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pinchraccoon · 1 year

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Short Sekiro Review

I gotta say, I didn't Love Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice.

Heresy, I know, but hear me out.

When I played Sekiro, I found that the aspects that are good, are near perfect. I think that the combat and the area design as well are honed to a mirror sheen, and these aspects of the game, the boss encounters, enemy design, character design, they're all lovely.

My issues with Sekiro arise in two major areas: the game's economy and it's story, or rather the presentation of it.

My larger of the two issues at hand is the economy. When I say "economy" I'm specifically referring to the systems of gaining and losing money as well as the flow of Spirit Emblems. When you kill an enemy in Sekiro enemies will drop money and Spirit Emblems, the former is a multi-use currency used in upgrades, item purchases, and anything else that can be purchased. One of the other things that is possible using money is the partial alleviation of the other major aspect of the economy, Spirit emblems.

Spirit Emblems are where this economy really begins to hurt. They are used as an "in combat" currency that dictates how many uses of your prosthetic tools and combat arts you can perform in combat. It makes sense to limit the amount of abilities that players can use in combat, as frequently these abilities are extremely good, and can turn the tide of a boss fight with the single use. My issue with them arises in how many you are allowed to carry. You see, when you are at maximum Spirit Emblems, you cannot pick up any more of them, even to put them in an overstock, which, notably, is a system that exists in the game and is accessible to add to through purchasing them with money.

Now, with limited not-immediately renewable resources in mind, consider the myriad effective interactions that can be triggered on any given boss fight in this game, whether that's the firecrackers on beasts, the spear on the Guardian Ape, or the Shurikens on Lady Butterfly, the most effective strategies, or perhaps most interesting strategies are often blocked by the use of your spirit emblems in combat. Most bosses, as well, tend to have a straight shot with not a lot of enemies between a shrine and the arena, not allowing for the easy replenishment of resources to go into a fight refreshed.

My issue with the economy of Sekiro is that boss fights encourage you to try everything that you have against it's bosses, BUT, offers few engaging avenues toward actually gaining the amount of Spirit Emblems required to engage in that experimentation without feeling as though resources are being wasted when something doesn't work.

For something that should be as meaningless as ammunition, SE's are an incredibly important item that the scarcity of legitimately *harms* your ability to engage with the core fantasy of the game, which is to say the various ninja weapons and ninja playstyle aimed for by FromSoft.

I find that anything that betrays the thesis of the game, which in this case is at least partially to encourage player experimentation with how to defeat bosses, like how a ninja would, makes the game actively and demonstrably worse in my eyes, and finding myself having to grind for money just so that I could make consistent attempts on this game's tough-as-nails bosses rubbed me *very much* the wrong way.

My other issue is the story, which my issues are far fewer with, but more from an air of confusion. I feel like, outside of the Mortal Blade being able to kill immortals, I know no more about the game than I did before. This is partially due to a series of, in my opinion, uncompelling characters, uncompelling objective-based pursuits, and general vagueness that had me uninterested the whole time.

This is mostly a me problem, and I'm sure that I wouldn't be saying this if I had watched a few VaatiVidya videos after my playthough, but this is just how I felt regarding the story.

All in all, I loved the boss fights themselves, and to a slightly lesser extent the various areas of the game (when they aren't being reused).

I found my issues, mostly with the economy, to make my time with the game worse, as sometimes bosses did not seem feasible if I didn't have the resources to do so, and made me try to exclusively use my sword as "what If I need those later?"

I didn't fall in love with Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, which is honestly a shame, but I would still recommend it to new players to at least give it a shot. It's positives do almost balance out the negatives, but I would have liked to have known about this beforehand.

Anyway, here's a funny clip from my playthough:

twitch_clip

#vtuber #envtuber #sekiro #soulsborne #fromsoftware #game reviews #game review #Pinch Reviews

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dinoracha · 1 year

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twitch

February 4th, 2023 Stream [Hi-Fi Rush, Sunday Gold] Summary

Abysmal turnout of viewership aside (surprising no one), I started the stream with Hi-Fi Rush. If my social media posts have been any indication, you can probably tell that I love the absolute bones of this game. I can't remember the last time I played a game where, from start to finish, I spent most of the time grinning like a doofus from the sheer amount of fun and joy I was getting out of it. A good part of that has to due with mostly everything being synced with its music, but I've always been a sucker for rhythmic elements in games.

The game being depicted and its story told like a 'western-anime' gives it so much color, expressiveness and free reign to take itself with so little seriousness; it's legitimately funny at times and Chai is an absolute idiot goofball moron buffoon git and I couldn't love him any more for it. While the combat may not be as intricate as other character action games, there's certainly enough depth to require quick decision-making. The rhythmic nature of the gameplay means that button-mashing is a fine way to get nowhere fast, but why would you mash to begin with? Attacks being enhanced and racking up a higher score by playing well are reward enough, but when you get in the zone and start vibin' out? Reacting on time with everything being thrown your way, cleaving through enemies while avoiding and parrying their attacks? Hearing the non-existent crowd chanting and cheering when hitting S rank?

I'll elaborate more if/when I sit down to write a review on the game, but good god, Hi-Fi Rush just feels brilliant to play. It makes me feel like the coolest dude around, and in lenient enough to still let you feel cool if you whiff on inputs or take hits. I was playing on medium difficulty which got a bit spicy from time to time, so I can only imagine how much more the game demands of you on hard or above. For a game that dropped seemingly out of the blue, I can't sing the praises of Hi-Fi Rush enough. Easily a contender for game of the year and has found a snug place in my personal top ten.

After finishing Hi-Fi Rush, I swapped over to Sunday Gold for the rest of the night. Ever since its reveal last year I had my eye on it, though never got around to actually picking it up. Turns out earlier that day it had gone on sale, so I snatched it up. The concept of a point and click adventure game crossed with an RPG had my interest, though finding out it's a heist game with a cast of utter dirtbags was a pleasant surprise.

I'd need more time to better define it, but the art and style is like a comic book if it was dropped in a muddy puddle and skillfully restored - For character portraits and cutscenes, anyway. There are Some Faces (TM) that are something else to look at. The game is broken up into two playable parts: Exploration and combat. The former is the point n' click standard fare with snooping around, searching for items and making progress. Action points (AP) are an interesting currency, because taking actions or searching things require AP while exploring, and they're restored by using items or 'ending the turn' which simulates a bit of time passing. You can't just kill time forever though, as ending turns (at least when heisting) cranks up an alert status which, if the dice rolls badly, can spook the team or trigger a fight.

AP is shared between both modes, and combat has been… Not the best so far. I'm not expecting Shin Megami Tensei-levels of planning of course, but fights seem to take longer than they really should, doubly so for the first boss fight. Credit due, there's stuff to consider like breaking guard or applying buffs/debuffs, but for the damage you deal versus the amount you take? I can forsee later chapters really trying to grind you into the ground to make things tense and desperate, but I don't think it'll be done in a satisfying or challenging way.

Still, the presentation is top-notch. Even with the limited animations, the game looks slick and the vocal cast has been enjoyable. I wasn't expecting there to be this much voice acting, but I'm not going to complain; the main characters are unlikable, but they have roguish qualities as the self-proclaimed 'righteous villains' that makes it more than possible to continue hanging out with them. I'll definitely come back to the game, but I'll likely save it for the stream for the sake of story continuity.

#stream #summary #writing #write up #hi-fi rush #sunday gold #twitch #archive

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icibiscade · 8 months

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The purpose of EoD

There are enough grindable elements that a player could, with sanity losing efficiency, become #1 rapidly. (Red = banned, green = inactive)

At least, #1 in elements found (star_kit, now ashley.bates, had 270104). (There are other leaderboards too. The second one is "elements made". If I map "elements found placements" to "elements made placements", I get (15, 253, 1, 54, 21, 5, 16, 4, 2, 50). In general, the latter leaderboards are much easier, so while they may be more satisfying to improve in, they generally have less import? value?, for example only 6 people have a nonzero "queries colored" value.) Remember the good old days, at the beginning of alchemical creation, where combos would be creative and somewhat interesting? Where fascination and curiosity happened... where when a combination is made, you don't know what you're getting. Where water bubble plus lava bubble made bubble column, then *2 got you _Pringles Cheddar Cheese_, and you were the 2nd person to find that element. Indeed, in the non-early game, almost everyone either grinds nearly 100% guessable combos or uses "hint" a lot. And the hint command gives _every combination_ (hiding the last element of each, but you still know the number of characters and where spaces are). Novelty. How can more of that be added to EoD? At first I thought about adding any old random elements related to anything I've randomly been thinking about. But just like a casino, high randomness is boring. There needs to be some kind of structure and legitimate sense of overall progress and revelation. And yet amidst 669,818 elements, how can one possibly hope to make enough content to even make a dent in the efficiency of grinding and other techniques? It will always be easier to add a grindable element than a creative, thought-out one. Grinding is fun to some people, anyways. There are currently no tools to reverse the tide. However, let's interrupt explanation for a moment and mention two spectular works of art: two pieces of online fiction named Homestuck and To the Stars (the latter is a PMMM fanfic). The former is finished and has 8,123 pages, the latter is not even close to done and has 883k words and 68 chapters. Over a long timescale, these works have accumulated an empire. Noting that I am procrastinating with unadvisably long moratoriums, I kinda feel inspired to make something similarly lengthy. To the point where I am using longer words than necessary. A further point against this having any actual effect is that, chains are similarly delightful in their commentary, yet even easier to grind. It would be difficult to incorporate elements of a combination into an actual story. The act of combining elements merely acts as the facilitator for finding out elements, like clicking "next" on a screen. Sounds like kindaof an effort to turn clicking "next" into an adventure. I do want to increase creativity and interest though. EoD is "dying" but is really quite alive. Maybe I should do something with my eleverse, create a story somehow, connect all the starter elements together, and figure out what EoD Anime would actually be like.

