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rex101111 · 2 years

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Right! I played and finished Bayonetta 3 yesterday, got to the final stage and thought “eh ill finish it in the morning” but then I just couldn’t help myself and so I blitzed through it and...well, I got some thoughts.

Before that though: I DO recommend this game, it is a TON of fun in the gameplay, the music is great, the set pieces are really cool, the gimmick stages are few and far between and actually fun, and Jennifer Hale does a really good job as the new voice of Bayo after that whole...drama.

Not any explicit spoilers under the cut, but I do allude to things that happen in the story so yeah read with caution:

But the story is a fucking mess, not nearly as bad as some people have made it out to be (i’ve heard the phrase “character assassination” being thrown around and woah no dude easy there) but...yeah no if you’ve seen people angry and upset over the ending of this game, I could absolutely sympathize with them...were I more connected to this franchise.

Which I’m not, I like Bayonetta as a character and the world is fun, but the stories in these games have always been a bowl of expired cat food, the saving grace was that the games seemed to be aware of it and regularly made fun of themselves in an endearing manner.

They committed to the bit.

Bayonetta 3 does not.

Bayonetta 3 has a story about multiverse destruction and changing fate, and it makes the frankly bone headed mistake of thinking that Bayonetta of all characters, would actually take it seriously. The Bayonetta series is a silly, campy good time, tragic things happen sure, but the characters are too head strong and confident to just lay down and accept it, they spit in the face of drama and tension and tragedy because those things don’t matter to this series.

The heart and soul of Bayonetta is that you and Bayonetta are here to have fun, to stick your tongue out at huge, monstrous creatures with plans of celestial proportions and then make them look like fools. Bayonetta 3 makes those villains too strong, makes them take too many victories, which doesn’t make you want to beat them, it just feels like playing pretend with a kid and they suddenly put up their Everything Proof Shield and that just spoils the fucking fun.

Multiple times you win a boss fight, you smirk and think “hell yeah I beat them! that was awesome” and then the villain pops out of the ground, your boot print still embedded in his stupid cloudy face, and goes “NUH UH ACTUALLY I WIN BECAUSE YOU DIDN’T PAY ATTENTION NYEH” and it just got so, so fucking tiresome.

Oh! And Viola! I like Viola, I do! Her design is fun her scenes are fun she’s fun to play with (though her parry could use a few extra frames, an equivalent to bat within maybe?) and I think she fits right in with the cast. She’s kinda a reverse Bayonetta, someone who tries to be series and cool but keeps falling flat on her face. It’s endearing, I like Viola. If she shows up in future games I wouldn’t complain about getting to play as her again.

But, again, Bayonetta 3 gives her too much importance, makes her out to be more integral to the meat of the game than she honestly deserves or has earned quite just yet.

We’ve been here before, with Nero in DMC4, but that game had a more confident grasp of how to treat the story and characters. Nero had just as many levels as Dante, you play the entire first half of the game with Nero. You get used to the new way of playing the game with Nero and you get attached to the cocky little punk.

Viola has, exactly, one level for every two Bayonetta has. Counting the prolog she has less than half the levels for you to get to know her and play as her. The gameplay doesn’t make her out as important, she’s a side story bit, a bit of variance with less power and a different witch time mechanic to keep the variety up during the game.

But the story treats her with way too much weight. At the end of the game, we’re supposed to believe that she’s on the same level as Cereza, that she’s earned a place as a main character, as the main character, for the rest of the franchise.

And she absolutely fucking didn’t. Like I said, she spends the whole game trying to be cool, trying to be awesome, and falling flat on her face every time. And I mean every time, from the first cutscene to the final boss Viola gets her shit pushed in 24/7 while Bayo gets to do all the cool shit (well, when she isn’t being unfairly beaten up by the boss she just fucking beat but let’s not get stuck on that), and she doesn't really get the chance to grow into a more competent fighter as the game goes on.

If she had more levels, I personally would have been 100% fine with them reusing levels in reverse for her, she would have had more time to actually feel like she’s growing into her own, become better, be stronger, if this was supposed to be her story, it certainly didn’t fucking feel like it.

Ah. Also. Luka.

Again, no explicit spoilers, but apparently someone at Platinum decided that the dude who had minimal story significance in the first game, and zero in the second, should be the most important mother fucker in this one.

And that just does not figure for me. Not one bit.

Luka is, to me, on the same level as Enzo. He’s a dude that shows up every so often in between levels so he can make the player laugh by trying look and act cool and failing, a real dime store Dante. I like Luka, and I like him because that’s how he’s been and that’s where he works, as a feckless loser who tries his best to help Bayo while she shakes her head fondly, like you would at a clumsy puppy, and go on her way.

Everything in this game that doesn’t work, doesn’t work for the same reason, they suddenly took this super silly game series and decided to take it seriously, but in an incomplete way.

You know why DMC5 worked? Why that game could take it self more seriously, give it’s characters more dimensions and give them growth? Because it had focus.

Boiling it down, DMC5′s story stakes are entirely personal. Its a story about family, about Dante and Vergil and Nero. Sure there’s a huge planet eating demon tree but it serves as the backdrop for a personal story about a broken family mending their bonds.

It zeroes on the main three, and gives them time to emote and grow and just be, they can still be silly and goofy and Wacky Woohoo Pizza Guy and all that stuff, but they can also take a second to just...stop, stop and take in what’s going on, and what their feeling.

They don’t get smacked around by a suddenly powerful villain to force a moment of weakness (more than once, anyway), they simply know when to stop with the bit for a minute and express themselves.

DMC5 also had the advantage of its series already diving into some pretty dramatic subjects with DMC3. This series has always been about family through the lenses of demon slaying adventures, so DMC5 had something to bring to a head...a climax if you will.

Bayonetta 3 doesn’t have that, because the Bayonetta series never really had a central theme so much as it had a central vibe, and that vibe is fun. You are here to have fun, sure there’s plots of celestial and infernal conflict and hideous monsters, but the main character is making cheesy jokes and dancing and laughing and overall treating all of this like a shopping holiday, so the prevailing attitude, the aesthetic, the vibe is fun.

I had fun with Bayo3, I’m still having fun with Bayo3, I want to stop writing and go back to play it some more. But every now and again the game sits me down for a soap opera I didn’t ask for and that it fails to make me care about and that’s when the fun stops for me for a while.

Say what you will about Bayo1 and 2, about messy gimmick stages and tricky platforming and obtuse puzzles, but those games never, ever stop having and feeling fun. They commit to the fucking bit.

Bayonetta 3 does not.

I can only hope that Bayo4, if it ever happens, learns from this, and we can all put this messy fucking nonsense behind us.

#Bayonetta #Bayonetta 3 #review #i guess???#really just me rambling for a bit about this game #tldr story sucks but not THAT much but the gameplay still slaps #lower your expectations for this story believe me its not worth the blood pressure some people are exhibiting

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bloomingbluebell · 1 month

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20 seconds is not enough time for my AuDHD brain to ramble!!!! aaaaa!!!!!!!!!!

#i hate this presentation format so much sobs #GIVE ME NORMAL POWERPOINT!!!!!!!!!!#it doesnt even switch at exactly 20 seconds i need to check that out #because im using the timer in presenter mode to know how much time i have until the slide changes #and everytime im like NOW MOVING ON-#its too much time to get my speaker notes out but not enough time to ramble #LET ME RAMBLE!!!!!!!!!!#LET ME SPILL TEA ON HOW THE ANTI-AGING INDUSTRY SUCKS ASS AND IS JUST CONTRIBUTING TO AGEIST RHETORIC AROUND #OLDER PEOPLE'S APPEARANCES!!!!!!!!#AAAAAAAAAAAA #(for context this is about an assignment that i've been fighting with for a month now)#(for my health and aging course)#(fortunately this is the last class for the semester and then i have finals starting on monday)#(tuesday technically. but monday is day 1 of finals week)#(i just don't have anything on monday other than reviewing organic chem)#right. the format for the presentation is 20 slides and 20 seconds per slide #so its just enough time to say my thing and then move on #and my format is like. typical powerpoint format.

