its definitely a game that you’re supposed to replay over and over because its just that fun!!

And as someone who has never had a great childhood and adolescence, absentee parent, chaotic household, unsupportive friends, want to be understood (you know…this and that) i was so happy that this game was doing that and it genuinely gave me hope to live despite going through the darkest of times in my life :)

This game has changed me into a better person and made me want to be the best version of myself that i want to be in the future! I will infinitely recommend this to anyone who wants to have a feel good game/read (+1 it will make you cry!!)

Anyway enough yapping 💀 Time to get to the point.

Here are some playlists i made dedicated to the lovable characters of OL:BA that i personally listened to during my walkthrough and may relate to their route/lore ;)

read: playlists are super down below so keep scrolling!!

1# COVE HOLDEN

the og love interest!

summer with cove holden.

this playlist is the epitome vibes of the game (growing up with them and having fun, making memories.)

from beginnings to always with cove holden.

spoiler alert!! MARRIAGE DLC WOOOO!! really love this one cuz its all full of cute romance and wedding songs. i also put some songs that i think mc and cove would have when they get kids :3

#2 DEREK SUAREZ

MY PERSONAL FAVORITE!!

DEREK IS JUST SOOOO AAHHHH He’s my ideal man and i KIN him so bad you dont even know!!!

derek suarez crushing on you.

THIS PLAYLIST. IM TELLING YOU. one of the FAVES i made!! the pining, secret crush on mc for a loong time, the angst GOSH. so cute. every song in this plays a part on each moment with him i swear

#3 BAXTER WARD

ANGST MAN.

5 years after baxter ward.

one thing i noticed about our life is it lacks certain angst aspects when the baxter dlc didn’t exist YET back then. like i LOVED the fight between mc and cove in mcs room and i wanted it to escalate more ngl just cuz i LIVE for angst! but if you want to get real hurt you should choose baxter. this playlist focuses more on the last step of his dlc and its full of taylor swift songs.

baxter ward.

honestly this playlist is catered more to his vibes, his character (i listen to this playlist and i imagine edits of him lol) but i guess some songs are related to his story/lore? i made this waaay before 5 years after baxter ward and when the baxter dlc didn’t exist yet and we all just knew him to be as the new neighbor in sunset bird but people like it i guess so here it is xD

anyway thats all for OL:BA series! GB Patch is cooking up Our Life Now & Forever and it’s not released yet! just on demo on steam and itch! i already have a playlist for it but so far i have only made Qiu Lin (one of the leads of the game) i also have a privated filo inspired playlist for baxter if you want to listen to it let me know so i can put it up in public!

#our life beginnings & always #our life #cove holden #derek suarez #visual novel #video games #games #spotify #music #spotify playlist #character playlist #baxter ward #olba mc #olba #olba derek #olba cove #olba baxter #Spotify

[goombasinastack]

splatoon 3 hot take turned impromptu essay

was stuck offline in splatoon 3 because internet was actin up and i realized how pretty the photomode splatoon 3 filters are compared to the actual game

i was taking photos on brinewater and thought. damn. this game looks fine but i miss how VIBRANT splatoon 1 was! i wish i could play sploon 3 with this photomode filter on all the time. and brinewater is the best map for this because of the sunset lighting! so i went to one of the worst offenders mapwise for general color—undertow spillway. it is a warm gray mess:

for someplace underground, it’s WAY too warm of a tone—even if there are skylights, they aren’t very well defined, as they’re off in the background—they’d be better with some light shafts to pop out more, imo.

so here’s undertow with photomode filter #6 (this would’ve been a video but tumblr limits to 1 video per post):

and i think this looks a lot nicer, colorwise! the icky warm gray is shifted to a soft pink—and while that’s still not in keeping with the lack of obvious skylights, it works better than warm gray.

so then i opened ibis x paint and got to work on a filter that would hopefully help elevate the entire game’s look:

on top is photomode filter #6, in the middle is the original screenshot, and on the bottom is my proposed filter.

i upped the contrast, brightness, and saturation a bit, then added a 5% pure magenta (#FF00FF) overlay layer on top of that. then i added a slight gaussian blur to emulate antialiasing, which nintendo refuses to do for some reason!

and i wanna play splatoon like that! i miss the vibrancy and intricacy of splatoon 1…

incoming splatoon 1 essay‼️

not only were the colors eye-bleachingly bright, but the overall game feel was much more immersive—especially in ink physics. you could paint trees, and the ink would drip down through leaves as if it were rain… ink splatter would respond to the movements of platforms, keeping its intertia as it dripped! you could see the textures of surfaces through the ink, as if it were an actual liquid instead of a layer of thick oil. 3 doesn’t have any of those special touches.

there’s also the music… 1’s ost feels so much more WEIRD and experimental than the later games, and that really helps cement that this is not human society—this is a new thing—which tracks for splatoon 1, as it was so zany nobody had ever seen anything quite like it before! splatoon 2 follows this sheer melting-pot of brashness and creativity with evolving and varied styles—where once was punk and weird samples in Squid Squad is now groovy rock in Wet Floor, jazz in Ink Theory, and also whatever Sashi-Mori was. also i <3 chirpy chips. splatoon 3’s music goes back to that punk, but i feel that it loses some of the charm and creativity of the first two games. C-side is pure metal, and hardly uses any weird instruments. there have sparsely been other splatbands involved with regular battle music—Yoko&tgb call back to the jazz of Ink Theory which i love! Off the Hook’s new tracks delve into a new style in piano rock. but the main band kind of falls flat to me. :(

let’s talk stages. in splatoon 1, stages were wildly different from each other, including skateparks, construction sites, underpasses, malls, sewage plants, and other locals that are culturally underground. the rest of the trilogy moves away from this in a story standpoint, as ink battles evolve from punky, diy competitions into full-fledged championships in 2 and 3, with advancing battle infrastructure as time progresses. that’s fine, and honestly it’s cool to see that kind of worldbuilding! but in 1, each stage was designed about and influenced by the area it represented. Arowana Mall is a straight line with high vantage points on the second/third story because it’s a mall. Pirahna Pit features convenyor belts that shuffle refuse around because it’s a trash plant. Blackbelly Skatepark has so many hills and valleys because it’s a skatepark, for goodness sake. splatoon 3’s original stages have some of this charm, but it feels lost in ambiguity. why doesn’t Mincemeat Metalworks have small moving platforms on cranes or other heavy machinery? Idk, have some grates and one-way drops, and a car on a post. why isn’t there any water incorporated into the stage design of Brinewater Springs? Idk, have 2 paintable walls and a tetris piece. 3’s original stages have little to no connection between their locals and the geometry, which make it feel same-y compared to previous games.

maybe this is because of the inflexible philosophy of the designers—or their corporate oversight, maybe. for stages, you need to make a straight line or tetris piece with few routes to push, in an effort to promote the game’s main premise of Chaos. for music, you need to make punk songs that aren’t too weird so they don’t drive away the parents. maybe the little ink touches could have been missing because development was rushed?

i honestly dont know why it happened out this way—perhaps the splatoon team just needed more time to cook, in order to squeeze out that extra 20% of game feel? or maybe it was that speculated corporate oversight, i dunno. things WERE missing on launch—notable exceptions being X rank, online tableturf lobbies, and no more than three salmon run maps. i know we’ve yet to even get the DLC but for being about 75% of the way through the game’s content lifespan, but splatoon 3 feels incomplete. there have been improvements, yeah! i just wish there could’ve been more. i would rather have waited another year for splatoon 3 if it were polished that much better, y’know?

i honestly feel like splatoon 1 captured that creative, no-holds-barred mantle of Chaos better than 3 does. 3 feels… flanderized, in a way. the curse of trilogies, perhaps? writing about it more, it feels like not only have the in-game sports of turf war been ripped out of its seedy home and thrust into the spotlight, and gone “mainstream” (see: massive squidsport companies investing in multimillion battle lobbies with holograms and lockers [sunken scroll about that!], flying coffee machines that grant you brief invincibility, new rules and techniques that allow squid surges and rolls, etc.), but also the Real Life Physical Video Game Cartridge of Splatoon has been popularized massively with the sequels on the Switch. maybe i’m not missing the “vibrancy” of splatoon 1 when i look at the colors and photomode filters of splatoon 3, but instead the inherent punkiness and counterculture inspiration that i see in the original.

fuck capitalism, i guess!

#splatoon 3 #long post #i did not think i’d be writing an essay tonight #on SPLATOON no less. i feel like im on storming the ivory tower #thats a good blog site btw i love their stuff #but anyways... i was like 12 or 13 when i first got splatoon 1 #i was an orange n-zap/carbon roller (i forget which kit) main #i never played any of the splatfests but i imagine they were really fun! #my internet connection in the basement was never really that good so i never played much.... i never finished story mode until years later #this also means that i'm probably misremembering specific splatoon 1 tidbits. let me know if i messed anything up? or whatever you think lo #it's 2:11 am and i need to wake up early lmao #goodnight and thanks for reading

[rabidferretnightmares]

MC calling the Obey Me! Cast 'maidenless' - pt.1 the brothers

A/N: But you may ask, "OP, what does 'maidenless' even mean?". Well, I say, have this (probably very unhelpful and) very Elden Ring-esque screenshot of an urban dictionary entry about it.

You're welcome! c; - Plue

Lucifer

"Pardon me?"

He heard Levi ranting about that one game that was all the rage currently and his brother mentioned some memes and gamer lingo as well

Does Lucifer understand the exact specific meaning and context of what you said? No, because he is a boomer.

Congratulations, he is butthurt now.

Was he really giving you the impression that he was single for the past thousands of years because he doesn't have the skills necessary to get head?

Get ready to be proven wrong as soon as he gets you alone because you managed to deal severe emotional damage to his ego and he can't let that slide

Mammon

"Huh? Maids? MC, do ya think I own a Café or somethin'?"

The remark is (unsurprisingly) lost on him

Sure, he sat close by when Levi ranted about the newest games he was playing, but did you seriously think that Mammon listened to him?

Funnily enough, Levi called him the same thing just two hours earlier... However, our resident tsundere is none the wiser either way

Honestly what did you expect?

Leviathan

Ouch. Please apply a burn heal to the wound

It's not that you're wrong... but did you really have to rub salt into the wound?

His Player 2 called him maidenless

He's gonna need quite some time to recover from that

Oof

I seriously hope that you have limited edition Ruri-Chan merch at the ready, because otherwise he won't talk to you for a while... Or at least until the next co-op event for Mononoke Land releases

Satan

To be honest, he takes it worse than you expected

He has been playing the game as well; the aesthetic, difficulty and the open world nature really got him hooked

Until Lucifer had to confiscate his copy of the game because Satan destroyed the living room in a rage fit after losing to the second boss 34 times in a row

Now he is silently seething at all times

Apart from that, he doesn't only read a lot of detective and mystery novels, but also a lot of other (human world) literature

More specifially, romance novels

Anything really, ranging from very sappy straight romance to LGBTQIA romance novels

Well, this turned him into a hopeless romantic

He knows this is an in-fandom joke... but will he really never find true love, MC? T^T

Asmodeus

LE GASP

MC, what did you just call him?

While he doesn't play the game or know anything about it apart from Levi's random rants at the dinner table where he zones out about halfway through every time to check his devilgram notifs

He still catches the drift of what you're implying

He is the Avatar of Lust after all

How dare. The sheer audacity.