#eod

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soft-epilogue-continues · 1 year

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On the Nature of Work

eh, while I'm waiting for my computer drivers to update, some thinky thoughts on the nature of work.

I'm in the privileged position of working in the tech industry at a remote company. I work out of my own house and generally have a lot of freedom with my work day. We don't need to push a clock and no one is tracking my hours/keystrokes or whatever. You get your work done on time and no one cares if you do or do not sit at your desk for 8 hours a day. The level of flexibility this provides as a working parent cannot be overstated: IT'S FANTASTIC AND AN ABSOLUTE NECESSITY. I also have unlimited paid time off, which, again, as a working parent is a goddessend (though the way the company has been limiting some of our freedoms in regards to remote work lately makes me think this will probably be on the chopping block one of these days too).

But I'm not happy with my job. One can argue I'm just feeling impostor syndrome, but I know that legitimately this job is not a great fit for me in regards to the actual work I'm doing. The benefits, yeah, fantastic, wouldn't want anything else. The actual work? It doesn't jive with me. I constantly have to claw my way up or through a wall in my mind to get work done. I constantly dream of escape. To another company, to another industry. But as I keep learning, wherever you go there you are.

I've generally accepted the personal philosophy that it's ok that I don't love my job (though in tech that's basically heresy) and that my life's meaning comes from my relationships with my family, my friend(s), and my hobbies. Not loving my job means that I can "clock out" and not think about it again until I have to work again the following day. My job doesn't haunt me on the weekends (unless I don't get enough done the previous week). But I'm not quite at the point of fully feeling this philosophy. I'm still constantly trying to escape in the back of my mind. Because I spend so much of most of my days thinking and worrying about work. It feels like there should be something more.

As my husband put it: I'm looking for a me-shaped hole to place my me-shaped peg into... and in capitalism that just doesn't exist.

So what's left? I don't want to come to the end of my life wondering: what did I spend my time doing?

I could go to grad school I suppose, but as my grad student husband has also pointed out, grad school is not a place where you go to figure yourself out. You don't discover yourself in grad school. You go there because you have a path already laid out for yourself. So while I can dream about academia and studying ancient history and linguistics all day long, this route will not bring me happiness as I don't have a path there. I've already tried dipping my toes into these waters and it didn't end well the several times I have done it.

Being an artist? Until that's a financially viable option I can't really make it work. I'm currently the primary provider of cash money for my family so if I'm ever to pursue that, it'll be way in the future. And what's the plan there exactly? Make my arts and crafts, make youtube videos about it and hope to make enough in adsense and with Patreon? While yes, that would be nice, I can't set off on that journey with the sole intention of making money. Don't get me wrong, I still want to do my arts and crafts and make videos about them because it would be neat, but it's not a viable living. And it can't be until I develop it to be, which I can't really do because I'm so worn down by the day job grind that I have nearly nothing left for my family, let alone my hobbies. And as always, for now it's all my hobbies. If it becomes my job it won't be fun anymore.

So we come back around to this: work a job that pays well and has good benefits but doesn't make my heart sing and put in the minimum required effort to sustain this job (not barely scraping by, but decent, without striving). Find meaning and fulfillment in my family, friends, and hobbies.

#work #capitalism #working parenthood #tech industry #work life balance #that illusive imaginary thing #a life well lived

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centrally-unplanned · 3 years

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So I am going through these notes on the CCP’s new guidelines around video game censorship and regulation, and it has some amazing stuff in it.

First and most importantly, Venti from Genshin is confirmed a femboy, who “you cannot tell is male unless you look at their lore” according to the CCP reviewers. Behold the face of gender-corruption!

(honestly, you can’t tell that he is male? Watch more anime normies or gtfo)

Anyway, first we gotta lay out our credentials:

Don’t be silly and think we don’t know games. Many experts here know more about games that you, developers

CCP confirmed True Gamers, get wrecked scrubs!

Anyway, what is great about these notes is, since the people in the CCP are not evil minions but real people, they actually aspire to make video games better. So in between all the rampant homophobia and history censorship, are some legitimate complaints. Our ideas include:

You cannot force players to spend money, and gate rewards behind lootboxes & other opaque mechanics

Totally valid, hell yes CCP

No misleading advertising baiting gay couples when they are not actually gay

Wokeness confirmed, fuck the queer-baiting

Wuxia style games are boring as they are so similar. Many companies ignore good storytelling and just bank on art design & aesthetics

They are right and they SHOULD say it, fucking savage.

But the *best* parts are where they just run into the weird shit that is just...part of gaming now, which with this new initiative you have to somehow regulate:

We forbid attractive character designs based on war criminals

Azur lane gets *specifically* called out, have waifus gone too far??

No ascending into god-hood; humans cannot beat a god

CCP confirmed *extremely* concerned that a plucky band of spike-haired protagonists will grind their way up the ranks and challenge Xi Jinping for the throne, its not possible everyone stop getting ideas!! Seriously they mention “no ascending-to-godhood” style plots like four times, this is priority number 1.

Lots of stuff in there that I didn’t cover, hopefully could be some fun highlights. I recommend checking it out, as I don’t imagine a major game around will be unaffected by this new initiative.

#CCP censorship

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something-very-special · 3 years

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Call Her Back

Probably already a post with this title from the Let’s Play but it’s appropriate.

Thoughts on Replicant up to Ending A (and change):

This game is pretty. I guess it didn’t really hit me because I’ve always thought that the original NIER was pretty, but this game can be very pretty.

This in particular just kind of struck me as I was going across the Northern Plains. It had been dominantly gray, overcast skies up to that point because Part II of the game is meant to be. You know. Bleak. But I walked out onto a bright, sunny day with an expanse of blues skies, the mountains in the backgrounds, the ivy a burst of green growing up the rusted sides of the train tracks and it just kind of hit me that the game can be very pretty.

(Then I got punched out by a Shade.)

It’s definitely not a matter of massive graphical overhaul. The models look much better (getting a good look at the Twins during the finale, they really are beautiful) and I’m sure the environmental poly count is much higher and just overall smoother, and there are little touches here and there and just the capacity for better atmospheric lighting... I mean it all helps. But NIER is a game that’s always had fantastic art direction, making the most out of its budget through atmospheric tuning. There’s something uniquely beautiful about its muted palette and the way it uses its spaces that elevates it beyond the its actual technical limitations. It doesn’t look like an end-of-generation PS4 game, but that’s not an insult; it looks very much like itself from ten years ago, with its solid art direction, but touched up where it matters.

Does the sidequest grind seem... better...? I haven’t really dug into the BEST part of the game (spending 30 hours grinding out weapon upgrades) but I mentioned before my theory about how the sidequest grind is supposed to be carried out across multiple playthroughs and that’s why it sucks. To my surprise I finished Ending A missing only one sidequest (your friend and mine, Life in the Sands), with all of the other ones being more or less... pretty natural? The only thing I really needed to go out of my way for was Memory Alloy but all the other components didn’t really give me the kind of grief I remember from my playthroughs of the original. ‘Grief’ of course being relative to getting the platinum trophy, but my first time through the game I gave up finishing a few outstanding sidequests (specifically, fixing the lighthouse broke me-- I could not find 10 Mysterious Switches!)

Maybe I just got lucky, especially with the Machine Oils. Maybe some weird muscle memory kicked in. I feel like there were a few purchasing options that weren’t open originally, too, to ameliorate some of the grind, but it might also be a case of those options being cost-prohibitive so I just didn’t really acknowledge them... whatever the case the sidequest grind felt overall pretty painless. I dunno!

I really need to know how to manipulate events. For literally seven playthroughs straight of the latter half of the game I always did the keystone quest as Junk Heap (start) - Forest of Myth - Junk Heap (end) - Facade - Aerie. It wasn’t until I did a run with my college roommates and Popola gave me the Aerie letter before the Facade in invite that I realized the Aerie wasn’t actually programmed to be the last event.

Absolutely blew my mind, and ever since I became aware of it, it feels like the game goes out of its way to make sure the Aerie always comes before Facade. When I did my Let’s Play of NIER I kept a save file from the start of the kystone collection so I could re-do the events in case they went ‘out of order’ (according to my headcanon)... which they did. I replayed the latter half of the game again in order to get things the way I wanted them to be, same order, and fortunately it cooperated the second time, but I still don’t understand what the trigger is, if there’s a way to manipulate it, or when the determination is even made.

And then they throw the Little Mermaid into the mix, which I wasn’t expecting (that is, I knew it was added, but I’ve been mostly avoiding spoilers -- and happily, the changes have largely been a delight, I’m so excited for the subsequent playthroughs -- but the way it was posted about made it seem like it would happen after and apart from the keystone quest. Not so, my friends).

The reason for this is just the emotional escalation of each factor of the quest. The Forest of Myth is weird and little else (at this juncture, of course). The Junk Heap is a personal tragedy, but the actual tragedy has already occurred and you’re just experiencing the fallout. Facade is a powerful and personal tragedy that deserves to be experienced later on. The Aerie is a terrible place and nobody misses it it’s an enormous loss and profoundly traumatic for the party, and it feels like the appropriate apex to basically force them to go to the Castle and finish the fight, having already lost far too much.

Also it’s just super weird to me that they see that devastation, they literally wipe an entire settlement off the map, and then the next day everybody’s super excited to go to a wedding.

It also becomes even weirder that you go to Popola post-Aerie and nobody mentions ‘yeah that didn’t go so well’ but coming out of Seafront they have a legitimate conversation about the loss of the ferryman and the people they’re never getting back. I guess that guy had a personality but I still think maybe somebody should mention the smoking crater where people used to be.

Then again it’s legitimately funny to me how basically everybody is just agreed the world is better off without it.