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koqabear · 6 months

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Hii, I sent a super long ask review of only you darling earlier this year- just wondering if you got it or if tumblr ate it 🥺

HIII omg… i did some serious digging through my inbox, and from what i see, i only have one review that’s off anon that i still need to respond to…! i might have skipped over it when i was scrolling tho… do you remember maybe around when you sent it? i’ll try look again omg 😭😭

#this actually just forced me to look through my inbox and realize how many asks i forgot to answer oh my god 😭😭#I FEEL SO BAD IM SOOOO SORRYYYY #I HAVE SO MANY WPAG ONES I NEVER GOT TO WTF #I PROMISE ILL DEDICATE TIME TO RESPOND TO REVIEWS #BC ITS GENUINELY MY FAVORITE THING EVER 💔#if tumblr ate it i’m srsly sorry it sucks when that happens #i love hearing ur guys’ thoughts :(((#rambles #koqabear asks

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caruliaa · 7 months

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this is like. it feels insane to do and i feel like i might just do it for a bit of a break but like. i kinda wanna change my blog theme and url and stuff to be hatchetfeild themed. im still into cs ofc but npmd has meant iv felt myself rly getting back into tht stuff, with finally watching nightmare time and everything and idk. i feel like i associate this current like. aesthetic and phase of my tumblr is smth i associate with a phase in my life when i had someone be a part of it and now they dont want me anymore or ig. its a bit self pitying to say that but they still yk. arent in my life anymore and its hard to not feel a bit sad with how my blog is rn with how much i associate stuff like this with them. idk maybe not my url im very proud of being tuser caruliaa but i think it wld be good for my pfo and blog aesthetic yk. ill change them back to cs eventually (and i also know im not tht active in rly any fandom on here anymore but i do wanna try to be a little esp in terms of like. connecting and talking with others) but i think it cld be a good change. or even like a cs theme thts different yk idk . but cs while smth i loved before and can love after them its also smth i shared with them a lot so i think focusing on smth tht i didnt rly share with them as much at least for a little bit wld be good for me yk while also reclaiming tht interest we did share ofc

#ya idk. also shld go url shopping for a cool hatchetfield one. ik all the miss holloway options r taken tho esp since #okay actually idk if we know her first name yet im part way thru yellow jacket rn but im assuming we dont have one for her #but tht sucks bc i literally love her smm shes the best im so happy abt apparently the next hatchetfield show #is gonna be abt her. i def also wanna start like financially supportive team starkid a bit more with their future projects #like ik they seem like a big groupto us but they rly arent esp comapred to like broadway nd they make like rly quality muscials #tht have proshots avalible for FREE on yt which most big broadway shows dont even have proshots you can pay to watch #theyre obvs not infallible lol but now tht i have like. my own bank account i wanna do things like but the live tickets #for nightmare time 3 and join the kickstarter fr their next show yk. idk thats soo off topic i think i went on tht rant bc the idea tht #they wldnt be able to make a miss holloway musical made me so upset tht im like i need to make sure they can asap #speaking of making sure ppl on yt can make the projects u want them to. go sub to quintion reviews #ik its of topic but if he gets 1mill hell make vids on drake and joash and zoey 101 and like. i wanna see those yk !!!!!#so do it ik a decent amnt of you watch his vid and thought u wehre subbed but arent this is the 5 our victorious yt essay website #anyway sooo of topic i just suddenly remembered tht. the real real point is tht nightmare time is so good #nd tht i wanna make a bit of a fresh start post a heart breaking friend breakup but theyre like. equeally the point honestly #flappy rambles

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pickles4nickles · 5 months

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Pickles Played Persona 5 Tactica and Has Some Words

I finally finished Tactica and its DLC sans some challenge stuff and I do wanna do some cleanup, but I thought I'd write a review for it.

It's long (like, 3k words long) and there's spoilers and overall... it's an Okay(tm) game, but... here, just lemme talk about it a bunch:

Alright, I'm not gonna mince words.

Persona 5 Tactica is not a game I can reccomend to anyone.

But is it a bad game?

Well, no.

But I have no idea who it's for.

Maybe it's for people who want more of the P5 characters? Not exactly? Both stories' focal points are on new characters and the Phantom Thieves just kinda happen to be there. There are some nice interactions, but this isn't a story about the PTs like Strikers.

Is it for people who like tactics but aren't really into P5? Well... it might be the other way around, actually? It's an okay tactics game with persona elements, but both parts of that are watered down when compared to base game persona and other tactics games like XCOM.

With that being said, lemme just ramble about what I thought about the story and gameplay.

THE STORY

The best way I can sum up my feelings about Tactica are "the story was told well, but I'm not sure if I liked it." This is a game that's less about the Phantom Thieves and more about Toshiro and Erina and focuses around the internal conflict of rebellion versus self-preservation.

Toshiro is probably why I'm neutral towards the game At Best. Erina grew on me but Toshiro...

Ehh.

At the beginning of the game, he's a big wimp and he's constantly telling the PTs and Erina that they have to be careful. From a theming standpoint, Toshiro's behavior makes perfect sense.

But from the petty bitch inside of me, this is infuriating because not only do YOU know that this is the Phantom Thieves that have taken down Shido (and also Yaldaboth), but TOSHIRO knows it as well and he's being Like This.

Like, he kinda sucks in the beginning and does so for the first two acts, understandably, but by the third act, when The Big Persona Moments happen, my opinion of him just kinda stayed the same. They swayed in a different direction, but... still on the negative side of the spectrum.

The reveal of Erina as Toshiro's Persona... makes sense. She's Toshiro's spirit(?) of rebellion and is based off of his classmate that once inspired him to stand up for himself and others.

Did I like this revelation?

Hell no, I was punching my thigh and screaming in voice call "No fucking way, Toshiro's so lame, though" as loud as I could without upsetting my parents in the other rooms.

From this point on, Toshiro now has the resolve to do what's right, even if it's scary... but he comes off as a little too strong in my opinion. I kinda have the same feelings about Zenkichi once he gets his persona in Strikers. In the beginning they feel like a new character meant to balance out the insanity that is how the metaverse is, but once they get their persona, they're full on inundated in the anime stand battles and they're a little too extra about it.

Having two full acts of "hey guys maybe we shouldn't help the hat people out of hat people slavery," pivoting into "WITNESS OUR POWER AS ONE" has the same vibes as a relative who's not really an asshole, but one that you've been trying to convince for years that economic inflation is the reason why our generation can't live comfortably, and once they finally understand, they come off a little bit too strong and righteous about it that you're not sure they're genuine or if this is a "he's a little confused, but he's got the spirit" situation.

And then god happens.

In persona games, I usually don't fully understand how or why the god-being is doing all of this, but I especially can't wrap my head around how they work in Tactica. It's mostly because Toshiro's metaverse is kind of a Silent Hill kinda deal where it's a mental torture labyrinth for him personally, as opposed to Mementos, which is naturally the collective unconscious, connecting everyone's minds and hearts together.

The jump from "I'm going to bully this one guy in particular" to "now EVERYONE will be as lame as Toshiro" is lost on me. Maybe politics?

It's... it's fine, there's no reason to lose sleep over it.

The ending of the story is nice and reasonable, though. It sorta redeems Toshiro for me. It's one thing to yell in your own metaverse hellscape how you're going to do the right thing, but once he's back in the real world, he actually stands up to his dad and fiancé and steps down from his political position to build it back up from scratch, but better.

And, yeah! I respect that.

That being said, though, the game isn't devoid of new Phantom Thief interactions. There's some good ones like Futaba "I don't kinkshame" Sakura, casually bi Joker as seen in that one "who would you marry" bit, and a guys only sidequest in which they think they're looking for Toshiro's porn stash (yeah, I know) (it's not). I wouldn't say it's crumbs, but you're not getting the whole loaf that you'd get from, say, Mementos Mission or Strikers.

The story also does this thing where the Phantom Thieves can relate with Toshiro's issues, but something about it feels... off.

