#the adventures of trying to decide which name to use with a character who has two different aliases | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

thewebcomicsreview · 1 year

Text

The Webcomic Reviews Mini Reviews Masterpost, Part 1

People always ask me what I think of various webcomics, so I decided to start collecting my thoughts in one place! Click the images to go to the comic! Comic titles with a ⭐ after them are recommended, but even if I don't give a comic a star, that doesn't mean you won't like it.

[un]Divine ⭐

What is it: A highschooler sells his soul for a big titty demon gf, and now has to have anime battles against angels who keep trying to eat him.

The Good: Excellent art and monster designs, some of the better fights in webcomics.

The Bad: Danny is kind of a bland protagonist. The comic keeps threatening to veer into femdom porn, which may be a good thing for some of you. Comic is on permanent semi-hiatus and updates very infrequently

You should read it if: You wanna read a comic with big fights, big angels, and big titties.

Ava’s Demon

What is it: A bunch of kids possessed by demons have space adventures and are sad

The Good: Extremely good art. Occasional "high production value" moments with music and limited animation. The single-panel page format really highlights the art.

The Bad: Bland writing, weak characters. The single-panel page format really slows the flow of reading it.

You should read it if: Learning that the Wrath demon is named “Wrathia” doesn’t strike you as comically dumb

Awkward Zombie ⭐

What is it: It’s a comic that makes jokes about video games

The Good: It’s the best comic that makes jokes about video games

The Bad: If you haven’t played the game in question, you might not get the jokes. Awkward lack of zombies.

You should read it if: You like jokes about video games. I don't....it's not a complex premise.

Camp Weedonwantcha ⭐

What is it: A bunch of kids are left at summer camp forever by parents who’ve abandoned them to die. Wacky comedy and feel-good moments ensue.

The Good: Cute adventures with kids, reminiscent of some of the better Nicktoons from the 90s. Surprisingly emotionally effective when it wants to be.

The Bad: While the ending is satisfying in its own way, many plot threads go unresolved

The Terrible: Nickelodeon bought the rights and is sitting on them.

You should read it if: You like slice of life adventures with blasts of dark humor and feels

Cloudscratcher

What is it: Ducktales, with Genocide!

The Good: Cute and generally likable characters. Decently paced

The Bad: Doesn’t really excel at anything. Weirdly insistent about totally not being a furry comic even though it obviously is.

The Terrible: The author is a white nationalist, and the lack of link is intentional.

You should read it if: You like 80s cartoons and hate minorities

Cornucopia ⭐

What is it: A ninja is sent on a mission to literally steal candy from a nation of morons, fails.

The Good: Good art and well-paced storytelling. Clever use of different types of word balloons. High joke-per-page ratio

The Bad: Doofy tone may not be your cup of tea. Seems to have died young, though the first chapter is still a complete story

You should read it if: You like JelloApocalypse’s videos on YouTube, or his series Epithet Erased, since he made this

Dresden Codak

What is it: A genius inventor has wacky adventurers, then goes to a flying city and spends most of the comic’s run embroiled in a conspiracy run by evil anime villains.

The Good: The drawings are pretty. The early comedy adventures are quirky and charming.

The Bad: Panel layout and composition, especially early in Dark Science, is atrocious. Presents the comic as a feminist power fantasy, but the main character usually has her tits out and has had her clothes burnt off on multiple occasions.

The Terrible: The author is a notorious jerk. As of this writing, The Dark Science storyline has been running for eight years and has yet to reach a triple-digit number of pages, even though it’s a full-time job for which Diaz earns $4,000+/mo on Patreon.

You should read it if: You thought the best part of Ghost in the Shell was the lesbian orgy boat.

Drop Out (NSFW) ⭐

What is it: Two girlfriends go on a road trip to kill themselves in style

The Good: Short enough to be read in one sitting. Surprisingly good visual storytelling for a first comic. Realistic dialogue and high tension keeps you engaged even when not much is happening. Subtle details that don’t become apparent until a second read reward paying attention.

The Bad: Heavy subject matter. Lettering can be tough to read in early pages.

Content Warnings: Drug Abuse, Suicide, Mental Health Issues, Detransitioning….a list of all the difficult content in this comic would be so long it’d look like I’m making a joke. This is a heavy comic.

You should read it if: You like arty dramatic comics that deal with uncomfortable topics

Dumbing of Age

What is it: College students obsessed with late 80s-early 90s pop culture have relationship troubles

The Good: Of all the popular comics it’s trendy to shit on, this is by far the best. Solid gag-a-day strip with plots that move at a decent pace.

The Bad: Realistic depictions of abusive parents co-exists in the same comic as a literal superhero, leading to some jarring tonal confusion.

You should read it if: You like newspaper-style drama comics.

Everything Is Fine

What is it: Maggie and Sam are a normal married couple in a very strange world where proving your loyalty is the key to winning, and the best way to prove your loyalty is to show someone else is disloyal. And also everyone wears mascot suit cat heads all the time.

The Good: Well-written characters, a novel premise, and excellent pacing. I’m not the biggest fan of the webtoon “really tall page” format, but it’s taken advantage of at times for nice transitions

The Bad: The webtoon format can be irritating, and the worldbuilding is toeing the line between “compelling mystery” and “If there were two astronauts on the moon and one shot the other wouldn’t that be fucked up?”-ism.

Content Warning: Gore, Suicide themes. Every page with such content has a warning on it (which works better in Webtoon format, actually)

You should read it if: You liked the dystopian fiction fiction books you had to read in high school.

Gunnerkrigg Court ⭐

What is it: A girl attends a scientific school in a magical world that’s honestly not even slightly like Harry Potter but people say it is because they think J. K. Rowling invented British schools

The Good: Good art and fantastic panel composition. Slow-burning dark fantasy mystery.

The Bad: Takes a little while to find its groove. Starts feeling rushed and confusing near the end.

The Terrible: Boxbot

You should read it if: You like dark fantasy stories, or stories in general.

Homestuck ⭐?

What is it: A kid wants to play a video game but it’s downstairs and he doesn’t feel like talking to his dad yadda yadda yadda the universe explodes. Was briefly ungodly popular.

The Good: High production values, many updates are music videos with excellent music. Great character writing, especially in Act 5. Toby Fox, the creator of Undertale, did a lot of the music, and arguably isn’t even the best musician featured.

The Bad:The early part of the comic is brutally slow-paced, and is an impossible hurdle for some.

The Terrible: The ending is widely considered a major disappointment, and attempts to turn the comic into a franchise have been met with mixed reviews. The prose epilogues are deeply divisive.

Content Warning: A lot gorier than you might expect, mitigated by the cartoony art style, abusive relationships, the epilogue is just generally gross.

You should read it if: You want to see what the hell all those kids in grey face-paint at anime conventions were about

You should also consider: Just getting the music off the bandcamp, it’s really good.

Homestuck 2

What is it: A “dubiously canon” sequel to Homestuck, following from The Homestuck Epilogues, made by a different creative team. Follows two intersecting future timelines

The Good: The art is quite nice, and the new characters are fun and likable. Very bold in its ideas, for better or for worse it’s rarely boring. One of the few webcomics to be able to integrate trigger warnings clearly while remaining non-obtrusive with them. Faster-paced than the original Homestuck (low bar!) and has a few clever presentation ideas. Willing to be its own thing. If you’re worried it’s just “Homestuck 1 but more of it”, this is not that.

The Bad: Not at all a stand-alone comic, Homestuck 2 is completely incoherent if you’re not familiar with Homestuck 1 and the Homestuck Epilogues. Does not have the big multimedia productions Homestuck 1 was known for. Beloved characters from Homestuck 1 can come off really badly, which upsets a lot of people. If you’re looking for “Homestuck 1 but more of it”, this is not that.

The Terrible: At times, this comic is actively trying to piss off the readership by dragging out unpopular plot revelations. I actually like this about it, but unsurprisingly a lot of people don’t.

You should read it if: If you have to ask “Should I read Homestuck 2?”, the answer is probably “No”. This is a comic for people who are riding the Homestuck train to the bitter end.

You should also consider: Reading my Liveblog of it

Kiwi Blitz ⭐

What is it: A precocious young girl gets a Kiwi-shaped robot and decides to become a superhero ridding the world of nefarious furries. More of a cute character drama than a superhero comic, and more of a superhero comic than a mecha one.

The Good: Cute artstyle. Not without dramatic stakes, but fairly light and fun throughout minus a few people getting shot. The android 42 is stand-out great character.

The Bad: Prone to long hiatuses as the author's main comic is now Sleepless Domain.

You should read it if: You liked Sleepless Domain, and are looking for a somewhat lighter comic by the same author.

Latchkey Kingdom ⭐

What is it: A girl goes on adventures in a magical land of idiots

The Good: Good but not overbearing comedy. Tight chapters. Strong side characters

The Bad: Thanks in part to Patron-backed stories in between the “main” chapters, can feel like an episodic series with no main character or driving plot

The Neutral: Willa is a semi-silent protagonist, and often gets overshadowed by the wacky people she meets. Cerberus Syndrome, executed well

You should read it if: You like adventure, silly characters, and jokes about Dark Souls.

Leasebound

What is it: Two lesbians are contrived into sharing an apartment, then the comic becomes a polemic about how trans people are evil. The second-best TERF webcomic on this list

The Good: This comic has no redeeming qualities

The Bad: It’s hella transphobic, and not even particularly interesting about it the way Sinfest can be. Everything that’s not hateful is boring, and the comic is practically going “Go on, be offended, blog about me, give me atteeeennnnttttiiiiiooooonnn!”

You should read it if: You really shouldn’t, and I’m not linking to it

Least I Could Do

What is it: Rayne Summers is the best at everything and you should listen to him

The Good: This comic updates on time regularly. Sometimes it updates without word balloons by accident, making it surreally funny

The Bad: Poorly thought-out political rants; few jokes, severe overuse of beat panels, copy-pasted art.

The Terrible: Designed to go viral, not to be entertaining; makes panels wordless just so they can be used as preview images

You should read it if: You have committed horrible sins and wish to atone

Legend of the Hare

What is it: I wrote this! A white trash loser girl is peer pressured into becoming a magical girl by a pair of pushy rabbits. A spinoff of the print comic Blade Bunny, written and drawn by the current creative team of Saffron and Sage.

The Good: Bouncy and cartoony art. Strong and memorable characters. Very weird and freewheeling.

The Bad: The plot is an absolute mess, stalling out and even going backwards at times, though it mostly comes together at the end. The tone is wildly inconsistent.

The Terrible: Kind of South-Parky in its humor sometimes

You should read it if: You like Saffron and Sage and want to see a comic by the same team when they were less experienced.

Nan Quest ⭐

What is it: In this spiritual sequel to Ruby Quest, a goat girl electrician sets out to fix a broken fuzebox and ends up ensnared in a psychological horror conspiracy.

The Good: Much more effective use of the simple MS Paint art style, with more color and some simple animations (animated panels being marked [A], a convention Homestuck would later adopt for its [S] sound panels). The characters are better fleshed out than in Ruby Quest, and the horror is more effective as well, with less gore and more tension.

The Bad: Though used effectively, the art is still MS Paint doodles. The story mechanics behind the mystery are much more ambiguous, which can be a plus.

Content Warning: Gore, threatened sexual violence.

You should read it if: You like Ruby Quest and/or psychological horror comics that can be read in a few hours.

Moby: Back from the Deep

What is it: A zombie killer whale attacks a small town.

The Good: The art is nice

The Bad: Egregious overuse of narration.

The Terrible: It’s a beat for beat ripoff of the movie Jaws, down to some characters having their names only marginally changed from their Jaws counterpart (e.g. “Alex Gardener” is the name of the Alex Kintner analogue)

You should read it if: You can’t find a Jaws torrent.

Mokepon ⭐

What is it: A dickhead teenager is forced on a Pokemon adventure, and learns a valuable lesson about friendship while being dragged into a criminal conspiracy. A Pokemon fanfic that’s somewhat darker than the source material (though not really “grimdark”)

The Good: Good action scenes, nice manga-style art. Notable improvement in art and storytelling over time. Atticus’ slow-burn character growth is satisfying.

The Bad: The early chapters are almost a completely different comic, and it takes a little while to find its groove.

You should read it if: You liked Pokemon Special

Monster Pulse ⭐

What is it: Kids’ internal organs become sentient external organs, and they have to keep it a secret from an evil orginization.