This might also just be an issue of familiarity. Maybe if I’d always ended on Facade, or actually known that they could be swapped out as they are, it wouldn’t feel so weird. I definitely got used to the pacing with the Aerie at the end and I feel like I got into a debate with somebody about how it’s more appropriate for Facade to come last so this might just be a personal thing. But it’s still a personal thing and I’m still vaguely irritated I can’t figure out how it works.

Anyway I blew up the Aerie So that’s that problem taken care of.

I feel like the ambiance surrounding Wendy was a little creepier this time. I swear I heard that good stock creepy child laughter in the background.

Then the ferryman left This was a nice bit of foreshadowing; following the Aerie events I wanted to hop over to Seafront to take care of an extant sidequest only to find the ferry dock in the Northern Plains empty. I thought that maybe this was just a weird way of railroading you to make sure you went through the Village first, even though there were no scenes that would trigger just by being in the Village.

Alas.

Not gonna lie, when the couple was first introduced I thought for SURE it was going to be the wife who wound up dead. I guess it’s because the guy had a purpose as an NPC so yeah, I was tricked. Good design decision; the ferryman is talkative and bright and definitely difficult to forget and even though he was kinda obnoxious there’s a definite void where his dialogue was. It’s clever too that you’re forced to use the ferry at least once so you can’t escape the dialogue that you’re presented with, meaning that even if you don’t really make use of the ferry you’ll always have that contrast between him at the start of Part II and the other guy (his brother, maybe?) taking over the job and just not really talking to you afterward.

Episode Mermaid First of all, to be clear, I’ve not done the Route B playthrough yet. All I know about the Little Mermaid is what’s presented on the surface, what can be gleaned from there, what I remember reading in the Grimoire NieR short story. This is very much just an impression and reaction to the first encounter and it’s pretty cool.

I like that they managed to go into yet another genre style aping a point-and-click adventure.

I like the atmosphere of the wrecked ship. It really brought me back to the ‘ghost ship’ level archetype with its little hints of spookiness.

I appreciate that it ties subtly in to the Haunted Manor (technically the Part I Seafront dungeon) with Weiss’ utterly irrational fear of ghosts.

I love every excuse they find to get Kaine and Emil (and especially Kaine) out of a situation. It’s almost a running gag that Kaine keeps getting knocked out of dungeons and boss fights. None of them are quite as great as her getting Rules Lawyer’d in the Barren Temple, but there’s something delightful about “Let’s get you some fresh air, we’ll be right outside, be careful!” and then bookending it with Kaine and Emil just chilling at the end like “Well yeah there are a lot of holes in the hull we just popped in.”

(I forgot to go backward to see what happens if you try to take them into Seafront proper, gotta remember that next time.)

Interesting thing when you find some of the dropped apples is that Nier and Weiss talk about the dinner they had with the couple. This was actually a really sweet and oddly emotional conclusion to the added sidequest between the bickering couple-- entirely missable. I would assume the dialogue just doesn’t trigger if you didn’t do the quest but it was a nice touch.

I appreciate the use of dead bodies in the hold.

(That’s a sentence.)

But for the game’s focus on violence and excess of blood it’s very selective in how it uses actual corpses. Any time you see a dead body it really emphasizes the seriousness of the situation. The corpses in the hold and the blood spatter -- especially compared to how bright and clean Seafront as a whole is -- was surprisingly effective. Again, just good atmospheric buildup.

Bit of an anticlimax as a boss, though. It is a really cool boss, between the environmental buildup to the fight and then actually unveiling her, but for how big and scary she is the fight itself went by fairly quick, and the actual finale (the postman whacking her hand telling her to go away she’s groooooss) felt a bit weird in comparison to the way the boss fights in the rest of the game usually play out. Of course, I don’t have context of her dialogue (I can take my guesses, her holding out her hand to Hans as he freaks out and attacks her is already a palpable tragedy) and by the way the scene was framed I suspect the Route B reveal is where the most important part of the scenario lies.

And the seals came back! It’s the little things.

“I wish I was Fyra.” So in the original Replicant the conversation between Emil and Nier before Sech’s wedding was apparently an implication that Emil had a crush on Nier and wanted to marry him. It was ambiguous enough that people had to ask for clarification and some players interpreted it as a weird, childish expression of looking up to and respecting Brother Nier. It was clarified in the Grimoire NieR that Emil is gay and crushing hard on Brother Nier, and this line of dialogue here seems to have been... not made explicit, but changed even between RepliCant and ver. 1.22 to make the implication a little clearer, at least insofar as he isn’t interested in girls. (It winds up missing the implication that he’s into Nier specifically, though.)

...which is funny, because it colors his introduction to the King of Facade somewhat differently. These two meeting is honestly really sweet on a few levels (Sechs recognizing him from Nier’s descriptions, which implies that Nier’s been visiting Sechs regularly and so proud of his interactions with Emil he told the king of another nation all about him, and the King is legit excited to meet him) but then a couple of minutes later Emil is all ‘I’m so jealous of Fyra’. He isn’t crushing on Nier, but he is totally crushing on Sechs.

Endgame At this point in the game the distinction between Brother and Father has become mostly lost and the final charge is pretty much the same as

wait what’s up with the music in the Lost Shrine? This is Snow in Summer.

Or an arrangement thereof. That particular track level from Snow in Summer winds up getting used in a few new places and it has this kind of weird, vague sense of dread that makes it work pretty well. Utterly threw me off in the Lost Shrine, though (I think it’s appropriate given its connection to the Shadowlord/Gestalt Nier so slowly re-introducing it in the climb is pretty cool). It also builds insanely as you climb, which is a very cool effect but, um, I’m just here to pick up some sidequest items right now this feels like a little much.

There isn’t much to say regarding any impact or differences in the large part of this area of the game. It’s a good final dungeon, it carries good momentum, it works as well as it ever did (that is to say, rather well). The emotional beats are great and translate equally well between the protagonists, although I have to give the nod to Papa Nier during a lot of this just for the imagery of such a big, powerful man becoming so broken the further he goes in (and Kaine being strong enough to toss him around like a rag doll anyway).

The final flashback with Nier and Yonah also feels better with Papa Nier. I always read it as, of course, Papa Nier having his moment with Yonah, giving her the flower, and as he lays back down Yonah does the same big sigh like she’s trying to emulate her dad and it’s really sweet. This is another one of those moments where it’s not something that feels wrong in Replicant, but just having that comparison in the back of my head is something that I just can’t help.

Is Papa Nier still Best Neir? Yes.

But there’s room in my heart for Brother. I’m glad the bizarre marketing decision happened and both of these characters can exist.

...and then we reload the save. Okay, okay, so-- so here’s the thing-- I figured that’s a good place to conclude a session, right? Get to the ending, prepare for the next run. But I also know that Route B starts with Kaine’s unskippable novel segments. I’ve read them, of course, so I figure I’ll just reload into Route B so I can make a save after the novel sections, really get into the meat of Route B when I’m fresh.

So skim through those--

Beat up the Knave--

Skim through the rest--

Educated Warrior... didn’t pop...?--

Wait what’s this camera angle--

Why am I outs--

oh my god

KAINE AND EMIL HAVING GIGGLY GIRL TALK AROUND THE CAMPFIRE OH MY GOD WHAT IS HAPPENING

THERE’S MORE.

THERE’S. MORE.

I legit short-circuited. Going in I knew they added the Little Mermaid. I knew they added Ending E. Those were things I suspected would be added and went out to specifically confirm; beyond that I’ve been keeping myself completely spoiler free.

I had no idea there was more. I had no idea this was happening.

I’m so excited.

And a goofy thought for the road

“I polished you with a special cloth, I poured warm water on you--”

“Wait, you poured water on me?”

/imagines Emil running blindfolded eight hours across the Southern Plains with an 8oz plastic water cup, getting to the library, splashing it on Kaine, waiting expectantly

/nothing happens

/walks dejectedly eight hours all the way back to the Manor

#NieR #NieR Replicant #Musings #Ramblings #OH MY GOD WHY DID NOBODY TELL ME ABOUT THIS #I AM SO GLAD NOBODY TOLD ME ABOUT THIS

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stardust-wanderlust · 2 years

Text

Different Flavors of Toxic

So I would like to say I didn’t know what the fuck all the nonsense was about today in regards to some posts on my dash, but I am just not that naive.

After a couple years traversing the K-pop fandoms, I have conclusively decided that everybody is full of shit.

ARMY is toxic. This is not really news, though it should be pointed out that while ARMY does toxic on a “fall into a vat and become a supervillain” level it is not the entire fandom. It is not even 10% of the fandom. But how math works is if you have a fandom of 50 million, then 10% is still 5 million people. That’s a lot of shitstains in the fandom. And everybody knows that shitstains gain the most attention. (and they also appear to attract eachother, so it has coalesced into one giant shitstain, Jeff Goldblum would be impressed.)

But all this said, ARMY is hardly the only people encumbered with shitstains. I could list any k-pop fandom and people would be able to find legitimate evidence of the shit.

So far, I have determined that the least “toxic” fandoms are the fans of the 1st and 2nd generation groups. Logically this makes sense, the groups tend to be less active, their fandoms were created prior to the ubiquity of social media, and in general fandoms age with the groups. So in theory, a majority of 1st and 2nd generation fandoms have an “older” demographic. (I say “older”, but this just means they aren’t literal teenagers.) Typically, the older you get the more actual life problems have to take priority and not made up bullshit that is spouted online.

But that being said, “least” toxic does not mean no toxicity at all. As my dash was populated by “discourse” between ARMY and Shawols. This is what I will focus on.

In general, most of the Shawol content I have engaged in has been pretty solid all around. (Please note: I mentioned Shawol content, not SHINee content. I have literally nothing bad to say about SHINee, they are amazing artists and, as far as I can tell, amazing people.) But that doesn’t mean I haven’t had the pleasure of tasting some of their toxicity.