Toshiro's in an arranged marriage with Marie for political reasons! Just like Haru! His fiancé sees him as a pushover! Kinda like Makoto! His mom died when he was young and he blames himself for it! Wow, Yusuke and DEFINITELY Futaba can relate to that!! Eri, the real person that Erina is based on, had to transfer schools because she was accused of a crime! Gee, that SURE sounds familiar-

Part of me thinks I'm being a little too unfair on the game for creating parallels like this because Strikers also kinda did this. But in Strikers, the PTs being able to connect with the jail rulers was integral to the plot. Here, it's just kind of a wink wink nudge nudge kinda thing.

And my knee-jerk reaction to that is a small "I get it, shut uuuup."

Again, and overall because I think that rounds out what I have to say about the story, P5 Tactica's main story isn't bad. It's told well, but I'm not necessarily the biggest fan of it.

GAMEPLAY

I've only played Strikers and I don't think I've played a true tactics game, so I don't know how much weight my opinions hold.

So um.

I dunno, the gameplay was fine.

The pacing is weird because it's kind of a visual novel first, and a tactics game in-between, but I got used to that after a bit.

It's a really simple tactics game and... yeah things don't get too complex outside of sometimes there are buttons that'll open doors or raise and lower platforms, sometimes height matters, but the mechanics don't get too crazy outside of certain boss battles.

The game revolves around downing enemies to get Once More's so you can either encase the enemy in a triangle formed by your units to initiate an All-out Attack or you can chain together Once More's to extend your unit's range and move them across the map. This mechanic took a bit for me to understand fully, but I never really got tired of doing it.

Boss battles were kind of hit or miss in this game. The fights with Toshiro's Dad and Salmael I enjoyed as they were kinda formatted as "here's a weird stage, go figure out what to do." However, Marie and *checks notes* "the scary Eri Natsuhara that Shadow Toshiro made" I didn't care for as much since they changed the game from "your decisions on where to move your units are key for this" to "you need to do exactly as we say." Which always kinda sucks, y'know?

Character selection is also kind of a weird thing in this, too. It doesn't seem like it matters who you take with you into missions, which... feels weird to me considering past Persona games. The elements have all been kinda smooshed down into less of a weakness thing, but just a special move that can hinder movement, do damage over time, or change enemy placement entirely, but which type of special you bring along doesn't seem to be as crucial as other Persona games. Each character has a slightly different attack, gun spread, and movement limit, but it wasn't anything drastic that I noticed apart from Haru (she is very slow but apparently hits like a truck) and possibly Morgana (his attack was very weak for me, but I'm not sure if that's because I didn't have him kitted out properly or that's intended).

I played the game almost entirely with Joker and Ann, while swapping between Erina and Ryuji for the last slot and I didn't run into any problems.

The last stretch of the game is... a strange one gameplay wise. Toshiro becomes a party member except... he's Different(tm). He doesn't get a skill tree, is a permanent fourth party member, and can initiate All-Out Attacks, but isn't a part of the triangle that forms it. He does have a gun, but it's in the form of a 0SP attack that Ernesto/Erina can use... that also happens to ignore walls entirely. And he also gets Almighty attacks, which kinda just do big number damage for way more SP.

It's hard to say if the game did a good job scaling the level difficulties to incorporate a fourth party member as staying on top of your persona fusing, weapons, and the skill tree can kind of make the game a breeze. I also played on the normal difficulty, so maybe in harder difficulties, Toshiro becomes more of a necessity than a party member that breaks the game.

My only big gripe with the game is just... the weirdness of the undo button. I don't know how it is in regular tactics games, but the undo in this game doesn't work on a "clear the last action this unit did" basis, but on a turn basis. If you happen to screw up on turn one, unit one, you have to back out COMPLETELY to the mission start screen, which is hella annoying especially if you're playing on the Switch because of the load times.

"But Pickles, what about the DLC? Surely you have just as many thoughts about it?"

Y'know?

I actually don't.

I liked Repaint Your Heart a lot. Again, it's less a story about the Royal Trio and more about Guernica, but it's closer to the traditional Persona 5 story format where they're changing someone's heart. This story also had much higher emotional... fidelity? I guess you could put it?

Guernica needed to remember her main inspirations for creating art - being abandoned and homeless and her big sister dying because of it and she embraces that anger against society into art that inspires hope in people less fortunate. While being groomed into a political pawn from basically birth and then, later in life, being thrown into your own mental hellscape sucks, in terms of emotional weight, Toshiro's story feels like a feather compared to Guernica's.

Also her design is just cool and the paint aesthetic is definitely more my speed.

In terms of Royal Trio content, I think this was the best case scenario we could expect from Atlus.

Emphasis on "from Atlus."

Yeah, we didn't get Black Mask Akechi, but there are MORE THAN ENOUGH moments where he lets the facade slip. His default spell is Megidola, but his skill tree lets him have both Light AND Dark spells. He'll cuss at you if you hit an enemy into him. I don't know what he's doing viscerally screaming half the time he summons Robin Hood.

Sumi. Is also there.

She is fine.

Guernica's connection to the thieves is also written in the same way as Toshiro is, in that it's a little shoehorned in and doesn't add to the story beyond that. After finding out that Luca is Guernica's sister that died, Sumi definitely feels motivated and inspired to help her out, but Akechi also being an abandoned child, scorned by society, and angry at the world because of it is never touched upon. This is probably for spoiler reasons, but... still.

Because this is a story that takes place during Sae's Palace in the main game, they all have to have amnesia about it in the end. Which, understandable, and at least no one in the trio had extensive character development but...

*clenches fist*

Man,

Having tackled this after the main game, I enjoyed the gameplay a lot! It's basically P5 Tactica but with Splatoon mixed in. When a unit is on a tile painted the opposite color for them, they can be instantly knocked down and combo'd on, which adds a whole extra layer of complexity to the game. I wish there were a few more levels to play, but the length of the DLC never overstays its welcome.

Hokay.

If you made it this far, congrats! You reached the end. And my tl;dr section.

I think that's just about it on what I cohesively have to say about P5 Tactica. This isn't a terrible game by any means, but I don't know if the audience it's intended for actually exists. It has a just okay story and just okay mechanics, but the DLC has a more than okay story and the core mechanics are given a fresh coat of paint (yeah, boo, I know) that makes the game more interesting. I would not go paying $80 USD to experience the DLC alone, though.

Thank you for reading my review if you made it all the way to the end! P5 stuff (well, mostly Akeshu) has been my muse these past few years and playing a game that was "just okay but why did they..." got into my brain real bad, so I wanted to write some stuff out.

I'll close this out with some bullet points of thoughts that I couldn't really cohesively fit into my review:

I really really liked how they got little costumes for the old timey Japan kingdom and I was hoping we'd get more of that and every kingdom was based on a new theme... but we only got three kingdoms and the last one before "Smithy's Forge from Super Mario RPG" was............ School.

SATANAEL'S BACK IN TIME FOR CHRISTMAS (BUT ONLY POST-GAME)

Erina also being Ernesto thing is mostly weird to me because she's still her own entity but also not???? The possible genderfluid connotations are cool though.

There's a quest where Haru asks Yusuke how to be fast. Yusuke tells her she has to "Become a Black Hole." I do not know what this means.

After the quest, Haru says that even though the axe slows her down, she's very partial to it as her father didn't like her chopping wood as a kid, but she'd sneak out and do it anyway. She later found out that her dad knew she was doing this, but decided not to scold her for it. She took this as a sign of kindness from her father and that's why the axe is so special to her. I do not know what this means as Haru's father was a horrible capitalist who basically tried to marry her off in pursuit of power.

The weapon designs in this game are generally kind of silly, but I appreciate that they exist in the game. There's a chompy gun with teeth that Joker gets and I really like it :)

God the Lyn tracks from the DLC FUCK

...what

Futaba says "sus" at one point in the end

#persona 5 tactica #p5t #Y'ALL ASKED FOR THE HOT TEA #THIS IS AS REASONABLY SCALDING I COULD MAKE IT #oh fug I almost forgot #thank you to all the friendos who looked through this for me before I posted it!!

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chrysalis-the-butterfly · 3 months

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People who have been following me since 2022 will know that I have a bad habit of becoming obsessed with things I haven't actually watched. The Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers film became my new special interest in 2022, but I didn't watch it in full until 2023, when I finally got Disney+.

