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atundratoadstool · 1 year

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I know you've listed the character ages already, but what about physical descriptions? I remember Van Helsing being described as having red hair and blue eyes and I know Lucy's a blonde, but that's it.

Stoker is both frequently very spartan in his physical descriptions of characters and obsessively interested in detailing their facial features owing to his zealous belief in the thoroughly racist science of physiognomy. Here's a breakdown of what we know in the text plus some notes on how these features possibly operate in relation to Stoker's views, experiences, and research:

[CW: Spoilers and a fair number of mentions of Stoker's inescapable racism/antisemitism under the cut.]

Jonathan Harker: Jonathan is barely described but in possession of hair that turns white over the course of the novel. He possibly has a beard or a lot of stubble following the unfortunate yeeting of his shaving mirror. Like many of Bram Stoker's hunky lawyer protagonists, he's more often describing characters than being described by them.

Mina Harker: She is described by Seward as "attractive," "sweet-faced," and "dainty looking." She also has eyes that blaze like "pole stars," which is a very common description in Stoker's greater body of work (See: Stephen Norman in The Man and Teuta Vissarion in Lady of the Shroud) and match with his rapturous descriptions of real world actress Geneviève Ward. While it isn't as common a denotation of willfulness and determination as aquiline noses, it's generally used to indicate female characters who are very hardcore and may obtain a gun. Her skin is light enough for the red mark she obtains to be clearly visible upon it, although I will note that Mimi Salton from Lair of the White Worm is both undeniably a Mina 2.0 and mixed race/darker skinned, which might be worth considering in the realm of headcanon given how frequently Stoker just recycles characters and their physical attributes.

Lucy Westerna: She's pretty, and her weight and appearance definitely fluctuates over the course of her illness. Her hair is laid out in "sunny ripples" while she's alive. She becomes a "dark-haired woman" while undead. This frustrates many many critics and commentators. It's been proposed that the "sunny ripples" just refers to the gloss on her dark hair. It's been proposed the blondeness/darkness hair is an indicator of her innate goodness/evilness... like Smurfette (which has--again--some Stoker-typical racist implications). The most obvious Doylist explanation is that Stoker cannot track characters' hair color much as he cannot track all his dates.

Jack Seward: Strong jaw. Nice forehead. Immense lunatic asylum. He's also mentioned as being thin in comparison to Renfield and Lucy thinks he's handsome (although obviously not as desirable as Arthur).

Arthur Holmwood: His hair is curly. He is tall. He is also a hottie, as attested to by Lucy and by Jack (who finds him very manly as he kills his vampire fiancee).

Quincey P. Morris: I haven't recalled or been able to look up any major descriptors. He apparently carries himself like a "moral Viking" (as Jack attests in the midst of commenting on yet another friend's manliness). I went into some detail as to how he reads in terms of race here and how it might mesh with Lucy's comparison of him to Othello.

Abraham Van Helsing: After the Count, he's the most thoroughly described character in terms of physiognomy, and that physiognomy... is more or less the spitting image of Bram Stoker as he describes himself (...you know, Abraham "Bram" Stoker, who has the same first name as this super genius great-at-everything character). He's got sensitive nostrils, big forehead bumps, a nice jaw, a big mouth, a strong build, and red hair. I wrote a comparison between him and Stoker here. I will also note that the forehead bumps are a phrenological feature denoting creativity and that Jonathan remarks that he apparently has eyebrows incompatible with self doubt.

R. M. Renfield: He appears to be swoler than Seward even if his swoleness is to no avail against Dracula.

Dracula: There is a lot to unpack with Dracula. He has an aquiline nose, which is one of the absolutely most significant recurring features in Stoker's greater corpus (See: The Judge from "The Judge's House"; Solomon Mendoza from The Watter's Mou; Don Bernadino from The Mystery of the Sea; Joy Ogilvie from Lady Athlyne; and Edgar Caswall from The Lair of the White Worm), and this trait was shared by his boss and Idol Henry Irving. It undoubtedly has physiongomic significance to Stoker, who seems to use it to denote command and leadership, although it is worth noting that Cesare Lombroso mentions aquiline noses as a feature of murderers and that many critics have pointed out its potential connections to Stoker's antisemitism (and specifically the suspicion regarding Jewish immigrants in the wake of the Jack the Ripper killings). Dracula additionally has a "domed forehead," which can paradoxically be associated in physiognomy with both high intellect and mental feebleness. His sharp teeth are a trait Stoker associates with "a militant instinct" (Lombroso, again, connects them with murderers) and are described in much the same way he describes Alfred Lord Tennyson and Sir Richard Burton's teeth, although he took notes from Sabine Baring-Gould's Book of Were-wolves in which sharp teeth are a werewolf trait. We also have pretty explicit evidence that Dracula's unibrow, pointy nails, and hairy palms are also from Baring-Gould. Overall, Dracula seems to be a real hodgepodge of physiognomic traits that seem to haunt Stoker's work, racist criminological theory, and actual folklore.

#Bram Stoker #Dracula #Jonathan Harker #Mina Harker #Lucy Westenra #Jack Seward #Arthur Holmwood #Quincey P. Morris #Abraham Van Helsing #R. M. Renfield #The Count #racism #antisemitism #dracula daily spoilers

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leonsliga · 3 months

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At the request of the wonderful @realmadrider, here’s some of my comfort footy vids 😁 happy watching!

All things DFB and Bundesliga:

Bayern Summer Games 2022 (especially the Guess the Song challenge)

Agility Challenge • Kimmich vs. Goretzka (AKA Kimetzka being an old married couple for nearly 7 minutes)

Wer kennt mehr? Leon Goretzka & Joshua Kimmich

Stadt, Land, Fußball - Thomas Müller and Leon Goretzka

Thomats Challenge: Bundesliga Edition

The big FC Bayern quiz with Manuel Neuer and Sven Ulreich

Google Autocomplete Challenge with Serge Gnabry and Leon Goretzka

Servus, Leon Goretzka!

Leon Goretzka vs. Julian Brandt: Buzzwire Challenge

Bundesliga Stars Try to Draw Their Team Logos - Witsel, Goretzka, and Co.

Mats Hummels vs. Thomas Müller: Me or Him Challenge

Pro vs. Pro:Direct with Thomas Müller

Read My Lips: 🇩🇪 vs. 🇫🇷

Close-Up with Leon Goretzka

60 Seconds Challenge: 🇩🇪🆚🇫🇷

Neuer, Müller, and Lahm making fun of Kramer’s memory loss during the 2014 World Cup final

One gotta go with Marco Reus and Julian Brandt

Manuel Neuer and Bastian Schweinsteiger dancing on the beach

Don’t get distracted! With Julian Brandt and Marco Reus

Müller & Co. Decorating the Christmas Tree

Hummels & Brandt: Which of You…

FC Bayern Teammate Insights

Neuer, Martínez, and Hernández Carpool Q&A

EURO Taxi with Thomas Müller and Mats Hummels

Manuel Neuer vs. Thomas Müller

New Season, New Berni ft. Müller, Neuer, Sané, and Davies

So feiern die Bayern das Triple

Neuer, Piszczek & Co. Try to Draw - Who is the Best Artist

Take it easy | BVB-Challenge with Marco Reus and Julian Brandt

Kimmich vs. Gnabry | Copy the Penalty Challenge

Chunkz vs. Neuer | YouTuber vs. Pro Keeper Penalty Shoot Out Challenge

Manuel Neuer im Interview

Who am I? BVB-Challenge with Mats Hummels and Marcel Schmelzer

Manu lifting up a jar of Nutella like it’s Simba

DFB Nutella Commercial

Will Grigg’s on fire! Is Mats Hummels terrified?