Shawols, like most fandoms, live in the “my favs can do no wrong and are superior on every level” mode. This doesn’t bother me so much as it is pretty much what any fandom thinks of their Idols. What starts grinding my gears is when that superiority leaks out into other fandom spaces. Shawols, like ARMY and everbody else, often exhibit and demand like-minded conformity. But they insist they are not like that. They will shout from hemisphere to hemisphere that their fandom is above such antics. Of the fandoms with the most brazenly Toxic fans (i.e. ARMY), I have never seen a denial that the toxic behavior exists or that it is wrong. But my experience of Shawols does not show this level of self-reflection.

To Shawols, it appears that unless you are a card carrying member of the fandom you are not allowed to mention SHINee in anything other than a discussion on their “superior” art. You are not allowed to talk about the members as if they were people. (And even then you have to walk a tightrope above the triggers to mention Jonghyun at all.)

And this pisses me off. How am I supposed to get to know this amazing group if I can’t discuss them? I do not subscribe to the theory that Taemin crushed on, lusted after, pursued, or any other non-platonic action toward Jimin. But I have speculated about Taemin and Kai. But based on the response I have seen to the TM/JM opinions, it is the height of inappropriate to speculate about Taemin’s humanity. And if I knew more about SHINee and their history I would likely have speculated about him and any female he appeared as close to as he is to Kai.

TL;DR > In short, every fandom ever has some toxic shit, but pretending you and your fandom are above that pisses me off just as much as some the “real” toxic traits. Also, it is human nature to speculate about people’s lives. Humanity is just one giant nosy ninny.

#sorry for the long rant #bts #shinee #fandom #your toxic may be chicken flavor instead of steak flavor but it's still fucking there

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just-a-quirkless-loser · 3 years

Text

In A World Of Grey

Chapter One

Words: 4K

(Not my art. Please credit the artist if you know their handle💕)

Thank you @anonymous for reminding me to update this piece!!!

Sountrack: ‘34+35′ by Ariana Grande, ‘I Don’t Miss You At All’ by FINNEAS, ‘Chained to the Rhythm’ by Katy Perry

Grey:

Adj: A color intermediate between black and white

Adj: Pale, as through age, tiredness, or illness

expulsion...ExPulSiOn...EXPULSION!?!?! Grey couldn’t believe that she was sitting on the sidelines of the track getting ready to compete for her spot in Class 1-A. She’s only been in the class for a few minutes and she’s already on the chopping block for being expelled. As Grey looked around, she noticed her peers having the same fearful, anxiety filled gazes as they looked around the obstacle courses.

Aizawa stood in front of them, gazing at them as they huddled together, trying to think hard about how they were going to pass (and some of them thinking to impress) with Aizawa. All of them stood together in a line, waiting for the next directions to be given.

“As a hero, you must be resilient and strong. These obstacles are meant to test your strength before we begin your training as a hero. We’ll start with the fifty meter dash, followed by grip strength, standing long jumps, and the ball throw. You are allowed to use your quirks,” only problem with that was that Grey couldn’t think of any song that would help her. She wanted to shake as she now understood she’d probably fail if she couldn’t think of a song. And, failing means EXPULSION.

‘I can’t fail, I just can’t. Not after I’ve come so far to be better,’ she starts to feel the world spinning as she fears the worse however, she knows she won’t give up without giving it her all.

They line up for the fifty meter dash, Iida to her left and Midoriya to her right. It doesn’t take a genius for her to know that she’s already beat by Iida but she surprisingly comes to the end with five seconds, her thighs rubbing together as she runs. Truthfully, she’s disappointed with how she’s performed but she supposes it’s better than coming in last.

The grip strength test wasn't as difficult as she thought it would be (although, she could probably thank her father's rigorous training regimen for that). She managed to lift 85 kilograms, which was better than a lot of other people, extraordinary for her considering that she doesn't even have a mutant type quirk.

The standing long jump wasn't anything too spectacular. She landed within the box.

‘At least I’m not in last place,’ Grey felt bad for Midoriya. She could already tell from his attitude that he had a positive outlook on life and she’d hate it for him to lose the sparkle his green eyes contained. Plus, isn’t this what they were going to U.A. for anyway? To gain the strength they needed to be heroes? Why would Aizawa expel any of them? It just didn’t make sense.

The ball throw was good for Grey, her total coming to eight-hundred meters high, higher than Bakugou. Grey smiled giddily as Bakugou cussed about her being a ‘shitty girl’ that cheated.

“There’s no fucking way she beat me. I call bullshit,” Bakugou glared down at her radiating face, part of him already knowing he wasn’t truly mad.

“She’s so manly,” Kirishima gushed.

“Manly? No, she’s too adorable for that,” Kaminari grinned. Sero was to his left, observing Grey as well. Grey didn’t notice how most of her classmates looked at her whenever she started to get happy, all of them wondering if she had a second type of quirk that could make them feel this way.

“Midoriya, how do you expect to save people when you keep breaking your limbs whenever you use your quirk?” Grey felt bad for the boy that was currently being held by Aizawa’s scarf. Although, she understood why Aizawa was being so rough on him. He couldn’t keep getting injured the way he was if he wanted to be a legitimate hero.

Thankfully, Midoriya was able to push through and, in the end, none of them were expelled. She supposed the extra incentive to do well was good for them all however, she still thinks it was a bit of an unorthodox method of teaching.

“You are all dismissed. Grey, I want to talk to you,” Grey tensed up as Aizawa beckoned her over to speak to him. “No songs for the fitness test?”

“I couldn’t think of any and my quirk wasn’t supplying anything,” she bows her head.

“Supplying?”

“Yes, Sensei. My quirk normally comes with a song before an event happens, normally either a day or days before. It normally clouds my judgement or rings through my mind so much I can’t forget it.”

“Have you tried writing the lyrics down? Making your own music?” Grey shook her head hard, her eyes dimming as she thought of the time she tried to make her own lyrics.

‘Never again.’

“You should try, it will help you for when these types of things happen,” if only her father were here to protest what her Sensei was telling her. Nothing good comes from her making her own songs. “We noticed at the exam that your songs also seem to influence those that are in your proximity. Is that a side effect or do you have dual quirks?”

“No, Sensei,” it was a good lie. Short and sweet to the point and Aizawa bought it. Grey’s father popped into her head, repeating the lie to her, telling her she should never tell anyone about her mother’s quirk, no matter what trouble she may be in. Was it a selfish request? Yes, but her father was a selfish man. Either way, she knew she owed it to her mother to never use her quirk again.

“Very well. We’ll work on it during training,” wait...does that mean he’ll help her with her quirk?

“Wait, you’re the one that's going to help me?”

“Of course. I’m your teacher,” Grey couldn’t help but squeal and jump up and down, her energy hitting Aizawa full force, making his tiredness disappear. He had a small smile on his face as he watched her run away squealing. “She’s a peculiar one.”

“What did Aizawa-Sensei need?” Mina asked as Grey returned to the girls locker room to change.

“He wanted to know why I didn’t use a song for the test today.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“My quirk didn’t give me one,” yet, her quirk was now starting to belt a few tones, making her think something important was about to happen. She got dressed quickly and left the locker room, excited to see whatever the music was prepared for.

“LITTLE LISTENERRRR, WAIT FOR ME,” Present Mic was once again screaming from the distance, his tone gaining in pitch with how excited he was getting. He was running towards her when one of Aizawa’s scarves came from nowhere, wrapping him up before he could reach her. “AIZAWAAAAA.”

“Yamada, leave her be. Can’t you see she’s in a rush?” Aizawa rolled his eyes as he caught his friend in the middle of trying to stop Grey as she was running to the front gates of the school.

“PLEASEEEEE,” Aizawa put him down, already getting a headache from his friend’s pleading. “Five minutes.”

“You’re Grey, right?” Yamada asked her and didn’t wait for her reply. “Yes, you are. I’ll be assisting Aizawa with your quirk training. The school thinks you could use the extra help considering your quirk is a sonic-emitter type like mine. So, I look forward to hearing whatever you come up with in that little noggin of yours,” Grey smiled hard, her energy once again amplifying.

“Thank you so much for helping me,” Grey bowed and ran away before they could say anything, causing both of them to smile.

Grey decided to take the long way home that day, popping her hips to the pop music in her head. She wanted to dance but she opted not to considering all the looks the people around her were giving. Her smiles were infectious, lifting the days of the people she passed.

She ended up passing a group performing on the street: a keyboard player, a violinist, and a drummer were playing. All they needed was a singer...

“Do you guys mind if I join? I promise I can sing,” Grey’s mind was now flooding with lyrics. Ofcourse, the time when she doesn’t necessarily need it, the music comes in bounts.

“Knock yourself out little girl,” said the gruff drummer with his beard flowing down his chest. Grey grinned, starting off the song.

“You might think I’m crazy, the way I’ve been craving, if I put it quite plainly, just give me them babies.”

So, this is one of those times the music is a bit...explicit. However, Grey can’t help herself as she sings, shimmying down and around the band, gathering the attention of many onlookers, her blush prominent on her cheeks as she grinded her hips into the air.

“So what you doing tonight? Better say "Doing you right" Watching movies but, We ain't seeing a thing tonight.”

Grey laughed loudly as she caught sight of Sero in the crowd, waving in between the stanzas as she hit a splits in front of him, pulling herself up as she swung her head around, her dutch braids whipping around her to create a faux halo.

She kept singing, no matter how large the crowd was getting, waving her hips enticingly as she did a backstand into a flip through the crowd that parted for her like the Red Sea. Many began clapping for the girl as it became apparent that she was putting her all into the performance.