The Good: Cool twist on the surprisingly rare monster pet genre. Not afraid to upend the status quo

The Bad: No real obvious flaws, but if you don’t find the premise interesting, you probably won’t like it.

You should read it if: You were a fan of monster-pet stories like Digimon Tamers

The Monster Under The Bed

What is it: A teenager finds a demon girl under his bed, rom-com ensues

The Good: Cute anime-esque premise

The Bad: Gets progressively hornier to to point where I'm not sure if I should even leave it on this list. Egregious use of photos instead of drawing backgrounds, making outdoor scenes look awful

You should read it if: You like trashy Japanese animes

Narbonic ⭐

What is it: A shlubby loser gets a job working for a mad scientist. Mad sciencey things occur, and the comic experiences an incredible jump in quality in the back half

The Good: Short comic, comfy and easy to read. The best and most satisfying ending arc of any webcomic ever.

The Bad: Some “LOLRANDOM” humor, especially early on.

The Terrible: The first few comics are almost literally unreadable due to messy handwritten lettering and low quality scans.

You should read it if: You love seeing a story build to a proper conclusion, and you don’t mind a rough start.

Octopus Pie ⭐

What is it: Slice-of-life dramedy where twenty-somethings try to become adults and/or get laid while navigating New York life. Completed comic.

The Good: If you direct your attention above, you will see the incredible coloring. There are other comics that have better plots and even better characters, but Octopus Pie is uniquely good at hitting a mood. Occasionally does some infinite canvas stuff that’s neat.

The Bad: This is a comic about exploring ideas and kind of drifting around through life, and isn’t a big plot-focused comic with a lot of big dramatic reveals. Which I don’t think is bad, but it might not be your thing.

You should read it if: You liked stories about adults trying to figure out how to grow up, and like seeing characters age.

Out-of-Placers ⭐

What is it: A human man is turned into a female rat creature, and has to navigate a low-fantasy world while learning their incredibly stupid ways and trying to get himself back to normal.

The Good: Really good worldbuilding, with interesting, fleshed out, and unique fantasy races. There are licensed Dungeons and Dragons books with less cool ideas for a campaign in them.

The Bad: Can get kind of edgy in ways that don’t always work, and occasionally gets a bit gross. If the premise made you think it was a furry fetish comic, it’s not, but it keeps threatening to become one if you don’t whap it with a newspaper and say “No” very firmly every now and then.

You should read it if: Your favorite DnD race is kobolds.

Paranatural ⭐

What is it: Kids bust ghosts in a parody of shounen anime tropes

The Good: Good banter, creative panel layouts, and characters you want to root for.

The Bad: The story rapidly increases in scale, causing the pacing to slow down somewhat. The story later transitions to an illustrated prose format, which some people can't really get into.

You should read it if: You liked Bleach before it became Dragonball

Prequel -or- Making A Cat Cry: The Adventure ⭐

What is it: An Elder Scrolls fanfiction, in which an alcoholic catgirl heads to a new land to try to make a better life, and generally fails.

The Good: Inventive use of the web as a storytelling medium. Great character writing. Lovable protagonist. Excellent payoff to years or life kicking the protagonist in the face.

The Bad: Years of life kicking the protagonist in the face. Can thus be depressing, especially early on, sometimes to the point of being offensive (see Content Warnings)

The Terrible: Very slow and irratic update schedule

Content Warnings: Alcoholism, Depression, the protagonist gets blackout drunk and wakes up in bed next to strange men several times, which is played for comedy.

You should read it if: You like slow burn character development. You like stories where the protagonist has a hard time

Problem Sleuth

What is it: A detective tries to leave his office using user-submitted commands, and gets in a few tangents along the way. Mostly known now as “The thing Andrew Hussie did before Homestuck”, but it was a popular comic in its own right.

The Good: Much better art than most reader-driven comics, bizarre and clever, with a dramatic finish.

The Bad: Holy shit, you thought Homestuck meandered? Problem Sleuth will do nearly anything and everything readers asked him to do, and this is a veeeeeery convoluted comic that has thus aged somewhat poorly.

You should read it if: You thought Homestuck was best before the Trolls got involved.

Questionable Content

What is it: Humanity achieves a technological utopia in the background while hipsters in Massachusetts complain about their dating lives. Later begins focusing much more heavily on all the robots.

The Good: A rotating menagerie of quirky cute girls. Had a major trans character before it was cool.

The Bad: The comic kind of transitions from being about one thing to being about another thing several times, to the point where onetime protagonists show up less and less or even get dropped altogether in favor of the New Thing the comic is.

You should read it if: You want a comfy and diverse slice-of-life comic.

465 notes · View notes

jq37 · 5 months

Text

The Report Card – Fantasy High Junior Year Ep 1

We're SO Back

School is back in session y’all!!!!

Fantasy High has returned to us after a long break and I am thrilled to come out of my recapping hiatus to bring back the Report Card for Junior Year! You know I could let my favorite chaotic high schoolers go un-analyzed!

This episode wastes no time in getting started so neither will I. Brennan makes what I think is a very strong narrative choice by starting us in media res at the end of a classic Bad Kids adventure. It is the summer between Sophomore and Junior Year and the party has spent the last four months hot on the trail of the dreaded Night Yorb.

We catch up to our Intrepid Heroes in the Red Waste and they’re trying to catch up to the Night Yorb which is a big, eldritch, manta ray like monster who threatens to plunge the entire world into darkness, creating a very slow (but still effective!) apocalypse! The Night Yorb is flanked by its groupies, made up of members of the many cults dedicated to it (collectively known as “Yorbies”).

As I said, the Bad Kids are hot on its trail, in (and on) the Hangvan. Gorgug (who has been leaning more into his Artificer vibes lately) has outfitted the top of the Hangvan with a solar lasso that can be used to capture and reel in the Night Yorb so that Fig and Adaine can defeat it with a magical sigil. I’m gonna quickly run down where everyone is and what they’re doing:

Adaine and Fig are both standing on top of the Hangvan in order to spring the sigil when the time comes. Adaine is also joined by Boggy and a new addition, Moggy the Doggy (aka, Mordekainen’s Faithful Hound), which is a very round, very cute, very invisible Pomeranian looking dog.

Gorgug is also up top with them because he’s manning the solar lasso.

Fabian is inside the Hangvan along with Baby (aka Wretchrot, aka Fig’s screeching blood imp who has no mechanical benefit unless she takes another level of Warlock as Brenan keeping reminding us) and Ecaf, a mirror with a sultry voice that Fabian is *heavily* flirting with, much to everyone’s discomfort. It’s tres Narcissus. (Also, ha, Face backwards. I see you Brennan).

Kristen is in the back with Fabian and Riz is driving, even though he is WAY too small to effectively be driving a Gorgug sized van.

The Hangman–Fabian’s trusty motorcycle/hellhound–is out in front of the Hangvan.

Also Squeem is on the roof with the others! Beloved, fan favorite Squeem!

Yeah, so this episode does a thing of pretending like we’re jumping into the last episode of an arc that we’ve seen every episode of and introducing characters in a very Sam Reich, “He’s been there this whole time” way even though it’s their first appearance. I think it’s very funny and it reminds me of that Community episode where they’re all flashing back to episodes that never aired. But anyway, I mention this so that if I mention a name and you’re like “Whomst?” it’s probably just a bit, you’re not forgetting a major character.

Anyway, we’re joining this chase already in progress which means our kids are hurt and down spell slots but their opponents are as well. The distribution is pretty uneven–Adaine is way less hurt than Fabian and Kristen for instance, which honestly checks out (curious how they decided on that though).

Because this episode is just one big battle sequence for the most part, I’m going to follow the precedent I set in the recaps for The Seven and just give the highlights in bullets and then do an analysis on where all the Bad Kids are right now at the end:

Murph comes in hot, using his first action of the new season to shoot his gun and doing 30 points of damage with a 27 to hit. New year, new Murph!

Siobhan invokes the corn cuties debacle from fight one and all the falling off the tables that happened. Clearly, a bit of Adaine’s oracle energy is rubbing off on her because the next thing that happens in that Fabian decides to jump on top of the Hangvan to cast Faerie Fire on the Night Yorb (which has shrouded itself in magical darkness), rolls the first Nat 1 of the season, absolutely eats it, and gets run over by Riz–narrowly avoiding going down. He’s ultimately fine–The Hangman comes and picks him up–but it’s not a very auspicious star from Master Fabian.

Emily and Murph have a cute moment of womping Brennan back to back by using Silvery Barbs to make him reroll two attacks on the Hangvan–one of which is a crit–and then giving each other the advantage on the next roll.

Kristen is a real pillar in this encounter–holding up the Circle of Power spell that allows her friends to ignore big chunks of damage that absolutely would have dropped them. But throughout the entire fight, her patron goddess, Cassandra, keeps trying to talk to her and Kristen keeps leaving her on read–we’ll get more into that in a bit.

Adaine comes in clutch with a Nat 1 portent roll to stop the NIght Yorb from resisting Gorgug’s attempt to reel it in further. Truly, the best time to roll a Nat 1 in this game. Divination Wizards are awesome!

We learn that “Don’t Speak of the Night Yorb” is more than just a silly bit when Fig realizes that saying its name makes it heal up which isn’t great because they’ve been *very* cavalier about invoking its name.

Squeem gets a big emotional goodbye with Gorgug on top of the Hangvan, heroically leaps off to fend off some Yorbies…and then rolls a 2 and totally faceplants. No! Squeem! Beloved fan favorite Squeem! They already had to revivify you once!

On the Night Yorb’s turn, Brennan does an attack and shakes so many dice that it sounds like maracas. It’s 61 points of damage and squishy wizard Adaine goes down, but everyone else stays up–large in part due to Kristen’s aforementioned Circle of Power. (Siobhan, describing how bad her saving rolls were zings two separate friends saying, “It was Fabian level nasty. I fucking Murph’d it.”)

Luckily, Fig and Gorgug are up on the roof with Adaine so she does not go sliding off the van when she goes down. They catch her before she can fall.

At this point the Van has sustained a lot of damage so Murph reminds the teacher that they have homework/Brennan that they have to roll for a mishap. That turns out to be the breaks blowing out. Now, all the Van can do is accelerate! It’s just like the movie Speed!

Two more characters who we totally know and have been here this whole time show up to help–Balthazar and Duggan McCann! A cool grizzled veteran and a centaur cowboy. Riz immediately starts doing cool guy banter with them because he’s somehow convinced them that he’s cool (which he is for the record, just in a completely different way lol). Unfortch, Baz almost right away gets eaten by the NIght Yorb. Who’s gonna take care of his litter (?) of parrots?????

At this point in the fight, everyone gets a ping on their crystals, reminding them that school starts in three days. This stresses everyone out more than the fight that they’re currently in.

Fig brings up Adaine with a Healing Word but she immediately has to do Wis save with the rest of the party. She and Fabian fail, but once again Fabian is saved by fear negating effects of his dad’s eyepatch. So Adaine starts to have a panic attack about the fact that she’s fighting the Night Yorb while standing on the roof of a moving vehicle which, real talk, very normal and valid reaction. In fact, probably concerning that she’s reached a point in her life where that *isn’t* the default reaction.

The Hangvan is coming up on a jump it’ll have to make to continue following the Night Yorb (and it can’t even try to stop because the brakes are cut). Riz fails the roll which means that the van is probably going to fall on its side. Adding insult to injury, a pillar of rock falls and is going to crash into the van, doing even more major damage.

Fig watches this, and almost dissociates, feeling the weight of the entire summer taken from them to do this quest. Feeling so so tired. Feeling the fact that even if they win, they’re just gonna have to go back to school and adventure some more. A piece of magic she’s been holding inside of for a long time flickers and she hears an enticing voice whisper in her ears. “If you would take me, you know what you would save.” She smells a sour, curdled scent and she knows that if she says yes, she can save her friends. Maybe there’s another way, but she just wants this to be over. “I’m yours,” Fig says.

There’s a flash of “lemony, yellow, creamy” light (hmmmm) and the rock stops falling. The Hangvan starts righting itself.

And then there’s a sick gurgle from Fig’s stomach.

Uh-oh, gang.