Bayern Summer Games 2021

Thomats Christmas Challenge

Serge Gnabry: Unlocked feat. Yung Filly

Who knows more? Marco Reus vs. Mario Götze - 2018 edition

Who knows more? Marco Reus vs. Mario Götze - 2019 revenge

Netradio Newcomer with Marco Reus and Julian Brandt

Best of Radio Müller

Thomats dieses Mal olympisch - eng subs

Don’t get distracted! With Mats Hummels and Marcel Schmelzer

Cow-Milking and Welly-Throwing | Team-Building Fun at FC Bayern

Shell Game w/ Manuel Neuer

Pantomime w/ Manuel Neuer

Drawing w/ Manuel Neuer

Marco Reus vs. Mats Hummels - Buzz Wire Challenge

Manuel Neuer reveals the results of his doping test (spoiler alert: it was urine)

Thomats Basketball Challenge

Thomas Müller “JAAA” compilation

A Spanish Lesson for Neuer with Thiago - Repeat after Me Challenge

Fußball-Dart: Goretzka gegen Burgstaller

You Have to Answer - Marco Reus

Bayern Team Photo Vlog

Who knows more 2.0: Brandt vs. Hummels

Thomats Tangram Challenge

FC Bayern wish you a Merry Christmas

Mario Götze’s Most Famous Picture

Mats Hummels pranks Gio Reyna

DFB Water Polo Teambuilding

Erling Haaland being a funny guy for 3 minutes straight

Bromance: Manuel Neuer & Leon Goretzka

Manuel Neuer, Per Mertesacke, & Arne Friedrich - Sky ad

Neustädter vs. Reus

Literally anything else:

50 most shocking moments of the 2010 World Cup

Jose Mourinho explains football to a baffled Ted Lasso

Timo Werner being the funniest German for 2 minutes (because he’s an adorable bean)

Lingard and Rashford | Roommates

Ney…freezin innit

Wingmen: Bruno Fernandes and Jesse Lingard

Manchester United x Stone Roses

I am Jose Mourinho 😎

Sergio Ramos drops the Supercopa under the bus

Marcelo, Bale, Ramos, & Co. joking around on a plane because why not

Lies | Toni Kroos & David Alaba

Kroos & Modrić | Teammates

Toni Kroos’s fantastic interview after RMA beat Liverpool in the UCL final

Luka Modrić taunting Gerard Piqué like the girlboss he is

Real Madrid x NFL with a heavy dose of Modramos

Roy Keane’s angriest moments discussing Manchester United - very validating as a United fan in the modern era tbh 😭

THE Kunessi stream - eng subs (55 minutes in all its glory)

When Kun met Leo

Kun calling Leo on stream

Sergio Agüero interviews Lionel Messi

Honestly every episode of the Champions

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thefirstknife · 1 year

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Going absolutely feral about the final raid lore book page. Finally got the last one today and I am losing it for real.

Screenshots of the whole thing below, and some initial commentary, under for spoilers for the final page of the raid lore book and because it's a long post:

This is Unveiling 2.0. This is 100% the Winnower, has to be. It fits with the first paragraph description and the rest of the text. I'm also thinking that both of the final pages could be the Winnower, but I'm still not sure about the previous one.

But this one? Holy shit. I will need to re-read this at least 1000 times, but for a start, I think this is super important for the overall story and where we're heading. I think that this makes the theory of the Witness as the First Knife more likely, as well as a few theories we've had about the Original Garden as a "place" where both the Witness and the Traveler (Gardener) have gone to with the portal.

A lot of callbacks to Unveiling stuff and the original game and how these things might be relating to our own reality and our own, heh, destiny in the universe that currently exists. Obviously, it's also a metaphor so a lot of this has the vibe of US being the flowers in the flower game and gaining access to the ability to wield Light and Darkness and how that affects us and shapes us.

And also a lot about more ambiguity when it comes to the Light and Darkness, and how they're inherently entwined. The existence of life necessitates death, gardening must lead to winnowing, Light is inherently linked with Darkness. The whole Lightfall and the raid in particular are built on this theme.

And yet, even here, there's the underlying cynicism of the Darkness philosophy. Even when it recognises that we will say "existence is more complex," it still boils it down to the simple philosophy of how violence is inevitable. Even if we concede that there's an inherent link between Light and Darkness (there is! You can't have too much of either!), it still doesn't mean that the Darkness HAS to assume the shape of violence. Except this author (the Winnower?) thinks so, as it did in Unveiling.

Favourite new lore tab. Also:

Vaguely reminiscent of Nezarec's words:

The "first victims of the blade" and "first victims of the Witness." First victims from where the Veil originates; an object (entity?) that is by itself a testament to the inherent link between Light and Darkness. Firmly believing that this is a lead.

Fascinating lore and something to occupy us with speculation for months to come. At least until we get some more about the Witness, because that will help us confirm or deny the current theory.

#destiny 2 #the root of nightmares raid #winnower #witness #losing my entire mind #hopefully it also gets up on ishtar soon so we don't have to rely on screenshots

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punklorde-hunter · 2 months

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So 2.1, just like the previous patch SO much happened, and To no one's surprise, It blew everything we saw in 2.0 out of the water! And since i did something similar during 2.1, I'd thought it make sense to do the same for the next part. So without further ado!

Spoilers under the Cut!!!!

Of course the start of 2.1's story has to end right where we left off, in the room where we found Robin's dead body O_O. But i like the direction they go, where after we split off form Aventurine and meet with the Express, we get to see multiple POV's, kinda like how they did with Dan Heng on the Luofu but more complex. And man did it work wonders!

While I know there were people meming and a bit disappointed Duke Inferno never got to appear in game, I did like that Acheron at least remembers his last stand. Man stood by his principles and went out fighting (even if he' prob won't be playable)

I also like how they handled Acheron & Welt together. Like I said before never got to play Honkai Impact 3rd, but I did get to read a lot of the supplementary material like Second Impact, so it was nice to see that side of Welt from there. And that's while Acheron isn't his Mei it's nice they shared a kinship

What a fun Greek Myth ref to match the HI3 Ref

I got nothing to add to this the sand pit was hilarious as hell! The NPC walking into walls and clipping into floors made me lose it. The devs had way too much fun in that area lmao.

Siobhan give em one more chance 🥺

the straight Up Pikachu ref sdjaldsadkklds

The little detail of Aventurine's & Dr. Ratio's shoes was pretty cute, the lil' spades on Aventurine's sole and Ratio's sandals, it's nice!

Nice Unlimited Blade Works ref there Star Rail

This next parts more on the serious side, so I'll give a little heads up that rest of the post is prob about to touch on really dark topics like Enslavement, genocide, su1c1de, and not so nice things like that so be warned.

So,

Aventurine / Kakavasha's backstory....

there's so much I could say but they really did a excellent job fleshing out his character. From how he was "lucky" from birth but everyone he ever loved wasn't so lucky, how his reckless gambling with his life was there even as a kid, him feeling he's never been truly free only going from one master to another, mans got trauma and it's no wonder he thinks everything comes at a cost.

I haven't seen a lot of post about the part where Kakasvasha says his last goodbyes to his sister, right before the Narration explains that the small rebellion ended in the Avgin clan's extinction (it's vague if the Katacins survived, but considering how the story paints them, not many people are gonna miss them). over 6,000 deaths and over ,000 casualties, all on a planet that was barely survivable. And while his sister sends him off after one final prayer to Gaithra Triclops, it left him alone with no one, and we know how he ended up afterwards.

Not to mention the fact even when Aventurine killed his old master by STRANGLING HIM WITH CHAINS, he would've been arrested by the IPC had Jade not taken an interest in his bet. Man has been through it. No wonder he recklessly bets his life in gambles, it was either that or he dies.

Speaking of reckless gambling, the entire sequence after Sunday does his Harmony suggestion we get that oh so nice interactions with the young Aventurine and his shadow the true self other Aventurine that rags on him the rest of the way. The shadow Aventurine lays it in him that underneath that bravado is a man whose so scared to lose more and yet doesn't care if his own life gets taken in the process since all he has is that. Not even with all the money in the universe. Dr Ratio's "betrayal" was supposedly an act, but he still thinks on some level the doctor hates him and it was real, he has no one to confined in or anything.

But with the younger self it's different. The way his young self still has light in his eyes, how in the hallucination he's at the theme park with his family, who are dead. First he denies that there are any Avgins since they were all dead right? But then he shows a kinder side he would never show to anyone, much less himself. And it accumulates in the scene where he decides to live on a bit longer and says a final prayer to his past, to Kakavasha. I was choking up all through that final part.

I know the patch mostly focused on Aventurine, but even what we learned of Acheron is also sad. She's not really a Galaxy Ranger, because her status as an Emanator of Nihillty, a "Self-Annihilator," is tragic enough, means she'll forget precious memories, senses, untill there's nothing. So it's sticks out to me that Acheron is the one to give Aventurine the nudge to live on, she she also has lost so much but chooses to walk on in life. Plus Dr. Ratio's note to Aventurine was very Ratio, no-nonsense but also wants him to live on despite their differences. The Aventio fans are eating it up but it's still a nice gesture from Ratio.