Well, it's happening again.

Right now, I'm mildly obsessed with Hazbin Hotel.

Now, I haven't seen none of it. I've watched the pilot on YouTube, and I've watched the first episode of the Prime Video series (which is freely available on YouTube). I don't have Prime Video, so I haven't seen the rest of it.

But I have been listening to the songs, browsing Tumblr for talking points, and watching scattered clips and reviews and essays on YouTube - which is basically what I was doing with Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers.

I'm a Christian (awkward!), and it initially bothered me that the show didn't mention God or Jesus at all. Not that I'd have wanted them to poke fun at God or Jesus ... but I'd assumed the series was meant to be a satire of Christianity, pointing out how much it sucks that its believers can be so judgmental and unforgiving when the faith is supposed to be about love and forgiveness. So I was quite surprised by the reveal that the angels don't actually know what gets you into Heaven. What, you don't even have the Ten Commandments? You don't have any rules that you impose? You can't satirise Christianity if you don't understand what you're satirising!

But upon reflection, I guess Hazbin Hotel is meant to be seen more as a cautionary tale about hypocrisy and second chances and redemption - about those concepts in general, rather than how they're (mis)used specifically by Christians. It's about how the people preemptively labelled "bad" who do bad things are clearly proving they're bad, while the people labelled "good" who do bad things are defended and justified because there must have been a good reason for what they did. Even if a good reason isn't apparent. And the settings of Heaven and Hell are just being used as vehicles for that social commentary.

It seems as though Hazbin Hotel is not really about Heaven and Hell, it's about life on Earth. But there are still some things that are interesting to think about from a theological viewpoint.

To close this slightly rambling post, here are some even more scattered thoughts, which may evolve if I actually get to watch the full thing:

EMILY IS PRECIOUS AND MUST BE PROTECTED!

"You Didn't Know" is a banger!

As is "Poison". Kind of reminds me of "All You Wanna Do" from Six: The Musical - in that it's a bop, but the lyrics are dark because they're about sexual abuse.

I really enjoy the "I'm a Disney Princess in a Hellish landscape" thing that Charlie's got going on.

EMILY IS PRECIOUS AND MUST BE PROTECTED!

I hope we get to see more of Emily and more of Heaven in the second season.

I wasn't sure about Vaggie at first, but she's grown on me.

My favourite characters are Charlie, Vaggie, Emily and Angel Dust. I refer to them as Charlie's Angels.

EMILY IS PRECIOUS AND MUST BE PROTECTED!

After a year of basically binge-watching loads of kids' cartoons on Disney+, it's still feels jarring to watch a cartoon where people say the F-word a lot.

Wait, Angel Dust has a twin sister? Molly? And she might be in Heaven? Is that girl with four legs we see in Heaven supposed to be Molly, or is she just a random background character? Why is she in Heaven when Angel Dust isn't? Are they going to be reunited? Is Molly friends with Emily?

EMILY IS PRECIOUS AND MUST BE PROTECTED!

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gontagokuhara · 3 months

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teary rambling inbound

christ alive its not often i reckon with the fact that jump (the first fic of my “modern” writing era) is approaching seven (7!!!!!) years old. when i do think about it it’s often in a nostalgic way or a half-proud, half-self-deprecating way where i’m like “this was my peak when i was 17, god DAMN have i improved” because as much love as i hold for it and what it ended up as, it’s still nowhere near perfect! there’s so much i would do differently with my slightly more developed brain!!

but i get comments still on a more or less weekly basis almost 7 years after publishing, over 6 years since i last touched it. little ‘i just read this in one sitting!’ and ‘this brought me back into enjoying deh again’ and ‘i usually get bored during long fics but i wanted to finish this!’ that i have saved in their own special portion of my inbox specifically for jump comments because they all make my day every single time.

and then sometimes i get comments like these, all these years later, and i pump the breaks and just think.

unless i’m particularly out of touch this is like. the type of comments fic writers dream of. thoughtful, personal, crafted with a level of care that highlights how genuinely an author (even of just ‘silly’ musical fanfic) can move a person.

someone who never writes reviews was compelled to detail how deeply they’ve been impacted by *my* writing. something i crafted as a labor of love while i was still a teenager struggling through that same shit i was writing about had enough of a positive effect on someone that it spurred them to put as much into writing themselves, unsure if i’d ever even see it. this person walked away from something i created with the exact takeaways i hoped they would, and i very sincerely hope that whatever realizations this person had while reading, they take them and make their lives better because there’s nothing more i could possibly ask for.

jump, as much as a bit of an ugly duckling i think of it as sometimes, is like…a net good on the world. so many of my current best friends i met because i wrote jump. more than one person has embraced recovery and getting better and stepping into the sun (hah!), and that’s just people who have told me that — some of the mostly deeply influential fics in my life are ones i’ve never commented on myself. more people than i can ever hope to comprehend have had their day, week, month, life outlook altered in a positive way by something i created — by me.

in a period of life (not just my own, but more broadly speaking How Life Is in the present day, 2024) where things are pretty shitty and i’m agonizing more than ever over feeling useless and impactless and like i’ll never create anything of true value. sometimes i wake up to comments like these, and i slow my roll, and i can…genuinely appreciate that at the very least, despite everything else sucking pretty bad, people have made their own happiness through something i’ve created. i’ve made something of value, and even if i never know the impacts of that…those people are out there. if i could do it at 17 years, and still hear the positive influence of doing so 7 years later, i can do it again. i want to do it again. writing is making my happiness, and knowing that that could be true of other people makes it a happiness worth pursuing.

all of that to say: thank you, if you’ve ever read my silly stories before. if they’ve done something positive in your life, even for just a second, that means more to me than anything. and especially thank you to my more vocal readers because quite literally it’s people like the above comment, and people who i’m sure are reading this and know exactly who they are, who make me love writing as much as i do and make me want to do it forever, no matter the capacity.

i suppose i should wrap up now before my weepiness makes everyones tl all damp. thank you again, persephonescurse (even if you’ll never see this). your comment now also forever lives in the original jump discord server from 2017, so i won’t be forgetting it anytime soon. thank you.

#jump #writing #un ange #i think i went this whole post without deflecting my feelings with a joke. sappiness abound i apologize #but ive been just reading and sitting on this comment for like an hour now and i couldnt bear to leave it alone without saying something #back to regularly scheduled clownery i suppose. and march 1: pointy objects lockdown time!

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joyce-stick · 5 months

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Here's my review of Bang Dream! It'sMyGO!!!!! on Letterboxd which incidentally is the only review of it on Letterboxd at this moment and I feel unreasonably braggadocios about having been the first one to leave a review for this particular show on that particular website

Okay so you should read that now but also I kinda want to mention a few specific things that really fucking got me in the show.

Scroll away if you don't want to spoil yourself or whatever.

First of all-ly. The live performances were really good. They surprised me a lot in that they actually very convincingly sold these girls as inexperienced amateurs who don't know how to work together.

When watching it, I was expecting the girls' first live performance to go like, y'know, big perfect hyper-well coreographed CGI anime girl song performance, like is normal in this genre generally.

Instead, THIS happens:

At this, I literally laugh-cried so hard so much. Like, god damn, the major anime music girls franchise let its girls just suck at the music, like actually seriously for real, just suck. And then they bounce back and do perform properly of course and get into a groove with each other, and it's really cool and energetic and stuff but

ALSO IT SOUNDS WRONG.

Like, the sound mixing is done wrong, on purpose. The instruments overtake Tomori's voice just a bit too much to still get across that they have still prepared really badly for this and are kind of still doing this sort of badly and that makes it cool when they give a good performance anyway.

Anyway. Then there's the whole arc with Soyo and her being emotionally manipulative to try and get her and Tomori's old band back together. And she's genuinely toxic and acts like an angry ex-wife who can't accept that her ex-wife has divorced her

(I need them to hatefuck about it. I need a hatefuck doujin of them now.)