For those of you who are new to these recaps, every week, I give one PC Detention and put one on the Honor Roll for their in-game actions. We’re starting off hot this semester with:

Detention

Kristen Applebees for Being a BAD Friend to Cassandra

Like, OK. Faith is complicated. Kristen’s relationship with religion is complicated. Being a cleric is complicated. But notice that I didn’t say being a bad *cleric*. I said being a bad *friend*. To be clear, she’s also being a bad cleric, and I’ll talk about that later. But having understandably conflicted views on religion doesn’t make sliding in your Fantasy Airpods while the being who is essentially a lonely teen girl and who is keeping you and all your friends alive tries to talk to you NOT seem like a giant dick move. Come on girl, get it together.

Honor Roll

Brennan Lee Mulligan for Being a Great DM!

I realized as I was writing this that I’ve given Brennan Detention but never Honor Roll so he’s getting it today. It feels so good to have him back in the dome with the kids and he drew me back into the world, right away. I’m so psyched that we have a full season of this ahead of us!

CHARACTER CHECK-INS

Like I said earlier, because this is the first episode back, I want to really quickly check in with all of the Bad Kids and where they are, character-wise. I’m going to do this roughly from least concerning to me to most concerning to me.

-Adaine: Adaine seems like she’s living her best life. She has her frog! She has her dog! Her character art is so much more chill and she’s coming into her own. This season, I’m hoping we get to see more of her relationship with her sister (yes, I’m a predictable bitch. Sue me) and with Zayn (who is also living at Mordred in her tower) who I think has a lot of potential to be an interesting supporting character with more spotlight. But yeah, go Adaine!

-Gorgug: Gorgug is making his parents proud (not that they ever weren’t) by taking another artificer level. He’s not a 7/3 Barb/Art split. I love that he’s gone from calling himself dumb to taking on this very technical skill. He also apparently has a homunculus? Fascinated to see what that looks like.

-Riz: Now that his big investigation is over and he knows his dad is a cool secret agent, Riz has switched his subclass from Inquisitor to Arcane Trickster which means he’s got tons of gadgets and that he’s a ring guy now. Love that for him. He’s very much not a chill person though so I’m very curious to know what the next thing he’ll latch onto is. He the kind of guy who always need something going on, you know?

-Fabian: Fabian is a fancy, dance boy now (6/4 Fighter/Bard)! But that doesn’t mean he’s any less athletic. I mean, have you ever seen a male ballerina? He still is, however, a total disaster. And I mean that affectionately. I mean, his current love interest (?) is a mirror that is showing a fuzzy reflection of his own face. My guy, what are you doing? Although I will say, idk if that’s more or less toxic than him dating Aelwyn.

-Kristen: Kristen. GIRL.

OK, so first of all. There is nothing inherently wrong with getting super jacked and like, respect. But in this context it feels like a red flag. Like the kind of thing you do because you’re on the rocks with your girlfriend or if you’ve recently broken up. I will be *very* interested to know what Tracker is up to as she’d not mentioned in this episode. Last we heard, she was out doing cleric stuff for the Moon Goddess, right? Long distance can be hell on a relationship. (Also, idk how seriously we’re supposed to take this but Ally mentioned the one shot it happened in in this episode so Kristen was also totally trying to flirt with a college girl in that college visit oneshot. Brennan shut it down pretty quick, but it very much did happen).

Also, speaking of cleric stuff, Cass. I feel SO bad for Cass. Like, a god isn’t owed followers, but Kristen chose that role. She CHOSE it. This isn’t like a Helio situation. Cass wasn’t pushy. She specifically says in this episode that she doesn’t want to be pushy. Hell, she says in the episode where she’s introduced that if people don’t want her around she’ll go away. But Kristen chose to be her follower, knowing what the implications of being the sole follower of a goddess is. Cass is made in her image. That’s how deeply entwined they are. Her goddess is made in her image. In The Seven, we learn that Ost’s god hasn’t talked to anyone in years. Kristen has Cass coming in like a mom offering snacks mid battle and Kristen is leaving her on read! It’s honestly kinda hard to watch her be so blithely dismissive of someone so dependent on her even though it’s played off as kind of a joke. I felt like I was watching a loyal puppy get kicked every time they interacted.

And like, I said this before, Cassandra is made in Kristen’s image. But specifically, she looks like Sophomore year Kristen. Still all skinny and still in her tie-die shirt and shorts. There is a definite vibe of almost wanting to kill the part of yourself that embarasses you, you know? It feels like she's being mean to Cass but also to herself.

Also, mechanically speaking, it’s wild to be just ignoring the person you’re getting your powers from like this. Like, this is real Wizard behavior. You don’t have to answer to anyone if you studied for your magic but you absolutely do as a cleric. Does Kristen even want to be a cleric? It honestly doesn’t seem like it. She’s shown a pattern of behavior of chafing at every god put in her path, even the ones she literally made up. I thought Cass might be the end of her searching, but we’re right back on the Merry Go Round. The party absolutely needs a healer though so idk how she deals with that.

I saw the snipped clip of Ally’s interview about Kristen’s arc this season involving what happens when chaos stops being cute, and I can def see seeds being planted. Fascinated to see how they explore that because this feels like a real ticking time bomb of a situation.

Oh also, her Dex went DOWN????? GIRL!

Fig: I had a lot more to say about Kristen but Fig has to be last on the list for making a deal with a literal devil lol. Like, classic Fig though, right? This WOULD happen. Emily talked about potentially retiring Fig and getting reeled in by some enticing plot hook from Brennan and it feels like we might be about to find out what that is. I won’t speculate on it too much right now because we’re presumably about to find out but there were a LOT of yogurt themed adjectives when that magic activated which has me very split on whether this is about to be deeply concerning or deeply silly. Or both! It could be both!

Random Thoughts

I LOVE that we have a proper theme song now. It feels so fitting and I love the opening art and it’s all so cool. The show’s so profesh now!

Also, shout out to @caitmayart for making the new art! It has the quality of a professional and the extra love of a fan. It’s my fave D20 official art so far.

I don’t know when this feature was added but I love that there is a full transcript you can pull up and search and jump to that time in the video now. That’s gonna be SO useful for me.

One of my favorite things about Adaine is that she’s generally polite but occasionally she’ll just absolutely verbally decimate someone so casually and this episode she said to the Solesian Yorbie they encountered, “What movie theater were you assistant managing before you decided to become a Yorbie?” Brutal.

Also love how vehement she was about the fact that Brennan couldn’t touch Moggy, even when she went down. You are absolutely NOT gonna kill that dog Brennan.

“Object interaction, touch Gorgug’s foot.”

Fig asks Gorgug how they can heal a van and he says, “Take it to a shop for 3-4 days.” Zac, underrated comic genius.

I really can’t overstate how funny it is that Fabian spends most of this episode flirting with his own reflection. I’ve said this many times but something I love about Lou is that he’s not afraid to make Fabian deeply uncool, even though Fabian’s whole thing is being as cool as possible.

Kristen says she needs to have an intense conversation with Cassandra when the fight is over and what does that mean? Like a breakup conversation? Which I guess would kill her because then she’d have no followers again? I am, como se dice, concerned.

Also, just looking ahead, Tracker is also a cleric. A pretty faithful one from what I can tell. I have to wonder what her take on Kristen completely neglecting her goddess and church is.

I think it’s so funny that Emily was thinking about retiring Fig so she could just ride off into the sunset with her cool rockstar life and awesome girlfriend because Riz’s big thing last year was being worried all his friend would pair up and leave him so for him to accept it and then have his fears validated right away would be like, welp.

At a certain point, Murph has to roll damage and he rolls 45 out of a possible 50 damage. That’s crazy. Let’s see how long that luck holds.

#Dimension 20 #dimension 20 spoilers #d20 #d20 spoilers #fantasy high #fantasy high spoilers #fhjy #fhjy spoilers #spoilers #the report card

97 notes · View notes

multi-fandomsfreak · 3 months

Note

Hey!! Can you do movie sonic x mobian fem reader (platonic) who is a fan of him and wants to show herself to the world and fight eggman but she is too scared people will hate her

Sonic Meeting Mobian!Reader Who Happens To Be A Fan

Hey there! Thanks for the ask!

Sorry for the late post. I’ve had a bunch of requests coming through and with me going to the hospital recently to see if my foot’s good (by the way it’s healing great just need to get used to walking again.) so I didn’t have the time to do it till now. Hope you like reading this because I definitely enjoyed writing this. ~J/Blaze

Pronouns: She/Her

Warning: ⚠️Mentions of low self-esteem/anxiety⚠️

Requested: Yes/No

Characters: Sonic + Mentions Of Tom + Maddie + Tails + Knuckles + Eggman

Proofread: ❌

Credits: Icon by jennieismygirlfriend on Pinterest + Banner by scyprod on Pinterest

———————————

- Sonic the hedgehog. A name that constantly rings through your mind constantly. You most likely discovered him around some point from the baseball scene to near the end just like how Tails did. You had heard about his antics on earth and to say you liked him was an understatement. Judging on the info you had discovered from the most recent event with him and eggman you became a massive fan of him. Can anyone blame you? He helped you be inspired in your own way. Even if you had some problems expressing yourself mostly due to fear of what people might think of you. You wanted to prove your worth but you just didn’t know how.

- You really wanted to meet him even dreaming of what he would be like if you were to talk to him. Would he take interest or not? You were contemplating on going to earth just to meet him in real life. Show him how he has helped you in a way without directly meeting you. But you let your insecurities get the better of you. Eventually you decided to risk and travel to earth, you didn’t know what you were going to do when you got there, you didn’t really have any other motive besides meeting your idol. With Eggman gone as far as you were aware of and no one else who wanted to carry out his plan you didn’t really have any reason to go and get yourself into any trouble but still for some reason you felt like you needed to go. It kind of took you a while to get used to being on earth as well trying not to get spotted by pretty much everyone. You never know what they’re reactions could be seeing you and honestly you didn’t want to find out so you created a hide-out like what sonic did in the first movie.

- Now for when Sonic met you for the first time. He managed to come across you and your hide-out on his solo adventure and to say he was surprised was an understatement. There was another mobian like him, he immediately went over to you and started asking you a bunch of questions catching you off guard before immediately recognising him as the idol you love. You were too busy internally fangirling about if this was a dream or not to answer his questions.

+ “Ma’am is everything alright there?” Sonic asked, managing to snap you out of your fangirl trance concerned about the lack of reaction coming from you “oh…yeah I am, you're sonic right like the actual sonic?” You asked in return wanting to confirm it even though you knew it was. Sonic gave you a confused look before slowly answering your question “yeah I am sonic, why do you ask?” You gave him a cheerful smile before bringing him into a hug, surprising him even more but still hugged you in return despite just meeting you. You then told him about how much of a fan you were of him, telling him how much you appreciated him to which he thanked you and joked about he never knew he had fans.

- Pretty much since then he wanted to introduce you to Tom and Maddie because why not, they were also starting to suspect something with him constantly going off to see you. At first you were nervous because based on how he described them you guessed they were humans and your nervousness was getting the best of you but sonic managed to convince you that they really didn’t mean any harm and you trusted him so you decided to go with him to meet the two of them. As soon as you met the two of them they were excited they’d pretty much had gotten used to seeing sonic so seeing you with him although surprised to see someone like sonic they openly welcomed you with open arms, they were just happy that sonic met someone else. Also Sonic may have been teased by Tom about you especially since you were a female but except for that they enjoyed meeting you.

- Sonic will be your number one defender. If anyone even dares to make you upset about something he isn’t going to sit there and let you take it, making you even more self conscious. He doesn’t like seeing his friends upset, it kind of makes him both angry and upset himself seeing you just take insults being thrown at you.

- He pretty much noticed a bit after meeting you that you're very self conscious about yourself. Although you seemed to be somewhat open, when it came to expressing yourself and your strengths he noticed how unwilling you were to do it. He didn’t really understand why at first because he thinks you're really cool. You must have some sort of strength if you were willing to leave your home planet just to visit him. But once he learns about your lack of confidence he honestly feels bad for you. He could tell by the way you talked to him that you do genuinely want to prove yourself to the world; you just let your feet get the best of you. So with the new information he learned about you he’s willing to do anything to help raise your confidence. He feels like he has to, what sort of idol would he be if he didn’t?

- He takes it a step at a time, although he was wanting to make sure that you gain your confidence he knows it will take some time. You two will often have one on one sessions basically letting you express your feelings (imagine that scene when sonic is acting like a therapist but it’s with you and not just him).