Speaking of Sunday, I said I wanted him to get his revenge as a treat but I wasn't counting on him almost killing Aventurine with whatever Harmony power he put on him. Sure the man lost his sister to an unknown murderer, and the light cone memory of them of a simpler time is sad. There's still a few unanswered question about him and Robin's relationship, like if Robin's fondest memories of are the pretend concert between her and Sunday, why is ti as adults she only just got back to Penacony, and why the Harmony isn't in sync anymore that caused her voice to lose it's tune. Also Sundays controlling attitude and his raven bird watching in every scene he's in makes me think the once closed siblings may not be as close anymore

Also with the reveal of what "Gallagher's" role in the story is, the drink he made for my Trailblazer fits a bit TOO well. I don't completely believe he's working alone, but his association with the Something Unto Death meme has me excited for his role next patch. Let my chill bartender man be a bit shady as a treat. Truly the "most normal human in the game of werewolf" (Thanks Shaoji)

Also to no one's surprise, Sam & Firefly are one in the same. While I am interested on how the last Stellaron Hunter is gonna be like and what their deal is, it's a shame most people like em were spoiled by the twist since it makes Firefly and Sam SO much more interesting.

But overall 2.1 has been AMAZING in terms of characterization and with 2.2 being set to be the "climax" of Penacony's Story I can't wait to see what they do with the plot threads they have been cooking up.

#honkai star rail #spoilers #hsr spoilers #hsr 2.1 spoilers #my post #txt post #long post #spent a lot of typing oop

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hollowtones · 10 months

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i can't find the vods for the rest of your endwalker playthrough (if you even did stream the rest) so i was wondering, what were your opinions on 6.0? (also what were your reactions to That urianger scene)

I think I only did like one or two streams of it. It ran kinda bad when I streamed it, people didn't want to watch it, and I wasn't getting much out of streaming it compared to just playing it on my own time. That and I think I had a really severe depressive episode at the time (for unrelated reasons).

IDK if anyone's still trying to avoid spoilers but I'll throw it under a read-more.

It's been a while since I last played so my memory's kind of spotty. I liked it, though. It felt like a satisfying conclusion to what they've been getting at since 2.0 MSQ, and a nice little dialogue on despair and exhaustion and depression and hope, and finding ways to carry on and keep living and keep loving and keep trying. I feel like that's when the game's overall writing and theming tends to be at its strongest (yes I liked the Dark Knight questlines haha).

I remember having mixed feelings about how they pulled off the Garlemald segment & the "Alphinaud and Alisaie's shit head dad" plotline but I don't remember enough of the specifics to really elaborate on that.

Alisaie has lesbian college admirers and I thought that was funny.

I came out of 5.5 MSQ expecting White Woman Jumpscare Hydaelyn to be a little trite but I ended up really liking Venat. I felt kinda whatever about Emet-Selch coming back, but I didn't hate what they did with him I guess, and his earless-Viera boy toy was fun. Fandaniel felt like The Joker but he still felt like a fine first-act villain. The way they write him (& Meteion) in the later chunk of the game felt more interesting to me, & felt like a fun play on "Shadowbringers"-era Emet-Selch's whole "AMAUROT, BABY! GREATEST CITY IN DA WORLD, BABY! SLIMES ALL OVER DA STREET, BABY!" nostalgia. It was funny when he was The Joker, though.

Final area was thematically and visually really interesting. I'm excited we got more stuff related to Omega & I'm glad we got more "btw the dragons are aliens" stuff. I've seen a lot of people forget about that, for whatever reason. That one area right by the end that was completely desolate, with no people & no indication of who lived there, was a really good setpiece. The Namazu canonically suffer in all possible dimensions and all possible worlds and you cannot help but laugh out loud.

I kind of rolled my eyes at Zenos coming back. "By the way he's a Reaper now" felt like it amounted to nothing, but admittedly I never did the Reaper questline or the post-6.0 stuff. Getting to punch him in the face at the end was fun.

Music was good, I liked the way they played with different motifs & I really like how that comes to a head in the final boss fight.

I was expecting moon rabbits to be grating and insufferable but I liked them. I fucking love that none of this planet's moons are normal. Why are they both orbital prison-ships. I love it.

Zodiark's design owned and Hydaelyn's design was okay. Very Yoshitaka Amano design, which makes sense given how he did that one boxart for "A Realm Reborn" & she looks a lot like she does there, but I kinda wish she got to look more monstrous and weird. She kept talking up becoming a monster to do what she felt was right!!! I wish that had informed her design a little more.

Hamburgers exist & I do like that the animators got to livingly render G'raha Tia going to town on one like those weird clips of anime girls where it looks like they've never eaten in their lives.

I don't remember what you mean by "the Urianger scene". LOL

You didn't ask, but the crafting/gathering questlines were a lot of fun. I feel like they (& the guildleves) added some fun extra context to everything going on while I was going through the MSQ.

I liked it overall. I don't think it's the highest point of the game's writing, but I had a good time and felt very satisfied by the time it came to a close.

#Also the dog is really funny.

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lexicals · 6 months

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System collapse notes made as I read:

(Spoilers, obvs, mostly out of context)

Amazing opening page as usual. This feels like coming home I'm so happy

Side note, "one of you" - like, is this being delivered to an actual audience, or does mb just like to pretend it is? I know it's just an in-universe excuse for the conceit but either option is so good

ART canon tax fraud?? ART canon embezzlement???

ART @ BE ship: "people die in car crashes all the time. I just thought that was interesting :)"

The note about iris having grown up alongside ART is so funny. And the note about her being ART's ratthi is so sweet from both sides of that comparison

I adore Three so much. The fucking baby deer comparison killed me this poor construct

I could be misremembering but it feels like secunit's narration has more colloquialisms than before, which is fun if I'm right

Love than mb and mensah have the exact same reaction to the extra settlement lmao. Handshake meme

ARGUCUSSION

SECUNIT YOUR BOUNDARIES. YOUR NEEDS. PLEASE STOP TELLING PEOPLE YOU'RE FINE

"Fun stuff like space battles and rescuing people and space monsters and throwing asteroids at planets" this bot loves its cheesy tv so much I'm gonna cry

WHY DO YOU KEEP REDACTING THINGS SECUNIT PLS THIS IS STRESSFUL. I can't tell if this is it editing out trauma discussion or something else

Mb casually using ART as a dictionary lmao

Oh god is it hurting over 2.0 specifically. Oh man of course it is. God this poor bot I'm so 😭

Mb and ART working as a team so fluidly.... best friends......

Ratthi can tell secunit is busy thinking/working just by glancing at it.... FRIENDS.....

"SENTIENCE SUCKS" LMAO. YEAH OKAY WE'VE ALL FELT THAT

MB JUST HAS THE VIDEO FILE OF RATTHI ALMOST GETTING EATEN BY A WORM ON HAND. AMAZING

Mb and pin-lee bonding over watching scifi car crash videos. Incredible

SECUNIT THE SELF-DESTRUCTIVE TENDENCIES. LITERALLY TRYING TO JUMP OUT OF A PLANE WITHOUT A PARACHUTE. PLEASE

I'm gonna cry pls mb stop beating yourself up for being traumatised. This is exactly what you were giving mensah shit about!!!!!

"It was always my job to get hurt" I Am Going To Fucking Cry

CITING ITS SOURCE ON THE PRE CR HISTORY LESSON LMAO

God I feel like this poor bot spent six books building up its confidence and it's all just been shattered after the thing with 2.0. Like it's so palpable in the narration that it thinks it's broken in some way and is forcing itself to carry on regardless but with no regard for its own survival, which has always been of pretty high priority for it even in ASR!! It's let itself get beaten up in the other books but it's never been reckless like this. Mb please stop punishing yourself.....

Ohh tarik and mb shared corpo trauma..... can we talk about that maybe

Ratthi correcting iris about the ex-secunit thing.... ouuououugghghh

"Under normal circumstances that would be kind of hilarious" mb honey as a reader. That IS hilarious

Mb "so is this guy your..... ex-security..... not that I'm feeling jealous or insecure rn....."

HEY GUYS YOU EVER HAVE A PTSD FLASHBACK SO BAD YOU PASS OUT. GUYS

HEY GUYS HAVE YOU EVER HAD YOUR BRAIN-CRASHING PTSD FLASHBACK ANALYSED IN DETAIL BY A BUNCH OF PEOPLE YOU WANT TO RESPECT YOU

Mb once again having the worst time of its life but being offered a media archive by a friendly bot: oh fuck yes hello there

Ooooh pre-corpo media no less......