He has lots of maidens! All kinds of maidens.

All the maidens he needs

He is the Avatar of Lust after all, thank you very much

Beelzebub

First of all, I have questions

Why him out of all people, MC?

This is straight up mean in my opinion. Shame on you. And your cow.

Beel would probably be confused and/or upset if he had understood your statement

But his brain is so wired to food and eating that he heard you talk about marinara sauce instead

And is now giving you puppy dog eyes, asking you to cook something with marinara sauce for him

Get your behind into the kitchen and start cooking, MC

That's the least you can do after even thinking of doing that to him

I'm serious, start cooking n o w

Belphegor

Lmao didn't ask, didn't care

Are you sure he isn't having a conversation with you while sleeping again?

Belphs tried playing Elden Ring, but decided the difficulty was too much work for him and he'd rather nap instead anyway

Did I say he didn't care about you calling him maidenless?

Yeah scrap that, he does care and is butthurt

Even if he doesn't show it

But you're gonna nap and cuddle with him to make up for it, right MC?

#I have no idea if I will ever even start on the side characters with that prompt lmao #obey me #obey me swd #obey me shall we date #om #om shall we date #om swd #omswd #obey me headcanons #om headcanons #omswd headcanons #obey me lucifer #obey me mammon #obey me leviathan #obey me levi #obey me satan #obey me asmodeus #obey me asmo #obey me beelzebub #obey me beel #obey me belphegor #obey me belphie #om lucifer #om mammon #om leviathan #om levi #om satan #om asmodeus #om asmo #om beelzebub

[catgirljaneway]

For the character ask game: Kes + 1, 12, 20

Thank you so much for the ask!! (Ask game in question)

1. Why do you like or dislike this character?

Ok! So I'm a huge Kes fan, and I was initially drawn to her because she's got this little aura of joy, and you can't help but love her, which you can see in other character's interactions with her on the show. Any room she walks into instantly gets a little brighter and she's just so fundamentally kind and gentle and full of love.

So that's what initially drew me to her, but what hooked me, was that fact that the longer you watch, the more we learn about her, the more deeply strange she gets. We've got that fantastic scene in elogium where she eats all those fucking bugs with that deranged expression, and of course, my all time favorite, this one scene where the doctor tells Kes he has some autopsy reports for her to read because he knows she loves autopsies. This by the way, is NEVER brought up again which I think is a terrible loss, because what thing to say about a character and then never mention! What a fact!

So you've got this little elfish looking girl, who's still fundamentally kind and gentle, but now we also know "oh she's a bit of a freak!" and she's wicked smart, and then she learn, oh, she's got these terrifying powers at her core and actually she might not be as fundamentally gentle as we (the audience) or kes herself thought. And now Kes has to grapple with this, and she's still a deeply good and loving person at heart, but now she has to try a little harder to suppress these urges and that makes her fundamentally more interesting.

Also her relationships with Janeway and Tuvok and The Doctor all bring me so much joy. Janeway's love for her, and the way she smiles when Kes is around, the way she hugs her when she leaves just!! Rip me to pieces. And Tuvok's mentorship and quiet protection of her?? And that scene when the Doctor holds her in Twisted. Kes has 3 parents, and honestly all three of them think they're taking care of her, but they need her more than she needs them.

And what's kept me loving her, is in a way her missed potential. So much about Kes wasn't explored, so much was left unanswered, and getting to rotate her around in my head and think about all the things she could have been is so fun. I deeply wish she had been used more, because on paper she's such a fascinating, deeply weird character. And she was just starting to come into her own when we leave her. She's broken up with Neelix, she's making her own choices, and I want to imagine where that would have gone. (I have further thoughts on this, but this is already ridiculously long, so I will continue this in a different post)

Long story short, she's a lovable little weird girl, and I like weird little girls. She'd crawl around on all fours and make up weird stories at recess in fourth grade and I like that about her.

Also she reminds me of the "a little guy!" > "oh they're actually fucked up" meme.

12. What's a headcanon you have for this character?

Well I LOVE the art where people make her look a little more bug like. With weird pupils and antennae and such. I love that, I definitely headcanon her looking a bit creepier like that.

I also headcanon her as a lesbian. Her whole relationship with Neelix baffles me. I honestly LOVE them as friends, they're so great when they're just silly best friends, but I cannot stand them as a couple. She's a gay girlie.

20. Which other character is the ideal best friend for this character, the amount of screentime they share doesn't matter?

SEVEN!! Seven!!! GAH! The missed potential! Pretty much a weirdgirls club with Seven, B'elanna, and Kes. Kes would have been the perfect person to help Seven reintegrate into society, because she's patient and kind, and she'd get a huge kick out of Seven's deadpan humor. I mean, the EMH is her best friend, she's very good at dealing with people who others consider hard to get along with.

Kes wouldn't make Seven feel bad about the way she is, or try to pressure her to conform to what she wants from Seven. She'd take her how she was and love her for her whole being, not for what she could be. Also Seven would be Kes's scary dog ❤️ Because people meet Kes and think she's an easy target or a pushover (even though she could probably obliterate anyone if she so felt like it) but then Seven is standing behind her looking menacing and they hurry away as quick as they can, completely unaware they were scared of the wrong blonde.

#trek thoughts #asks #ask game #thank you so much for the ask!! #sorry I went a bit overboard! #but I love kes tons #that's my bug daughter #!!! #will have to make some more posts to expand on what i've said here #but I'm a kes x seven and a kes x b'elanna or seven x kes x b'elanna truther #star trek #voyager #kes #seven x kes #and also I NEED to talk more about janeway and kes #they make me feel so much

[upn-the-sky]

Give me God of War!! (Ares OOAK, Part 2)

Just a reminder that there was Part 1 of this madness.

OKAY

I wanted to wait until I finish sword and spider legs before making a post, but there are three days after finishing the whole armor and I can't wait, I am screaming about Ares's supremacy.

Now I can say, it was hard. And the most hard thing was finding a balance. There are differences between Ares's 3D models from the different years, even in color palette. And I wanted to be as much close to the first game design as it possible. Some features were fully recreated from GOW1, some others I found more good at latest model from GOW3 and reworked them according to it. So at the end we have a good symbiosis I think.

Now let's a take a bow and look a bit closer at the mess under the cut.

Preparatory process

Until eyes are frightened, you can't do anything. To be honest I had no idea from where to start, the plan sounded like a "How to draw an owl" tutorial. Complexity of his armor scared me as hell, and after spending some time with drawings, where I tried to figure out a hook and loop system, which should attach parts to each other, I gave up and started to make his scaly iron belt, it felt more easier. YEAH.

Iron belt

You can see it at the screenshot. Well, one of the versions. Seems, it has no purpose beside decorative, I mean, maybe it can protect the groin, but eh, not really, honestly. At GOW3 model of dead Ares it became more detailed with round flower-like pendants and a little green jewel drops, but also it became golden as all metallic elements. I decided to make everything silver, but anyway, belt is very beautiful and I headcanon it is the same belt, which Ares gifted to his daughter Hippolyte in the past.

I weaponised myself with the smallest crochet hook and red thread and started to knit. WHY KNIT YOU ASK?? I don't know, it is easier for me than sewing all these scales %) Maybe they represents some fishy motives? (His connection with Aphrodite). Or serpent? (One of Ares's children, who was killed by Kadmus). Maybe green jewels is a hint to his mother Hera, because she loves emeralds. Who knows.

Scales, flowers, suns, glass drops.. If I were Ares, I'd present it to my beloved warrior daughter too.

Pteruges

As an example of the true manliness, Ares wears a skirt of course. He is not a barbarian, who hides his beautiful freckled thighs in the pants! How dare we to judge..

The easy part was to make a leather stripes and pierce them with the rivets (little nails, which I cut after this to left a head only). The hard part (which I had a chance to feel over and over again) was to figure out how to attach it to the body and hide all of the fasteners, and how to let stripes flow on his thighs and how the hell it should cover his.. godlike butt, I can't believe I wrote this.. %)

ANYWAY, A MONTH LATER I decided to make it a single piece with the iron belt, by creating a two-part wide leather base, attach knitted waistband to it, then join the each stripe to the separate piece of cloth to make them movable, then attach this cloth to the leather and sew some hooks. Aaaand the final result!

Cuirasse

I just say I literally hanged up myself with it. Here will be ranting...

Let's just think that it is not enough just to recreate appearence. In making 3D you can ignore some aspects like hidden straps and strings, which keeps armor conjoint on the human body. But how to make it wearable to the doll body, which is not soft and has a stable reliefs? How to make armor firm and shaped, but not completely firm, so it can be taken off from the body? Yes, my wish from the beginning was to make whole armor with a possibility to take it off and send nudes dress Ares in different outfit, which i will also make someday. How to make it light, so the doll can stand by itself? How to make it textured, to make it looks rough, to imitate metal or at least used condition? How to make metal parts without using a metal?

OKAY, WE NEED TO BE CANON - I thought and it was a day I decided to not invent armor, but use an experience of the hellenic people, who was smarter than me, I guesse. Because long time ago these people invented Linothorax - composite armor made of laminated linen fabric. ____

First of all, I splited Ares's cuirass to the segments: chest+collar segment, belly segment, spine segment, which emphasizes Ares's love to hunching over a little, and a waist-and-lower segment. Plus cuirasse has chained shoulder straps and side straps.

Well, when you have all elements, it is easier to imagine a complete piece. After that you just buy fabric, glue, chains, 27 hours for your day, new eyes, paint and other stuff. You wrap the body with the film and tape to protect it and start to glue. And here it is time for me to shut up, I know, you are here to watch a process, not to read an essay. I started from the front pieces of course. You imagine a pattern, you cut it, you glue it to hold the natural body forms as close as possible. Collar was formed right here. Gladly we can remove Ares's head when we want to do it...

Waist piece (eheh, spider butt (͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) ) and first attempt to assemble the cuirasse. Here I literally lost my last brain cells and bravery, stopped the process and didn't make straps until the last week.

Anyway A MONTH LATER!!11 after the first assemble I started to sculp a relief of the reinforced chest and the metallic collar. Also we can check how's our decapitated dogs doing. Here you can see a belly piece of the cuirasse, which needed it's own dog decor. I was that meme boy with a knife, yeah..

Seemed they doing great! I felt that and decided to finish arm armor. Shoulder pads and bracers Thankfully making them requires the same process: cut a pattern, glue it, repeat for each arm. Here is close ups of the leather "feathers" pierced by rievets, chained bracers (I am very proud that I recreated it fully like at the Ares model. Bracers has no other strings and stays at arm only because of the chains) and shoulder pads as a base and as a complete, fully Cerbered piece. Actually this part wasn't really difficult, I've just delayed the inevitable.

Boots The first GOW novel says he weared sandals!!! Bloodstained SANDALS! But this novel was written much later, so we are making rocker boots. ᕕ(シ)ᕗ HEY!, we are laughing here, but Ares is smart, Ares don't want to break his toes by kicking someone's helmet! Maybe after having some experience %)))

Well, as I said in my previous posts, his boots was the most agressive part his armor. Heel and shoes toes should be firm, but sole should stay soft. Also the whole construction of the boots should looks monolite with the greavers which cover up the layers of the material above the ankles. Don't forget about the chains and double emotional damage, because there is two legs!