And I kind of love-hated Soyo this whole time for being so emotionally manipulative and seeming almost hell-bent on burning all the bridges she has left but well anyway the thing that got me later is after Tomori gets everyone back together with her song poem and they all cry it out

And she's like "why??? I was so terrible and I used you" but even still Tomori expresses that it doesn't matter and she still wants them all together and just

AND IT'S SOO AAAAHHHHH

And that got me just because. Just. Forgiveness is just a really powerful thing and it takes a lot to do it and it's hard but sometimes you need to forgive your friends when they hurt you for things to move forward better than before and more often than not that's a losing gamble but it's so worth it when it pans out and aaahhhhhhhh

Oh, yeah, and then there's the ending reveal that Sakiko has an abusive father.

We'll have to wait to see how that plays into the Ave Mujica anime but that also really got me. That was something

And also um

I liked the gay aquarium penguins

Okay so anyway um

I have nothing more of significance to say at this time.

There. There's media talk rant ramble for that.

So here's our links etc if you want to leave a tip for this one

patreon | ko-fi

#bang dream #bang dream it's mygo #reviews #mini rant #media analysis #(ish)#ramblings

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calicodreamer · 3 months

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Calico Reviews: Sun and Moon Show eps. 1-3

Welcome back to Calico rants about the Sun and Moon show to her tumblr page, because its to cringe to explain to people in real life.

We’re going to try to do at least three episodes a week, and then write down my notes so I can ramble about this to my Tumblr, become like, an actual content creator for the things that I like.

Does it count as spoilers for the show if its episodes 1-3? regardless, spoilers below

9:21 Montgomery Gator is the WORST Daycare ATTENDANT in VRCHAT

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They have a Funny little intro right now! It's Cringe, and I would like them to not.

I am looking forward to when they don’t. .

I had previously watched this episode during my trying to get all those juicy little lore bits by being picky and choosey with what I wanted to consume, and unluckily for me, there isn't a complete season one compilation for me to pick through

Moon, when we the audience are not looking through his perspective, hangs out in Vtuber form in the corner. We don’t see any of Sun's Vtuber model right now, but he does have one, so there's that.

Sun - upon the start of the video, is cleaning the day-care, Moon comes down to check on him. Sun is an upbeat happy guy, who is anxiously cleaning the day-care - this seems to be his only personality trait. Moon is snappy, uptight, and grumpy but overall quiet outside of when he is yelling, or being angry at Sun.

Sun has hired Monty the gator (Yes he’s here, no I don’t know why), for 1000$ dollars a second to look after the daycare for him for whatever reason. Why would they have this much money to afford to give it to Monty the gator?? Don’t ask me, they just do I guess. Moon hates Monty the Gator - this is a reasonable opinion of Monty the gator.

Moon has control of the bank account they have I guess.

Sun has to talk to Roxanne for whatever reason (Yes, Yes I do mean Roxanne wolf, No I don’t know why she’s here)

Monty sucks at his job - hence the title of the video. Monty is also an idiot, and happy music plays when he comes on screen, he also briefly thinks that Sun is a statue- this feels like Flanderization, even though this is an au, I hate that character choice, I wish they would not.

Sun seems to be slightly intense about cleaning, he has a whole organization schedule. Moon can only be grumpy, I assume this is because Sun didn’t talk to him about anything he was doing that day, but eeeeeeeeeeeeeh - Moon stop being a dick to your brother.

There’s implied to be kids running around while everything happens, which is also concerning.

Monty leaves because Moon hates him for whatever reason, I dunno why. He was sent to get snacks and then doesn’t show up for the rest of the episode. I’m also glad Monty is gone, Fuck I hate this character.

Sun shows up, upset that Monty has messed everything up, Moon is largely apathetic to the whole situation.

9:06 Sun and Moon MOVE to SPACE in VRCHAT

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We are still intro-ing, I would still like us to not be. I have to forcibly remind myself that this channel is meant for kids every time the intro comes on, and that If I watch like five episodes a day I can get through this in 2 months.

I am not going to watch five episodes a day

They (The people) told me to watch this episode, You really don’t have to. Nothing of major importance here, but there is funny nonsense happening.

Moon is starting a ponzi scheme I guess, or atleast is implied to have business deals with “Someone” or people? Idk between this and insisting how “Animatronic” they are I’m beginning to loose it.

Monty the gator is also here (For SOME reason), and he has a space station apartment building that he is using to actively kill people to get more money, they only reason Moon cares about it is because Sun spent 50,000,000 dollars on an apartment for Moon to live in, because he thinks Moon hates him (Poor baby), and wanted Moon to be able to have his own space.

Moon has to walk Sun through what sarcasm is a couple times. Sun you sweet precious baby. And remind him that No he doesn’t actually hate him, and would prefer to live with Sun

Moon goes to Monty to get the Money back

Monty doesn’t wanna give the money back

Moon threatens to expose him

Monty gives the money back.

Apparently Sun spent even more money on a tv sold to him by Monty

Oh boy howdy, I hope this character trait of Sun being gullible isn’t around long.

Other notes:

It's Directly stated that they have a bank account, and that Moon has enough money to buy himself a house for whatever reason? Why is he buying himself a house? I don’t know. Where did they get the bank account from? I don’t know. WHY DO THEY HAVE-

There's also apparently enough money on this account to afford a funky little space station apartment, and a house.

Moon invent things, why? Idk personality traits.

But they do have a good dynamic going or whatever, and the voice acting for Moon is pretty good

17:51 Sun and Moon Play AMONG US in VRCHAT

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THERE IS NO INTRO LETS GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Sun and Moon are playing among us, for some reason. With Some of the Funtime animatronics, Glamrock Chica, and Freddy - just regular old Freddy - he is here

Sun and Moon are canonically, Very Big boys, and have to crawl around the ship

This is just a Funny little episode, Nothing important lore wise happens here, but you do get more of Sun and Moons Dynamic.

Sun walks around being anxious the entire time, and everything is too short for him to move around properly. Which is a shame that no ones drawn this scene yet because I think that would be hilarious - them just knuckle walking on the ground because they’re both too tall.

“OMG YOU GUYS ARE CREEPILY WALKING EVERYWHERE!?!?”

“Bro, I am literally just trying to get around.”

Funtime Freddy has a stupid voice

also Funtime foxy what the fuck is up with your voice, I am literally begging you both not to show up again so I don’t have to hear you. I hate it.

Moon is so proud of himself for just doing anything - he could burn coffee and I'd still believe he was proud of himself

Moon has such a smug little voice and I’m 80% sure its all the deadpan tone he has when he’s not yelling. When he’s not being an edgy bastard he’s such a little goober. The dynamic between the two is very interesting, and I am HERE for it.

Notable: Moon is Willing to Kill Sun, and kill for Sun without a second thought, Sun is willing to lie for his brother. Even to his own detriment. Sun is afraid of Moon to some degree in the episode? I'm not sure how much of a joke this is.

I am most certainly reading into it

Moon stop being an edgy goober for like, five seconds, I swear. The deadpan voice even makes him even better. I love him

Sun stop being Anxious challenge “level impossible”

This episode is just silly little filler, Not much of note happens.

Everyone is rabid, except for Sun who is a very good boy. I cannot wait to see him change that

Final thoughts:

So Overall, In the first three episodes. My favourite character is definitely Moon, mostly because I like his voice better. Sun and Moon definitely have some issues in their relationship, especially since Moon is grumpy, and Sun is constantly going out of his way to try and appease him most of the time.

Anyhow, hopefully this makes my watching of the series easier.

Previous post?:

#calico speaks #tsams spoilers #tsams #the sun and moon show #tsams sun #tsams moon #tsams monty #I will ramble to my hearts content #The humour still isn't getting any better #God help me #but I need the dopamine #Youtube

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merge-conflict · 5 months

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year in review

2023 is on its way out, and it's been... a year. First full year that I've actually been active on social media (i.e. not just lurking), and first time in fandom.

My first fic of the year? when her edges soften – the longer I wrote for Valentine and the more her relationship with Johnny got weird and intimate and full of casual innuendo the more I needed to write something where they were reunited. Also my first ever experience writing smut and self-indulgently adding a whole fencing scene. Goddamn that was fun! Feels like it's older than a year.