THE ART THERAPY-SPEAK..... "that’s for humans" "this affects the part of you that is human" I'm going to yell and yell and yell

"No, it doesn't read my mind, it just knows me really well" 🥺

I feel like MW has gotten more up to date on current gender/pronoun usage since the earlier books which is nice to see. We've had neopronouns before but having pronouns attached to feed/character intros is new and appreciated

Mb: "aw fuck am I being tall and intimidating again"

Local secunit physically repelled by power phrase "sexual discussion" like a fucking skyrim shout

VISUAL EQUIVALENT OF A WET BLANKET..... SECUNIT......

OHH...... OHHHHH!!!!! OHH MY GOD THE. IS THIS THE. WHEN I TALKED ABOUT THE CONCEIT EARLIER.........

Oh okay no BUT MURDERBOT NEW CREATIVE DIRECTOR POSITION BABEY!!!!!

And ratthi is so supportive. God I'm so. AAAAUGH

Just patch out the anxiety lmao. New mental illness fix dropped please restart your OS to apply

Telling your bestie to fuck off IS a kind of love language and I'm glad that ART appreciates it 😌

LITERALLY "(INTERNAL SCREAMING)". LMAO

Mb literally in a life or death situ rn: I could just burn part of this person's brain out to save us..... that seems mean though :/

"I lack a sense of proportional response" LMAO ART. At least it's self-aware

"I didn't come here to make friends" says the secunit who literally cannot go anywhere without forming some kind of allyship with someone

The delayed-hack though, that's fun. Wonder whether this file is gonna slowly make its way from CR secunit to CR secunit as mb gradually becomes some kind of mythic figure, lmao

"Be safe" 🥺

FINAL GIRL IS OUT. FINAL DRONE IS IN

ART: "Oooh you guys care about me ^^ lol"

LMAO ART YOUNGER SIBLING BEHAVIOUR

ALSO YES SET THREE UP WITH THE OTHER CRAZY SMART AI THEY CAN ALL GET A SECUNIT BESTIE!!!!

Murderbot trauma acknowledgement 😌 You go working through your feelings mb you're doing so well ily

WHERE ARE WE GOING NEXXXTTTT THAT IS INDEED THE QUESTION!!!

Summary thoughts: this was really good and I like that MW has taken the time to address the NE fallout before moving on to whatever is coming next, I'm mostly just excited for that whatever-comes-next now. I didn't expect this story to still be focused on the same planet, but it's cool that it was! And now we're moving on with more machine intelligences and rogue secunits in play!! And they mentioned the comfortunit from artificial condition so hopefully that'll come back into play soon as well! I feel like something is building up wrt construct rights in the setting and I'm very excited to see that, but in the meantime I loved getting this familiar romp through MB having a very bad day and working through its emotions while also trying not to die. And it was fun having the twist on the usual formula with things being so isolated and it having to handle everything while being off its game, it felt a lot more tense than some of the other entries just by virtue of the fact that MB's narration was so much less confident than usual, and it made it really nice to hear the fire come back to its voice once we hit that point in the story. 11/10 as usual I love this bot so goddamn much

#wastepaper basket #I think I had a tag for murderbot liveblogging at one point but idr what it was lmao #Just be advised there's spoilers below the cut I guess!#But my spoiler-free review is thst it's amazing as usual and I love this bot so so so so so much #Oh wait I remember the tag #murderbot lb #I think some of these got eaten when I saved the draft at some point or else they'd be even longer lmao.....

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paranormalfrogtivity · 3 months

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(Honkai: Star Rail)

Hidden achievement: "Zoologist in Fiction"

Basic guide with screenshots under the read more, as the pictures could be spoilers if you have not completed the 2.0 Trailblaze story.

This hidden achievement is earned by finding and interacting with 5 hound statuettes throughout Penacony.

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Sighting #1: First Meeting

Location: Reverie Hotel (Reality)

I missed getting a photo with the hound statuette in the first location because I didn't expect it to disappear! It sits on this side table when we enter our room at the Reverie Hotel in reality. When you interact with it, it gives you a feeling of foreboding, disappearing off to the dreamscape.

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Sighting #2: Dr. Edward's

Location: Dreamscape Sales Store (Golden Hour)

The hound reappears to the right of Dr. Edward at the Dreamscape Sales Store. Interacting with the hound will make it disappear again.

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Sighting #3: Bloodhound Bouncer

Location: Dream's Edge

The hound is to the right of the archway where the Bloodhound guard blocks us from getting to Firefly's secret stronghold. Interact with the hound to make it disappear to the Memory Zone.

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Sighting #4: A Child's Dream

Location: The Playroom (A Child's Dream/The Memory Zone)

This time the hound is on a table in the playroom towards the end of A Child's Dream. The door to the playroom can be found just to the left of the origami bird gathering place, if you're struggling to find it. Interacting with the hound makes it disappear, but this time without telling you where it's headed...

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Sighting #5: Our Room?

Location: Reverie Hotel (Dreamscape)

Our friend is there to great us upon using Silver Wolf's code to enter the dreamscape version of the Reverie. Interacting with this hound one last time will net you the Zoologist in Fiction achievement.

Happy hunting!

#Honkai Star Rail #HSR #Star Rail #Honkai: Star Rail #hidden achievement #em rambles

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miraluking-respectfully · 7 months

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I wanted my next longpost about DNT to focus on what this book reveals wrt the process of Joining. Instead, I accidentally went on a rant in the Discord server about the Killiks as a people during this particular era of galactic history in-universe, and by extension, Raynar Thul.

Raynar Thul, aka UnuThul, is a Joiner of Unu of some significance who I've put off explaining because when I entered the book, I knew about him and I considered his presence abhorrent. I've since gotten over some of those feelings, but I'm better off copy-pasting my Discord Rant than to try and summarize here.

Spoilers for The Joiner King below, but don't worry about that too much, as I'm kind of reading this book so you don't have to.

Call me Bug Walker.

*bad rimshot*

Begin Copypaste

The trouble with this particular novel is that while it's EXTREMELY juicy with Bug Lore, half of what it reveals about Kind society/culture/biology are New Developments™️ that i'm having to untangle from what could feasibly have been present before, ie, within the SWTOR era. Basically the premise of this book is that the nest has been undergoing some Changes due to the influence of a highly Force-sensitive Joiner, who was then able to extend his will over the nest as a whole. So discovering which is the nasty yucky invasive anthropomorphism introduced into my bugs by this character and which is the acceptable seasoning of anthropomorphism inherent to the development of a fictional intelligent species is not always super cut and dry

Like, the care given to individual casualties is an explicitly new development (makes sense, there aren't a ton of eusocial hive insects IRL that perform triage), but is the spaceport they built? Is the trade they're performing with other species? Is the Colony involving multiple distinct nests sharing a unified hive mind as opposed to a bunch of them? I'm like, not sure

Which is kind of funny, because the idea that the Killiks were a static culture until this One Guy with the right levels of space magic crashed into their planet & exerted his will over them with his last burst of near-death strength Also Really Bothers Me(edited)

"Well, Mads, if you like an aspect of Killiks 2.0, you can just pretend it's always been present in Killiks 1.0!" I don't waaaannaaaa

I want the LEAST anthro version of my bugs!!! I want the version of them BEFORE Raynar Thul got his grubby little mind all over them!

Joiners as a concept are fuckin sick not only because of what the bugs can give to them but for what they can give to the bugs. Joiners aren't Oops! All Hive Mind, they are two minds. Your old personality and memories still exist, but your understanding of the world and your priorities are now one with the Hive. And because I <3 TLT and I'm really big on the permeability of the soul rn, that suggests to me that the character and personality of a hive would change, slowly and surely, depending on the types of Joiners incorporated into it. It would have to. If the hive mind pre-Raynar has no clear source, no clear singular will behind it (disclaimer: IDK if this is true, I have 2.75 more entire book to read), then it could only be shaped and influenced by all its participants, bug and otherwise.