- Eventually when Eggman returns from Mushroom planet Sonic definitely wants you to join him alongside Tails. He knows this would be a big step for you but he sees this as an opportunity and wants you to join him. He promises to keep both you and Tails safe as long as you're with him. Although a bit nervous yourself you could see what his point was and you knew he wouldn’t let you get harmed. You wanted to prove yourself and put what you learned from him to use so without thinking you joined him. And to say that it felt oddly good to finally do what you wanted to was an understatement. Still you were nervous but that nervousness was overwritten by adrenaline and relief. Although you went through some things during the trip to get the chaos emerald it was worth it in the end. This is when you decided to permanently join Sonic’s group alongside your new friends Tails and eventually when he decided to join Knuckles.

———————————

59 notes · View notes

francisballerhide · 4 days

Text

An older viewer's perspective on I Saw The TV Glow

(content warning: discussion of spoilers, depression and suicidal themes.)

x-posted from the subreddit of the same name.

I am a queer, non-gender conforming (back in the day we said "genderqueer") person in their late 40s. I saw this the day before yesterday. I'm about five years or so older than the main characters (Owen and Maddy.) The equivalents to "The Pink Opaque" for my friend group that were on TV when we were the same age as the characters were Liquid TV and/or the 1992-era X Men cartoon (so as you can imagine, I've been ecstatic about the X Men 97 revival.) We were also obsessed with the film The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai: Across The Eighth Dimension.

I liked Buffy, but I was already in my 20s when it was airing.

And woah, this movie is very powerful and made me feel all sorts of things.

Like Maddy, I experienced a "break from reality" in my 20s. And I was deadset on finding someone to go on that "break" with me, to experience a folie à deux with, I guess. To help me validate that the imaginary world I was living in was "the real world," and the outside world where I was expected to "get a job and be a productive member of society" was fake.

I know in the context of the film, it's supposed to be implied that Maddy's story is true. She is really Tara, and Owen is really Isabel. But as someone who has been through something very much like Maddy describes (apart from the "being buried alive" part) it was difficult for me not to see Maddy as someone who did exactly what I did - who rejected reality as it is, and tried to check out from it completely.

But also, it's easy to see what Maddy ended up doing as a metaphor for attempted suicide - and that she might have been trying to talk Owen into going along with her on a second attempt, together, when the first attempt failed. And this may have been how Owen saw it, when he rejected it.

Because for me, adulthood felt the same way. You get a job. You try and fit in, or at least fly under the radar. It's not what you want to do - but society is constantly telling you, pressuring you, hassling you, that it's what you should be doing, what you need to do. Maybe you meet someone and settle down, maybe you don't. Maybe you have kids, and maybe you don't.

But one year passes, and then another. And then five years. And then a decade. And then three decades have gone by. And you don't feel it. It's just like skipping forward to the next scene on a DVD. And then you're old, and wondering where your life has gone. You haven't been living your real life.

And the thoughts running through your mind go: "This wasn't how it was supposed to happen. This wasn't how things were supposed to be. This wasn't supposed to be my life. What happened to my life?"

And as someone with left-of-center politics and a not-always stable mental state, I think: "how much of this is down to reality being screwed up, how much of this is down to us living in a "Black Iron Prison"-style reality construct; and how much of this can be blamed on "late stage" or "end stage" capitalism, which never allows people who exist outside of a certain tax bracket to self-actualize at all?

What if it is "just the suburbs?"

The answer is to try and live your truth and be your authentic self, no matter what is going on in the world outside of that - no matter how difficult the world makes it. But not everyone is strong enough, or has the psychological tools to find their way to that.

I think I need to go back and watch this film again.

I also would like to recommend Matrix Resurrections to anyone who was bummed out by the end of I Saw The TV Glow, for what happens when the person who has been insisting "that beautiful, powerful person can't be me" suddenly decides to be that, anyway.

#i saw the tv glow #transgender #film #lgbtiq

31 notes · View notes

fernsnailz · 1 year

Note

i love reading your sonic loreposts i was wondering if you could please explain archie charmy to me, i have heard stuff and i am so curious but i am not a comics in general kinda person. the lsd poisoned friend or the brain damage literally just anything that happens to him your pick

hi anon i’m just going to go over everything that happens to archie charmy pre-reboot so i hopefully never have to talk about it after this. i'm sorry i'm so so sorry

Archie Charmy is subject to a lot of controversy and discussion because despite his limited role in the comics, he goes through some of the most batshit insane character and plot beats in the whole series (and that you’ve already mentioned). I’ll be skimming over some of the more boring parts, but the wild stuff I'll go pretty in-depth with.

I’ll also be attempting to explain WHY all of this happens to Charmy Bee of all characters, taking into account the context of the story, what was happening behind the scenes in the writer’s room, and even comic trends in general. I want to try and keep away from the very reactionary “wow archie sonic is sooooo crazy” discussion that happens around this stuff and hopefully provide a little more useful analysis. i talk about comic PSAs for a while so be warned

There are some very, very important content warnings that are coming with Archie Charmy lore: warning for non-consensual drug use and overdose (specifically LSD), child death, genocide, implied ableism, memory loss, implied age regression, breif homophobia mention (not related to charmy)

this is going to be a very long one. charmy lore under the cut

INTRODUCTION - CHAOTIX

Charmy Bee’s first appearance in Archie Sonic is in the Knuckles’ Chaotix special, which adapts the first game he appeared in. This issue introduces the entire Chaotix cast (six new characters) in a mere four pages, so Charmy doesn’t make much of an impression other than “bee who likes to explore and adventure.” He lacks that annoying little brother personality that he has in most Sonic media, and he’ll often speak with language that feels extremely out of character for the Charmy that most people know.

This is because this version of Charmy is based off of his character description from the Knuckles’ Chaotix game manual. Despite the series being based off of the video game franchise, the Archie Sonic writers were often given very little information about upcoming game releases from SEGA when they were asked to adapt them into the comics. Often they had to go digging for the canonical materials themselves - for example, the only way they were able to adapt Sonic Adventure into the comics is because Patrick Spaziante (one of the comic’s artists) had a Japanese version of the game that he bought himself. They had no English translation and zero guidance from SEGA, so they had to attempt to piece the story together without SEGA's help. This was the case with most of the game adaptations, and it was honestly a miracle that they had access to the manual for Knuckles’ Chaotix at all.

There’s just one problem: the manual for Knuckles’ Chaotix describes a version of Charmy that is very, very different from the one we know of today. It describes a 16-year old that is… sophisticated?

(sorry for the low quality, there aren't many images of the manual. also fun fact, there was no age for Charmy listed in the original Japanese manual)

Charmy's differing age and personality will lead to many, many problems, as the writers decided to give the “sophisticated” Charmy darker stories. This brings us to the Knuckles the Echidna mini-series.

The Knuckles mini-series is. Bad. Charmy Bee is certainly there for the first few issues (as are most of the Chaotix), but he doesn’t get much focus until issue 13.

I don’t know how to put this in a way that doesn’t sound extremely blunt: This is the issue where Charmy’s best friend overdoses on LSD and dies.

PART 1 - MELLO

Charmy's best friend is named Mello Bee. This is his first and last appearance in the series.

Mello started feeling strange on their return trip from Happyland, a sketchy theme park that recently reopened under new management. Charmy isn't sure why Mello died, but Constable Reminton (essentially the sheriff of Echidnopolis) reveals that there have been a series of cases similar to Mello's - cases where people were suffering from… Lemon Sundrop Dandelion poisoning.

The Chaotix go to Happyland to see if they can find the source of the poisoning, but what they don't know is that it's actually laced into the food. The manager of Happyland, Renfield T. Rodent, has been lacing the park's chili dogs with LSD in hopes of making everyone addicted to them. However, the amount of LSD he's been putting into the food is too much for most people to handle. This is probably the most insane paragraph I've had to write for one of these loreposts

Unknown to the Chaotix, they all start eating the chili dogs during their investigation (except for Julie-Su and Knuckles, who is absent) and start tripping balls.

Continuing the story into issue 14, Charmy’s LSD trip reveals that he’s actually the prince of a bee colony and has been running away from his responsibilities as a member of the royal family.

Charmy is knocked out for the rest of this arc as he goes through his trip - they have to operate on him and some other stuff happens I guess (Julie-Su gets thrown off of a roof, Knuckles fights some guys in a desert, Vector is a misogynist, stuff like that). At the end of issue 15, Charmy learns from his trip and returns to his family, temporarily leaving the Chaotix to return to his royal duties. Mello's family and his all mourn Mello's death and bury him back at their home.

So. What was the fucking point of all that

In the long-term, Charmy returning home to his family essentially writes him out of the story for a while. Knuckles the Echidna issue 15 released in 1998, and Charmy doesn't really return until 2001. While I'm not entirely sure what the reason for this was, there were so many members of the Chaotix that I honestly think this was an okay decision.

However, there's one very important question left to answer: Why was LSD and a drug overdose included in this arc at all?

When I first read this arc, I had a burning thought that I couldn't get out of my mind:

PART 1.5 - wait is this an anti-drug PSA?

(if you want to avoid me talking in-depth about the abilities of LSD and my ramble about comic PSAs for a while, you can skip to PART 2 where I continue the Charmy lore)

Comic PSAs (Public Service Announcements) and propaganda are a fundamental part of the medium’s history, whether it be to aid their country’s war efforts, give health information to their readers, or warn kids about the dangers of drug abuse. While a comic being used as a PSA isn’t inherently a bad thing, it’s usually VERY obvious. One of the most interesting ones I've found is a PSA that features Green Lantern debunking misinformation about the AIDS crisis. The image quality isn’t great, but the comic doesn’t hold back when talking about how the AIDS crisis is spreading homophobic ideology - if you read this, you know it’s a PSA and you know what message it’s trying to send. Sometimes propaganda can be subtle, but PSAs are usually loud.

(cw: homophobia)

This is why anti-drug PSAs are so common and so remembered - they’re over the top, they’re blunt (lol), and they have a very specific message they’re trying to send. For example, there’s an issue of New Teen Titans from 1983 that introduce a character called the Protector to teach kids about drug awareness where the issue literally starts with the Teen Titans in an auditorium telling kids about a dangerous drug. This issue also includes some bad trip imagery, and it’s uh… honestly i kinda love this

Anti-drug PSAs usually don’t work for this very reason - showing how a drug affects fictional characters can increase interest in the substance, and a single superhero telling someone to stop smoking is not going to break someone’s addiction.

So. Is Knuckles the Echidna issues 13-15 an anti-drug PSA?

Probably not, but if it is it’s doing a fucking terrible job of it

Some of the main factors of a PSA are the information it's presenting, the opinion it wants the consumer to develop, and the bluntness of its presentation. While this part of the Knuckles series is certainly over the top, the rest of these factors are really muddy. First, anti-drug PSAs usually don’t create a fake drug to replace the one they’re advising against. An anti-weed campaign will just tell you that weed is bad because that’s the opinion it wants you to walk away with. So when Knuckles issue 13 introduces a substance called “Lemon Sundrop Dandelion” and never actually refers to it as LSD, it’s less of a message about “drug bad” and more just a sly nudge and wink that goes “hey you see that? yeah, that’s drug.”

Then there’s the problem that there isn’t really much of a lesson to be had from these issues regarding drug use. Yes, Mello dies horrifically of an overdose, but most of the cast is able to walk off the trip like it’s nothing. Charmy needs to be operated on, but the doctors literally treat it like it’s fucking NOTHING

he's literally talking about how he told a patient that couldn't afford surgery to go to the butcher like HUH?????

In fact, Charmy’s trip seems to help him in the long run - he’s forced to face his past, and eventually returns to his family because of the literal guilt trip he has. It’s a fundamental part of his character arc.

This isn’t to say that I wish these issues were explicitly drug PSAs - I bring all of this up because these issues were released in 1998, in an era where the anti-drug movement was arguably at its peak. The people working on these comics would KNOW its content is similar to and even promotes the anti-drug movement. While I don't consider these issues to be an anti-drug PSA, they can definitely serve as anti-drug propaganda.