A little more damage as a person you receive, when you understand that you need to process each edge of each piece, because all armor pieces has visible layers. And only after that you can paint everything, draw Ares's assymetrical ornaments and dress him up.

That's how we reach the end. Here he is. O defence of Olympus, father of warlike Victory, ally of Themis, stern governor of the rebellious, leader of righteous men. Kratos's yes-homo partner and his personal most vieceful enemy.

Ares! God of war!

Thank you everyone for your patience while reading this duvet cover. See ya in Part 3, Skeletor will return soon with a sword, spider legs and normal photos. And stay tuned, I will post some portraits next time!

#ares #ares god of war #kratos #kratos gow #god of war #gow #god of war ragnarok #gowr #ooak doll #ooak #action figures #upn the sky handycraft

[bluebudgie]

Behold! The long announced whiny pissbaby gamer rage essay that noone on the internet asked for.

Disclaimer up front: This is about Eff Eff Sixteen. If you're a fan of this game I advise you to just ignore this because I genuinely don't want to piss into your morning coffee with my negativity. I will rip this game several new assholes. You have been warned.

FAQ Q: Don't you have anything better to spend your time on than writing a ridiculously lengthy internet text post about a video game whose existence you are free to simply ignore? A: Yes, but this matter is personal. I'm writing this for the sake of carthasis. Closure. To be free of the rage that has possessed me for the past months. Q: Have you tried touching grass? A: I have sat in a field of grass for a prolonged amount of time prior to writing this. I am beyond the need of touching grass. Q: Do you expect anyone to actually read all this? A: No.

Spoilers ahead, obviously. Let's go.

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Table of Contents

Introduction: Is this the worst game ever made? 1.1 It's personal 1.2 Pre-release & producer statements

The battle system

The narrative 3.1 Storytelling and morality 3.2 Pacing 3.3 Visuals 3.4 Characters 3.4.1 The game's biggest mistake 3.4.2 The state of women 3.5 Music

Credit where credit is due 4.1 It's personal again

Conclusion

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1. Introduction: Is this the worst game ever made? What a strange way to start, you may think. Shouldn't this question rather be addressed in a conclusion at the end? I want to set the record straight from the start: No, it is not the worst game ever made. All things considered I don't even think it's the worst game of its series. And yet I have never in my life felt such unbridled hatred for a video game, or honestly, any piece of entertainment media I can currently think of. Why is that?

1.1 It's personal Usually I'm pretty good at doing the sensible thing people should do when they don't like something - ignore it. Why bother wasting your energy deliberately seeking out something that you know will make you angry?

Hear me out for a moment, I'll have to go on a tangent here.

I didn't actively get into the series until a year before FFXIII released - which at this point in time is 15 years ago now, but considering we've had only two more (singleplayer) mainline games since then, it's still a relatively late entry point. This is to say: I don't think I'm wearing the worst nostalgia goggles, but I do have a long history with the series nonetheless. These games have played a big role in my life for those past 15 years.

I used to roll my eyes at the "the series died after FFX" crowd. FFXII is one of the best in the series, sure FFXIII was a landslide miss for me, but... that's one game, right. Then FFXV's release drew closer. I did not like what I saw, for many reasons I won't detail now. What did I do? I blacklisted the game's name on all social media platforms, and didn't hear anything about it anymore. To this day I haven't actually seen much of it, though I do know the rough outline. And I know that while the game has a dedicated fanbase, it has also received its fair share of harsh criticism.

Why am I telling you all this?

1.2 Pre-release & producer statements

A few years ago, FFXVI was announced. And I have to be honest: I was negatively biased from the start. I hadn't been happy with SE's general direction for years and I wasn't particularly hopeful for this entry either. But - and I want to make this very clear - I was open to give this game a fair chance. The announcement trailer didn't really hook me but it looked alright, some visual and audio gripes aside. I was... cautiously curious. Not quite enough to call it optimistic, but I wanted to be hopeful.

You know what's excellent at crushing hopes? Game producer interviews that range from "that's a severely stupid opinion to have but you do you" aka (paraphrased) "our traditionally turn-based series can't be turn-based anymore because in order to get the production costs covered we have to appeal to the masses, and the masses are kids who love action and not outdated combat systems in which you have to navigate menus to act" (source); to downright offensive statements such as "we are creating a fantasy world based on reality and therefore black people can't exist in our european medieval setting" (source); and "I have gamer pride so I don't want to feature an easy difficulty setting in my game" (source - for clarity's sake there are accessibility options in the game in the form of equipment that helps simplify combat, however the statement itself is still really goddamn stupid).

And I know these statements have been called out by some - but it definitely didn't blow up as much as it should have considering the popularity of this franchise. It's an open secret why this is the case (if you're out of the loop: the game producer in question is an untouchable god with a really large cult fan following), and quite frankly I believe this is probably where the first seeds of my hatred were sown. Knowing that no matter what FFXVI was going to be it would have people defend it out of their blind commitment to the team behind the game's development, left a.... spiteful aftertaste in my mouth.

Ironically looking back now, and plain offensive statements aside, my biggest concern for the game itself was actually the combat system. I'm definitely part of the old-school "a main series FF game needs turn-based combat" crowd. Oh sweet summer child.

At this point I decided it would be better to go the FFXV route (which, by the way, had some similarly stupid dev comments at its release). All marketing made it clear that I was not the target audience for this game, so best to just ignore its existence.

That worked... alright...ish... until the demo's release. I guess you could say curiousity killed the cat. I decided to take a look at someone's playthrough... and that's where my initial "pissbaby gamer rage" draft that I ended up not posting came from. Go big or go home, if I wanted to be angry about this game in public I should at least be fair and wait for the full release. Not judge the game by its (admittedly generous in length) demo. Get the full receipts, see it for all that it is in its entirety. I think in a way I still didn't want to give up hope completely.

And that's where we are now, two months later I've watched a full playthrough of the game including all sidequests. It's been a wild ride to say the least.

2. The battle system

Let's get this out of the way before we finally get to the really meaty part: As mentioned earlier my primary concern before release was the combat system since it's so far removed from the older entries of the series. Ironically, of all things, this is probably the smallest issue I have with the game now.

I still don't think the combat is good, mind you - this is mostly a matter of personal taste but I'll never see how button mashing and a series of QTEs overlayed over 20 minutes of cinematic cutscene is supposed to be more impactful or fun than the oh-so-outdated turn based menu inputs. Then again, I didn't play the game myself and can therefore obviously not judge how good or bad it feels in the heat of battle. I say "button mashing", by the way, as what I've gathered from other people's reviews - who genuinely enjoyed the game - the combat is really watered down and repetitive in comparison to games with similar systems like the DMC series. While you do pick up new abilities over the course of the game it seems like once you've found one combination that works you can solve every single battle following those exact inputs. This is one of the two really big complaints about this game I've seen consistently in almost every review.

Speaking of combat, the game has the weirdest way to pull you out of the action and emotional moments by freezing mid cutscene, showing a "you won the battle - here's your loot" screen while blasting an epic choir rendition of the classic FF fanfare, before picking that same cutscene right back up. I don't know who thought this was a good idea, but it's honestly jarring. For an extremely cinematic game that supposedly wants to break with "outdated" traditions, implementing that very video game-y results screen is a strange choice.

You could say this last point is nitpicking, and if this game had no other issues I would probably not mention it at all, but as it is this little detail is indicative of a much, much larger issue.

3. The narrative

[The sound of cracking knuckles can be heard in the distance.] Let the slaughter begin.

Prior to release the game was marketed as a departure from the rest of the series - the setting was advertised as a darker, more mature, political intrigue for an adult audience. ('But the masses of kids that like action com-' Who? What are you talking about?) Because as we all know, no other FF game has ever been dark before (/sarcasm).

What we got was storytelling and character writing with about the maturity level of a twelve year old teenage boy in his edgelord phase making his first Game of Thrones fanfiction drafts. This game oozes of sexism, really stupid slavery allegories, the most dumbed down black and white morality with a matching set of one-dimensional black and white characters, godawful pacing and some of the worst NPC dialogues I've ever had to witness.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

3.1 Storytelling and morality

So this dark and mature political story... I'm still searching for it. I know GoT started this trend where writers will use "politics" as a buzz word to make their games look complex (FFXVI hasn't been the sole offender in the past years). Then they expose you to a few kingdom names, show you a map with territories, drop a few year dates with barely any significant relevance to anything over the course of the game, and pretend that's a deep political intrigue. I have news for you: It's not.

Alright, then... this dark and mature... oh. Oh you mean that's because there's a plethora of blood splatters and people say "fuck" and "cock" and "whore" and there's goofily censored sex on screen? Ah... oh. Alright, I see. If that's what you'd call that... sure.

But surely the people who are tattooed like cattle and used as slaves due to being born as magic users will have an interesting role in the story dealing with the very delicate topic of slaver- ...oh, uh... what do you mean the perfect king beloved by everyone is the good guy because unlike all the other people who held slaves, he treated his slaves nicely? And, before you ask.... No, this isn't some sort of commentary the game wants you to question. This guy is unironically, unambiguously portrayed as the perfect good guy. Brought up many, many times for how flawless he is.

And that... is where we're diving into one of this game's biggest and most glaring issues. The writing is so mindnumbingly black and white with not the slightest room for ambiguous or grey morality it's painful. Everything and everyone in this game is always either good with no failings - or so stupidly evil they may as well be a bad saturday morning cartoon villain.

Good characters are always good, and always act out of the pure kindness of their heart. When you think a good character fucked up and actually did something bad, it will later be revealed that either it wasn't them at all and it was all a scheme, or they were possessed by the big baddie and therefore not actually responsible for their actions. Can't possibly risk anyone appearing like a realistic person with character depth now, can we?

And don't worry, just in case you have an extremely bad case of media illiteracy with the slightest hint of doubt of anyone's alignment on the binary moral chart, the game will make sure to overexplain literally every tiny detail to you in the worst way possible. You see, the evil woman right at the start? The one who looks really evil and moves really evil and the first thing she does is being mean to the slaves and being dismissive of her own son? In case you didn't get yet that she's evil, there will be guards whispering about how evil she is when she leaves the scene. Also a scene later the good perfect king will point out how evil she is. And worry not, in case you forget in the few hours she's not on screen, characters will make sure to remind you how she has not a single redeeming quality and every breath she has ever taken has been filled with evil.

And this might sound like I'm exaggerating. But the game is like this with Every. Single. Thing. Sometimes I found myself genuinely wondering if the writers were actively trying to insult the player's intelligence with this condescending amount of overexplanation. Characters constantly comment on everything that is visibly happening on screen - for God's sake if you want to make a modern game that moves away from "outdated" mechanics then write it this way. If you show what is going on with detailed realistic graphics, you do not need characters monologuing a description of what they're seeing. You do not need to voice a character saying "I'm sad" when you can clearly see their facial expression. You do not need to make a character loudly ask himself with noone else present by his side "Is he hallucinating?" when showing another character's hallucinations. Old games did that because they had limited visual capabilities. If you sit on your high horse talking about moving the series forward while spitting into your old playerbase's faces, then do it right at the very least.