“I don't wanna keep you up (you up) But show me, can you keep it up? (It up?) 'Cause then I'll have to keep you up, So maybe, I'mma keep you up boy.”

Sero sang backup for her as she danced around him, using his body as a wall to push herself up against, her body creating a visual representation of what the lyrics promised. She briefly wondered what she looked like to the people around her? A girl in a school uniform dancing so wildly? She didn’t care as long as she was having fun.

“Wanna come home with me tonight?” Grey asked Sero once she was satisfied with her dancing.

“You sure about that? You’ve only known me for a few hours. How do you know I’m not a homicidal maniac that cha-chas after he kills his victims?” Sero mimicked the move he talked about, his arms swinging left to right.

“Okay, for one, good dancing. For two, if you are a cha-cha slanging killer, I’d be honored to die by your lady killing moves,” Grey giggled. “Plus, you’d be the type to slaughter me in my sleep.”

“True. Lead the way, fearless lady,” Sero stood to the side and motioned for her to walk in front of him. This was turning out to be a really good day for Sero. Kaminari would lose his mind when he found out he got to spend extra time with Grey.

“What do you want for dinner?” Grey led Sero all the way to her humble apartment, unlocking it and yanking him into her space right after her. Sero looked around, noting the lack of pictures on the walls. “I’ll have to warn you that I’m not the best cook.

“Anything is fine. When will your parents be home?” Sero instantly felt bad at the way the girl's face dimmed. Walking further into her apartment, Sero could see that there was a small, rotating sectional in the corner with a few chairs scattered around the living room. The furniture was pointed at a flat-screen T.V. (which was coincidentally playing the American news). When he looked over to the dining room, his heart sunk a bit more when all he saw was a small round table, clearly meant for one person. “You live here alone, don’t you?”

‘Great! Now he thinks he made me upset. There’s no way I’m ruining this opportunity,’ Grey thought as she whirled around to face Sero. She’d be damned if she let this chance to be around someone other than the mailman slip away.

“I do! My dad’s an American hero, so he sent me away to be safe,” okay, that was a very big omission of truth. He DID send her away to be safe...from her. “It gets a bit lonely but he always answers when I call.”

Sero felt a little better hearing her explanation but, he still took notice to the way she didn’t mention her mother. Deciding to let it slide, Sero grinned and nodded.

“So, dinner?” Sero and Grey migrated into the kitchen. There was a small marble island in the middle with a spacious countertop seated on the wall.

“Hmmm, I’ll let you pick,” Sero took a seat as Grey got out the ingredients for spring rolls. As she cut up all the vegetables, Sero sat at the little dining table, laughing at the crazy things she would do as she cooked.

“Then, what did you do?” Sero was practically screaming as he laughed at the story Grey was telling him.

“I did what any rational person would do; I poured some barbecue sauce on my ass and told him to kiss it. Then I pushed him into the closet,” they both were laughing hard as Grey came to the table with food for Sero to assemble his own roll.

“What did he say? Did he kiss it?” he wiggled his eyebrows.

“No, ahehe,” Grey rubbed the back of her neck sheepishly. “He actually had a wig in the closet which he put on, turned around, and screamed “Jokes on you Grey, I identify as a woman” and tackled me onto the bed.”

Sero was holding a fist to his mouth, trying not to snort at Grey’s story. This girl was such a whirlwind to him; he couldn’t wait till they had their own stories of each other. He looked down at his phone, noticing a text message from his mother telling him he’d have to get home soon. It was already nine o’clock!

“Wow, I didn’t know it was this late. I’ve gotta start heading home,” Sero said as he got up, gathering his plate so he could wash it. “Thanks for having me over!”

“No problem! You can come over any time; I enjoyed having you over. And, don’t worry about the plate. I’ll wash it. It’ll give me something to do,” despite how much she smiles, Sero could feel Grey’s loneliness. No one can ever truly be okay being alone every single day in a forgeign country with no one to talk to. He can only think about how sad she must be at night when she falls asleep without her father.

“I’ll definitely be coming over more often,” Sero placed the plate in the sink for her, walking over to give her a big hug. Grey’s eyes were wide as her arms were squeezed to her sides. She didn’t know what to do. She hadn’t been hugged like this since she was seven years old. “We’ll definitely be making more memories.”

He left soon after, promising one last time that he’d be coming over soon. She was still smiling moments later as she was washing the dishes, reminiscing on how happy she felt. If only she could feel this way all the time.

Once she finished washing all the dishes, Grey went upstairs and took her shower (she wasn’t really feeling up to taking a bath). Grey could hear a song coming into her mind, killing her happy mood as she started to listen to the lyrics.

‘I swear I don’t, Miss you at all, And I barely still remember, Who’s in the pictures on my wall.’

As she washed her body, she wanted to believe that she truly didn’t miss her father but that would be believing a lie. She missed him with every fiber in her being but, there was nothing she could do about this feeling. Her father is a busy enough man and he doesn’t need her taking up any more of his focus. That’s what she had been telling herself to justify his behavior. She just wishes she could still believe that too.

One thing about her quirk that she’s noticed is that it plays off her emotions. Sometimes, the music will be truly random but, most of the time, the music is created from a strong feeling. She’s also noticed that the more she connects with the song, the harder it is to control her influence on the song. So, she wondered if this new song was any indication of what she was truly feeling.

‘All but forgotten, About those eyes, A shade of green, that if he seen, Would make F. Scott Fitzgerald cry.’

How long had it been since she saw her father? He hadn’t even seen her off when she left for Japan. And, before that, he had been gone for a while on a mission (she half suspects he was just staying somewhere else to avoid her). By her estimation, it’s about a year and a few months since she’s seen him. She doesn’t know whether she should still be pained from her feelings.

Grey supposes it can be worse than what it is right now. Her father could’ve sold her off to the American government, claiming she was a loose cannon. And, it was somewhat true. She was a loose cannon in the sense that she couldn’t control her quirk like others but, it wasn’t as if she didn’t try her hardest to suppress the urges she had every day.

Truthfully, her only hope for a good future as a hero was lying in her teacher’s hands. She needs help from them; the help she should be getting from her own father. Again, she still can’t feel any resentment towards her father.

Grey got dressed in her Pikachu onesie, her mind drifting off a bit to Kaminari’s hair, and went downstairs to complete her nightly routine. She plugged up her laptop to the t.v., searched for the American news channel just like she did every night, and sat on the rotating sectional in the corner of her living room. She watched as the broadcasters talked about the daily news, happy to see that her father wasn’t on the screen.

This was her only way to make sure her father was safe. Her father was prone to not answering his phone for long periods of time, so she had stopped calling so frequently. If anything ever did happen to her father, she would most likely find out just like any stranger would.

‘And I’m sleeping fine, I don’t mean to boast, But I only dream about you, Once or twice a night at most. And it feels so good, eating alone, I don’t get distracted by your smile, And miss the green lights driving home.’

She would sit in that sectional for hours, making sure that her father was safe. Her loyalty and dedication to him weighing on her consciousness. She felt bitterness creep into her soul. Why did she care about him so much?

Then, the guilt came; it always comes. It’s her fault that her father is the way he is. This is her penance. She knows she must pay the price of what she’s done but, it hurts all the same. It hurts like hell.

This particular night, she sees her father smiling at the camera as he restrains a villain. He looks so good to the public, his bright, white teeth setting him apart. His dark skin looks good against his white superhero costume. Hell, even his grey hair looks nice. He looks better than he’s ever been with her.

“OUR NEXT TOP STORY: AMERICAN PRO-HERO ‘SOUND-YEAR’ HAS ONCE AGAIN SAVED THE DAY.”

She watches with tears in her eyes, hurt in her heart. Why couldn’t he be this happy with her?

‘But I won’t, Make that mistake again and fall, So I say I don’t, Miss you at all, And one day I won’t, Miss you at all.’

***

‘Are we crazy, Livin’ our lives through a lens, Trapped in our white picket fence.’

Oh my! Grey woke up the next morning, body grooving on its own. It’s weird how quickly her feelings can change but she doesn’t question it. All she does is shoulder shuffle out of her bedroom to her bathroom and get prepared for the day. She dressed in her uniform, using her hairbrush as a microphone. She’s pretty sure she forgot to eat breakfast in her dance craze. She figured she’d just get lunch at the school.

“Aren’t you lonely, Up there in Utopia, Where nothing will ever be enough, Happily Numb, So comfortable, we’re living in a bubble, bubble,” Grey sang loudly on the train, her quirk flowing through the bodies of the other people around her. Their souls felt uplifted, their feet thumping on the train's floor, their bodies shimmying to her accord.

Poor Grey didn’t notice how she was controlling the people around her and, to her credit, none of them seemed to mind. Her song control wasn’t bothering them.

When she got off the train (A nice lady had noticed her U.A. uniform and directed her off on the right stop), she continued her dancing all the way to U.A. A few pedestrians that got too close to her felt their moods lift a bit, eyeing her with curiosity. To most, she would seem like some wild girl but, the closer they looked the more they saw her beautiful aura of happiness.

“Turn it up, it's your favorite song, Dance, dance, dance to the distortion, Turn it up, keep it on repeat,” and this is where her true problem rears its head. As she danced into the school, people were raptured by her song. They began to dance just as she had sung, their bodies flailing to repeat her moves. Grey’s voice was loud, drowning out all the student’s that were yelling for her attention.

“Stumblin’ around like a wasted zombie, Yeah, we think we’re free, Drink, this one’s on me, We’re all chained to the rhythm, To the rhythm, to the rhythm,” she danced into Class 1-B. Vlad was getting ready to direct her out when his body began to dance as well. The students that were already in the class couldn’t fight her temptation as they began to stumble around, running into each other. Hell, some people were crashing into desks and walls.