My favorite fic of the year? thread-safe – I became engrossed with cyberpunk because of Jackie but I imprinted hard on Takemura after that traumatic heist mission and perhaps the rest is history. Valentine's story has had a lot of tinkering and reworking and it was the thing that got me back into writing, but the original story in my head was something bittersweet and angry and grieving, one night only no encores, parting badly– and I finally was able to capture that in thread-safe and it feels so good.

Most fun experiments?? There are several of these. When I got stuck and discouraged and tired of working on the longfic and plotting things out I ended up working out a "shenanigans au" (fleeting fits of reason) where I could put Johnny and Kerry and V (and Alt and Rogue it turns out) together and just have them interact without plot. Well the plot crept in, but writing some loosely connected 1-1.5k pieces focused on a single scene or idea with minimal polish was incredibly freeing. Then I recorded some of my own podfic! I wrote a chapter of thread-safe in second-person! I wrote imago and decided to incorporate pieces of it into my longfic. Playing around like this has really kept writing fun for me when I don't have the concentration to play the long game.

Additional musings and personal reflections under the cut:

2023 the year sucked ass. It has been god awful. Just the fucking worst! Cyberhanami was in February? March? I remember finishing up some of my prompts that week while I was in another state with friends who were out and about while I was in bed too nauseated and weak to move. Writing was the only thing keeping me from going insane. My health has been shoddy, I had to cancel a much anticipated two weeks of international travel, spent at least two week long periods this year with anxiety so intense it made me almost physically incapable of eating. I had an incredibly expensive panic attack, and the world... things have been better!

I find it difficult to be honest about that sort of thing– my primary instinct is Not To Talk About any of that shit, because well... it's personal! And I handle reassurance about as well as I handle compliments (awkwardly. half in panic. friendly self-deprecation). But it feels disingenuous to celebrate accomplishments without acknowledging the yawning abyss we all struggle with from time to time. I remain cynically optimistic, as always, and I'm seriously grateful for all the connections and shared art and braincells and excitable messages, especially from folks tolerating my tendency to ramble onto tangents and use an oddly formal tone. I don't know what I'm doing, but who does? It comes easier with practice. It has to, right?

See you cool cats in 2024. :3 😼

#cyberpunk 2077 #year in review #for auld lang syne #seriously though everyone who's ever interacted with me even briefly– I appreciate being a part of the community and connecting #it ain't perfect but it's ours y'know?#also as someone who's horribly time blind it is nice to look back on a year and have date and timestamps and posts #to prove that I was here and doing stuff and it wasn't just a weird blur #highly recommend :3

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reanimated-owl · 1 month

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What are you salty about?

((under a readmore bc i ended up rambling, sorry))

((idk;; i guess i'm mostly pissed about taxes rn. i just filed my returns and i owed the state like $159, which ended up being $162-ish because there was a bullshit $4 service fee...

also salty at the barometric pressure. its been swinging like crazy (as is expected for spring in my area) so I've been getting migraines basically every single day for the past week-ish. super fun when my MCAT is in like 2 weeks and I'm still trying to finish reviewing... the bonus? i do have meds to take for them. unfortunately rebound headaches (medication overuse headaches) exist. to minimize the chance of those, I can only take the meds 2-3 times per week. so i've been having to go without a lot of the time so that if I get one at work i can take something. super miserable :(

on that note, fuck the AAMC and fuck how vague the application cycles are. i thought i would be applying NEXT year bc i want (ideally) to start med school next fall. turns out, i need to apply THIS year. so i had to spend like an hour frantically sending emails to professors to hopefully get LORs from them (they agreed when i asked them before while i was still in college but i also havent seen them since i graduated which was. a year ago. so i'm trying to make sure they're still okay with it), plus double-checking my personal statement (idk if im still happy with it but its. Okay. i guess.) and praying I get a good score and don't have to retake... applications "open" in May but you can't submit until june... this shit's so hard to navigate esp bc i don't have doctors in my family who've gone through this and can help me, i've largely had to figure it out on my own and it SUCKS

#ooc #vent /#((i guess?#((im so tired. ive been stressing out all day and my hands hurt from typing and i have to go to bed soon bc i have work tomorrow #((just tired of this shit tbh #((oh and thanks for the inbox #((i rly do appreciate the asks <3 /gen

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mass-convergence · 3 months

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A collarary to the advice of "they'll read it if they want to and they won't if they don't" is - they need to find it. People not reading your work is not a mark against its' quality, it's simply evidence that people haven't found it. As a published author myself I get it, it sucks when noone reads your work. It feels that you have put something out into the world and that it is being ignored. But it is not being actively ignored, it is not being judged as poor quality. It simply hasn't been found. Courage and patience. Don't be scared to send links to reviewers or people in other circles.

Sincerely - thank you.

Long, somewhat disorganized, ramble

It is frustrating, and part of this is my (admittedly ADHD related, though trying to blame it solely on that isn’t really getting the full picture) need for instant gratification and complete lack of patience in anything. And the general insecurity that if it doesn’t get some kind of recognition, positive or otherwise, that I’m just showing my whole ass to the world and people are being too polite to mention it. I also have issues with emotional regulation so it literally feels like someone’s squeezing my heart whenever I get into this state.

And I’ll be honest: I’m frustrated with people who have said they’ll read it or check it out and then never do. And I don’t feel like keeping on poking them and asking them if they are. Because I’ve gotten the “I’m sorry I’ve just been so busy” explanation about a hundred times now (only slightly exaggerating).

And I don’t want to call them liars because I’m an adult with a day job and a mountain of responsibilities that I’m only somewhat keeping up with. There’s plenty of stuff I want to watch or consume that I don’t have mental bandwidth to handle. I’ve read the first paragraph of Gideon the Ninth and I want to read more I just haven’t gotten a chance. Which also is lending to mental health issues but we do not have the time to unpack that rn.

This is something I’m passionate about and pouring my heart into and not even getting the bare minimum of support from people who purportedly said they’re interested is not really a fun spot to be in. (And I know one or two of my friends have been reading and I love you guys). My mom said she was gonna read it which is slightly terrifying because she’s not into queer fantasy but she’s also like unabashedly supportive and has been trying to get me to publish my writing and sell my art for goddamn ages. I’m not on the level of Tolkien or Pratchett or Gaiman (Martin you stay the fuck out of this) and I’m not trying to be them either. But I think I’m like decent.

And I guess I took some of the advice when I was writing fanfic that “well people who aren’t interested won’t read it so don’t worry about posting cringe” and extrapolated it to original fic. Which isn’t a 1:1 - people legitimately do not give a shit about other’s OCs unless they’re given a reason to care.

Side note: Partially the reason that while I could advertise this (and probably should) as a story lead by queer protags, two of whom are POCs, that doesn’t really tell you anything about them. Aside from representation. Admittedly: I’m not too great at self promo because I feel like I’m hyping me and my story telling ability way too much. Which is a self fulfilling prophecy when I inevitably don’t get any bites.

It’s a rough situation all around and frankly demotivating. Part of the reason I just didn’t post on Thursday because I was just so damn tired of posting and having to deal with the pain over and over again. I have a huge buffer of words and chapters and I’m frankly having a hard time deciding if I should keep posting them. I mean my last chapter didn’t get any notes except for the one reblog … which was my own fucking reblog onto this blog.

And I think I’ve come a long way from like not disparaging my own shit. I love my writing. I love my art. I just hate sharing it and not getting the same level of excitement I feel to tell a story I want to tell.

#writing #writing problems #I really should start tagging my writing though that’s like the bare minimum #I just don’t want to clog up the tags (even though this isn’t like clogging fandom tags with hate on a ship or something)

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winters0689 · 6 months

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My Semi-Alan Wake 2 Review (featuring my crazy ramblings)

I’m having severe Alan Wake brain rot help me I just think about Alan and Zane and Scratch and Alice (ABSOLUTE GIRLBOSS) and Barry and Pat Maine and Rose (she’s delusional, just like me fr fr) and the Anderson brothers and THIS GAME I LOVE IT I NEED MORE!!!!

I feel bad for anyone who follows me for something else because let me tell you I’m going to be gushing about Alan Wake for A WHILE!!! I love Alan so much he’s my blorbo I want to squish him like a bug I want to give him a blanket I adore him!! He’s such an asshole and I love him.