Once in a while you'll be exposed to some textbook philosophy theories, which in essence wouldn't be a bad idea at all if those philosophies were somehow smartly woven into the game's narrative… but instead you get characters quoting essentially the wikipedia summary of what that philosophy is about and call it a day.

I wish this was the only issue with the game's writing.

3.2 Pacing

This game's pacing is atrocious. Genuinely, utterly awful. And there`s mostly one thing to blame: Sidequests. If you've heard a single criticism for this game even from people who highly praise it, it's this.

The sidequests are absolutely horrendous filler content on so many levels. Gameplay wise they're usually "follow 10 meters of a linear corridor to defeat an enemy and then grab a carrot at the end" fetch quests. Visually they are not just a nose dive but an entire plane crash compared to the well animated main quests, consisting mostly of the same three reused conversation animations from FFXIV (I'm all for reusing assets if it helps developers save time, work smarter not harder, but this one is blatantly obvious in all the worst ways). And the writing.... oh boy.

NPCs go on and on and on and on having the most blandly written expository dialogue. I get that the writer's intention was to give the world a bit of context and make it feel more alive with random people telling you about their life stories and everyday hurdles, but they failed miserably at making this remotely engaging. They may as well have had people read the dictionary. And maybe this would have worked better as purely written textbox dialogue (if about half of the dialogue was cut, which would still leave more than enough padding around the actually relevant information) - but in a game with voice acting, making people audibly speak in ways noone would ever speak to another person, just doesn't work. It's stilted and unnatural, and really awkward to listen to.

Delivery aside, the stories told in these sidequests vary from "farmer's everyday life issues about growing their crops" to "random child ends oppression by convincing an angry mob of adults they shouldn't be stoning someone because that someone has been a valuable asset to their society (by reminding them they need to keep the streets clean) and suddenly every adult in range is free of bigoted feelings". And then everyone in the bus clapped, I guess. And again, I get the intention behind these stories but they're so clumsily written.

And yes, these are sidequests - you are free to ignore them. But they do make up a considerable chunk of the game. And, unfortuantely, a fair handful of the main quests follow this same fetch quest formula.

This game goes long, very long stretches without anything substential happening. And it's good to have downtime to breathe - the game's big main story moments pack a punch in terms of epic adrenaline filled battles. But this game honestly feels like 60 hours of filler fetch quests with the occasional relevant story sequence sprinkled in between.

3.3 Visuals

I'm not a film student so maybe it's not my place to comment on cinematography, but I felt like visually many of the cutscenes were also really... bland. Not necessarily bad looking (if you can see anything behind the millions of particle effects) but it definitely felt like less care was put into choosing narratively interesting image composition compared to a game like FFXII.

And then it also does this really annoying thing where it will constantly fade to black for absolutely no reason.

Character A: Oh that seems like an exciting story! Tell me all about it. Character B: Okay, so this is a long story... [screen fades to black] [screen fades from black to the exact same shot we had before the fade] Character B: So the story goes like this... (starts telling the story you thought was told off screen indicated by the black sreen)

This and similar instances happen fairly often and I just don't get why. It's nothing to hate the game for but it's just... really strange. Just like those really silly "In the meantime..." text overlays for scenes that are very clearly happening in the meantime. Seriously, we get it. You don't have to spell it out. But whatever, this is one of those things I'd look past if it weren't for the whole rest of this trainwreck.

3.4 Characters

Speaking of trainwrecks. [Takes a deep breath] I've avoided this topic for long enough now. This is where the last seams that hold the game together break and make it fall apart entirely. This is where the pile of shit that's been tossed across the room finally hits the fan.

If you're remotely familiar with any Final Fantasy title you know how important a solid cast is to those games. Your allies and party members you meet over the course of the game, their stories and views on the world's happenings... a charismatic villain. Well, how about we just simply didn't have any of that.

3.4.1 The game's biggest mistake

FFXVI's writers made the decision to focus the game's narrative around a single character, our playable protagonist. There is a small supporting cast of characters that you meet, and occasionally travels alongside you temporarily, but most of them have... not much to them. The game makes it clear: This story is about Clive, and him alone.

And... I don't think having a story focused on a single character is necessarily a bad decision per se, even if highly unusual for a series that was driven by party systems for decades, but... If you decide to do that, then your protagonist needs to have more personality than a soggy wet sponge. It's bad enough that pretty much noone in this game has any sort of depth to them, but if you sideline literally every character in favour of your protagonist's narrative then... at least give that protagonist a character?

This man's personality is nothing beyond helping people because it's the right thing to do. The attempted "he feels guilty for killing his brother" (which naturally he didn't actually do, because that would be too complex of a story) subplot gets dropped a few hours in and he's just... that guy who runs everyone's errands with no input of his own. And it doesn't make him unlikeable necessarily, it just makes him terribly boring.

What is really, really grating however is how every other character portrays him. Named characters and unnamed NPCs alike will throw pity parties for him over and over, going on about how he's so self-sacrificial, always doing everything for others while never expecting anything in return and never taking enough care of himself. It's exhausting. We get it. He's the perfect heroic nice guy, just like his (slave having) dad, the unfailable king. And unlike his evil witch of a mother. Who is so evil, by the way. At times I felt like Clive was some sort of dream fantasy guy self insert of the writers.

I'll say it plainly now: the lack of a well developped playable party is, in my opinion, the game's downfall. Clive alone can't carry the narrative because there isn't nearly enough depth to him, and everyone else has deliberately been stripped of any sort of meaningful screentime. Narrative aside I also feel like multiple playable characters would have done a lot for more variety in terms of gameplay. And before you raise your pitchforks - yes, there are few, very few characters that have their own little story moment. But boy... at what cost.

3.4.2 The state of women

! Rape & suicide mention trigger warning for this section !

So you know, Clive's sidekick? No, not the dog, the girl. Jill. The one who spends most of the game sick in bed, kidnapped, or otherwise missing, and whose single personality trait is being Clive's pure and innocent love interest. Surprisingly, she has her own 30 minutes of side story! A side story that essentially boils down to finding out she was held captive by a weird cult that had no relevance prior to this point and will have no relevance at all after this point. You get to beat up the cult's leader who is revealed to sexually assault underage girls.

Is that ever addressed again at any point? No.

But worry not. We still have a few more women in the bigger roles of the game. One of them, Benedikta, is an early game antagonist whose entire thing is seducing men, and most of the screentime she has is sex scenes. Once you defeat her in battle she flees, and a randomly passing by group of bandits is implied to attempt to rape her. This triggers a flashback of a past assault she was rescued from, and she goes mad. You fight her again, now in her powered up form, and kill her. Then she gets decapitated and her head is sent in a box to her lover to fuel his man rage. Don't worry, you'll get more sex scene flashbacks with her after her death.

But hey. We have another woman in a leading role. The supposedly main antagonist before the real big baddie (who is so boring of a villain i can't even get myself to say anything more about him) is revealed to have business with her. Clive's evil slave-mistreating mum. Her purpose in the story is breeding a flawless heir. What fuels this dignified ambition? Hell if I know. She's written in a hateable way for the sake of it. Likely to contrast Clive and his flawless dad. Absolutely zero depth to anything.

Guess her age here.

If you guessed "at least in her 50s" you are correct! Do I even have to say anything more about this.

The moment her perfect heir is killed, she loses it and slits her own throat. A very anticlimatic conclusion to her non-existent character arc.

Yes, there are a couple more secondary female characters who aren't necessarily walking misogyny targets, but they're pretty much irrelevant to the plot.

Here's a quote from my girlfriend, who is a woman, about the state of women in this game: "I have scarcely felt this alienated by the depiction of women in a video game."

! Trigger warning ends here !

So, uh... how do we move on from here... Let's head somewhere less offensive.

3.5 Music

Usually I'd give the soundtrack a lot more attention since I'm of the opinion that music is one of the most vital parts in a game and can absolutely make or break it - but quite frankly I don't have much to say about this one in detail. It's largely generic epic orchestra music with nothing much unique going for it. The regular battle theme is fairly memorable; and then there's that really aggravatingly annoying acoustic guitar ambient song that seems to play for about half of the game's time. Seriously I hate that one. It drove me nuts. In general I don't know if there's more than 10 songs in the OST because I don't think I heard more than that. Either that, or they all sounded the same.

What stuck out negatively to me especially (apart from that godsdamned acoustic guitar) was the overusage of over the top orchestral arrangements for the tiniest occasions, which was unfitting at best and really tiring at worst. I got used to it with time, but still a good soundtrack isn't just making every moment sound like it's as epic as the final boss, it's making varied music that fits the moment and sets the ambience.

Also not to ruin the OST for anyone who actually enjoys it, but the game's leitmotif sounds like Army of Lovers' Crucified. Noticed it during the demo and couldn't unhear it for the entirety of the game. You're welcome.

4. Credit where credit is due

As should be evident by now, I'm not finding much redeemable in this game. And yet - I would be lying if I said I didn't find myself liking some aspects of it.

Some of the armour designs are pretty neat. In general the character design as a whole feels coherent and mostly fits the setting, some questionable haircut choices aside.

There are chocobos. In different colours. They look nice. Not a big surprise, I suppose.

The voice acting is really good. I can't comment much on the English dub since I only watched the demo in English and then watched the full game with a streamer who played in German; but the German voice actors did an amazing job, and I've heard only good things about the English cast as well. Listening to a few comparisons I was surprised how deep English Joshua's voice is. He sounds like a teenage boy even after the last timeskip in German. That took me out a bit. I also realized I'm very partial to Dion's German voice acting. His final scene was extremely strong in that regard.

Speaking of Dion....

4.1 It's personal again

Alright. Listen. I hate this. I fucking hate this. For weeks I suffered through this game, nothing but this burning passionate hatred within me, ready to shred and tear every single aspect of it apart.

And then. So close to the end. In the final stretch. When I've almost made it through with nothing but rage and hatred by my side. This fucking stupid garbage game attacks my one goddamn weak point: The gay prince and his lover share a small "it isn't meant to be" moment. And I genuinely enjoyed the little gestures in that cutscene. It was a good cutscene.

And at this point I was unfortunately confronted with a hard to swallow pill: I had been kinda looking forward to every time Dion showed up on screen. I'll be honest I'm not sure I would have made it through the game without the driving force of "hey maybe he'll show up again". Over time he turned into my single point of fixation, and it's sad because ultimately he too is pretty much a wet sponge of a character, though maybe the least wet and spongy one. I think he does have some of the stronger scenes in the game (as well as the most visually appealing boss battle - whatever was going on with that bullet hell laser fight in space). He's also unfortunately a sad blond Final Fantasy prince and. Uh. Yeah. Ahem. Alas, he's kinda ugly. Subjectively. But he has an absolutely mighty hip swing when he walks. And a pretty cool spear. Good weapon choice.

In general, props to SE for including an unambiguously gay character in a decently written way. We all know this company is pretty behind in terms of diversity and representation, so seeing that was a pleasant surprise.

Anyway I really REALLY hate to admit it but I've been kinda held hostage by the game over this stupid prince. I'm hoping this is a temporary side effect (derogatory) from being exposed to the game for a prolonged amount of time and in a few weeks I won't care anymore. I hate it here.

5. Conclusion

When I finally finished watching the game after having spent 2 entire months with it I was mostly asking myself one question... What is worse in regards to an art medium? To hate it so intensely that you're willing to dive into every little aspect of it; or to feel complete indifference?