Grey’s eyes were still closed. The poor, oblivious girl. She had no idea of the mayhem she was causing. All she knew was that the music was making her feel good. She wanted to feel good.

Vlad was trying hard to fight her siren’s call when he experienced first-hand what happens when you try to go against Grey’s commands. The blood bubbled in his throat, snorting from his nose, running out of his ears. His atoms were clashing against each other violently, causing more blood to splurt from his body.

“GREY, GREY, PLEASE! SOMEONE GET PRESENT MIC,” Vlad was screaming to the top of his lungs to any students that were out of her singing range. To be fair, Grey’s range goes far, most likely extending to Class 1-A.

Footsteps were pounding the school's hallways. Present Mic was yelling some low sound waves, trying to cancel her sound out. He hoped he could get to the girl before any real damage was done. However, he was too late.

What drew Grey out of her happy trance was a spurt of blood that landed on her face. Her eyes snapped open, staring up widely at Vlad’s bloody appearance. Her body began to shake as she slowly turned to look around, seeing her peers with red faces as they hugged their bodies. She felt the tears bubble in her eyes as she kept glancing at Vlad’s face, the image of his blood flowing would be permanently stained into her mind.

“I’m so sorry.”

—————————————————————————-

TagList💕

@sakurashortstack @sinclairsamess @mha4life007

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lebrookestore · 2 years

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hello, sorry for replying 8 years later I'm very fucking lazy and also went to my relatives' place to get annoyed by my shit ass aunt but it was worth it because of the dog lol

about falling back last year, same lol, but I stopped really giving a shit about it because covid just a slapped a reality check onto my family's face back in the first half of the year and they no longer have the audacity to bring up academic performance for my final exam that happened in March which btw we were forced to give offline and everybody is aware of what happened after that, we had a lot of losses much like everyone else unfortunately and of all things, that seemed to beat some sense into them about what their priorities should be 🗿

sorry if this got a bit dark but covid has just taught me a lot about how fucking stupid people, esp my relatives are and it's pretty pathetic

so I really blame covid and an inflexible curriculum + education system that doesn't give a shit for falling behind last year (which most kids did considering the amount of kids that straight up failed certain subjects in my batch), I mean holy shit, they really expected their low effort budget curriculum to make kids focus during online, bro I have a hard time focussing while I'm SITTING IN THE ClASSROOM because this shit is so boring, I wouldn't blame the kids if they fucked up even these board exams because honestly when these people keep changing stuff and passing around different circulars everyday and their plans are so badly thought out, how does one expect kids to not get caught up in all the confusion and speculation and get anxiety

speaking of board exams, I absolutely abhore how obsessed these people are with these shitty exams. I have heard several teachers say that they're "training" us for them and I think that wording says enough. what this does is so harmful because it legitimately makes kids feel like all they should do is continuously grind for it even though in reality we know that the result wouldn't really be different if they just chilled out and that it absolutely wouldn't be bad if they just took time to do other stuff and rest but in place of that grinding is encouraged but when a someone gets anxiety and panic they go like "lmfao it's just an exam, don't be so nervous kekw"

as someone who really would get caught up in the moment when it came to exams and school and then stopped, there really is no difference in the result, I feel better and and also feel like I have been scammed so badly until 8th grd

I would study so much back then and it didn't even matter, I could have fucked around and done more art etc but no, I was doing some stupid notebook work so that I would get A+ and not A and some stupid 60 year old entitled bitch wouldn't give me the "I'm disappointed in you" stare

anyway, thanks for complimenting my blog! I'm still experimenting with how I can customise it and looking for different themes (so if you have any, please recommend)

and as for the fanart, it's gonna be for summer of seven years ! (sorry if you were expecting a taeyong or ten fic, jaehyun simp here 🌜, we live in a society and also I don't need ref to draw him so it's easier) prob the first fic I read from you and I really liked it and I'm a sucker for pointlessly connected stories that overlap in certain parts, I might make something for another fic too, been experimenting with blender on my eXTrRemEly HIGh SpEcS pc and might make a certain miniature something from favourite crime

random nct song for this ask is !!! firetruck because I love the mv, really charming and makes me wanna write something (I'm being unecessarily mean but unecessarily decorated performance videos for music videos are just not for me unless done very differently, the tax evasion milestone uncle Lee soo man and his gang really pissing me off) lol and a free picture of my other cousin's dog

also a request, please add me to the tag list for rhyme scheme ! <3

have a good night 🌞

dude. don't even apologize because i took another 8 years to respond to this 🤡 we stan a procrastinating bitch👍 but yes the dog makes everything worth it (she/he's SO CUTE GBYE I WANT TO PET)

bro frfr except my parents just became worse with how I did and I just ✨suffer✨now lmfao, our boards are offline and I'm just :///// HELLO?? they're not taking into consideration that hey! kids can't take the vaccine, you don't know if someone at home has covid and they're sending their kid, what if they're asymptomatic?? what if they're carriers?? brains? none. hotel? trivago.

and yes! our Indian educational system is BEYOND unreasonable and does not benefit the student in any which way! When everything keeps changing it's only harder on us and we've literally been through HELL as a batch.

board exams are harmful, because they don't prepare for the real world in any which way and tells us that 'oH if you don't do well, you're a failure.' i told this to my mother who was like "oH nO yOu'e NoT A fAIlUrE (mind you this woman is the same one who flat out told me I was going to be a failure if I didn't do well) and its honestly one the reasons I get so stressed and agitated.

Yes! themes there are several blogs for such like @/glenthemes and @/seyche and many more!! honestly thinking about changing mine too soon haha

AND OMG i can't wait to see the art ahh as long as you're good with the fic you chose I'm ecstatic because holy shit someone wants to make art of what I've written?? INSANE fjdfjfjk and I'm happy it was your first fic from me!! yes, i too am also a hoe for hopelessly connected stories (writing the last part of the series rn!!!) so make sure to tag me<3

👏FIRETRUCK 👏SUPREMACY👏 i love that song and mv no matter how odd lmao I go back a lot of times just to vibe yk??

and yes I shall add you to the taglist bby, have a great day<3

#asks—◌

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curious-minx · 3 years

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The Divine Hustle

Do the hustle(!)

Working yourself to the death has never been so glamours!

To live in America is to play by the business savvy handbook. America has never been a country of a wholesome omniloving God, instead the USA has always been the land of fleeced pockets. Much of America has fetishized the concept of “Hard Work” from the Puritantical Protestants to the Bootstrap pulling fantasia sprung from the Industrial Age. Some business CEOs even go as far to reinvent history by putting the word “Hustle” into Abraham Lincoln’s mouth:

“Things may come to those who wait … but only the things left by those who hustle.”

An actual quote from our Hardest Working President Business

Yes, Lincoln the original Tall King, the first Presidential White Saviour, a Myth more than Man, the living embodiment of a Pull Yourself By the Bootstraps Aesop fable. He needed that stove pipe hat to hide his vast quantity of hustle. I can see why a Business CEO type would be tickled by this fake quote. Lincoln’s legal work had him making more money at times than that of a prominent State Governor. There are reasons why he’s a Money Man. So tell me, Encyclopedia Britannica why would Lincoln feel the drive to accumulate this money and capital? Does it stem from Abraham Lincoln’s insecurities and low self-esteem from coming from a low income background? EB offers us none such info but it does lean heavily into Mary Todd Lincoln being a questionable influence on Lincoln. The EB is quick to file MTL as being the Insane, Difficult Woman who has developed an “obsessive need to spend money.” Of course, Lincoln had to make all of this money in order to pay for his expensive crazy wife. Makes perfect sense if I am someone completely stoned and drunk from hagiography and cute, quaint reductive views of history.

Lincoln’s business savviness is made abundantly clear in his failed presidential campaign against Douglas. He published personally curated debate transcripts and his own Biography to hawk on the campaign trail. The acute self-awareness of his own remarkableness is perhaps one of Lincoln’s main shortcomings and strengths. The man worked himself into a frenzy, constantly looked emaciated and worn down, and for what? The one few times he tries to take in one of his only pleasures in life, The Arts, he gets murdered. The Capitalist Mythmakers want us to forget about all of that. Abraham Lincoln worked because he loved to work and he was a good American, therefore if you want to be a good American like Lincoln, you’ll work the Hustle.

Yes, this essay has been nothing but the ramblings of someone pretending like they know what they are talking about, but everytime I see the word “Hustle,” exclusively when it’s being used in terms of celebrating hyper capitalist America another part of me dies.

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Wow, the people look meaningless from up here.

The New York Hustle. The Detroit Hustle. To do these hustles once meant finding a dancing partner for the night and telling the 4/4 rhythm, “4 steps are fine, but six steps are even better.” Now the New York Hustle is working three unpaid internships with the promise that a slightly underpaid gig could be on the way. All language inevitAbly changes and evolves, but that doesn’t mean I have to be okay about it. The modern hustle is the joy killer. The modern hustle is pushing and shoving fellow hustlers over the faint whiff of dining room scraps. To hustle is to continue to believe in your own self mythology so hard that you too can become your personal Lincoln. An emaciated, husk working for the Good of the Company, er, I mean Nation. Maybe a scuzzy Matthew McConaughey will give you a spin. That’s sure to make any hard worker smile before she collapses.

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Have you ever seen a side hustle news filler story that didn’t make you want to walk into a murky ocean’s depths? One Google “News” search of the term hustle brings up this article about a New Zealand Woman supposedly planning slumber parties during Covid times. One can only assume that this is the case because the article (sourced from the highly reputable looking Stuff.co) despite being published in February 2021 makes no reference to the pandemic. This is because New Zealand has already moved well beyond those covid days. Covid slumber party nightmares aside, the idea of hiring a professional slumber party planner in or out of Covid times is a brazenly gross idea. The extent of “planning” that should go into a slumber party is how much should you tip the pizza delivery driver, how many boxes of brownie mix, and maybe the one job I could jokingly fathom hiring a person for is choosing what regrettable movie a kid should watch at a slumber party.