With this in mind, considering Knuckles the Echidna as a form of propaganda really opens up how utterly terrible these issues are. These comics can be genuinely harmful pieces of anti-drug propaganda because the way they use LSD to advance they plot is untrue to how the drug actually works and relies entirely on fear mongering. While LSD can be laced into other substances like drinks, it probably wouldn't last long in cooked meat - LSD usually degrades at higher temperatures, and telling comic readers that they need to be afraid of LSD-laced fair food is fucking stupid and likely based on false urban legends. Not only that, but Renfield T. Rodent’s plot to addict everyone to his LSD chili dogs is also fucking stupid because LSD is not considered an addictive substance. It can be extremely dangerous at high or multiple doses, but LSD does not normally lead to compulsive use.

I don’t talk about all of this to be a cinemasins guy or to nitpick a comic from 1998, and I also don't want to imply that PSAs can't spread lies and misinformation (anti-drug PSAs famously over-exaggerate things). I bring all of this up to show an ineffective and possibly dangerous use of something that could be considered anti-drug propaganda. Spreading blatantly untrue information and placing false fears into a reader’s mind is truly incompetent on the writer’s behalf, especially considering that this comic was targeted at kids. And that’s not even mentioning that there’s barely any moral to all of this. There’s no lesson and they never talk about this again.

Do I think this was all intentional on the behalf of the writers? I have no idea. I have no goddamn idea what they were thinking with this one, and I honestly don't think much thought was put into this arc at all. Maybe this was a strange attempt to make a Sonic-themed anti-drug PSA, maybe they were just inspired by the drug PSAs of their time when writing this, or maybe they just did not care. I don't know man. Anti-drug propaganda is stupid and it doesn't work and these comics drive me crazy

alright enough of that. let's talk about genocide

PART 2 - SAFFRON

don’t worry this part will be shorter (cheering and clapping)

Like I mentioned a while back, Charmy is essentially written out of the story for a while after the Mello incident. While living in the Golden Hive Colony, he reunites with another friend, Saffron Bee. Saffron becomes Charmy’s girlfriend, and they’re together for basically the rest of the comic. Usually if Charmy shows up, Saffron is there too.

(image of Charmy and Saffron I stole from... the Shipping Wiki??)

They eventually return to help Chaos Knuckles, a green version of Knuckles who is uh. Kinda going through it. Not much important Charmy lore needs to be discussed here, but some of his actions do eventually lead to him creating a genocidal villain that will cause many problems later. Don’t worry about it.

Things are quiet for a while for Charmy and Saffron. That is, until Eggman attacks their colony and wipes out most of its population.

Charmy and Saffron are the only survivors we see from the Golden Hive Colony. Eggman transforms the colony into a new base and traps its residents in an invention of his called the Egg Grapes - basically, he puts Mobians in these little pods that sap all of their life force, powering his empire. Most people do not survive the Egg Grapes.

The two bees return to join the Chaotix for a little while, and the rest of the Chaotix confirm that the Golden Hive Colony and its residents are truly gone. Espio destroys what’s left of the colony so Eggman can’t use it as a base, and no other survivors from the colony are found.

So. yeah what the fuck

Archie Sonic is known to have a LOT of characters - I’ve talked about the sheer number of echidnas the series has before, but there are a lot of characters that have massive extended families. The arc where Mello died introduced like eight new bee characters, but most of them were background characters that didn’t need to stick around.

Most people cite writer Ian Flynn’s debut to the series as when a lot of these unneeded/background characters were written out or killed off, and I agree since one of his objectives as a writer was to tighten up the story. However, the trend of “Archie background characters getting killed off or written out” started a little bit before he joined the team. There’s the destruction of the Golden Hive, and many echidnas in this arc suffer from the horrors of war - a number die off after Charmy and Saffron rejoin the Chaotix. yeah it's kinda fucked up

This is the second major arc where Charmy has lost people close to him - first Mello, and now his entire family and kingdom. The same goes for Saffron - they only have each other left. I mean the Chaotix are also there but still, trauma is trauma

How could it get any worse?

PART 3 - CHARMY

Remember how Archie Charmy is based off of the Knuckles’ Chaotix manual? The one that said he was sophisticated and 16?

This is about to cause a few problems.

At this point, it’s around 2007. The Knuckles’ Chaotix manual is terribly outdated, and most versions of Charmy within canon are 6 year-old kids. Charmy is known to be the annoying comedic relief, which is the exact opposite from how he’s portrayed in Archie Sonic.

So when SEGA asked writer Ian Flynn to change Archie Sonic to be like his video game counterpart, the solution was uh. well. it could have been handled better

Like how he obliterated the Golden Hive Colony, Eggman’s next target to destroy is Knothole, the city where Sonic and the Freedom Fighters all live. It’s a surprise to all of the residents, and he manages to teleport most of the population into his Egg Grapes. Before Sonic can save them, Eggman singles out Charmy to be used as an example of how the Egg Grapes work.

Sonic and friends manage to get Charmy out, but not before the damage is already done. In the limited amount of time the Grape sapped his life force, Charmy’s memory was partially wiped and personality changed forever. After this, Charmy has very little memory of the Golden Hive Colony at all, only seeming to remember Saffron and his friends. His becomes much more child-like, similar to his game counterpart.

the fucking sigh i just sighed

For clarification, Charmy is still 16. The only thing that was altered was his mind, with the intention to make his personality more in-line with his goofy video game counterpart. The problem is that giving a character brain damage to turn them into a comedic relief character is fucked up and unintentionally ableist.

This is something that writer Ian Flynn identified pretty early and openly regrets (I’m not sure what the source of that statement is, I’m assuming an episode of Bumblekast but I’m don’t know which one. I’ll edit this if I find it). Because of this, he mostly kept Charmy out of any comedic situations for the rest of the series. Charmy has a very limited role in the series after this until the reboot, only appearing sporadically and in one Sonic Universe arc. When he does show up, his childish demeanor is usually met with the patience of the Chaotix and their sad expressions.

Although the intention was to make Archie Charmy more like his game counterpart, in practice I honestly think this action only made Archie Charmy even MORE distant from his game character. From the Egg Grape incident to the reboot, Archie Charmy’s trauma never leaves my mind and leaves me feeling strangely hollow.

CONCLUSION - WHAT THE FUCK

I find the Archie Sonic series unfathomably fascinating. While I love the series, I can’t deny that most of the events I went over are poorly handled by the writing team and leave the series with such a strange legacy. With Archie Sonic, it’s often incredibly easy to see the biases of the writers and how they affect the characters and stories, leading to some genuinely fucked up moments that could have easily been avoided in my opinion.

Archie Charmy was really one of the characters that got it the worst, but it's honestly so strange that all of this happened to him specifically. The fact that all of this shit happens to a silly little bee is so, so Archie Sonic to me. Charmy is such a simple character to understand - he's a funny kid who's kinda annoying and hard to handle. So when I look back and see the 3,000+ words I just wrote about Archie Charmy... fucking hell why did i do that

In conclusion. I am sorry and do not become a comics person

thanks for reading if you got this far. as always let me know if i need to tag any other content warnings or if there was anything i got wrong! alright good night tristate area

#PLEASE read all of the content warnings before opening the pandora's box of charmy lore #this one's a hell of a read i am so sorry #sonic loreposting #cw drug use #cw overdose #cw child death #cw genocide #cw ableism #cw memory loss #cw age regression #i actually really enjoyed talking about comic psas and propaganda its very interesting to me #long post

204 notes · View notes

blackskorpi0n · 9 months

Text

bold the facts: 𝙽𝚊𝚍𝚒𝚊 𝚂𝚘𝚕𝚘𝚟𝚢𝚘𝚟𝚊

rules: Tag people and name a character you want to know more about! If you want to let the person you tagged decide who to showcase, then don’t name a character and they can pick somebody. Easy! The person who is tagged will then bold the remarks below which apply to their character &, if they want to, include a picture with their reply!

tysm @wldestluv-rs @helltrait @sikoi for tagging me!!!! muah <3333

[ PERSONAL ]

$ Financial: wealthy / moderate / poor / in poverty / N/A

✚ Medical: fit / moderate / sickly / disabled / disadvantaged / non applicable

✪ Class or Caste: upper / middle / working / other

✔ Education: qualified / unqualified / studying / other (trained assassin)

✖ Criminal Records: yes, for major crimes (was caught but escaped prison and goes under multiple aliases) / yes, for minor crimes / no / has committed crimes, but not caught yet / yes, but charges were dismissed

[ TRAITS + TENDENCIES ]

♦ extroverted / introverted / in between

♦ disorganized / organized / in between

♦ close minded / open-minded / in between

♦ calm / anxious / in between

♦ disagreeable / agreeable / in between

♦ cautious / reckless / in between

♦ patient / impatient / in between

♦ outspoken / reserved / in between

♦ leader / follower / in between

♦ empathetic / vicious bastard / in between (kills anyone that hurts innocent people)

♦ optimistic / pessimistic / in between

♦ traditional / modern / in between

♦ hard-working / lazy / in between

♦ cultured / uncultured / in between

♦ loyal (to like 1 person and her cat lol) / disloyal / unknown

♦ faithful / unfaithful / unknown

[ ABILITIES ]

☠ Combat Skills: excellent / good / moderate / poor / none

≡ Literacy Skills: excellent / good / moderate / poor / none

✍ Artistic Skills: excellent / good / moderate / poor / none

✂ Technical Skills: excellent / good / moderate / poor / none

[ HABITS ]

☕ Drinking Alcohol: never / special occasions / sometimes / frequently / Alcoholic

☁ Smoking: tried it / trying to quit / quit / never / rarely / sometimes / frequently / chain-smoker

✿ Recreational Drugs: never / special occasions (went through psychological torture during training with LSD and other psychoactive drugs) / sometimes / frequently / addict

✌ Medicinal Drugs: never / no longer needs medication / some medication needed / frequently / to excess

**☻ Unhealthy Food: never / special occasions / sometimes / frequently / binge eater

$ Splurge Spending: never / sometimes (can't resist a little treat once in a while) / frequently / shopaholic

♣ Gambling: never / rarely / sometimes / frequently / compulsive gambler

[ BELIEFS ]

★Faith: monotheist / polytheist / atheist / agnostic

☆Belief in Ghosts or Spirits: yes / no / don’t know / don’t care

✮Belief in an Afterlife: yes / no / don’t know / don’t care

✯Belief in Reincarnation: yes / no / don’t know / don’t care

❃Belief in Aliens: yes / no / don’t know / don’t care

✧Religious: orthodox / liberal / in between / not religious

❀Philosophical: yes / no / somewhat

[ FAMILY ]

◒Children: had a child or children / has no children / wants children (wants to adopt <3)

◑Relationship with Family: close with sibling(s) / not close with sibling(s) / has no siblings / sibling(s) is deceased

◔ Affiliation: orphaned (both parents got shot in front of her by her kidnapper :///) / adopted / disowned / raised by birth parents / not applicable

[ SEXUALITY & ROMANTIC INCLINATION ]

❤ Sexuality: heterosexual / homosexual / bisexual / asexual / pansexual / demisexual for serious relationships

❥ Sex: sex repulsed / sex neutral / sex favorable / naive and clueless

**♥ Romance: romance repulsed / romance neutral / romance favorable / naive and clueless / romance suspicious (sometimes uses seduction to lure her targets so she sees romance as a tool rather than a desire, same as sex)

❣ Sexually: adventurous / experienced / naive / inexperienced / curious

⚧ Potential Sexual Partners: male / female / agender / other / none / all

⚧ Potential Romantic Partners: male / female / agender / other / none / all

I tag @fizzytoo @bbrrambo @vampiredisk @vampiremilfs @missatan @crsentfairy @mobwhim @yuyulie @goblin-sims @ubebutter @minaevesmoths @diactrl @90s-trait @eldrichthingy @hellish-qt @vicciouxs @menshuldbeeaten @deathtulips @faestelle @skaterboisims @simphic and all my moots if you want to do this!!!❤️

#oc: Nadia Solovyova #nadia coded #she is the definition of a master manipulator #she will lure you in and snipe you #or just hack you into pieces with a butcher knife #whichever shes in the mood for #rule one: don't be a bad person and you won't die 💀#but shes generally a nice person to be around #just dont get too personal or she'll ghost you 🫶🏾#anyways i loved this tag game i want more like these!!!!#tag game #also i wanna interact with you guys more i hope you don't mind tagging yall 😭😭#if you've done this im SAWRRRYY🥺

92 notes · View notes

theresattrpgforthat · 3 months

Note

Hi! I'm looking for a game in the space opera genre, and I'd love some suggestions. More specifically, I'm trying to find something that's pretty easily customizable or setting-agnostic. Pretty soft as far as sci-fi is concerned, even science fantasy. (And my players have a very brief attention span when it comes to learning rules, so some degree of simplicity would be appreciated, too, haha!)