Raynar's existence + influence over the Colony doesn't preclude this possibility, but like. He does raise a question,

that being, could any Forcie have done this under the right circumstances? if not Why not

Like the book hasn't stated it outright but the wiki seemed confident that this guy has been the only Forcie Joiner to get subsumed, and while I don't know if that's a wholly accurate statement bc fucking nobody has read these books, the fact that the books gave the wiki authors that impression BUGS ME (pun intended)

This is the first EU book I've ever read. IDK what kinds of fuckin galactic percentages of Forcies to non-Forcies it's assuming. Obviously the number would be low because this book takes place a point when the Jedi are bouncing back from a painful extinction, but that extinction was recent, it was artificial, and also as we all know well Jedi =/= all Force users and statistically it is buckwild crazy to me that the Killiks would exist for 20,000+ years (the migration Vector mentions was introduced here btw! These are the Kind that left Alderaan, that he was looking for!) and at no point would they have picked up a strong-willed Force-user before this one dude

Now, there IS a confounding factor here. Which is, I imagine any other Forcie Joiners pre-Raynar were not, um. Trying to influence the nest as hard as he was

For starters he's just super duper strong in the Force, but also, he Joined because he crashed into a planet and crawled out of his ship half-dead and super on fire after watching multiple of his friends die horribly, and the will he exerted over the Killiks was a last-ditch effort to get them to save his life as opposed to eating him

that is a SPECIFIC-ASS set of circumstances and maaaybe if such a thing happened again within a different and unrelated nest, the same thing could have happened. Maybe it wasn't the presence of Force abilities that caused this one guy's brain to redirect the flow of the collective mind, but the effort he was putting behind it, effort that previous Force-sensitive Joiners had not found a need to wield

And also, like, UnuThul is 100% a Joiner. He is no more the same guy he was going in than Vector is, this is made clear

Bright side: as I said, I have A TON of this book left to go. And there have been a bunch of really strange happenings within the nest that Raynar in his Dawn-Herald-On-Steroids role seems as baffled by as the rest of the Kind. So maybe the next Big Reveal is gonna blow my ass clean off, slash positive, and make this all sit right with me.

But nonetheless I am bovvered. I am bovvered that a hive mind could develop a person in the drivers' seat for any reason. It feels too easy and it feels too anthropomorphizing, and both of those make it reeeally boring

End Copypaste

#killikposting #mads reads the dark nest trilogy #killiks #star wars eu #star wars legends #swtor

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laufire · 4 months

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with my 2024 wip list locked and loaded (under the cut).

send me “spoiler!” + a number from 1 to 25 and ill give u a vague spoiler abt a story im writing

1001 nights. Thanks to Batman: The Cult, Jason must know how to deprogram someone. In The Man Who Stopped Laughing, he discovers that Joker goes around brainwashing people into Joker-lites. Do the math.

5 times dick and zatana fooled around on dick's birthday and 1 time they didn't. What it says. I consider it part of the same continuity as my longer Young Justice WIP.

aditf: jason survives. I came up with this one before the fauximile, and it doesn't follow that. It'll focus on Jason's recovery and asks questions about what his survival would have changed in Batman comics as a whole, going forward.

amnesiac!jason. Circa new-earth, before Damian entered the picture. Jason faced something that broke his psyche and, while it was getting fixed, Bruce took creative licenses. Now Jason lives a "normal" life, starting college, working... but something is clearly WRONG. I swear I came up with this story before Gotham War xD, but there were some eerie parallels that jumpted at me as I read lol.

batwoman / robin: 2.0. AU of Batwoman's third season. Upon the realisation that a lot of what instantly appealed to me about batwoman!Ryan is similar to what appeals to me about robin!Jason, I decided to sit down and write about it. And I took advantage of it to tackle some changes I really didn't like in s3.

caretaker red hood (prev. bloodsharing wip). I read that at least in some comics it's been said that Jason (and Bruce, but that's less relevant) is 0-. I engineered a situation where the (still masked) Red Hood had to give a blood transfusion on the field to Bruce, and to take care of his injuries.

cass & jason: street kids. Cass makes it to Gotham a bit earlier, wandering the city, homeless. Just around the time a catatonic Jason is around, sharing his food with other homeless people. And just in time for her to intervene when people try to take Jason away.

convergence + incorporated: hold my beer (brand new!). Takes the end of the new earth timeline and puts Jason & Bruce on a difference direction, taking inspiration from Convergence: Batman and Robin, the basic premise of Batman Incorporated, and explores how Bruce killing Darkseid could've affected things.

damon and elena: marriage of doom. the quieter horror that I think Elena and Damon's marriage would inevitably be (especially in an universe where Damon put his money where his mouth was re: alienating others, and he killed Jeremy instead of Tyler).

dc vs. vampires, re-imagined. I read the first volume of that story and I was... disappointed. I decided to do my own spin on it: more character focused, less about the JL/saving the world~~ shenanigans. And obviously, Jason lives xD (well. Technically).

desperate housewives/spn crossover. all based on a dream I had where Tom Scavo was brutally killed by some monster and the late-seasons spn team came to infiltrate the suburbs and investigate LOL.

gotham: bruce plots a murder. Future fic set on the Fox show, about how that Bruce might react to Valeska killing Jason. The title sounds tongue-in-cheek but this is very angsty I swear.

gotham war: everything gets worse. Exactly that xD. I took what happened to Jason in GW seriously and poured more angst over it. What if he got hurt in some incurable way that meant he'd need to change his life going forward? What if he couldn't bring himself to save the child in Catwoman #57? What if the Joker did something much worse to "cure" him? And so on and so forth.

rogue green lantern!Jason. Someone on reddit joked about how, if Jason "overcame great fear" during Gotham War, he could get a ring. I don't think he'd join the Corps, but he would also not renounce to such power coming at a time of such vulnerability either.

immortal!Jason. It's basically canon that new earth!Jason came back from things that should have killed him with no explanation. So what if he can resurrect, over and over? This is about each of the Bats finding out about it.

orpheus!jayeddie. Jason finds out that Kid/Red Devil, his only peer from back in the day, got his soul sent to Hell.

jason + joker’s last laugh. Jason finds out about what happened in that arc (Dick beating the Joker to death, Bruce resucitating him). It only makes things worse.

jason’s journals. AU of War Games. Steph survives and is recovering in the Manor. There, she finds some old journals, written by the mysterious second Robin... and she, Tim, and Cass start to unravel the stories they'd been told about Jason vs. what he wrote himself. Just in time for the Red Hood to come into town.

jason’s new rules. Jason takes a victim's death really hard and reevaluates. Set on some amalgam of the main continuity, post-Alfred's death.

journalist!dick. Prompted by a tumblr post discusing how he could've gotten inspired to be an investigative journalist (thanks to Clark & Lois!). It takes things from Nightwing & Batman comics, and from the UTRH animated film, twisting some things around (for example, in this world Batman never took another sidekick after Jason's death, so Cass, Steph, and Tim's stories go differently).

kidnapping wip. Also inspired by a weird dream. Bruce manages to snatch Jason at the end of UTRH, takes him to the Manor to heal, and decides to try a little Stockholm syndrome. I also came up with this one before Gotham War xD

outlaws vs. justice league: simulation. If you haven't read the "Red Hood: Outlaws" webtoon, the premise is that Jason, Artemis, and Bizarro are made the new JL for a provation period... and then it's revealed they'd been put in a simulation without their consent (a simulation where they showed more compassion to some of the "criminals" they meant to hunt than the JL did). Then the webtoon did nothing with that, which really disappointed me. So I ran with it instead.

prison break: robins. Jason is facing the death penalty (for something he 100% did, lbr). Dick can't take it and puts himself in the same prison.

time travel: robin jason. You know all those AUs where robin!Jason suddenly appears on the present, and everyone has to deal with all the angst that brings? I want to do my own take on that. Lots of Jason & Jason bonding.

young justice: FÉNIX. In which I do what I've wanted to for years and write THEE yj!Jason-centric fic that's been so clear in my head. Featuring a lot of Jason & Damian, Jason & Bats reuniting, and tons of secret identity shenanigans.

#all of them are about detective comics comics (+ some other dc properties)#minus the two that specify they're about the vampire diaries and a cracky desperate housewives/supernatural crossover lol #talking to the void #ask meme #writing woes

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hunxi-after-hours · 1 year

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hunxi’s danmei awards 2.0! (aka 2022 edition)

Featuring the return of some categories such as:

Best Worldbuilding

Best Interrogation of Themes (aka the “Rent-Free Award”)

Best Moment That Wrecked Me (aka the Knifiest Award)

Best Beleaguered Side Character Award

Best Unreliable Narrator

As well as never-before-seen categories like:

Best Himbo

Most Brilliant Moment of Backstabbery

Most Ambitious Scope

Most Heartwrenching Line Delivery in an Audiodrama

…and more!