Slumber parties are for children, and can easily be planned and arranged by a child. There should never be a need to outsource “Harrypotter glam” themed teepees and treats. Maybe that’s the kind of life people in New Zealand want to lead and if certain individuals want to have that ambitious drive to make a ridiculous small company they should be free to do so. The sinister creeping reality is that the standards of the Exceptional Money Making Individual are becoming the standards everyone is expected to live up to. Passion for the sake of passion, and art for the sake of art is getting the squeeze in favor of monetizing slumber parties.

Monetizing off of Twitter followers. Monetizing off of newsletters. Monetizing off of podcasts. Content creation for the sake of profit is basically the main reason the Internet exists anymore. If you have something you love to do in your life like the act of reading a book you better be willing to invest in a USB microphone and recording booth to start your audio book reading career because otherwise you’re just reading a book. You’re just playing a video game when you could be streaming yourself for all of your adoring fans and followers. I could be thinking, but instead I’m tweeting.

I do not respect the Hustle. I respect differences and a variety of lifestyles. I respect Passion and drive. I do not respect the Hustle, because the side hustle is just a full-time job the capitalist system is trying to make you consider a “side” project. One look at this exhaustive CNBC “The ultimate side hustle guide for 2021”, and what they are describing is not a side hustle but starting your own small business. They are not the same thing. A side hustle should not require an immense amount of time, personal wealth, and the possible necessity of hiring a freelancer and tax analysts to start when you are already working a full-time job and/or participating in the American Breeding Dream.

I know that I am lazy compared to many over working Americans. I am already in my late twenties and still staunchly refuse to engage in American Adult Tie Sensitive Checklist. I would like to work, truly I do. I would love nothing more than to be in possession of a job in a safe and humane company that legitimately favored Human Kindness and Decency over the Grind. Working for a company that didn’t feel like the sole purpose of its existence is to make more and more money.. I am trying to minimize. I am trying not to let other people’s perceptions clutter and crowd out my mind. I am trying to survive through this pandemic that has completely melted what little brains and physical strength I had. I will not stop trying to do the Divine Hustle.

Let’s just appreciate this blurry picture of Divine being eaten by a lobster and call it a day.

#hustle #side hustle #economy #personal essay #capitalism #employment #employee #work #america #divine #John waters #Abraham lincoln #lincoln #president lincoln

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baconpal · 4 years

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Bravely Default and BD2

Here it is, the partially prompted bravely default rant/retrospective/whatever the fuck!

With the announcement and demo of bravely default 2 out now for a bigger market than the original game ever had, I feel that as a massive fan of the original I should put some amount of effort into explaining what the appeal of the original is, why bravely second missed a lot of the appeal, and why bravely default 2 has been very, very worrying so far.

If you care about any of that, come on in and I'll try to actually avoid spoilers this time and make this a more legitimate recommendation of a game than usual.

THE APPEAL OF BRAVELY DEFAULT The games obviously have a beautiful art style, especially when it comes to the backgrounds. Every city is like a painting, a beautifully composed shot that you see from just one direction to give you one very strong impression. While the overworld and dungeons are fully 3d and do not have as strong of an artistic impact, they are still very competent and have good colors and cohesive elements. The character design, including the job outfits, the monsters, and all the villains are just top notch. Simple, evocative designs that make the most of the 3DS' limited hardware and build upon the teams skill in making handheld games look good. (its the same team that did the ff3 remake and 4 heroes of light, which looks absolutely kino on original DS) The music is also consistently excellent, with great use of motifing, a full and varied orchestra, and many good slow paced tracks for most of the non-combat segments. Shit like "Conflict's Chime" being the main battle theme, "Infiltrating Hostile Territory" being a common dungeon theme, and "That person's name is" as the rival boss themes makes even the seemingly repetitive songs a constant joy to listen to.

The story is pretty decent, it's not the best part of the game, and there are definitely some aspects of the story some people loathe, but the characters (specifically ringabel fuckin love him) are pretty good and the make for an enjoyable experience. The side material like D's journal are really well done and integrate into the main narrative well for how tucked away and ignored it is.

The gameplay and systems are also some of the best of any RPG I've played, and I've played far too many. The job system from ff3 and 5 is brought to an even greater depth with the addition of universal job abilities, allowing any character of any job make use of another jobs features to create an endless depth to strategy. The way various jobs can mingle together, and how no job is completely perfect on its own makes for very compelling team composition and unit design. The extensive amount of jobs helps as well for replay value and for assuring that no easy winning strategy is found by all players.

The BP system makes battles take on a very unique pacing as the player and enemies can choose to save up turns or blow them all at once to make more complicated strategies possible, or to make the most of an enemies vulnerabilities. This powerful option gives the player a meaningful way to capitalize on their knowledge of the game, while also allowing them to make truly detrimental mistakes. That may sound not good if you're a fucking baby, but nobody wants an RPG you cant lose, but losing because you fucked up is much better than losing because the enemies are just stronger than you or anything to that effect.

But the single greatest part of bravely defaults, which creates the games wonderful balance and unique design philosophy, is that the player is expected to hit the level cap long before finishing the game. Reaching level 99 should occur somewhere just after the middle of the game, at the point where the player has access to almost every job and has encountered almost every type of threat. Reaching level 99 brings with it a certain security, the implication that from then on, all enemies will also be level 99, and that any failure to defeat an enemy will be a result of a bad strategy or the players own mistakes. The game is not easy, and is certainly intended for veteran final fantasy players used to the games with job systems and changing up your entire party to combat a single encounter. Leveling up is not a slow grind part of the game, as you have a lot of control over the speed and frequency of battles, and it is not difficult to keep up with the games level curve.

The other layer to this unique design is that the game expects you to "cheat", or use strategies that would be overpowered and frowned upon in most other games. Bravely default easily expects you to know or discover strategies such as: applying a status to all enemies and killing every enemy with that status using another spell, cycling a counter move over and over to have a nearly invincible party member, applying a healing attribute to a self-damaging character to get huge damage at little cost, casting reflect and dangerous spells on your own party to bounce them at the enemy, or duplicating a move that does maximum damage 15 times in a row. The game builds all of its encounters with the knowledge that your team will be the maximum level and that you will be using the most vile tactics you can come up with, and the game will do the same. Bosses and even common enemies will employ equally vile tactics using the exact same moves that you have access to, meaning you can learn from your enemies or quickly grasp the enemies strategy through your own experiences. One of the late game dungeons is entirely optional, but involves several fights against parties of 4 just like your, using the same jobs and skills you have gained during the game as a perfect test of your ability to develop counter-strategies, instead of relying on your own overpowered tactics. This type of design is really not something you find in many games due to the prominence of grinding or the lack testing strategies, and it is the most true appeal of bravely default to me.

BRAVELY SECOND EXISTS I GUESS So bravely second, a direct sequel to bravely default, definitely is a video game. It uses the original game as a base to generate more content, but completely misses the appeal of the original, and the new content added makes the experience even less focused. Overall, it's still a fairly alright RPG, but it fails to follow up on bravely default in a meaningful way or to provide as compelling of a gameplay experience. Here's some of the things it fucked up.

The game reuses almost everything the original game had, including the same music, world map, and most of the original's towns and dungeons, while adding a few of it's own. Going through areas you've been before never feels good, and the new areas lack the quality or brevity of the original game, leading to uninteresting areas that overstay their welcome, despite being the only break from repetitively reused content.

This extends to the classes but in an even worse sense. One important trait of the original jobs is that they were not perfect by themselves. While every job provided some useful abilities to be shared with other classes, or provided a good base with which to make a character, no class was without flaws. The new classes in bravely second are a lot of the opposite, they are closed loops that think of everything they could have to make a good standalone character. The 4 starter classes you get in bravely second are all brand new, and there's almost no reason to use any class besides those 4 as they are just insanely good. The priest and magician specifically augment magic in a way that makes spells infinity scalable into the end game, completely trampling on any other magic classes territory without needing the extra effort of grinding a new class out. Many of the new job concepts are actually really interesting, like going back in time to return to a healthier state, or a class that changes the stats and attributes of all units in a battle, allowing for all new kinds of strategies; but these classes lack any opportunity to be used to their full potential since they don't mesh well with other jobs and are limited by their self-centered design.

Another completely missed aspect of the original is the level curve discussed before. Bravely second only really requires you get somewhere in the ballpark of level 60-70 to comfortably beat the final boss, and getting too leveled up is really hard to avoid if you are plan to try out various jobs.

Second also fails to account for how many incredibly strong strategies the player can come up with, and even introduces some of its own strategies that it has no way to counteract, such as halfsies (the first skill the first class gets) pretty much splitting the game in two by tripling the value of items like phoenix downs, and allowing for fool-proof strategies by making 1 character focus entirely on defense, effectively making the party unkillable. Essentially, if you play second after having played the original (like any sane person would) then you will absolutely destroy the game with no sense of satisfaction.

The story is also a large step down, enough to become an annoyance, as the writing style changes to a strange romantic comedy situation with, for lack of a better term please forgive my sin, anime writing, but like bad anime writing, ya know the kind of shit that makes people write off all anime cus a lot of it is awkward and unpleasant to listen to. The story tries to mess with some big concepts like "what if new game + was a real thing???" and time travel and shit like that but it doesn't mesh with the tone the rest of the game has and that tone doesn't mesh with the world or art style and it's just a mess.

BRAVELY DEFAULT 2 SEEMS KINDA POOPIE SO FAR So unfortunately, the big appeal of bravely default being part of it's end game makes it hard to judge how 2 is gonna go given we only have a demo of the beginning, but given that the original team behind bravely default has slowly been stripped out of the series as it goes on, the outlook is bleek.