I can’t wait for the DLC’s and New Game Plus I am going to play the FUCK out of it. I’ve completely abandoned playing any other games (poor Spider-Man 2 is just sitting there, waiting for me to continue) and I’ve been playing AW2 for hours on end. To me it’s such a good game. I love the characters and I’m emotionally attached to so many of them!

Saga my love my life I love her puns and how kind she is and how she cares so much about her daughter and Casey and how fucking badass she is and how powerful she is!

I adore Casey and I love the short film Yöton Yö and my gosh I adore Ahti! I feel so bad for Cynthia and she deserves better than Tom, speaking of Zane, pop off you absolute whore of a man. Scratch was just… he’s Scratch what more is there to say about him?

Gosh this game- I can’t elaborate on why I love it, it’s just so much to dive into, there is so much of it that I love.

Bright Falls is so different and also just how we remember it being! It has so many of the OG Cast (Rose, Pat, Cynthia, Anderson Bros) while also bringing in new characters (like Saga, Casey, Koskela Bros, Agent Estevez) and how Deerfest is still being celebrated. The townsfolk living there have really experienced it all.

Watery is such a cool place to explore. I love Coffee World and the atmosphere, like how the Ferris Wheel played music and how it made it sound so creepy I LOVE IT!! I love how big Coffee World feels and how abandoned it feels even though it currently isn’t. It gives Abandoned Amusement Park vibes and it’s not even abandoned I love it!

My two favorite locations are the Valhalla Nursing Home and The Oceanview Hotel. Valhalla has just a haunting vibe with it being a nursing home, and the basement section fills me with so much dread due to the environment. The Oceanview Hotel seems so grand and like a maze that I often get lost in that section. It seems so grand, especially considering we only go to three floors at most.

The map system is also cool, in my opinion, I like how you are able to see if any Collectibles are nearby and where it shows you when a certain location can’t be accessed. I love exploring and how vastly different it is from the beautiful forests of Cauldron Lake to the Noir Style New York.

The Dark Place is just a perfect mix of being frightening while also having moments of hilarity. It seems so vast, and Alan is basically trapped to a small location, and wandering too far will suck him into pure darkness. It’s such a bending world that going one way can lead you to a completely new direction. It’s such a moldable location that Alan has been trapped in, stuck in a loop (metaphorically and literally) of remembering and not remembering and basically dealing with his personal demons. The ‘We Sing’ section is such a fun one! It’s so fun to play and funny in how almost safe it makes you feel, well, until you fight enemies, of course. The graffiti gives so much to the environment, especially in the Subway section, in which it seems like it has so much history to it.

I adore the way that Alan literally rewrites scenes. I love Sagas Mind Palace and how we can solve things. I love Rose’s Zombie Apocalypse fanfic and how the Angel Lamp also changes environments, and honestly talking about the Yöton Yö short film and how amazing it is deserves a post of its own.

I just- I love the Remedy Games! I’m so excited to see what is coming up in the future! I love these characters, and I can’t wait for more content to come out in the upcoming months.

To anyone who has read all this, here, have a picture of Alan

#alan wake #alan wake 2 #alan wake 2 spoilers #I love Alan Wake

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mothuary · 1 year

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Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance

Ok! so this review is for the first game that I actually started and finished in the new year. Yay! When I stumbled upon the last game I wrote a review for, I had actually been looking for this one:

Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance was one of the first video games I’d ever touched in my life. I didn’t even learn it was a spinoff until I’d accidentally bought the mainline game two years ago and was supremely confused. Needless to say, I was really excited to see if this held up to my expectations. Now, this game is part of a kind of set of very similar games that were released by snowblind studios all around the same time, so BG:DA2, as well as the two similar games that take place in the Everquest universe, the first and second Champions of Norrath games. But this one is all D&D 3e babyyyy. Now Im not going to spend this review sucking up to WotC obviously, but it is very charming to re-play a game and see all the references I had been missing as a kid. I thought beholders were as well-known as dragons, lol.

Now I know that the game has been, in recent years, re-released, so lets talk about what I like about it and see if it’s a worthy way to go on a little early 2000s fantasy nostalgia trip.

First lets talk about your characters. You get a quite limited selection of three characters with pre-selected names and classes. You can also unlock Drizzt Do’Urden in the character select screen but i didnt know so I played as the elf Adrianna, and my 2P played as... human archer. whose name I forget. each of them has the stats and abilities you would expect, ie. the sorcerer starts with high int and low str, and can cast magic missile. Part of the great fun of the game is finding new weapons and armor to upgrade your character with, but seeing as the game is locked to the basic loot tables in D&D 3e, the loot is a lot more boring than I remembered. You’ll mostly get a couple of weapons worth clinging to over the course of the game, and sell everything else. But hey! at least the woman armor looks respectable. (image source cause its from someones letsplay but mega spoilers in there!)

Before I get started rambling about the gameplay, you might be interested to know that the music is done by the infamous jeremy soule so if you want some very morrowind-esque vibes, you can always give it a listen: ( x | x | x )

Okay so gameplay stuff. The game is set up in a bunch of dungeons where you look down from above and you go from “room” to “room” (they arent all literal rooms) and you clear out all of the enemies. Its quite cute, it does remind me of a miniature in a model set. Enemies dont respawn, so there IS a limited quantity of experience in the game. You can load characters from past playthroughs if you want to start out beefier, and this is recommended if you want to play the harder difficulties. Its also important to keep that in mind when youre playing with more than one person, because if youre always getting the kills, your player 2 will fall behind quickly.

The game has some kind of clunky controls, I really hate how difficult it is to switch spells (you have to use the D-Pad and they give you like forty empty spell slots lol). This issue is especially bad compared to the way that champions of norrath handles it (basically offers you hotkeys, its way better). We also found that the archery was a lot less.... fun than just melee bonking bc there are really limited projectiles. by which I mean its just arrows. plain ol arrows. Also there arent any rings around the feet of your character to help differentiate P1 from P2 so i kept walking into walls. Its not helped by the fact that the gameplay is v simplistic hack n slashy so your eyes kind of glaze over sometimes.

Another thing of note, which I never really noticed as a kid, is how front-loaded the game is. In the beginning of the game, youre completing a questline attached to the Elfsong tavern, and every once in a while, when you stop at the tavern to buy new weapons, someone will show up to give you a new quest. The quests were always part of the linear plot, so they didnt change the shape of the game at all, but they made the world feel more interesting. By the time you step into the second chapter of the game, the world begins to feel more flat and less and less named npcs pop up to chat with you. It ends up making the game feel really lonely. The NPCs that DO exist are animated quite well for a 2001 game, though, and I was really struck by their individually moving fingers which really helped them feel very emotive, which was underlined by the way that NPCs take up the whole screen when you talk with them.

having a sexy bartender in the first five minutes of your game helps keep the audience engaged.

Its a quite short adventure, it took my partner and I about a week to play all the way through and honestly? By the end I was mostly just kind of excited that I can move on to the second game now and see how much better it is. I think that the game is OK, but should you pay $30 new for it? NO. you can get ps2 copies used for $10. and if youre interested in playing BOTH of the games (and/or the champions games as well) i’d just.... buy a ps2. This game is very imperfect and leaves a lot to be desired. I would not recommend it to everyone, but I would recommend it to anyone craving a classic campaign but doesnt have a party. It does scratch the D&D itch but its not the best of it’s kind. That being said, if your time is limited, I’d say that most people would prefer the Champion’s games to this one.

#Baldurs Gate #Baldur's Gate #Dark Alliance #Game review #ps2 #video games #moth reviews #moth speaks #forgotten realms

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joyflameball · 2 years

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I just. I really need to talk about my emotional reaction to the Skip Button End because god damn it effected me.

So, a bit of context. I have this friend (it/its) who loves rambling to me about its latest hyperfixations. Usually at first I'm not too invested but loving its passion, but slowly it starts sucking me in until I'm in fandom hell with it. So one day it comes to me talking about The Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe, and I'm intrigued by all the lore and mysteries and buckets. And then the first thing it really rambles to me about is an ending where you, in its words, "unintentionally force the Narrator to suffer through an eternity of nothingness and slowly watch his spirit break."