I can't tell you if I think FFXVI is the worst game in the series. It's the one I feel the most passionate hate for, that's for sure. But a game like FFXV seems so inherently unappealing I don't even care to look at it. Not because I think I'll dislike it any more, I just think it will bore me. (Irrelevant side note - I do plan to finally watch a playthrough of that one too in the future. Might as well commit now.)

There are aspects of FFXVI I do think are inexcusable in an objective way; delicate topics handled badly, developers that need an attitude check, and also... by god go meet a woman in real life, please.

For a game that was said to modernize and move the series forward, it makes terribly outdated choices in many regards. It somehow tries so hard to be a departure from the other games in the series, losing a lot of what makes a good Final Fantasy game, and simultaneously clings so hard to references that feel so empty when the core of these games has been trampled on. No amount of preludes and FF1 overworld theme rearrangements and corny "this will be your final fantasy" puns can bring the series' essence back that this game failed to capture. A sense of adventure, a compelling story with a meaningful cast of companions, a world to explore beyond grey corridors.

It should have been a spin-off, not a main title game. Obviously a different name wouldn't have changed the quality of the game, but I can't shake off the feeling that had it been called FFXIV: The Offline Singleplayer Experience (which quite frankly it feels like in many regards), I might have been a bit more lenient with my judgement.

Still...public reception of the game seems, surprisingly, fairly mixed. My fears of the game being hailed as the second coming of Christ didn't actually become true. At the very least the gameplay is oftentimes heavily criticized. And while I really have to wonder if all the people who praise the story and character writing have watched the same thing as I have, seeing the game actually receive some nuanced opinions from both people who like and dislike it alike is a refreshing twist I didn't expect. (Just in case this comes across wrong: I don't consider my opinions to be nuanced. I'm just a hater. But I'm right. Ha.)

Well... uh... After all this I don't quite know how to end this. I feel like I've said more than anyone should say about this game and somehow nothing of substance at all. Topical, I suppose. Oh well. Congrats (I guess) to this game for sparking something in me (negative) no other game has ever done before. For all it's worth, it strengthened my bond to some of the older entries I used to judge more harshly. I know better now.

-----

If you're the single person who made it this far, I think you deserve to have some pictures. Here's my favourite battle phase: (Something about those symmetrical orb patterns was very aesthetically pleasing. Better in motion though.)

And here's an exclusive look at parts of my initial draft and some discord liveblogging:

anyway peace out ✌️ go watch dions death scene in german

#this is my villain origin story #and also the unskippable cutscene villain monologue i'll drop 3/4th through the story

[morphogenetic]

Mediaposting 2024, #5: Dai Gyakuten Saiban 1/The Great Ace Attorney Adventures

Completed: March 26th (main game) / March 27th (escapades/the bonus video content)

Time spent: 37 hours (main game) / 39 hours (including bonus content stuff)

Rating: 8/10 (but with caveats because of it being the first of a duology) thoughts under the cut because there are many and a lot of them are spoilery. but the tl;dr is that they were clearly still kind of finding their footing with this game but The Game Is Good. and the reasons i'm giving it an 8/10 are mostly because i need to see how dgs2 deals with some of the loose ends before i go higher

first, the positives (and I suppose the neutrals):

first of all, on the game design side of things, the music slaps. as usual for an AA game honestly but there does not seem to be a single miss in this soundtrack which is rare. can't wait to hear the inevitable remixes and reframing of themes in dgs2.

it took me way longer than i expected to warm up to the main cast, but once I really got into the meat of the game, i found that I do really like all of them (and I mean ALL of them, including the more minor characters. except mcgilded but fuck mcgilded). this kind of suprised me because I don't think i've come close to that in any AA game except maybe the first one and t&t. also maybe aai2 but that's pushing it. like this game reminded me why I like AA at all after the absolute slogs of 5 and 6. (and the absolute 'i remember fucking none of this' of apollo justice)

the character design of this game as a whole is INCREDIBLE. there is not a single character design that I don't like in some way. from the really good student uniform designs, to susato's kimono, to iris and sherlock's outfits.....and those are just the main ones. a lot of the witnesses and even some of the jury members are memorable just on character design alone. even the designs i think are kind of ugly (coughs. mcgilded) are clearly ugly by design and not by accident. it's a feat. hope that dgs2 keeps up the good work but based on the one (very big....oops) spoiler that i know, i'd be surprised if it didn't.

the parallel between ashley graydon and gina as kids raised in poverty in the last case. mwah. magnificent. chef's kiss. 10/10 no notes

dgs sherlock is such a good interpretation of the Man The Myth and the Legend

also i really adore ryuu as a protagonist. i can't quite put my finger on why, it might honestly just be because of how fucking distressed he is all the time LOL, but i like him in a way that feels a bit deeper to me than the way in which i like phoenix. he's clearly making the best of a bizarre situation and his Law Skills are more of a matter of natural talent rather than training

the ending is. man. it's good and a very good sequel hook but can you fucking IMAGINE if they had never gotten the money to make a sequel to this game. what a hell world that would be. imagine just dropping a major hint that three characters you already know of are involved in a huge fucking conspiracy and then never getting to explain why. vlr/ztd interface level catastrophe.

and then the few negatives i have which unfortunately drag this down a little bit for me, enough to the 8/10 level...primarily the first one:

this game has WHACK pacing. having essentially 3 separate tutorials is a wild game design choice to make. the pacing felt off to me to the extent that the end of case 4 felt like it was the middle of the game, and case 5 was almost half of my playtime at 16 hours out of 37 so i think it was close to LITERALLY being halfway through. i don't have a good idea on how to fix it, given that this game has to introduce both the new dance of deduction mechanic AND the weird jury summation examination mechanic, but....there should have been something. it really made it difficult for me to fully Care about the characters until i was into case 5. and I'm glad that case 5 was ultimately good enough to make me care about everyone (e.g. i didn't really care about gina in case 3 at all), but it's pretty rough. i genuinely don't know HOW you fix the pacing issue while also keeping the overall plot outline the same, though, especially because cases 2 and 3 are so crucial. the only thing i can really think of is introducing some of the background london information in case 4 instead of 5, but.......still. or making case 4 happen more than a single goddamn day after case 3. just something to make the pace not feel nearly as weird. sighs. idk. it needed substantial tweaking but I don't have a good idea on what tweaks needed to be made. i've heard dgs2 has much better pacing from someone whose opinions i trust on that kind of thing, so i really hope it pulls through there.

more minor critique: a lot of the cases, barring 5, are weirdly easy with very rare (and also weird) spotty difficulty spikes. of course it's always hard to strike the balance in an AA game, and i wasn't expecting the tutorial to be hard, but...case 4 just kind of dragged for me because of how long the trial goes on. 5 actually did have tricky moments for me thanks to eggman graydon wanting to hide the truth and the sheer amount of evidence, but yeah. still far more challenging than the dr games just giving you all of the facts at the very beginning of the trial, though...at least shu takumi knows how to write a mystery LMAO

asougi really needed a little more lead time before getting killed off, because i like him but, without the escapades, it's probably not as much as I think the game wants me to like him, and ryuu being his best friend is not super convincing to me even though he shows that a lot more in later cases. i'm not tooootally sure how i would have fixed that, maybe keeping him alive a bit in the first half of the 2nd case? doing some more slice of life stuff with him and ryuu? or making ryuu's reaction to his death a little bit more shocked? idk. i'm REALLY glad the escapades exist because they help a lot in fleshing him out, but i really think parts of them should have been in the game proper =========== all that said. if a game gets me to write this many fucking words about it..which took me a goddamn HOUR to write jesus christ i just checked my computer clock.... it's clearly doing SOMETHING right. honestly, if the pacing wasn't so bizarre, i'd probably bump it up a full point. i am absolutely playing the second game but im already worried its gonna hit full on zero escape and raging loop level catastrophe fixation (positive) once im done so…i'm honestly putting off starting dgs2 a little bit because i'm worried that it's gonna distract me to the point of my grades/job suffering a little LOL. i haven't had that happen in a while so, at least in that way....congrats dgs you won me over. i will never stop calling you dgs because thats how i was introduced to you 7 years ago as my best friend's first new-fixation when i first became friends with her. sorry it took so long for me to get around to you.

#aj plays dgs #(just to keep it in the same tag for my own cross reference) #mediaposting #junpei.txt #this got REALLY out of hand as a post i am so sorry

[ohwhataniight]

more than the world can contain - Chapter 4: A Scandal in Belgravia - Part 3

Part 1, Part 2

Songs I was listening to while writing:

Sherlocked

Faded

Tango del Fuego

So. I can't stop writing and posting little bits of my WIP. It's horrible. I can't seem to be able to sit down and proofread and complete it before I appear on your dashboard again. Anyway, please forgive my impatience once again.

Irene Adler makes me hot. Seriously, every character in this universe makes me swoon. Impertinent.

J

Now that’s a visual and auditory experience I never expected I’d acquire. Sherlock Holmes, the mighty and seemingly heartless (I declare bullshit to that) detective, lying like a giant lump in his bed under covers he keeps throwing off, tossing and turning, his voice alternating between tiny whimpers and an anxious baritone. “I am not in love, I am not in love.”

In retrospect, I should have seen this coming. I had been foolish enough to be comforted by his “married to my work” facade and assume that this - us, solving crimes together - would keep being enough for him. I should have listened to Donovan. “He’ll get bored of you” meaning you’ll never be enough. Because, apparently, people who could be enough for Sherlock do exist, after all, in the form of women who match him in wits and ineffability. It only makes sense that he has to deny being in love with such a person, a woman, now that was unexpected, only a day into meeting her. Such forms of denial, when uttered with such desperation by those lips, are akin to a declaration.

Honestly, I don’t know what this sinking feeling in my stomach really signifies. I should have expected this, and even if I hadn’t, I shouldn’t care. I don’t know why I care, why it feels so ugly and wrong that Sherlock Holmes is so adamantly denying (declaring) his love for a woman who, painful as it is to admit, is a perfect match for his mind and his looks. I think I have sort of become addicted to this - this us, again - to being handcuffed together, running around foggy London hand-in-hand, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson, just the two of us, sleuth brothers-in-arms, colleagues, friends.

For some reason I can only blurrily see, my knees give out with the idea of someone else stepping into the equation.

“He’ll get bored of you”.

About bloody time I realized that, then.

But for now, he’s unconscious, and distressed, and he needs me. So I provide the comfort he requires, my hand brushing damp, stray curls away from his forehead, stroking his head, hushing him, taking it all in (including the image of his lipstick-stained skin) while I still can, privy to the fact that the only reason he accepts that is because he’s high as a fucking kite. The realization tugs painfully on my heart like a rusty hook.

Yet, he seems to want me here, leans into the touch, drags me close with his arms wrapped like tentacles around my waist when I make an attempt to withdraw after musing on consent, and when he calls my name I realize that I’m more than okay to do that for the most brilliant man in the world.

I’m okay with him needing me, until he realizes he doesn’t anymore.

S

Tasteful touch, the moaning. It attracts some delightfully appalled stares. Especially from John. He’s been counting.