For context, I have a friend who loves worldbuilding and has fleshed out a whole galaxy, and I want to run a one-shot set in his world for his birthday. In the past, we've tried using a homebrew amalgamation of D&D, SW5e, and miscellaneous other bits, but I want to find a system that fits a bit better.

Thanks for the help! 😁

Theme: Simple Space Operas.

Hello friend, this sounds like such an awesome idea! I think I’ve got a few pretty good options for you to take a look at. Many of these games pull from Star Wars as their idea of what a space opera is like, but not all of them do. Also, don't forget to check the bottom of the post to see what I've recommended in the past!

Laser-Ritter, by Bad Quail Games.

Laser-Ritter is an analog adventure game about swashbuckling heroes journeying among endless stars to embrace their destiny. There are rendezvous in hazy tap rooms, chases across distant moons, and showdowns with the forces of galactic evil. We play to find out how our Laser-Ritters follow their passions and face their pasts to triumph over adversity.

Laser-Ritter gives space for you to create your own saga. There's no burdensome timeline of canon events or overwhelming lists of characters, spaceships, and alien species to be contradicted. Every group begins their saga by creating their own dramatic title crawl to establish what's happening when the adventure begins!

This is a game all about embracing your destiny, with plenty of space to build your own universe. The game can be played episodically, or cover a long-spanning story over a series of sessions. This means that if you just want to run a one-shot, it can be pretty easily self-contained, but there’s also room to expand the game.

Players in this game have 4 stats and a health track labelled Vitality. You also have something called a Pathos track, which represents how attrition and trauma affect your character. If you fill your Pathos track, your character becomes vulnerable to dying. If you want a game with dramatic action and tragic scenes, Laser-Ritter might be for you.

Galaxy Goons and A Goons’ Guide to the Galaxy, by John Erwin.

Galaxy Goons is a space fantasy adventure hack of the Ennies-award winning Tunnel Goons. If you want a light-hearted game about rascals just trying to make their way in the universe, this is worth checking out. Tunnel Goons is known for being pretty light-weight, and Galaxy Goons is true to this legacy. Your characters are rolled randomly, with stats used to add onto dice rolls to try and beat a difficulty level.

A Goon’s Guide to the Galaxy is made for the same kind of setting, but uses a different set of rules, namely the 24XX SRD. This means that instead of just rolling d6’s, your characters will have a few things that they have a d8 or d10 for, and there might even be a few skills that only allow you to roll a d4. 24XX games also tend to carry roll tables to help the GM come up with obstacles and goals, so that might help the GM decide what about this homemade galaxy might be interesting to follow.

Rebel Scum, by 9th Level Games.

REBEL SCUM tells the story of how scrappy, anti-fascist heroes can fight back against a government with unlimited power (including giant lasers and space magic). Inspired by a love for a certain line of 3 and 3/4 inch action figures, this is a fast paced, feel good, space opera of rebellion and adventure.

In this TTRPG, characters are all expressed as action figures, with their pertinent stats and abilities "on the back of the card." Choose your toy and get out into battle!

So Rebel Scum borrows very obviously from Star Wars, but of course the book can’t just put the game in the Star Wars setting, so they create their own. What this means is you can pretty easily throw out that lore and build your own world, although the expectation in this game is that your characters will be working to overthrow some sort of galaxy-wide power. The rules are very simple to learn - in fact the booklet is under 100 pages, and that’s including art, setting, and example characters. If you have a standard set of polyhedral dice (and I’m assuming you do, if you’ve played D&D) then you’ll be able to play this game.

Save the Universe, by Don Bisdorf.

Tyranny and cruelty have spread across the galaxy, and only you can stop it!

Save the Universe is a sci-fi adventure roleplaying game in which the players create their own great galactic menace and then portray the brave heroes battling against it.

I think the biggest pull for this game is that it encourages you to build your own galaxy. The game even comes with a number of questions for you to answer, and if you already have a world decided, you can slot in the answers according to your friend’s world. In fact, assigning world creation to one player is actually a recommended option in the game!

Even though this game is pretty open in terms of the details of your galaxy, there’s still an overarching theme of an Empire or large enemy that your characters will be resisting. Then again, I have a feeling that’s a common theme in space operas.

Plerion: Space Opera Adventure Game, by Zotiquest Games.

Intrepid spacers ply the vastness of the Five Galaxies in search of fortune and glory.

This is Plerion, a sci-fi hack from Cairn designed to play radiant space opera. Inspired by classic science fiction and the RPGs that emulate it, but with a more modern twist, winking at transhumanism and cyberpunk.

Plerion is an adventure game for one referee and at least one other player. Players act as hardened spacers exploring, exploiting and commerce through the vastness of space in the far future.

The author of this game cites Mass Effect, the Traveller roleplaying game and the Wayfarer series by Becky Chambers. Cairn, the game that inspired this one, is a game that makes survival difficult and daunting for the players, and asks them to put the fiction first. This means that combat shouldn’t always be the answer. Instead, players are encouraged to find ways to solve problems using their tools at hand, which is a common trend in many of the games that inspired this rule system.

What’s So Cool About Outer Space, by Jared Sinclair.

WSCAOS is a tiny little system for going to space no matter where you are!

This is an incredibly tiny game, with just two pages to print out and use as a rules reference in any galaxy you like. It’s also the parent of a number of “What’s So Cool About" games that use the same philosophy - minimal rules, and plenty of agency left up to the group in terms of what possible backstories you might have, as well as what might be considered an advantage and what might not.

No-one Owns The Sky, by Free Radicals Press.

A band of misfits lives aboard a rundown starship, traveling from one frontier world to the next, hoping to make a name and a living for themselves. Along the way, things always seem to go sideways, but the crew holds on, no matter what.

NO ONE OWNS THE SKY is a sci-fi roleplaying game that is rules-light and relies on players to craft and flesh out the universe of the setting as a collective. This game was designed for two or more players. One player is always the referee (REF), a neutral arbiter and guiding force for the game. The others act and play as player characters (PCs). These players, with their REF and their PCs, will tell amazing, collective (and interactive) stories with the help of imagination, dice, roleplaying, critical thinking, and problem-solving.

This game uses a staggered success layout, which means that you could roll a failure, a success, or a mixed success during any given roll. Anything above a 5 is a success! It looks like the game uses more than just d6’s though, so the larger dice you roll, the higher your chances of succeeding. The setting is also up to the players, pretty good for folks who want to build their own galaxy.

Games I’ve Recommended in the Past

Space Fantasy Rec Post

Impulse Drive, by Adrian Thorn.

Syzygy, by Ostrichmonkey Games.

#tabletop games #indie ttrpgs #game recommendations #dnd #asks #indie ttrpg #space #space opera

41 notes · View notes

seariii · 4 months

Text

So, @roseofcards90 said that Stark from Frieren looks like a 0309 fankid, and me loving Frieren + her encouraging me, i made some headcanons for it

For those who dont know the character, his name is Stark, he is kind, silly, a people pleaser, in general he is a good boy, he is strong, a warrior and fights with a big axe. (Frieren is set in a fantasy world)

Stark + 0309 (probably platonic? not the main focus) found family

Warnings: SPOILERS FOR STARK'S BACKSTORY ON FRIEREN, not proof read

Like on the anime, Stark grew up on the shadow of his brother, always training, but without ever getting any recognition or support from his father. His brother on the other side, would always make space for him he was who taught him what kindness and love felt like, always caring for him, always watching over him, till his last breath

After their village got attacked and Stark had to run away, leaving behind everyone he ever knew, believing himself a coward that could never improve, he came across two adventurers

Seeing the red hair of one of them, which reminded him of his family and other people from the village, he felt shame, fear and immense guilt for having left everyone behind for his own survival (HE IS STILL A KID GUYS)

Mikoto and Fuuta stared at the random kid confused, and when Mikoto noticed that he was about to cry, he kneeled down and tried to talk with him, to make sure he was okay

Fuuta was also worried about the kid, but he has never been good with words or feelings, so he just asked where the kid was from and Stark began to cry, which made Fuuta panic and take a couple steps away from them, leaving the work to Mikoto

Mikoto eventually managed to comfort him and learnt about the tragedy that struck his village. Knowing Fuuta and him wouldnt have what it takes to save the village, and also knowing that he cant leave a child alone, Mikoto decided to offer Stark to join them on their travels, Fuuta was prepared to refute, but when he saw Stark’s face full of fear and guilt, he couldnt help but see a bit of himself on the kid

Mikoto’s plan was to bring Stark with them for a while and then leave him in an orphanage or somewhere that would be safe for him, so he wouldnt have to grow up traveling, and so he could grow up in a nice home

But he didnt take into account of the small group growing attached to each other

Fuuta quickly noticed Stark’s true potential as a warrior, and with a bit of excitement of teaching someone something he loves he asked if he would like him to train him. Stark was scared, remembering how it was to be trained by his father, but agreed, wanting to make himself useful

Stark was terrified, he couldnt bring himself to fight any monsters, even the easiest ones to kill, and Fuuta was starting to grow frustrated with that, but whenever he was about to raise his voice, he would see Stark’s face full of horror, so he would just sigh loudly, kneel beside him and try his best to convince him to try it

It was certainly a learning experience for Fuuta, having to learn basic communication skills

One time, they were on a small town, Mikoto was always in charge of gathering information from the town folk, while Fuuta would take care of buying the supplies for their journey. Stark had grown up a bit and most of the time would stick with Mikoto. But this time he went with Fuuta, they split the list of what they needed and got to work each on their own. After a while he heard a loud noise coming from the forest, doing a quick scan on the area he noticed the people from the town appeared worried and scared, and he assumed it was a monster attacking. He was TERRIFIED, he was about to run to look for Fuuta when he heard someone say that “the adventurer with the silly face went to check on the river bank” which made his heart drop (and the supplies he had bought). Even as terrified as he was, his legs moved on his own and he ran towards the place where he heard the loud noise.

When he arrived he found Mikoto unconscious on the floor and a monster about to eat him, Stark stared at the monster, paralyzed, not knowing what to do, his hands were shaking and he felt like his heart would beat out of his chest. Stark and the monster stared at each other for what felt like an eternity, until the monster launched its attack. Stark quickly drew his axe and defended himself. As they fought, Stark screamed for help, hoping anyone would come to their aid

On the other side of the town, Fuuta heard the first loud noise, and soon after heard more and more loud noises, making him worry about his team, he quickly searched the town, and not finding them he assumed the worst. He ran as quickly as he could, ready to unveil his sword and save his comrades, he kept hearing Stark’s cries for help, but when he finally arrived to the scene, he found Stark, still calling for help, with his axe on the monster’s neck as the monster was slowly disintegrating

Fuuta felt extremely proud of him, and after checking up on Mikoto, he congratulated Stark, which made Stark surprised, not having ever received that treatment from someone else

when they came back to the town, the people received them with cheers and gratefulness, apparently they had been struggling with that monster for a while and they will be able to go back to their normal activities now

After that, Mikoto keeps telling Stark how strong he is, he keeps wrapping an arm around his neck like an affectionate brother, Stark feels slightly embarrassed by this, but cant help but feel happiness. Fuuta just answers with “he is but he needs to keep training” to which Stark nods his head

#ALRIGHT THAT WAS FUN #i feel i couldve done more but i got carried away with the story heh #MIGHT AD ONTO THIS??? IDK #seari writes #frieren: beyond journey's end #stark frieren #milgram #milgram headcanons #crack fic #milgram crossover #fuuta kajiyama #mikoto kayano #milgram fanfic #frieren #sousou no frieren

40 notes · View notes

lucidicer · 8 months

Text

BOLD THE FACTS: TANG DUYI

the rules are simple! tag people and name a character you want to know more about! if you want to let the person you tagged decide who to showcase, then don’t name a character and they can pick somebody. easy! the person who is tagged will then bold the remarks below which apply to their character &, if they want to, include a picture with their reply!