So!! I was obviously horrified!!! /pos

And it kept rambling to me about that ending, about how it was fueled by the Narrator getting a few bad reviews about wanting to create a "skip button" so they didn't have to hear him, how it was fueled by him just wanting to please the players, how it absolutely wrecked him, how he would go silent for skips at a time, before he was just reduced to saying "The end is never the end" over and over and over. I was INCREDIBLY fascinated in a horrified way.

But a key here is: I was still not totally invested. I was getting secondhand knowledge of this game about some random details, and a lot more information on one specific ending. I still did not know a lot. I did not know the Narrator.

My friend kept rambling to me about TSP, aboout random little fun details or emotional details. I didn't know a lot about the game itself, I wasn't really retaining or processing a LOT of information due to other hyperfixations, but there were two things I knew: My friend adored the Narrator, and the Skip Button End was emotionally awful.

After a bit, I started asking questions and getting invested (specifically I asked if the Narrator was a bucket which is fucking hilarious in retrospect.) I started really processing what was being said and the implications. I didn't fully know what they were, but I knew they were there. I know that doesn't make full sense, but moving on.

My friend then sent me a few clips from the game - the out of bounds song ending, the Door 430 achievement (because it sent me the transcript and i wanted to actually hear it), and a few voice lines from the Zending. And finally, I asked what the fuck was up with the Skip Button End, and it sent me a video.

(Critically, the video it sent me did not have the leadup to the Skip Button. It only had Stanley stepping into the room. This will become relevant later.)

Now, something about me. I'm really, really emotional. I get attached to characters easily, and am a very easy cryer. And I felt a lot of emotion for the Narrator in this end, it was an emotionally awful experience - the dread, the sympathy, all of it.

But I didn't... Cry at it.

And I think that's because I didn't fully... Know the Narrator. At this point, I did know quite a bit about him, I was beginning to hyperfixate on TSP, and I did find him incredibly interesting. But I wasn't fully, entirely invested in him.

This is just me spitballing here, this might be wrong, but. It's just how I think it was.

Now fast forwards a bit. I got fully hyperfixated, friend sent me more clips of TSP, we rambled about it in DMs a LOT, I played the demo and cried, then a different friend BOUGHT me TSPUD, and I played through every ending you can get without going through the New Content door. And by now, I was already more emotionally attached to Narry than I had been when I first watched the Skip Button video. But actually playing the game was... Way different.

I wasn't just watching someone else unplug a phone and unlock a very derealizing (/pos) end, I was the one unplugging the phone. I wasn't just watching someone else follow the Adventure Line™, I was following It™ myself, taking my time and exploring every nook and cranny. I wasn't just listening to Narry's desperate begging for me to go back to the Zen room, I was the one putting him through that.

It felt a lot more personal, honestly. Narry was no longer my blorbrit-in-law, no longer just a disembodied voice who will go through incomprehensible trauma, no longer even my blorbrit. He was this silly British voice who could in one end blow me to pieces for pressing a wrong button, and in another would bring me to a colorful room in hopes the conflict would end. Who would one moment lose his mind over clicking on doors, and another be incredibly, shall we say, passive-aggresive towards me for going through the wrong (or shall I say, the right) door. I genuinely cared about Narry, loved seeing him happy, saw him as not just this funny British guy, but my friend.

Fast-forwards to five days ago.

I wanted to get my other friend into TSP, so I streamed me playing the game into Discord (albeit without game audio because computers are evil). We played a few endings, fucked with Narry as much as possible, and finally went through the New Content door, both of us experiencing it for the first time.

Now, I wanna say this: I still did not know that much about TSPUD specifically. I knew about the Skip Button End, I knew about the Bucket, I vaguely knew about the tape person, I knew the Epilogue existed but didn't know what happened in it or how to get it, you get the gist. I knew most broad strokes, but not the full picture.

So we saw the vent on the floor and made Amongus jokes, lost it over the "fine you're a dork anyway >:(" "NEVERMIND! YOU'RE NOT A DORK", and finally went through the vent. We got to the Memory Zone, and I started feeling... A bit worried. I vaguely remembered, the friend who got me into TSP had mentioned that the Skip Button end happened in the Memory Zone... But hey, that end was so emotionally loaded, they wouldn't throw that at us immediately.

So we went through the Memory Zone. Poked fun at the fact that Narry had a "PERSON OF THE YEAR" poster that had Stanley on it and the fact that he had a love song in the background of the Memory Zone. Talked about how TSP could only really exist as a game first, and no true adaptation could ever really, really exist.

And then we got to the good reviews. And then the dread started to set in.

And then we got to the Steam reviews. And it fully hit me like a fucking truck.

We were doing the Skip Button End.

I started freaking out. I did not fucking know it was this early in the game, I did not realize this was the leadup to the Skip Button, and I could not go back. I was walking from review to review, hearing Narry doubt himself and his game more and more, and I was just breaking down crying even before we got to the button because I knew what happened next.

When we finally did get to the Skip Button, I pressed it once. And I felt so guity for just that. It wasn't even doing anything bad yet, and here I was, having this strong an emotional reaction, knowing what happens, dreading it so much.

So I didn't go through with it. I reset. Went to the Zending. Sat in the pretty lights. Refused to move.

I tried everything. Asked the Discord, asked my friend, asked everyone I could if there was another way to progress, if there was another way that didn't involve putting Narry through that.

And there wasn't.

I had to put Narry through unfathomable pain and loneliness.

So the next day, I booted up the game, streaming it to my friend again (recording it, hence why this is so detailed), feeling even more dread. I started tearing up earlier because I knew what was happening this time. I started really crying by around the first or second skip. The emotions were just hitting me so, so much worse - the guilt, the grief, the anger, all of it. By the time I'd gotten to the end is never the end, I was fully breaking down sobbing, and as I kept skipping, every time the room started breaking, more and more, I kept saying "Let me out of here, let me out, I want Narry back." And when I completed the Skip Button end, I was just ecstatic, still fucking sobbing as I did the Door 430 thing. I immediately went to get the Freedom End, and afterwards went back to the Zen Room and just sat there.

Playing it felt so much worse than just watching a playthrough. Actually playing it felt so bad that I was fucking dissociating afterwards. And I don't think it's just because I was the one pulling the trigger (or shall I say pressing the button), although there is something uniquely horrible about pulling the trigger yourself.. I think it's because of me completing all the normal routes.

Which, that is still in a way because I was pulling the trigger, but the point still stands: I don't think I'd cry as much if I hadn't completed all the normal routes before going through the Ultra Deluxe. Those routes gave me an emotional bond with Narry. Fuck, when he said "I can tell I am becoming less and less real," I said "You're real to me." Narry became more real to me as I played the game and got all the dialogue and endings - some of which I didn't even know existed until I got them.

When I watched the Skip Button End for the first time, I didn't know a lot about TSP. I was just an observer, mostly. Listening to my friend's rambling, having watched a few short clips, barely having any context to any of it. When I downloaded the game, I knew more about Narry and cared way, WAY WAY WAY more about him, but when I actually played the game, it gave me... A different kind of bond with him?

He was no longer my blorbo the Narrator, he was my friend Narry. This artist, who used his writing to cope with his issues. This person who projected all his derealization and loneliness onto his OC, who would put that OC through hell and back, who cared about him so much. Someone who was implied at least three times to not be human, yet who was so, so human in everything he did and said. Someone who felt like the most real depiction of an artist I'd ever seen. Someone with both full control and no control. Someone who needed to be heard to feel real. Someone who couldn't handle being alone. Someone who just wanted to be free.

And yeah, I know I'm describing my emotional bond to a fictional character who doesn't exist and how that changed over time but just... I dunno. I haven't gotten any sleep, I don't know if this is coherent or if it's just me talking into the void, this turned out longer than I meant it to.

#the stanley parable #cassie rambles #skip button ending #the narrator #side effects of playing tsp:#horrible dissociation #reading everything in the narrator's voice #the stanley parable ultra deluxe #tsp #tspud #tsp narrator #long post

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