She is interesting too, diverting, even. A pleasant distraction. I stalk her on Twitter, become occupied with her in more ways than one. I never respond to her texts, and yet it’s still somehow like a two-way conversation. She catches up quickly, she understands. It’s refreshing to find someone who is equally intrigued by The Game, and fit to follow (or even lead, sometimes).

Until her texts become all about John Watson.

Still not responding?

Are you so terribly busy, Mr. Holmes?

You’re having breakfast together, aren’t you? How domestic.

I can do to you things that would make John Watson blush.

We could let him watch.

John watching. John participating. John. The images materialize instantly in my head - it’s the curse of exceptional intelligence combined with a synaesthetic ability of sorts. Damn my mind palace. Thankfully, the presence of both Mycroft and Mrs. Hudson in the room is distasteful enough for me to be able to brush off every and any unsettling image involving the Woman and John.

To be continued...

#sherlock holmes #john watson #johnlock #bbc sherlock #johnlock fanfiction #johnlock fic #sherlock #fanfiction #queer #gay #a scandal in belgravia #irene adler

[thesupreme316]

Is the Grass Green on the Other Side? Ep. 4

SO SORRY FOR THY DELAY

Summary: The pressure piles on Y/N as tensions continue to rise in her life (Mercedes and Trinity leaving, relationship falling apart, career being jeopardized). What happens when she takes matters into her own hands?

Word Count: 2.8K

Taglist: @hookerforhook @triscillal @wwenhlimagines @sheinthatfandom​ @zatarias-pandora @hooks-martin​

Links to Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3

May 21, 2022 (Saturday)

“Do you think you can suplex me?” 


“Y/N, sweetheart, I can do a lot of things to you.” Hook said with a smirk and wink.

Immediately blushing, you got into position for another takedown. You and Hook have been practicing for three hours on different moves: suplexes, clotheslines, strikes, and submissions. You helped him in various moments; telling him what to emphasize, what he needs to pay attention to, how he should execute a move, etc. You were just hoping that he couldn’t see the stress underneath the surface.

Although this was a good exercise to destress, you couldn’t help but constantly think about how Mercedes and Trinity’s leave has affected your mentality. It was hard to keep your focus straight, but somehow you managed to do so to train Hook.

Even though he is in fact, a cold-hearted and handsome devil.

A very handsome devil indeed.

During the entire session, Hook (or Tyler as he wants you to call him) kept flirting with you, most likely to throw you off your game or to lighten the mood. He was a sweet guy tho, constantly making sure you were comfortable and that he was learning properly. He was definitely different from other guys you practiced and trained with, he was serious about his craft.

You found out more and more about him like his inspirations, favorite moves, favorite rappers, etc. After the takedown (which he finally won as you were distracted), you two decided to call it quits. Panting, Hook started up, “So…I make you blush?”

“You wish.”

“I think I do, which is why I won.” Hook chuckled. “Thanks for practicing with me, I really do appreciate it. Especially with the old man down my back.”

“Regal means well, even though his age gets in the way.” You laughed.

“I meant my dad, but yeah including him.” He laughed before continuing, “Well, if it’s alright, I would like to get your number.” He brought out his phone and passed it to you.

“Is it because you want advice and practice, or you just want my number?” You joked while typing in your number.

You handed back his phone as he said, “All the above. Your pretty face is just a bonus.” Chuckling, he waved goodbye before leaving your eyesight and revealing Paige with a big smile.

“Y/N, you did a great job.” You silently thanked her as she continued, “For someone who wasn’t in their best mindset.” You sighed. “Maybe you were able to fool Hook, but you can’t fool me.”

With Paige, she was always able to figure out when you’re uneasy, upset, or just off your game. No one has been able to do that with just one look. “I know this walkout is affecting you, especially with the rumors, but it shouldn’t affect you this bad.”

“She’s right Miss. Y/L/N.” William’s voice echoed. “Now, darling, you’re one of the best in the ring without a doubt and you did an excellent job training the young lad. However, you just look so down or out of it. Now, you can always talk to us.”

You looked between them as tears started to fill your eyes. You sighed and sat down in the middle of the ring, “I’m just so lost right now. I have everything that I want, I wished for, everything that I earned. But it seems like it’s slipping away from me. My friends are now gone and probably not coming back. The company wants me to job to a woman who hasn’t done half of what I do. I’m split between doing what I want and what’s right.”

A moment went by before William asked, “Well sweetheart, what do you want to do?”

“Honestly, I’m between leaving and just going off somewhere to not deal with this bullshit or staying and becoming a damn problem for everyone.”

“Well, do you want my advice?” Paige asked as you immediately nodded your head. “Sometimes doing what you want is the right thing. There are other companies and people to work with, incredible people. For example, and I think I can speak for both me and Mr. Regal, AEW is a great place to look at if you are thinking about your first option. Now, it’s going to be extremely different from WWE but it’s a fantastic place to consider.”

“We all know you will be a star anywhere you go, Miss. Y/L/N.” William started. “There is so much more to wrestling than WWE, you can accomplish so much more outside of the WWE. I just genuinely want you to be happy, and I know you are not going to be happy there if things do not change. And speaking from a person who has transitioned from WWE to AEW, it was a transition that was needed. Not only for my career but for my life.”

Paige sat beside you and rubbed your back, “Darling, we just want the best for you. I know at the end of the day, you’ll make the right decision about everything. Just take your time and breathe.” You nodded and thanked them for their words. “But now, does the Real Deal wanna go against AEW’s fastest-rising star?”

Chuckling and getting up, brushing your outfit, you said, “You are so on.”

June 10, 2022 (Smackdown after Hell in a Cell)

Despite everything in the past month, you were still champ, to everyone’s surprise (and you were just surprised as everyone else).

To be honest, you’re surprised that the tweet about you training with your friends from AEW didn’t get you into more hot water as more rumors of you leaving or being punished, started to spread.

All across Twitter, Instagram, and even in interviews, you’ve been receiving the same questions: What’s going on with you and WWE? Are you leaving? What happened to Sasha Banks and Naomi?

And all you could say was “No comment.”

People are still avoiding you and you haven’t talked to Mercedes and Trinity since they left as they just needed time to themselves.

Your short feud with Raquel ended with you beating her in a 6-minute match (the shortest on the card) and you are now going to be resuming a feud with Liv Morgan that you alluded to a few months ago. Your goal for this feud was to make Liv a star to set her up for bigger things in the future. So for that to work out, you would be working as an anti-hero/heel to build Liv as a baby face.

Along with that, you have been pulled into many meetings with Paul (Triple H) and John Laurinaitis about your storylines, your connections with AEW, and your contract as it was coming to an end in August. Still while praising your work, they still wanted you to drop the title to Ronda (more so John than Paul). Still refusing and not listening, you just allowed them to continue talking.

You eventually left the office and ran into the other woman in the conversation.

“Hey Y/L/N, keeping my championship warm?”

“MY championship is very comfortable, Ronda.” You said emphasizing the first word, squinting at her.

“Creative’s telling me that I’m gonna get my shot by Money in the Bank.  I honestly can’t wait to share the ring with the realest Y/N Y/L/N and take back what’s mine.” Ronda said before walking past you, bumping your shoulder.

“Over my dead body.” You whispered before gripping your title and walking to your locker room. You sat down and pulled out your phone, texting your friends. Since that day you helped train Tyler, you and he have gotten comfortable with each other and text a lot. And Paige has been just checking in on you every day, and Daniel…..is being himself.

Your eyebrows furrowed at Daniel’s text as you tried to decipher his tone. It was unlike Daniel to shut down a conversation unless there was something really bothering him. You didn’t see what was so wrong with you texting Tyler. As you were trying to conclude, there was a knock at the door. You got up to see it was your charming boyfriend. You hesitantly let him in.

“Haven’t seen you in like two weeks.” You said rolling your eyes at him.

“It’s been stressful for me,” Christian said sitting down on your couch. 

“And I’m not trying to downplay your work or anything, but I have been going through just as much stress.” You said, firmly leaning against the wall, with your arms crossed. You weren’t raising your voice, just trying to get your point across.

He sighed, looking up at you. “Y/N, it’s been a stressful week. I just became champion, which you never congratulated me on, and now people are giving me side-eyes because of your rumors going around.”

Your eyes widened as you pushed yourself off the wall. “So you’re saying the reason why you’re so stressed is because of me?”

“Co-workers are looking at me crazy due to your situation, to the point where they don’t even notice that I won the North American Championship-“

“Well, I’m sorry Carmelo that my stressful, messed up, and biased situation going on has taken your spotlight.” You walked up to him, almost three feet from where he was sitting. “And I did congratulate you, you were just so keen on avoiding me that you didn’t answer.”

Christian stood up from the couch, stepping towards you. “Yeah, we’ve been over this. I don’t want people tying me into your mess and then I become the next target.”

“I never once defied your wishes, I always accommodate you. I never allow my mess to become our mess. For once, have you thought about how I feel? About how I need a supportive boyfriend beside me? Why does everything have to be about you?” You said glaring up at him, fists at your side. As the tension grew thick between you, a knock on the door interrupted the intense staring contest.

A stagehand popped their head into the room, “Y/R/N, it’s time for your segment.”

You glanced at the stagehand with a small smile, you thanked them and grabbed your title. Before exiting, you looked back at your anger-filled boyfriend, “When I get back, you need to be gone”

You walked down the hallway to the gorilla as your phone buzzed, notifying you of a text message.

As your theme song played, you put the phone on a nearside table…wishing it was your boyfriend saying those words.

July 2, 2022 (Money in the Bank)

Tonight is the night.

In recent months, even compared to your Wrestlemania moment, this is probably the climax of all your drama.

You and Christian are talking less and less now, you and Daniel are talking at least every second of the day (even when he’s jealous of Tyler), and Paige and Tyler are checking up on you daily.

You’re facing Natalya as Liv was in the women’s Money in the Bank match. And just as planned, she won the match. You watched with glee and congratulated her once she came backstage. You proceeded to watch the rest of the pay-per-view in your locker room before walking to the gorilla a couple of minutes before your match.

As you were stretching, you were called over by Vince McMahon to confirm the plans for tonight. “Okay Y/R/N, so after your match with Nattie, you will squash Liv as she cashes in the briefcase. Then after that, you and Ronda will have a staredown-“ You started to tune Vince’s voice out, you already knew the plan. Did you agree with it? Hell no. But what the boss wants, the boss gets. You were pulled back into the conversation by his question, “Are you okay?”

You found it interesting that he would ask you that question, as he never seemed to care last month or anytime after Mercedes and Trinity left. “Uh, not really. A lot is on my mind, but I’m fine.”

Vince hummed as if he was trying to find a solution. “You know what? Ronda can wait a little later. After you beat Liv, grab the mic and let loose. After you’re done, then Ronda will come out and you will have the staredown.”

“Are you sure? It’s a lot I gotta say.”

“I’m sure! Go for it, I’m sure you’ve been dying to say this stuff, so say or do anything you think is right.” Vince said before going back to his seat.

Now that you have permission, you’re about to air everything out.

—Time skip 13 minutes later—

The bell rang as you secretly thanked Natalya and the referee (along with the audience) counted to three. Your leg grew weak during the match and you were currently leaning against the ropes. Your theme song played throughout the arena as you held your championship high above your head and the audience cheered. 