tagged by @literalite @walkiie @wldestluv-rs @mattodore @helltrait @rottengurlz <3 god bless yall for not letting me miss out on this. i dont know who has or hasn't been tagged so do it if u want and tag me >:) let me see ur freaks

[ PERSONAL ]

$ Financial: wealthy / moderate / poor / in poverty

✚ Medical: fit / moderate / sickly / disabled / disadvantaged (? i think idk dudes missing an eye) / non applicable

✪ Class or Caste: upper / middle / working / unsure / other

✔ Education: qualified / unqualified / studying / other

✖ Criminal Record: yes, for major crimes / yes, for minor crimes / no / has committed crimes, but not caught yet / yes, but charges were dismissed

[ FAMILY ]

◒ Children: had a child or children / has no children / wants children

◑ Relationship with Family: close with sibling(s) (he used to be) / not close with sibling(s) / has no siblings / sibling(s) is deceased

◔ Affiliation: orphaned / adopted / disowned / raised by birth parent / not applicable (his father's dead, mother never stuck around to raise him)

[ TRAITS + TENDENCIES ]

♦ extroverted / introverted / in between

♦ disorganized / organized / in between

♦ close minded / open-minded / in between

♦ calm / anxious / in between

♦ disagreeable / agreeable / in between

♦ cautious / reckless / in between

♦ patient / impatient / in between

♦ outspoken / reserved / in between

♦ leader / follower / in between

♦ empathetic / vicious bastard / in between

♦ optimistic / pessimistic / in between

♦ traditional / modern / in between

♦ hard-working / lazy / in between

♦ cultured / uncultured / in between / unknown

♦ loyal / disloyal / unknown

♦ faithful / unfaithful / unknown

[ BELIEFS ]

★ Faith: monotheist / polytheist / atheist / agnostic

☆ Belief in Ghosts or Spirits: yes / no / don’t know / don’t care

✮ Belief in an Afterlife: yes / no / don’t know / don’t care

✯ Belief in Reincarnation: yes / no / don’t know / don’t care

❃ Belief in Aliens: yes / no / don’t know / don’t care

✧ Religious: orthodox / liberal / in between / not religious

❀ Philosophical: yes / no

[ SEXUALITY & ROMANTIC INCLINATION ]

❤ Sexuality: heterosexual / homosexual / bisexual / asexual / pansexual

❥ Sex: sex repulsed / sex neutral / sex favorable / naive and clueless / uhh secret 5th thing its complicated

♥ Romance: romance repulsed / romance neutral / romance favorable / naive and clueless / romance suspicious

❣ Sexually: adventurous / experienced / naive / inexperienced / curious

⚧ Potential Sexual Partners: male / female / agender / other / none / all

⚧ Potential Romantic Partners: male / female / agender / other / none / all

[ ABILITIES ]

☠ Combat Skills: excellent / good / moderate / poor / none

≡ Literacy Skills: excellent / good / moderate / poor / none

✍ Artistic Skills: excellent / good / moderate / poor / none

✂ Technical Skills: excellent / good / moderate / poor / none

[ HABITS ]

☕ Drinking Alcohol: never / special occasions / sometimes / frequently / alcoholic

☁ Smoking: tried it/ trying to quit / quit / never / rarely / sometimes / frequently / chain-smoker

✿ Recreational Drugs: never / special occasions / sometimes / frequently / addict

✌ Medicinal Drugs: never / no longer needs medication / some medication needed / frequently / to excess

☻ Unhealthy Food: never / special occasions / sometimes / frequently / binge eater

$ Splurge Spending: never / sometimes / frequently / shopaholic

♣ Gambling: never / rarely / sometimes / frequently / compulsive gambler

#mysilly guy my boy #hes like a wet dog #first edit back thumbs up emoji #*tang #*solitude #ts4 #ts4 edit

48 notes · View notes

softgaychild · 3 months

Text

My boyfriend and I had an argument earlier

So we were on video call on discord and I was going through my sheet of OC's and naming several of them as I was going through the updating process. I came across an OC who I based their entire character around Tango Tek from Hermitcraft. More specifically, I based them off of season 7 Tango when he made Decked Out and I wanted the character to own a popular dungeon adventure attraction in his universe.

In the process of explaining the names of Hermitcraft members, I end up going over how certain Hermit's names aren't as crazy as he may think and when I mention the season 10 newcomer, Skizzleman, my boyfriend lost his shit.

I tried to defend Skizz by saying that his name is better and not as weird as say, SneegSnag (no shade to him or his fans, merely a reference to another tumblr post), but then that was also apparently "Not a good comparison in his eyes" because to him, and I quote, "SneegSnag is not as weird of a name as Skizzleman"

After this a minor argument broke out, where I described how Skizz's name simply flowed better when coming off the tongue and that it was simply a less weird name than SneegSnag, who's name takes a literal second to come out when spoken.

He tried to compare Skizz's name to GeorgeNotFound and I told him that their names don't work when trying to compare because George's has his name in it. He said that MC Youtubers have a scale at which their names reside and thats, "Normal" "A bit odd" and "That's fuckin weird"

Ultimately, the argument ended with not much being said afterwards and us focusing on the items we were working on, and then I decided to make this little argument into a tumblr post, and now here we are.

#mcyt #georgenotfound #skizzleman #hermitcraft #hermitblr #hermitcraft s10 #hermitcraft decked out #decked out #mumbo jumbo #we were being funny #writing #minecraft

33 notes · View notes

quibbs126 · 1 year

Text

Alright, I decided to make my designs for the All Ancients Disappear au that I’ve talked about before

I’m not sure I fully explained it before (I probably did) but basically the setup here is that when the Ancient Heroes fought Dark Enchantress Cookie, instead of just Pure Vanilla, all of the Ancients vanished and became trapped in the void, until Gingerbrave and his friends showed up that is. And like Pure Vanilla, they all lose their memories

I tried to name them all after roles, and you can see the names there. Winged Cookie however is a name that @ifreakinglovedragons suggested because I was asking for help with it, and I’ll be honest, I can’t come up with anything better

With their designs, for Pure Vanilla and Hollyberry, I just straight up took their designs from preexisting designs of theirs, and with Dark Cacao I took some inspiration from both Dark Choco’s new design and Dark Cacao’s younger one. For Golden Cheese and White Lily though, I kind of had to try and make something up. I ended up sort of basing their designs on Black Raisin and Seaweed Cookie, two cookies with nothing to do with the cookies, but I thought their designs looked good. Originally I was gonna say Golden Cheese was the weakest design, but I changed it up during the lineart phase and honestly I quite like it now. To be honest, now it’s Dark Cacao’s design I feel is the weakest. I tried to keep their outfits all fabric based, since they aren’t supposed to have anything that defines them. Originally I was gonna give Sage a lily pad for her shawl, but it broke that rule, so I changed it

Now let’s see, these characters on their own

Healer Cookie is basically the same as he is in canon, since the au doesn’t really affect him

Huntress Cookie finds going on adventures to be quite fun, but she can’t shake the feeling there’s someone she’s missing, but she doesn’t know who. She tries to keep it in the back of her head, but it’s always there (this person is Royal Berry)

Warrior Cookie feels that sense of off-ness far more strongly, and has this overwhelming feeling there’s something that he’s supposed to be doing, something he’s supposed to protect, but he doesn’t know what. But he fears that it’s something he’s too late to do, and he’s failed (what he’s thinking about is the Dark Cacao Kingdom, and likely Dark Choco, who I’ll talk about in another post sometime). Also I might make him mute? I have a headcanon that Dark Cacao used to not talk, and perhaps this comes back here. He does eventually talk, but it’s not till he regains his memory

Sage Cookie also feels a sense of wrongness like Warrior Cookie, but she doesn’t feel this drive to do something, only a sense of dread. She wishes to know what this is, but at the same time is afraid (Dark Enchantress Cookie)

Also, I haven’t quite figured why White Lily is here, because Dark Enchantress is still around as well, or at least that’s how I originally envisioned it. I just don’t know what the canon explanation for White Lily being there is. Though, I am currently toying with the idea of White Lily and Dark Enchantress somehow merging together into what we’re calling Sage Cookie. I mean, most of her actual body is currently covered, including her other eye, who’s not to say that under that hair she has a red and black eye with perhaps some purple bits to her dough? And under that hood, a small pair of horns? I dunno, I’m considering it, but not sure if I’ll do it. It kind of leaves the story without an antagonist

As for Winged Cookie…I don’t know, because I don’t have any canon Golden Cheese material to work with. All I do know is she doesn’t fly (her wings are under her cloak), but like Warrior Cookie, she will eventually

Now, as for what these five are doing, I have two ideas and I’m not sure which one I like more. Yes they’re all wandering Earthbread trying to figure out who they are (or doing other stuff), but it’s how they do it that I’m debating

Option 1 is that they all come back, but not near each other, and each of them wander to the corners of Earthbread. I’d say this is the option where they’d be less inclined to search about their past, as they may not suspect much is up

Option 2 is that they all appear in relatively the same location, and meeting each other they all decide to travel together because “hmm, so all five of us just so happened to all appear here in the same place at the same time, and none of us have our memories. There’s no way that’s a coincidence, how about we all stick together to find out what’s going on?” And so because of that, this is the one where they’re a bit more active in figuring out the truth, because it’s a very strange circumstance. Assuming Episodes 9-10 still happen with Healer Cookie, then they all wind up in the Raisin Village and help out around the village

I actually ended up making option 2 because I thought it would be funny how these five were all super close friends who traveled the world together, and even now when they all have amnesia, they’re still doing that, unaware this is what they used to do. They probably have discussions at night about who they used to be and how they might know each other. They sometimes wonder if perhaps they were all enemies, unaware of the truth. That thought to me was just funny

But yeah, not sure which version to do

But yeah, I think that’s everything about this au, specifically for these characters, that I have. However I do have more, so perhaps I’ll be able to actually go and post more of it sometime. Hope you like it!

#cookie run #cookie run kingdom #cookie run au #all ancients disappear au #ancient cookies #pure vanilla cookie #hollyberry cookie #dark cacao cookie #golden cheese cookie #white lily cookie #my au #my art #oh yeah another thing their kingdoms were definitely affected by their absence #we’ll really only be talking about the Hollyberry and Dark Cacao Kingdoms though #since Vanilla Kingdom is the same we don’t know anything about Golden Cheese Kingdom and WL doesn’t have one #hmm maybe I made Sage and Winged Cookie’s outfits too colorful

291 notes · View notes

best-underrated-anime · 3 months

Text

Best Underrated Anime Group J Round 3: #J3 vs #J1

#J3: Cat demon stuck in cat form, gets adopted as a pet

#J1: Two high school girls overcome mommy issues with the power of YURI!

Details and poll under the cut!

#J3: Legend of Luo XiaoHei (series) (Luo XiaoHei Zhan Ji)

Summary:

XiaoHei is a young cat demon training to be an Executor, someone who maintains the balance between humans and demons. His first mission as a trainee was to steal the Sky Pearl. He succeeded, but he also got injured enough to be unable to revert to his human form. Stuck in his cat form, he gets adopted by the human girl XiaoBai as a pet. The story then follows XiaoHei’s adventures as a pet cat in a human home while also evading the pursuit of his enemy, Diting.

Propaganda:

Legend of Luo Xiaohei, at first glance, is a fun kiddy series with cute art. But the more you learn of the story, the more you realize how much thought is put into every little detail. The creator’s worldbuilding is so intricate. It’s like Adventure Time in that you think it’s all fun and games, but there’s actually so much more to it. There’s even a manhua for the side characters featuring their lives from thousands of years ago!

A lot of information will be slowly unfolded, but not once does it feel overwhelming to the viewer. Following XiaoHei’s point of view, we get to see glimpses of the wider lore, piquing our curiosity.

In the world of LXH, demons and cultivators/immortals exist, but they don’t usually cross paths with ordinary humans because they keep their existence/powers a secret. XiaoHei himself has had little interactions with humans aside from his master. It isn’t until XiaoHei meets XiaoBai that he actually learns more about them and their way of life. Slowly, he gets drawn to the human life and also learns to have fun just like the human kids his age.

Season 1 presents to us XiaoHei’s daily life with his friends, so it’s more slice-of-life with the supernatural simply peppered around. It never gets boring, though, because there’s this ever-present tension of XiaoHei having to keep his identity a secret. We also get to meet a lot of intriguing characters, like XiaoBai’s “brother,” who helps XiaoHei fight against Diting.