Most immediately obvious is that the artstyle has made a horrible transition from handheld to console, somehow even worse than pokemon. The areas are all fully 3d and lack the style or compositional excellence of bravely default, and the outside environment look like asset store products. The small proportioned characters with simple features to be readable on a small screen have been replaced with identically proportioned characters with excessive detail and ugly features, and look horrible up close on a big screen. Only the negatives of the art style have made it over, and everything good has been made unsavory. The character and enemy design overall is much worse as a result, everything is messy, unclear, and clashes with everything else. It's an absolutely shocking downgrade.

The characters themselves are overly hammy and feel like shallow attempts to have a similar party dynamic to the original without having identical character types, and the writing as a whole doesn't seem to have improved from second, which was already quite a step down from the original.

The gameplay also has not done anything different or interesting yet, and seems to be selling itself to people haven't heard of or gotten enough of the BP system. Enemies being on the overworld as opposed to random encounters shows they have dropped the player agency over encounter frequency, which is dumb. The battles lack any of the flow the original had, especially when using the battle speed option, as the camera does not present everything very well and changes position often as a result. Overall, I have not enjoyed the bravely default 2 demo and feel it shows nothing but a continued decline in the series that likely should have just been a single game. With the release date being set for sometime this year, I feel there is no chance any amount of player feedback could save the game or even begin to pull it in the right direction, as it seems to be fundamentally flawed with an inescapable feeling of shovelware.

SO WHAT? Basically, all I wanted to say here is that the original bravely default is a very unique experience I think every RPG fan should give a good chance (and just do all the optional stuff during the "repetitive" part of the game, it's where all the best content is you bozo) and that the sequels are NOT the same experience. I guess it's kind of mean to just say "hey don't buy or like this new thing cus its not like the old thing" but people should know why there's a bravely default 2 in the first place, and should fight for what made the original great. I worry that BD goes down the same sad path that FF did, becoming a completely hollow, middling series that strayed so far from it's home that a whole new series had to be made to give the fans of the old style a place to go.

Thanks for reading, and hope you got something out of it.

#bravely default #bravely series #bravely default 2 #juvenile rant #vote now for the next rant! including things such as The Great Ace Attorney and why it's kino #or why i think arms is a really well designed game even tho i'm fucking shit at it #very exciting topics indeed #or ya know whatever other shit you think i have a lot to say about

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everygame · 4 years

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Cinco Paus (iOS)

Developed/Published by: smestorp Released: 12/02/2015 Completed: n/a Completion: 33 games, 632 points. Trophies / Achievements: n/a

So, Cinco Paus, then. It’s a game I’ve resisted playing for ages and ages largely because I wasn’t that into Michael Brough’s previous games (I somewhat liked 868-Hack, but I didn’t find it very compelling somehow?) but we got to a point where Metanet’s Raigan Burns just bought it for me so I decided to give it the old college try.

Cinco Paus is incredible. It’s also frustrating, unfair, probably taking the piss when it comes to time investment, and yet something that I managed to lose more time, more intensely on, than any game I’ve played in ages. Like legitimately losing 14 hours to it within the first three days.

It’s an easily misunderstood game, so I’m going to outline (first of all) that you absolutely should play it, unless you’re easily addicted to rogue-likes, in which case you probably shouldn’t. Basically, it goes like this:

You’re a wizard.

You have five wands that you don’t know the behaviors of; each wand does five things. Your goal is to compete FIFTY sets of five levels, which are five by five, by getting to the exit on each level.

Wands do a variety of things. You learn by shooting them (drag them to your wizard and point them in a direction; you can’t use them directly against a wall.) They don’t tell you what the thing they do is unless they do that thing so you can’t tell if it hurts an enemy unless you hit an enemy. But you also can’t tell if it does something good that requires it not to hit an enemy (the “buried treasure” ability) unless it doesn’t hit an enemy!

All the explanations are in Portuguese, so ignore them and just look them up here.

You can pick up items.

Books teach you one thing one wand does.

Gems. Collect five gems and you can unlock an artifact (you can have five) which do one (powerful) thing.

Keys. Collect five keys, which you can only do via wand shenanigans (there’s one key per level, and that always gets used up to unlock doors) and you can find a secret level (a hidden door on a wall that doesn’t contain an exit/entrance already) which will upgrade an artifact. Each artifact can have five upgrades. They’re extremely good.

Potions. Heal you one point. This is valuable, but if you’re at full health you can ignore or transform these.

Treasure. It’s just points! If you’re going for score, these are high risk because they give you nothing else. Transform ‘em early if you can, I say.

After a set of five levels, everything resets except for your gems, keys, score and artifacts. So you “keep” some progress.

If you die: you lose everything and start again.

Oh, and every set of five levels is basically the same; the layouts are close to random, but the selection of enemies you face are consistent; level 3 in your fiftieth game will have the same possible enemy selection as it would have in your first game (recounted in this excellent guide).

You die if you lose your hitpoints; you will generally die because an enemy hit you.

Enemies move after you do, semi-randomly.

If you walk into a space next to them, they will hit you. Do not do this! Make sure they move next to you, and hit them.

There are shrimp, lizards, toads and roosters. You don’t want to slug it out with the toads and roosters.

There are also Ghosts, who are weird; they will hit you if you move next to them, but if you are next to them and you move towards them, they’ll move away. That means you can’t kill them without a wand, but is also means that you can move and not get hit by them even if you think you’re trapped!

That’s… a lot. So you might be asking, what the hell am I doing?

Try and learn as much about the wands as soon as possible each run. If you can, track all the big things a wand can do (did it hit a wall, an enemy, etc).

Don’t get hit, and especially never ever get cornered (two enemies next to you) unless you have a big power that will pay off and kill them. On the first level, if you’re deep in a multi-game run, carefully slug it out with lizards if you would otherwise have to fire at point blank range. There are too many ways for things to go wrong on that first level and taking a couple of hits is more survivable than turning a lizard into a rooster, and then having the beam bounce off corners and duplicate it several times (and then teleport you in the center of them. Which could happen.)

Do whatever you can to get as many gems as early as possible; if you can dupe them, do so. If you can use transform on books/potions/treasure to try and get a gem, do it.

Do whatever you can to get as many extra keys. Upgraded artifacts are so important.

Above all: survive. If you’re fucking up a level, just do whatever to get to the exit. Don’t get greedy. There’s always the next level, or at worst the next set.

Right. So that reads as insanely complicated, I think, but the beauty of Cinco Paus is that it’s actually extremely simple. While there’s a lot of things a wand can do, the things you can do are limited, so the play-space is always extremely understandable (the map is always 5x5; you know you’re getting a particular set of enemies next time, etc.) It’s actually extremely elegant.

The thing about Cinco Paus is that it’s the closest I think I’ve come to truly seeing genius at play in game design. Like, ok, maybe that sounds absurd, but I mean like when you think about a piece of art or music where you think “oh, I could do that” and you probably could, but it’s the idiosyncrasies of the artist that make it something far more interesting and unique and you sort of second guess any critique of that.

I mean listen. This game looks like shit. Just shit. It’s disgusting to look at. I hate it. But maybe that’s totally still necessary to what it is. And I honestly think the decision to make all the text in Portuguese is… problematic? I know it came from a genuine interest in using the language (Brough is, or was, learning it) but that it’s used to make the game more mysterious and alien (for everyone except people who can speak, as he admits, the sixth most spoken language in the world) is kinda… I just don’t think it’s good.

And the thing is, for me it doesn’t add anything. This game could, I think, look crazy polished and feature some brilliant UI and be in English; like it could track all the things you’ve learned in a big database; fuck it could even cross off all the things you’ve tried. The game would still be extremely challenging, and if anything, more enjoyable as a puzzle.

But… would that actually be better? I’m not sure. I really can’t tell, because it’s a bit like saying Van Gogh should have just drawn normally.

So, you know, here’s to the iconoclasts. Fuck knows I’d probably have been a better games journalist if I didn’t put my best writing in a printed zine, you know? I still did it the way I wanted to.

I suppose the question might be though: why have I stopped playing? Well, I died frustratingly in the middle of my greatest run ever as it turns out Roosters had unlocked a way to warp me three runs ago and, despite being well prepared, I was warped by one where I was surrounded and literally couldn’t survive (some people might quibble.) I didn’t feel any rage, I felt pretty proud of getting that far, but the idea of starting the grind again made me really bored.

You see, in order to get to the point where Cinco Paus is really fun, you have to put up with the “starting grind” where with no artifacts yet you have to play loads of times trying to get a good start and get a few artifacts going. That’s potentially hundreds of games, and after bumping up against that for a few days I just said fuck it.

I know, you can’t question genius by my own parameters here, but I think about a similar genius (uh, actually not similar) Jeff Minter, and how he came up with that genius “high score save” where it just saved the game at your highest score each level and you could restart there. You could always restart too. Here I wish I could just pick a random artifact or two and start at level 5 or 10 with less score, even. Because it’s the getting of those that are the ball-ache when you’re so weak and shitey.

But look. It’s probably good. I kicked my habit. But I’m glad I played it. I’m better for it. I’m still not watching the Wire though.

Will I ever play it again? Maybe if he updates it, which I think has been rumoured. I’m taking a big break from Brough but I’ll be back for Imbrouglio though. Actually excited.

Final Thought: There’s no daily seed here, which might have kept me playing, but I realize that he can’t really do that because one person could just tell you what’s coming, plus doing fifty levels is, what… 8 hours or something? It’s wild that I want a game where everything is so restricted to five of anything still maybe streamlined a bit more. But as I said, what do I know? I’m not a genius.

#cinco paus #games #gaming #video games #smestorp #michael brough #ios #text #txt #review #game guide #guide #faq #iphone #ipad

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