This year’s candidates in the running:

《小蘑菇》 Xiao Mo Gu by 一十四洲 Yi Shi Si Zhou

《不小心救了江湖公敌》 Bu Xiao Xin Jiule Jianghu Gong Di by 六木乔 Liu Muqiao (有声漫画 audiomanhua season 1)

《无双》 Wu Shuang by 梦溪石 Meng Xishi

《问鹿三千》 Wen Lu San Qian by 光合积木 Voicegem, 吼浪文化 Houlang Studio, and 斗木獬编剧工作室 Doumuxie Screenwriting Studio

《师弟还不杀我灭口》 Shidi Hai Bu Sha Wo Mie Kou by 子鹿 Zi Lu

《默读》 Mo Du by priest

《督主有病》 Du Zhu You Bing by 杨溯 Yang Su

《海中爵》 Hai Zhong Jue by 七药 Qi Yao

《哏儿》 Gen’er by 南北逐风 Nan Bei Zhu Feng

《杀破狼》 Sha Po Lang by priest

《金牌助理之弯弯没想到》 Jin Pai Zhu Li zhi Wan Wan Mei Xiang Dao by (nominally) 非天夜翔 Fei Tian Ye Xiang and (mostly) 传奇火箭队 The Legendary Rocket Team

(unmarked spoilers, including but not limited to these titles, under the cut. for introductions of these titles, click here. for last year’s danmei awards, click here)

Best Worldbuilding

Winner: 《杀破狼》 Sha Po Lang by priest

This award goes to 《杀破狼》 Sha Po Lang for the effortless ease with which p大 manages to merge the genres of imperial intrigue, steampunk mecha, alternate history, and wuxia elements. Over the course of the novel, priest explores how the development of 紫流金-based technology leads the fictional Liang Dynasty into industrial revolution, and doesn’t hesitate to include all the negative consequences of early industrialization. So you’ve rolled out mechanical alternatives for farming? Have fun dealing with the uprisings of unemployed farmers while fending off international threats on your borders. So you want to roll out paper currency/government bonds to stimulate your war-torn economy? Good luck even getting people to trust the validity of paper the way they trust the hardness of coin. In a way, 《杀破狼》 Sha Po Lang carries on the tradition set down in priest’s earlier novel 《七爷》 Qi Ye of protagonists using decidedly underhanded methods to effect the change they wish to see in the world, and the morality thereof remains just as thorny in 《杀破狼》. what would you do in the name of peace? how much of yourself can you give away before you are no longer the same person?

oh and I have to give a shout-out to the trains in this book, I’d give this award to 《杀破狼》 Sha Po Lang for its (re-)invention of trains alone

Best Interrogation of Themes (aka the “Rent-Free Award”)

Winner: 《小蘑菇》 Xiao Mo Gu by 一十四洲 Yi Shi Si Zhou

I listened to 《小蘑菇》 Xiao Mo Gu via audiodrama before I read the novel, and every time I finished an episode I would have to just sit for a few hours, processing. Despite its seemingly lighthearted premise, 《小蘑菇》 Xiao Mo Gu shows us an apocalypse in all its cruel magnificence. The oppressive atmosphere of unending martial law, the seductive proximity of despair, the omnipresence and unpredictability of death, the utter lack of justice or closure or meaning in a world slowly grinding to a halt, the vast, inhuman lengths civilization will go to in the name of survival... to this day, 《小蘑菇》 Xiao Mo Gu haunts the solemnity of my early mornings with questions like what would you condone to survive? and wherein lies the locus of meaning when everything it means to be human has been stripped away? and like. I haven’t been the same since my mushroom phase, okay

Best Beleaguered Side Character Award

Winner: Ji Bolan from 《小蘑菇》 Xiao Mo Gu by 一十四洲 Yi Shi Si Zhou

This poor man had to deal with his childhood friend growing up to be a governmentally-licensed and universally-reviled mass murderer, the complete breakdown of the laws of physics, and witnessing Lu Feng and An Zhe flirt in front of his salad soup, all during the apocalypse that he is frantically trying to solve. Frankly, he’s allowed to roast Lu Feng as much as he wants, and the fact that he’s voiced by the same person who did AD!Jiang Cheng and AD!Xiao Zheng (winner of last year’s Best Beleaguered Side Character Award) is 1) extremely funny, 2) very on-brand, and 3) further proof that being in voice actor fandom 其乐无穷

Best Moment That Wrecked Me (aka the Knifiest Award)

Winner: 《默读》 Mo Du by priest

The character of Fei Du in priest’s 《默读》 is easily the character who had me clawing at the walls the most for the better part of this year (I’m still clawing at the walls, if we’re being honest). I am in love with everything about the way priest wrote him; from his introduction as the flamboyantly aggravating playboy chasing after Tao Ran (brilliant character work there as well as brilliant comedy, 感谢陶然不弯之恩 etc etc) to the slow, methodical reveal of his backstory and how deeply, deeply traumatized he is, Fei Du is one of the most complex and intelligent and nuanced and terribly lovable meow meows characters I’ve had the good fortune to run into

To pick a single Fei Du moment? A single one? Well if I have to choose, unfortunately it’s going to have to be chapter 180 朗诵（五） for the simple reason that it hurts me:

他恨不能撕裂时空，大步闯入七年前，一把抱起那个沉默的孩子，双手捧起他从不流露的伤痕，对他说一句“对不起，我来晚了”。

[Luo Wenzhou] wished he could tear apart time, to barge back into that moment seven years ago and pick up that silent child, to cradle those hidden wounds and say to him, “I’m sorry I was late.”

“我来晚了……”

“I was late...”

直到上了救护车，费渡才好像是有了点意识，难以聚焦的目光在骆闻舟脸上停留了许久，大概是认出了他，竟露出了一个微笑。

Fei Du only seemed to recover a semblance of consciousness when they loaded him into the ambulance. His eyes, unfocused, stopped on Luo Wenzhou’s face for a while before smiling slightly.

骆闻舟艰难地看懂了他无声的唇语。

Luo Wenzhou read his words in the soundless shape of his lips with difficulty.

他说：“没有了……怪物都清理干净了，我是最后一个，你可不可以把我关在你家？”

He said, “They’re all gone... All the monsters are taken care of, I’m the last one. Can you lock me up in your house?”

I’m just. if you need me I’ll be screaming about sunflowers in the abyss

Best Unreliable Narrator

Winner: Yan Zhuoqing and the Deer God of 《问鹿三千》 Wen Lu San Qian by 光合积木 Voicegem, 吼浪文化 Houlang Studio, and 斗木獬编剧工作室 Doumuxie Screenwriting Studio

surprising shortage of unreliable narrators in this year’s contenders, but 《问鹿三千》 makes up for it by having not one, but TWO unreliable narrators involved. can you believe that BOTH of these semi-immortal dumbasses have amnesia? smh Deer God you’re literally the god of time and memory, how you’ve even gotten this far I’ve got no idea

honorable mention: Fei Du from 《默读》 by priest. this man had the audacity to say the words “我没有创伤” / “I’m not traumatized” after asking for Luo Wenzhou’s assistance in recovering some of his repressed memories that he’d blocked out because of the — you guessed it — trauma

Best Himbo

Winner: Situ Jin from 《督主有病》 Du Zhu You Bing by 杨溯 Yang Su

I think it’s safe to say that Situ Jin is a Very Good Egg With No Braincells Whatsoever. None. This man had to be bullied into a hurt/comfort scenario by his future wife, and when she came to him for comfort, grieving her father’s death, he responded to her “now I’m all alone” with “don’t cry: you’re one, I’m one, together we’re two.” proud of u for basic math, bro, but is now really the time. his other highlights include: thinking dreamily about his wife while in prison, defending innocent bystanders regardless the personal cost, and continually failing to seek medical attention while bleeding out

Side Character I’m Still Mad About (aka the Gongyi Xiao Award)

Winner: Fu Luo from 《海中爵》 Hai Zhong Jue by 七药 Qi Yao

so it turns out that I am Weak for this very specific kind of character, the one who is a Good Kid, the one who tries their best to be responsible and reasonable, the one who could honestly be a protagonist in another novel. double points if you can trust them with a spreadsheet (Bian Yanmei), triple points if they’re delightfully lowkey devoted to the actual protagonist (can I get a wahoo for the Jiangzuo Alliance in here??)