Season 2, on the other hand, is more action-packed. The plot for s2 is the Executors guild seeking humans with talent in cultivation. They screen them through a virtual reality game where they can emulate the use of powers. XiaoHei’s final test as Executor also takes place here.

I personally think the best aspect of this show is its hype fight scenes, but that’s just me craving stimulation. At its core, LXH is really a heartwarming story about a young demon learning that there is more to life than powers and fighting. Sure, the supernatural stuff is interesting, but beyond that, it’s a story of love—It’s about XiaoHei making friends and discovering what it is he really wants to do without fear of losing what he calls his home, for home will always be with him.

Overall, Legend of Luo Xiaohei is a nice, warm show that you can binge on a slow day without missing out on the excitement a story with an overarching plot brings. Do give it a try.

P.S.: This series takes place about three years after the events in the movie (which has the same title in Chinese, but is more known as simply “Legend of Hei” in English). The series aired first before the movie, though, so it doesn’t matter.

Trigger Warnings:

Child death in s2 (it’s fake, but the characters’ reactions feel so real)

Not really a trigger, but just in case: Teens/adults bullying children. XiaoHei is a great fighter, and the people that can match with him are only those older than him.

#J1: Flip Flappers

youtube

Summary:

Cocona is an average middle schooler living with her grandmother. And she, who has yet to decide a goal to strive for, soon met a strange girl named Papika who invites her to an organization called Flip Flap.

Dragged along by the energetic stranger, Cocona finds herself in the world of Pure Illusion—a bizarre alternate dimension—helping Papika look for crystal shards. Upon completing their mission, Papika and Cocona are sent to yet another world in Pure Illusion. As a dangerous creature besets them, the girls use their crystals to transform into magical girls: Cocona into Pure Blade, and Papika into Pure Barrier. But as they try to defeat the creature before them, three others with powers from a rival organization enter the fray and slay the creature, taking with them a fragment left behind from its body. Afterward, the girls realize that to stand a chance against their rivals and the creatures in Pure Illusion, they must learn to work together and synchronize their feelings in order to transform more effectively.

Propaganda 1:

Flip Flappers is a magical girl show that brings its own unique twist to the genre, while still being reminiscent of older classics. It has incredibly creative visuals, good characters, and an absolute banger soundtrack! The deeper messages of the show are about finding the courage to start making your own decisions and living your life the way you want it, growing up, and the struggle against controlling authority figures that entails. While it is a fun show, the emotional moments it has hit hard! It also has a yuri narrative (seriously, they even get taken to an all-girls Catholic school yuri setting one time), which I’m sure the himejoshis on this webbed site would appreciate if they saw the show!

Propaganda 2:

Look, sometimes Magical Girl Shows have fights that are just kinda… ehh. You ever wanted to see magical girls beat the SNOT out of monsters in amazingly animated, incredibly physical fight scenes? Give Flip Flappers a shot! And if you don’t, that’s fine too, because the shows genre changes every other episode anyways.

Flip Flappers has a little something for everyone. It has amazing characters. It has slick transformation sequences. It has stunning fight scenes. It has horror. It has yuri. It has mommy issues. It’s fun for the whole family!

While one would think the constant tone-shifts would leave the series feeling kinda all over the place, Flip Flappers keeps itself grounded with its amazing character work. The main two characters, Cocona and Papika, bounce off of each other incredibly well. They have so much chemistry, and it’s refreshing to see a show that actually does something romantic with its two main leads instead of just kinda dangling it in front of your face and then chickening out at the last second.

In conclusion, this show is the embodiment what having ADHD and being sapphic feels like. Give it a shot!

Trigger Warnings:

Flashing Lights/Flickering Images, Gender Identity/Sexuality Discrimination, Guns, Kidnapping, Nudity.

Depictions of child and emotional abuse, both at a side character and a main character. Control over children is a common theme in the show.

When reblogging and adding your own propaganda, please tag me @best-underrated-anime so that I’ll be sure to see it.

If you want to criticize one of the shows above to give the one you’re rooting for an advantage, then do so constructively. I do not tolerate groundless hate or slander on this blog. If I catch you doing such a thing in the notes, be it in the tags or reblogs, I will block you.

Know one of the shows above and not satisfied with how it’s presented in this tournament? Just fill up this form, where you can submit revisions for taglines, propaganda, trigger warnings, and/or video.

#anime #donghua #best underrated anime #polls #poll tournament #tournament #anime tournament #animation #group stage #group stage round 3 #tournament polls #group j #legend of hei #legend of luo xiaohei #luo xiaohei zhan ji #羅小黒戦記 #flip flappers

24 notes · View notes

literalite · 9 months

Text

BOLD THE FACTS tag by @helenofsimblr

AAAA thanks guys for tagging me <33333 @morrigan-sims @alltimefail-sims and everyone who encouraged my dumbass on the post fhgjkl; <33 uhh tagging YOU if you see this... here's nayef

[ PERSONAL ]

$ Financial: wealthy / moderate / poor / in poverty

✚ Medical: fit / moderate / sickly / disabled / disadvantaged / non applicable

✪ Class or Caste: upper / middle / working / unsure / other

✔ Education: qualified / unqualified / studying / other

✖ Criminal Record: yes, for major crimes / yes, for minor crimes / no / has committed crimes, but not caught yet / yes, but charges were dismissed

[ FAMILY ]

◒ Children: had a child or children / has no children / wants children

◑ Relationship with Family: close with sibling(s) (he used to be) / not close with sibling(s) / has no siblings / sibling(s) is deceased

◔ Affiliation: orphaned / adopted / disowned / raised by birth parent / not applicable (his father's dead, mother never stuck around to raise him)

[ TRAITS + TENDENCIES ]

♦ extroverted / introverted / in between

♦ disorganized / organized / in between

♦ close minded / open-minded / in between

♦ calm / anxious / in between

♦ disagreeable / agreeable / in between

♦ cautious / reckless / in between

♦ patient / impatient / in between

♦ outspoken / reserved / in between

♦ leader / follower / in between

♦ empathetic / vicious bastard / in between

♦ optimistic / pessimistic / in between

♦ traditional / modern / in between

♦ hard-working / lazy / in between

♦ cultured / uncultured / in between / unknown

♦ loyal / disloyal / unknown

♦ faithful / unfaithful / unknown

[ BELIEFS ]

★ Faith: monotheist / polytheist / atheist / agnostic

☆ Belief in Ghosts or Spirits: yes / no / don’t know / don’t care

✮ Belief in an Afterlife: yes / no / don’t know / don’t care

✯ Belief in Reincarnation: yes / no / don’t know / don’t care

❃ Belief in Aliens: yes / no / don’t know / don’t care

✧ Religious: orthodox / liberal / in between / not religious

❀ Philosophical: yes / no

[ SEXUALITY & ROMANTIC INCLINATION ]

❤ Sexuality: heterosexual / homosexual / bisexual / asexual / pansexual

❥ Sex: sex repulsed / sex neutral / sex favorable / naive and clueless

♥ Romance: romance repulsed / romance neutral / romance favorable / naive and clueless / romance suspicious

❣ Sexually: adventurous / experienced / naive / inexperienced / curious

⚧ Potential Sexual Partners: male / female / agender / other / none / all

⚧ Potential Romantic Partners: male / female / agender / other / none / all (he is never going to love someone other than sioar let's be fucking real tho)

[ ABILITIES ]

☠ Combat Skills: excellent / good / moderate / poor / none

≡ Literacy Skills: excellent / good / moderate / poor / none

✍ Artistic Skills: excellent / good / moderate / poor / none

✂ Technical Skills: excellent / good / moderate / poor / none

[ HABITS ]

☕ Drinking Alcohol: never / special occasions / sometimes / frequently / alcoholic

☁ Smoking: tried it / trying to quit / quit / never / rarely / sometimes / frequently / chain-smoker

✿ Recreational Drugs: never / special occasions / sometimes / frequently / addict

✌ Medicinal Drugs: never / no longer needs medication / some medication needed / frequently / to excess

☻ Unhealthy Food: never / special occasions / sometimes (food is food if it's nice he'll savour it) / frequently / binge eater

$ Splurge Spending: never / sometimes / frequently / shopaholic

♣ Gambling: never / rarely / sometimes / frequently / compulsive gambler

what i think i like a lot about nayef is that he's honestly just extremely driven... he finds areas to improve in and goes all out in them. he's literally like one of the finest chefs in the world bouncing from place to place absorbing all the knowledge he can like a sponge idk he's one of my more i would say active ocs he's not really bogged down by things as much as most of my others. he's a trooper fr

#i fucking love his face ughghgghghgh #ts4 #nayef #seph.txt #p

52 notes · View notes

pierrotdameron · 1 year

Text

[...] As the game begins, your character arrives in a remote corner of the world of Eora called the Living Lands as an envoy of the Aedyr Empire, where you've been sent to investigate a mysterious plague. "Not everybody in the Living Lands is super thrilled to have an imperial presence in this far-flung land," she said. "So adventure ensues."

[...] CEO Feargus Urquhart told me that in scope Avowed is more akin to Obsidian's past RPGs like The Outer Worlds in size than it is a sprawling open world a la Skyrim, though that was actually Obsidian's initial pitch. When the developers sat down and focused on what Obsidian does best—stories and companions, in particular—the more compact scale came naturally.

The way you interact with other characters in Avowed will be similar to The Outer Worlds, where your dialogue options reflect the tone you want to want to use. "We try to hit a sweet spot when we're writing dialogue options where we invest enough personality for those options to be fun and interesting, but also leave enough space around them so that the player can really invest whatever headcanon they built for their character into that option," she said.

Patel wouldn't spill much about Avowed's story, but did give me some of the basics on what form of RPG to expect from Avowed:

You have an established role as the imperial envoy, but your "personality, appearance, and philosophy and vibe you bring to that role is up to you as a player to decide"

You can play as a human or an elf, but not other races

It's purely singleplayer—no co-op

The world is lightly systemic: think water and lightning interactions, but not the ol' bucket-on-the-head trick

You'll have two companions with you at a time, with their own combat specialties and, of course, personalities

There are several ability trees to progress through, and you won't be locked to a particular class or playstyle

You will level up, but the focus is on unlocking abilities rather than putting points into stats to grow stronger

Early in development, when Obsidian decided to prioritize a story "more focused on depth than breadth," the first-person combat ended up benefitting, too. Patel said that it was an example of a piece of Avowed that was surprisingly fun in their first vertical slice, a time when the team has to decide on what to commit more resources to and what to scale back on. Combat became a key focus, which should be music to the ears of every Elder Scrolls player who's always found the sword-swinging a bit wimpy. "Our combat has come along really, really well, and the bones have been there since the beginning," she said.

Patel cited a lot of time spent tuning the feel of swinging a sword vs. a mace vs. an axe to make combat feel right, but the options available to players seem like the more significant element at play here. You're free to dual-wield weapons, wield both magic and melee simultaneously, and as in Pillars of Eternity, there are some old timey guns available. When I brought up how bored I am of game loot with imperceptible stat differences from one sword to another, she said that's been on their mind, too.

"The way we've tried to approach that is erring on the side of fewer but meaningful upgrades. If you're upgrading your weapon from one tier to the next, you should feel the difference. If it's a small number change next to your item name, that's not going to feel as meaningful as going through an upgrade process, trying your weapon again and realizing it's doing a lot more damage. Fewer but more meaningful upgrade tiers."

From today's trailer, magic looks like it could be the bit of Avowed that really gives it its own fantasy flair. There's some excellent hand animation at work when the envoy draws runes in the air to conjure a fireball and later lifts a pulsing void skyward, sending a pile of guards orbiting weightlessly around it. I want a whole lot more of that, and I'm excited that I can mix magic with melee without being railroaded into a class.

"In most of our games companions have been optional, which I think offers a wonderful degree of choice to players, but it means there's a limit to how deeply you can tie them into the core story. With Avowed we decided companions are going to be core. They're going to be part of the experience. And that means we can invest so much more in them and tie them much more closely, and personally, to the events and the parts of the world the player is encountering."

And can they die?

This time there was a pause. "You'll have to see," Patel said. Until 2024, then.

#Avowed #Pillars of Eternity #Feargus Urquhart #Carrie Patel #obsidian games

89 notes · View notes