Natalya rolled out the ring, and Liv’s music cut yours off, making the crowd erupt even louder. Liv rushed down the aisle and pushed the briefcase toward the referee’s chest. He brought it over to the ring announcer who stated with the crowd roaring, “Liv Morgan is cashing in her Money in the Bank!”

The bell rang and she leaped towards your body and you moved out the way while grasping your knee and leaning against the ropes again. Liv rushed over and performed her finisher, Oblivion.

1! 2! 3!

“Here’s your winner and the NEW WWE Smackdown Women’s Champion, Liv Morgan!”

It should be a bitter moment for you, now the former champion, but you couldn’t help but smile and look at the ground as Liv was celebrating around the ring. Before the match, you texted Liv about the “changes” in the match and she hesitantly got on board (after you reassured her). You got up and hugged her as she whispered, “Thank you so much.”

You raised her arm before buckling the title around her waist. After another moment, she left the ring as you grabbed the mic and sat down on the mat. The crowd chants your name but after what you’re gonna say, you don’t know how long they’ll chant, so you just try to enjoy the moment.

You raised the mic to your mouth and said, “Congratulations to Liv, hopefully, this company will treat you better and this division will become more meaningful with you as champion. I’m not gonna talk for long, but I just wanted to let everyone know something.” You paused as the crowd started to chant your ring name again.

“I am not interested in helping a charity case nor am I available to be someone’s stepping stone. I have been ridiculed time and time again for a woman who has been in my world for a few years with only two months of training, has been given a title that I worked my ass off, and has been given opportunities that only some can dream of having, and then dares to disrespect my business and my coworkers. I refuse to be embarrassed any further, I refuse to be silenced, and I refuse to sell my soul to the damn devil for this. The fact is this women’s division wouldn’t be what it is without me not her, and no matter how hard you try and no matter how hard you look, you will never be able to replace me.

No one comes close to me! Not on the mic and damn well not in this ring. They know it and you all know it. Whether I remain in this company or not, I, Y/N Y/L/N, am the greatest of all time. And there is not a damn thing you can do or say about it.”

You dropped the mic before getting up and looking around the crowd, emotion filling your eyes. To your surprise, the crowd was still cheering for you and even gave you a standing ovation. You limped out of the ring as the audience yelled “Thank you Y/N.” As you went through the curtains, you saw the angry faces of Vince, John, and other executive producers as Liv and Paul were sitting and looking like scolded puppies in the corner. 

Behind them was most of, if not the entire, locker room. You continued to walk past them as Vince was screaming at you about suspending and fining you for the whole ordeal and being unprofessional.

Was it unprofessional? Yeah.

Was there probably a better way to do this? Probably.

Was going into business for yourself a good call? Probably not.

Was it bold as hell? Yes.

But it felt damn good to speak your mind. And they weren’t gonna hear you out privately, they’ll damn sure hear you now.

And after what seemed like an eternity of Vince screaming at you…

You grabbed your keys and got in your car (ring gear and all)…

And you drove out of the parking garage…

With your future unknown.

#wwe #aew #all elite wrestling #wwe imagine #aew imagine #all elite wrestling imagines #wwe carmelo #wwe carmelo imagine #aew hook #aew hook imagine #aew hook x reader #daniel garcia #daniel garcia imagine #jamie hayter #jamie hayter x reader #wrestling imagine #aew x reader

[carecrowgames]

Yazeba Readthrough #1

I gave up on finding a migraine free bunch of hours to lie down and read Possum Creek Games Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast. So instead! I’ll try reading some daily on phone during work breaks and in trains and y’all get a commentary thread (to remind myself to sit down for it ^^)

Music for this reading session is ofc Running Away Again from the Yazeba OST. I love the vibe it, and the cover, establish for the game. I’m currently on a train and it makes me want to look out of the window more and dive into feelings of the exciting melancholy of leaving 

Cover: I think one of the great things about the cover is the way in which it immediately hooks you on the specific characters and interactions this book is going to evolve around. Like who are these two! Why are they argueing? Will I be able to play this frog! Thief cat??? 

Table of Contents: so i did this the first time I looked a bit into the PDF too, but I gotta do it again, because the table of contents entices me similarly as the cover does There is so much to water my mouth here. if alone because Yazeba’s has fantastic fucking character names 

Some favourites: the rabbits in the garden, who wear little outfits (I want to play them immidiately) the fact that there are two characters with a nickname in the middle of their name one after the other, Niviana “Viv” of Llyn and Percival “Percy” Combustion (are they friends?) 

The "Tracks & Shelves" Chapter fascinates me. From my first rough look into this book I have a kind of idea of what they are gonna be and how they are gonna make the book work but I don’t realy know yet! Maybe they have to do with my next fascination: locked characters!

What do I have to do to play “The Zappamouschi Circus!”? who is “T.H.E.M”? “32 Maple Lane” as a character name hooks me immediately, I would read a book on that character without any further info. 

The fact that there are going to be entire chapters on resident journeys warms my heart somehow. I've been watching a lot of slice and life recently, and I'm realy looking forward to being able to see some main characters growth over a longer amount of time.

Some of the late Chapter names similarily give me preemptive and beautiful heartache. "The Witch's Old Hostel" sticks out, as it feels like alot of emotional processing is coming for us.

also i'm noticing that a character from the locked characters is part of the resident journeys, and listed after yazeba! I love the idea of the cast of residents changing. feels like a second season addition to the cast, i often end up loving the addition to the tone these bring 

i'm still in the tabel of contents and my train is arriving '^^ diving into the first pages tomorrow 

-----------

I started this on twitter, but oops, it died and i will not cling to it’s zombiefied corpse. I honestly love being back on tumblr, so this is me reposting my first thread of my readthrough here, and all upcoming threads will be primarily made for tumblr. Happy to be back!

You can see all my Readthrough posts under #zeebthrough, or mute the hashtag if you don’t wanna see them pop up on your timeline ^^

#possum creek games #yazeba's bed & breakfast #zeebthrough #ttrpg #twitter

[jimothystu]

Talk Hockey To Me

Tagged by @david-reinbacher - thank you Alek!!

1. The thing that got you hooked on hockey

So I was kind of assimilated into the hockey world through Blue Jays moots (ty <3), and it was a slow progression for me to 1) start watching 2) pick teams I liked and 3) regularly watch. BUT what really made me be like holy fuck was the final game for the Habs in the 2021/2022 season where they had 10 goals and Cole got his first hattie and people chanted Guy's name. That was insane and just gave me chills the entire time.

2. Your first ever fandom friend

Like I said, I was assimilated through Blue Jays moots, so all of them!! But probably specifically @donttelltheelff <3

3. The jersey you would most like to own

I'd love any jersey tbh. They're so expensive and I have none - so any for my favourite players would be great.

4. YOUR player (you only get ONE so choose wisely)

Jimmy Stu. James. Timmy. The wettest rag in the league. My beloved floppy piece of bread.

5. A pairing that deserves more fic

There are a lot in my humble opinion. Juraj Slafkovsky/Arber Xhekaj, Cole Caufield/Nick Suzuki, Thomas Chabot/Josh Norris (though Jeh and I have been going a lil crazy with them lately...), Quinn Hughes/Josh Norris.

6. Your favourite on-ice moment

When G got his 1000th career point and the entire Sens bench went onto the ice to hug him mid game!!!!!! Vibes per 60 were through the roof!

THEN

link someone else's art/fic/etc that you love & think everyone should check out

Anything @canadian-as-puck writes for Chabs and Josh! These fics keep me sane.

AND

link something you made & are proud of & want people to see

Honestly 99% of the fics I've written the last sixish months have been ones I'm really proud of and loved writing and rereading. But here are my top 5:

Intoxicated: Tim Stutzle/Brady Tkachuk; silly fic where Timmy's high and drunk and can only speak German

Don't break the dam or you might drown in the current: Tim Stutzle/Brady Tkachuk; my longest single chapter fic in which the weight of being the Sens captain finally gets to Brady

You don't go to parties anymore: Thomas Chabot/Josh Norris; Josh stops going to Thomas's house parties and Thomas is desperate to know why

Desperate times call for desperate measures: Tim Stutzle/Brady Tkachuk; Brady's an idiot and has to win Timmy back after not realizing they were dating

Do's and Don't's: Tim Stutzle/Brady Tkachuk and Thomas Chabot/Josh Norris; G is sick of their pda

Tagging @donttelltheelff @canadian-as-puck @gordiemeow @graves-makar @may-the-puck-be-with-you @kylesdubas @lam-ila - no pressure + sorry if you don't wanna do it!!

#tag games #about me

[halstead4l]

I Miss You, I'm Sorry (Part 1)

Jay Halstead and I have known each other since childhood. We have always been friends. Things got a little tricky as we both grew up. Feelings, fights, not being as close as we once were. We tried everything out, dating. The relationship, of course, like all, had the ups and downs. We even worked in the Intelligence Unit together for the Chicago Police Department. We have been through hell and back, literally. 

As I’m packing up my belongings, to move back to Chicago, I can’t help but replay the heartbreaking and tough conversation that Jay and I had to have.

I walked into the apartment that Jay and I both shared. I was just getting home from staying behind at the district, finishing up paperwork. I set my keys down on the little stand we have by the door, hanging my coat up on the hook. I see Jay watching football, beer in hand.

“Hey baby”, Jay greets me, looking at me then back at the game.

“Hey” was all I could manage to get out. A lot was on my mind. I knew that Jay and I needed to have a conversation and soon.

I go to our room, taking a quick shower and getting dressed into my pajamas. I walk out, walking to the fridge, grabbing a beer, and sitting on the couch with Jay, to finish watching the game. 

Without saying anything, Jay throws his arm around me, pulling me close into him. I let it happen, I needed his embrace and his touch. I hold my tears in because I know what’s coming.

“Baby? Everything okay?” He asked. 

I just look up at him, into his beautiful greenish-blue eyes. I push off his chest so I can sit up. Not saying anything, I grab the remote, muting the television.

“You know that I love you and I know that you love me. We both know things haven’t been the best or the easiest between us lately…” I start to say. “I have also been busting my ass at work and all my hard work is finally starting to pay off. And I say this because, I was given, and accepted a job offer…in Washington, D.C.”. 

Jay didn’t know what to say and frankly, neither did I. All we could do is just look into each other’s eyes.

“Are you doing this because everything has been rocky between us?” He asks.

I shake my head no, cupping one side of his face with my hand.

“Of course not, no. I just think that a change would be could for us, for me.” I truthfully say.

Jay gets out of my touch, the little embrace that I had on him. He stands up, beginning to pace around our living room apartment, rubbing his face with his hands.

“When do you leave, start?” He asked.

I close my eyes for a second, opening them to look back up at him. “I start next week…”.

Jay says nothing. 

“Please don’t be upset with me. I think this will be good, for the both of us.”

Jay just looks at me. I can see that he’s hurt.

“So, that’s it? We’re done?” He asked another tough question.

I think before I respond.

“No…of course I don’t want to be. You’re everything to me, you’re my safe place, my protector, the love of my life…” I looked at him, tears threatening to fall.

“Well, it’s what it sounds and looks like to me. You’re moving, states away, and you’re going without me. And it’s not just that, this is the first I’m hearing about it- all of it!”

“Jay, I’m sorry, okay?! You know what Voight tells us, if there is an opportunity, we should take it and that’s what I’m doing!”