and you know what the author does? murders them with prejudice

tl;dr I’m still not over Fu Luo, because like oh man that scene was well done but also ouch

"most memeworthy/meme-able"

(this one’s for you, @presumenothing)

Winner: 《督主有病》 Du Zhu You Bing by 杨溯 Yang Su

I mean I literally—

this book is a Very Serious and Somewhat Grimdark book, but I have to say the sheer amount of misunderstandings that occur are comical in their quantity. have you ever met two people more in love with each other and less capable of uttering a single sentence about it, it is only by the grace of the author that these two didn’t murder each other before their happy ending at the many given opportunities throughout the book

"most deserving of a shenshen OST"

(this one’s also for you, @presumenothing, ty for all the brilliant category recs)

Winner: ........?

this is such an interesting award category to consider, because it’s like asking “which one of these texts would you like to hand a steak knife to gut you with,” but it also begs the question of what a shenshen OST would bring to the text that the existing music/adaptation doesn’t. it also raises the question of what kind of narrative (grand, sweeping, vast in scale or minute, gentle, heartbreaking?) would be most compatible with a shenshen OST?

my first thought was 《小蘑菇》 Xiao Mo Gu, since it has both the monumental scope and the fragile, breakable heart that shenshen OST’s are so suited for (他只是一个小蘑菇 goodbYE—), but the music of the 《小蘑菇》 Xiao Mo Gu AD is already so perfect I don’t actually want to add anything to it. my next thought would be 《问鹿三千》 Wen Lu San Qian — again, for that blend of scale and sorrow, wistfulness at what can never be and gratitude for what we have. but 《问鹿》 also has five songs already, and while a shenshen OST would be nice, it most certainly isn’t necessary

so I think I’m going to cheat and give this award to a title that isn’t even on the list of candidates this year, one that already has a shenshen OST: 《天宝伏妖录》 Tian Bao Fu Yao Lu by 非天夜翔 Fei Tian Ye Xiang, which has the great fortune to have Zhou Shen’s 《天地为念》 for its ongoing donghua title song. what a beautiful, meditative song; what an ethereal, gently sorrowful melody. extra brownie points because I maintain that Zhou Shen and 锦鲤 Jin Li (the voice of Kong Hongjun) are counterparts of each other in their respective industries, and also because I’m ride or die for both of them

"most untranslatable ever"

(category shout-out to — you guessed it — @presumenothing)

Winner: oh ABSOLUTELY 《金牌助理之弯弯没想到》 Jin Pai Zhu Li zhi Wan Wan Mei Xiang Dao by 非天夜翔 Fei Tian Ye Xiang and 传奇火箭队 The Legendary Rocket Team

I consider myself fairly proficient in audiodramas on 猫耳FM as a medium/genre now; I’m familiar with the ways script adaptation dovetails with post-production, the roles the voice directors and producers and casts play, the different twists that can happen with 报幕, what names to keep an eye out for while checking out the production team... so when I say that this audiodrama knocked me flat on the ass when I first listened to it, I really do mean that I was in no way prepared for the chaos that was to come. where do I even begin to describe it? the speed? the unhinged energy? the unending 吐槽 / roasts? the brilliant comedic pacing? the extremely 洗脑片尾曲？whatever the hell this is?

this audiodrama is not only the most untranslatable ever due to the high concentration of internet and culture-specific slang, but also apparently the most impossible to explain ever. idk. listen to this AD and lose your mind

Most Brilliant Moment of Backstabbery

Winner: ch. 116 of 《无双》 Wu Shuang by 梦溪石 Meng Xishi

I described 《无双》 Wu Shuang as “a book about roasting your rival first, saving your dynasty second,” but perhaps didn’t do justice to the sheer lengths these two will go to one-up each other. I’d like to take this moment to recognize a certain flamboyant demonic sect leader (that is somehow not Yan Wushi) for not just habitually backstabbing (gently, for funsies) his love interest but also getting some frontstabbery (once, with great intention) in as well. truly, no one out here is doing it like Feng Xiao

honorable mention: 《不小心救了江湖公敌》 Bu Xiao Xin Jiule Jianghu Gong Di by 六木乔 Liu Muqiao, for the sheer quantity of backstabbing that occurs. maybe this is simply what happens when all of your characters are professional evildoers at fluctuating levels of retirement

Best Comfort Media

Winner: 《哏儿》 Gen’er by 南北逐风 Nan Bei Zhu Feng

earlier this year, I went around asking various people: what makes a book, movie, or other text comfort media for you? listening to the answers, it occurred to me that I don’t really have texts that I turn to on a semi-regular basis to re-read or re-watch. especially because my favorite books tend to be the ones that rip my heart out through my throat, the idea of choosing a “comfort read” from among them seems somewhat, er, misguided

and then I ran into 《哏儿》 Gen’er, which is the only text I’ve chosen to carry over from last year’s danmei awards because the second season of the AD aired this year. this webnovel/AD is also, genre-wise, the outlier in this year’s awards — no magic, no speculative elements, not a single sword in sight, just slice-of-life, daily trials and tribulations, characters balancing budgets and bantering backstage and discussing art over hotpot. the cast and characters of 《哏儿》 feel real and lived-in in a way that is so deeply precious to me; at times throughout the year, I would simply cue up the beginning of S2E2 to listen to the first fifteen minutes or so to quiet down. the ongoing discussions threaded throughout the narrative about the roles of traditional culture and art in modern society, how to adapt traditional forms to contemporary values and preferences, and the ever-relevant question of how to get other people to care about things you love... 《哏儿》 hits different, hits real close to home, asks thought-provoking questions in a gentle, lighthearted manner in a way that is totally unique among the danmei works I’ve read, so here I am, conferring this new, foreign honor upon it. it’s a first for both of us!

Most Ambitious Scope

Winner: 《问鹿三千》 Wen Lu San Qian by 光合积木 Voicegem, 吼浪文化 Houlang Studio, and 斗木獬编剧工作室 Doumuxie Screenwriting Studio

I know, I know — very bold of me to give this award to an audiodrama that’s still airing, that we don’t know if it’ll ever be completed, but I still have to take a moment to yell about this completely original episodic gufeng AD, because like... wow. there is no answer key; there is no original work; there is no blueprint to work off of, no pre-existing fanbase of readers to appeal to. this entire project with its xuanhuan scope will succeed or fail based on its merits alone, and what scope it has, too — from the five voice actor songs (I guess everyone in 光合积木 can sing too??? sure that’s fine I guess) to penning scripts that play specifically to the voice actors’ strengths, to engaging with thorny dynamics of family and relationship and devotion and misalignment, I think it’s real gutsy of the 《问鹿》 creative team to embark on such a vast and ambitious project, and carry it off as well as they did. now it’s just 乖巧坐等更新.jpeg hours, fingers crossed they come back for a season 2

Best Work I Was Songbaited Into

Winner: 《小蘑菇》 Xiao Mo Gu by 一十四洲 Yi Shi Si Zhou

Definitely the first thing that even put 《小蘑菇》 Xiao Mo Gu on my radar was 奇然’s 《风过荒野》 appearing in my YouTube algorithm. The song’s arrangement is haunting, lyrical, and so unlike any other AD song I’ve ever heard. The second season’s 《极光入夜》 is also transcendent in lyrics, composition, and the fact that both of the main voice actors can sing 哎呦还让人活吗—and don’t even get me started on the beautiful piano and string covers they work into the soundtrack! 声罗万象请受我一拜！

let’s put it this way: I actually went out of my way to translate the 《小蘑菇》 songs (here and here) for how hard they go. one day I’ll get over the lines “玫瑰静默凋谢” and “审判是我于你的吻别” but today will not be that day

honorable mention: 《督主有病》 Du Zhu You Bing by 杨溯 Yang Su, for having the opposite energy of the 《默读》 AD asdlfskdfjs no less than FIVE original songs composed for a THREE season AD. I was on the fence about listening to this AD until I heard 远皓ZIL’s 《燃灯》, which immediately joined my playlist before I’d even read the book. Again, the lyricism, the arrangement, the melancholy, deeply thoughtful atmosphere of the song got me interested in exactly what kind of maddeningly angsty plot could result in these lyrics:

我愿抚拂前尘燃着灯做你归途的引 / I would brush away the dust of our past and light a lamp, and be what guides you back