Moments go by and it feels like it’s been eternity of silence. The rest of the night was emotional.

As I am looking around my now-empty, Washington D.C. apartment, I can honestly say that I am more than ready to be back in Chicago. I have missed Jay, Trudy, Voight, Erin, Adam, Kim, Atwater, Alvin, and Antonio. It’s going to be so good to see everyone again, some easier than other but still, Chicago is calling my name.

#jay halstead #chicago #chicago pd #jay #fanfic #reqs open #Spotify

[itsbenedict]

Games I Played In 2023 And Whether Or Not I Thought They Were Good (Part 4/4)

This last part, I'm going to go over the games I played but didn't finish in 2023, for various reasons. None of these because they were bad, really- I'm still in the middle of most of them. Just didn't have time! But here's my impressions anyway:

[1] - [2] - [3] - 4

Fire Emblem: Vision Quest

This is a hack of Sacred Stones that I played just because I had a hankering for Fire Emblem and wasn't going to stoop to playing Heroes or Engage. It delivers pretty well, I think! It's challenging and fun, if a little dull on the story end.

The main innovation here is... just, an atypical willingness to give the enemy's rank-and-file mooks special weapons, actually. The map design is generally really satisfying and challenging, because... you really can't just throw your strongest guys into the middle of the enemy and let them crash against their defense stat. Enemies routinely carry things like weapon-triangle-reversing -reaver or -slayer weapons, or hammers and rapiers and things that deal massive bonus damage, or these unique-to-the-hack gem weapons that double down on weapon triangle effects. You've got to be really mindful of exactly which units you're putting yours in range of...

...but you can't just take it slow, because almost every map has some kind of timed objective, and you've got to be advancing at a decent clip or else lose out on rewards. Moreover, you've got to be careful about which enemies you kill, because... the shop at base never sells better than D/C-tier weapons, enemies rarely drop weapons, and you almost never receive gold as a part of the story progression. Your only real source of income is using the party thief to steal gems from enemies that don't drop them on death, and she's pretty fragile, so every map has a secondary objective of "nab all the stuff you can sell for money so you don't literally run out of weapons to use because you're broke". You really need to approach every map with a plan.

It's not... great on story and character, honestly. It's doing something, but the character writing's just a touch too flat to carry the story. It's faithful to other GBA fire emblems in that respect, I guess- it's maybe a cut above those, for the most part? Doesn't really have an eye for comedy to give texture to the serious-mans-fight-serious-war stuff. I think it's trying to do, like, a subversion thing, where the hook is that you play as the map-1 Generic Ugly Bandits, forced by circumstance into heroism? But they don't really lean into that enough.

oh also the main character's name is "Storch". which sounds like something the Game Grumps would name Link in a zelda game.

Void Stranger

Man, Zero really wanted me to like this game. And, like, I kinda appreciate what it's doing, it's clever, but I just...

Void Stranger, on the surface, is a gauntlet of a few hundred block-pushing puzzles.

It has a unique gimmick where you can use a magic wand to pick up floor tiles and place them elsewhere, which it uses in a lot of really clever ways- the puzzles are definitely well-designed and reward you for sneaky lateral-thinking solutions. But it's a gauntlet of a few hundred block-pushing puzzles.

It's clearly doing some crazy mind-blowing The Witness or Tunic-esque mechanics-hidden-in-plain-sight stuff where the nature of the game transforms when you realize the significance of that one strange geometric shape, or learn a bizarre rules interaction that opens up what's possible. But it's a gauntlet of a few hundred block-pushing puzzles.

It's got a story- but I put like ten hours into the game without it managing to hook me. There's some mystique to the true nature of the mysterious videogame dungeon you're exploring that I never learned much about- but also, every few dozen block-pushing puzzles, you'll get to take a brief rest and watch (or sometimes play) a brief cutscene wherein the player character is serving as handmaiden to a headstrong rebellious disney princess type. It didn't really manage to go anywhere interesting after a gauntlet of 160-something block-pushing puzzles, but maybe does after a few thousand more.

Also, there's a lives system, and no save system, and if you run out of lives you have to start the gauntlet of hundreds of block-pushing puzzles over again. Which also happens if you [spoilers], or accidentally [spoilers], and I'm given to understand that the real game is the really cool metagame of doing multiple runs of the game over and over after learning new mechanics and secret truths about the game's structure. After the fourth time I died slash accidentally triggered a reset by screwing around and lost all my progress, I lost patience with replaying the same gauntlet of a few hundred block-pushing puzzles and dropped it.

Sorry, Zero- I just don't have the patience for it. You should probably just tell me about all the cool shit it does.

Pokemon Infinity

This is a Pokémon fangame! It's... kind of nothing to write home about- it's just polished and has good QoL and a lot of fun regional forms. I'm pretty far in- beat the last not-a-gym-leader and am about to embark on the bog-standard Evil Team Wants To Do Some Kind Of Apocalypse Evil By Controlling A Legendary Pokémon So Go Take Some Time And Stop Them Before Doing The Elite Four segment of the game.

The thing that stands out about it is how much it feels like it really could just be an entry in the mainline franchise from an alternate timeline. As mentioned, it's very polished, and the writing has exactly the same kind of inoffensively uninteresting tone as most real games in the series. Very authentic, with a lot of effort put into nailing the feel.

(The only big mechanical addition is the way it does HMs- they exist and control the progression, but you don't actually have to teach them to your pokemon to use them on the field. You get Fly pretty early on, and as long as you have a pokemon that could use Fly, you can just Fly with them from the party menu without wasting a moveslot. Very appreciated.)

Unnamed Space Idle

Ugh. I'm only really posting about this as a mea culpa- I kicked the idle game habit for all of a month and a half before getting hooked on another one. This one's annoyingly well-designed, with a shitton of different mechanics and ways to optimize your build for different objectives. There's always some low-hanging progression fruit you can pick by respeccing some stuff, and it's paced out to introduce new systems the instant the existing ones start getting old. The balancing and timing of it is pretty immaculate... for the purpose of getting me to check in and waste time on it every couple hours. Huge addictive time sink- keep a safe distance.

Fate/Hollow Ataraxia

You may have noticed that the title bullet point is not a link to a store page or something, unlike the rest. That's not because I don't want you to find the game- it's because much like Fate/Stay Night, the sequel Hollow Ataraxia is fucking impossible to find a way to purchase legitimately. Big thanks to Tulip and Wise for providing me with a copy. It's a whole process.

Anyway- FHA is a sequel to FSN, which I've mentioned on here before. FSN had this whole dark and complex plot about mages fighting a secret shounen battle war except the war was sort of fake and a conspiracy and you had to figure out what was really going on... and FHA is weirdly doing the same thing, except replace "shounen battle" with "slice-of-life omake collection".

It's very strange. It's like... "hey, thanks for playing our very serious and dramatic game! now that you've done that, how about you relax with some hilarious vignettes about all your favorite characters from that game just kinda hanging out and doing wacky anime hijinks, instead of trying to kill each other? don't worry, nothing sinister is happening in the background! this is just a fun video game! don't read into it! for the love of god, DON'T REĄ̴͕͈͓̮̘̘͌̆̇͗̕̕̚D̷̡͚̰̤̱̝̰̣͙̼̙͍̬̻̈́́͛́͝͠͝ ̸̮̭̙̳̯͍̤̣͎̖̺̊̌̔̄̇̉̽̀͐͘I̶̢̛̻̦̙͚͔̻͖͙̞̺͖͑̇̈́̌̾̑͌͝N̶̢̛͙̭̫͆͆̽̑̈́̇̎͛͛̔T̴̨̨̡̰̘̮̺̝̠̬̼̗̬̝̜̼̒̋̿̔͐O̵̢̻̟̮̩̘̖̙̖͍̒̅͑́̎̏̍ͅ ̶̨̙̱̒͐̽̐̆͂̎̏̂̍̂͑̚͝��̣̙͔͔̫̰̲͎̣̘̹̭̰I̷̢̡̧̛͙̤̠̦̖̩͂̆̈́̔͊̽͒͐̃̽͑͗͘T̵̡̨̪͕̘̲͔̮́̚͝!!̶̡̧̧̟̮̜̻͔͓̜̩̟͖̼͓͕̑͛͌̀̃̐̊̑͗̋̅̀́̔̓́͂!"

But yeah, there's a whole-ass actual sequel going on here, except the veneer you're trying to decipher the truth of is goofy romcom nonsense instead of super sugoi battle anime nonsense. It's doing a lot of sneaky stuff, and I'm pretty sure I've twigged to a couple of the big twists already, which fills so many of these scenes with delicious dramatic irony.

I haven't finished it yet, though, mainly because when I have the wherewithal for visual novels lately, I've been working through...

The Sekimeiya: Spun Glass

I mentioned I'd started on this last year, and I've now sunk over 60 hours into it and have finally managed to finish chapter one.

This VN is long, and it is dense. It's an ontological mystery type thing about people trapped in a facility where Weird Time Shit is happening... and fuck almighty they are doing everything but explaining how the Weird Time Shit works. There's a magic egg that works as a time machine, but how exactly its time travel powers work, mechanically, is the central mystery of the story. And the game just bombards you with incident after incident of weirdass time travel and teleporting going on, each more impossible than the last, and you're supposed to, like... grope around blind-men-and-the-elephant-style, using all these weird incidents as clues to how the time travel has to work.

Except, clearly, at least one of the characters, probably multiple characters, already know how the time machine works and are hiding that fact, while actively attempting to misdirect and obscure what they're doing with the time machine to try and throw off other time travelers. So the actual whodunit mystery of who- uh, murdered some people, there's murders that occur- is this whole other layer of complication where you can't exactly trust that any given instance of time machine behavior isn't some elaborate ruse.

So this is, obviously, catnip for me.

But it's taking fucking forever- I can't just read this thing and absorb it- I have to stop every five minutes and pace around the room and lay down in the dark and focus on time travel logistics for half an hour. SO MUCH insane shit happens! Like nonstop! And every time someone suggests a plan for testing or investigating the latest insane shit, that becomes the staging ground for new insane shit! It's so, so fucking complicated, and every new piece of evidence comes with a dozen caveats and additional mysteries! It's fully bonkers and it's eating my brain.

As long as it's been taking me to work through this... I feel like the game could benefit a bit from being a little slower-paced, giving the cast some room to do things other than dig themselves deeper into impossible time travel logistics from time to time. Some of this stuff needs time to settle! It's exhausting. Static and unexpressive character portraits and kinda flat dialogue writing make it all the more difficult to focus and take in what's happening, and honestly the VN format makes it kind of harder to consume. It'd be a lot easier to follow along with the logistics if, like, the game was in 3D and we could look around and see how people were moving.

Still, I'm gonna keep at this one. It's got its hooks in me and won't let go, and I'm really impressed by how meticulously it manages to lay out its stable time loops without giving the game away for this long. Wild stuff.

-

Alright, that's it! That's everything I played in 2023. I still want to go on an in-depth mega-rant about how furious I am at all the stupid little things in Horizon Forbidden West, but that's for later. For now... onward to 2024!

[1] - [2] - [3] - 4

#game rec #the sekimeiya #pokemon infinity #fire emblem vision quest #fate/hollow ataraxia #not gonna tag the other two for reasons