只求你破迷津渡极乐回首看我在等 / I only pray that you break free from the labyrinth and deliver paradise, to look back and see me waiting

我匍匐入尘埃叩长阶奉上所有虔诚 / I crawl through the dirt, pressing my forehead to the stone steps of the long stairway, offering up all of my piety

只为听你亲将相思说那纸情书太薄 / just to hear you say, yearning for me, that this love letter is too thin

不载残生颠簸无你我苦不可脱 / it cannot carry what’s left of our tumultuous lives — without you or me, life would be bitter with no escape

Audiodrama Adaptation with the Strongest First Episode

Winner: 《督主有病》 Du Zhu You Bing by 杨溯 Yang Su

Adaptation is a delicate and tricky practice; how do you accommodate for the limits of production, the requirements of medium, when it comes to translating a work across dimensions? And particularly when it comes to AD’s, how can you capture a listener’s attention within the first few episodes, to bait them into the story and make them willing to pay money to unlock what happens next?

this award has to go to 珞玉 Luo Yu and 子穆木 Zi Mumu for their adaptation of 杨溯 Yang Su’s novel 《督主有病》 Du Zhu You Bing. The book itself runs chronologically, from the two main characters first meeting each other as children, the months they spend together, their sudden (and deeply traumatic) parting, and then resumes the narrative the next time they meet each other seven years down the line, attempting to kill each other (in their defense, it was dark, and neither of them were sure if the other survived the massacre that separated them in the first place). Episode 1 “故人来” of the AD begins with that reunion as Shen Jue, disposing of a body, finds an injured assassin just outside the palace walls. They grapple in the dark until they recognize each other, and the way post-production editing fills in their backstory through a quick, tantalizing flashback and brings the listener back out of it by overlapping young!Xiahou Lian and present!Xiahou Lian saying the same lines (“shaoye, remember: don’t look back, don’t say anything—”)... well done, well played, I sure paid money to listen to the rest of this AD

Audiodrama Adaptation with the Strongest First Ten Minutes

Winner: 《海中爵》 Hai Zhong Jue by 七药 Qi Yao

haha I think I’m hilarious, but while 《督主》 has the strongest first episode I would also like to shout out how good the first ten minutes of 《海中爵》 Hai Zhong Jue are. seamless transition from baby Hailian to adult Hailian, from quiet lullaby to sea battle, and establishing Hailian’s sass, competence, kindness, and swashbuckling swagger as well as introducing Fang Tinglan (and his shamelessness asldfksj). credit has to go to the director 齐杰, the scriptwriter 虾仁猪心@一梦还江月, and the post-production editor 时柒@丶为之奈何 for pacing the opening scene so well, and an extra special shout-out to 梅梅 (韬韬你是最棒的) for the funniest little “bye~~~” as he throws someone off a boat

Most Heartwrenching Line Delivery in an Audiodrama (aka the Knifiest Award, audio edition)

Winner: S1E7 of the 《默读》Mo Du audiodrama

I can yell for years about how talented voice actors are, but there are specific moments while listening where I have to pause for a second or ten and silently mouth “damn”

杨天翔 Yang Tianxiang’s performance as Fei Du in season 1, episode 7 of the 《默读》 Mo Du audiodrama knocks it out of the goddamn solar system with the plaza broadcast scene — this was a scene that I was pretty eh on in the novel, but after listening to it in the AD... 当! 场! 封! 神! with Yang Tianxiang’s measured delivery, the slow excavation of the depth of Fei Du’s anguish, the forced steadiness of his voice when he says “你们如果都这么狠心，为什么以前还要表现出好像很在乎我们的样子?” / “If all of you were always this cruel, why did you pretend to care about us so much in the beginning?” underlaid by the devastatingly quiet, melancholy piano backing of 《以沫》 that then kicks into the sequence that culminates in 何忠义 He Zhongyi’s “等我回来!” / “Wait for me to come home!”... (silently screams into a paper bag) I’m not okay and I haven’t been okay for months

Honorable Mentions:

S2E2 “也恨相逢” of 《督主有病》 Du Zhu You Bing by 杨溯 Yang Su: specifically for 梅梅’s line “少爷，这是我的命” / “shaoye, this is my fate.” for a scene that didn’t even exist in the original novel... hot damn wow

E12 “绝不复寡“ of 《师弟还不杀我灭口》 Shidi Hai Bu Sha Wo Mie Kou by 子鹿 Zi Lu: 锦鲤 has the range and this AD proves it! While he spends most of the AD being generally the comedic, satirical commentary, Zhong Yan/Qin Mingxi absolutely begging, tears in his voice, for Gu Xuanyan to leave him to die in this scene? look I’m not immune to this trope either

S1E13·上 of 《问鹿三千》 Wen Lu San Qian by 光合积木 Voicegem, 吼浪文化 Houlang Studio, and 斗木獬编剧工作室 Doumuxie Screenwriting Studio: (cups hands around mouth, yells) 马! 老! 师! it’s hard to explain the heartbreaking context of the line I have in mind without giving away the entire story, but 马正阳’s throat-scraping scream of “我要你爱我” / “I want you to love me!” is wince-inducing from the sheer force of the raw anguish in it

wooooo and that’s a wrap! thanks for tuning into the 2022 danmei awards :)

looking forward at my reading list, I’m not sure I’ll be doing a 2023 round since my reading is taking me in different directions and I simply might not have enough candidates to fill out a whole awards post next year (and I suspect I’ll have gone so far off the map that people won’t even have the faintest idea what I’m talking about anymore asldkfajsd)

it’s been fun!!! catch you all in the new year!!

#came for the mushroom stayed for the mushroom #saving your kingdom while burnt out: the imperial intrigue steampunk wuxia light mecha alternate historical novel #voice(bear) appreciation hours #《督主有病》#《无双》 backlog #guess who walked into and out of the abyss while y'all weren't looking #新年快乐送你们一篇博君一笑

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elegyofthemoon · 1 month

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yoohoo! i remember you had a robin pfp somewhat recently, so... could you do the character bingo with her?

YEAH I WAS VERY EXCITED TO MEET ROBIN WHEN PENACONY WAS FIRST RELEASING !! she, firefly, and misha were the ones i was most excited to meet :D so to celebrate I had Robin as the theme of my blog for a little while ^ w ^

blank character bingo

uhh to be safe! i shall put this under the cut but some hsr 2.0 spoilers :D (ik we're on 2.1 rn but still! to be safe!!)

i'd like to stress on the SQUEAK panel because the way that the ending of 2.0 had me go insane that i 100% all areas in penacony in hopes to find clues about WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO MY GIRL NOOOOOOOOOO WHAT THE HELL

I refused to accept that she died and wanted to understand WHAT happened which inevitably turned into me searching and finishing all the missions in Penacony and 😭 I still have zero idea what happened. and I mean. technically 2.1 gave us the answer about what happened, but that doesn't explain how people die in this dream when usually if people die, they just wake up back in the Reverie

SO WHAT HAPPENED TO ROBIN??????

I think she's really interesting though, even if we only get to know her through word of mouth - which is. kinda fitting for an idol like her. You only know her image, not the person she is. You could even meet her former teacher who envies Robin stealing her spotlight, and how Singer mentions that Robin and The Family had some argument or conflict between each other. It made me wonder if that's the reason why she left to be a Galaxy known singer rather than staying in Penacony since she only came back because of that.

Hmm... Now that I'm here. There was this thing about Robin being an Emanator for Harmony because she was said to be blessed by Xipe themself for such a talented voice and how Penacony was just Obsessed with Robin to the point that uhhh I forgot her name but the NPC who follows Idrila was just sick of being under Robin's shadow as well.

If Robin had gotten into a fight with The Family, I wonder if her leaving and returning may have been the cause for her voice to be Weird (I don't understand), getting her powers revoked and all that.

All this next to her song "If I Can Stop One Heart from Breaking" really fits the "bird in a cage" imagery that her splash art has WHICH MAKES ME ADORE HER ALL THE MORE I LOVE BIRD IN A CAGE IMAGERY SM (SHAKES HER)

The other thing I did while coping was start questioning "why is it that Firefly and Robin had to die in this?" I mean, albeit, both deaths have different modus operandi, where Firefly's body dissipated (which is what I anticipate will happen too with Sunday's) and Robin's didn't. And I reflected a bit more on Firefly's monologue regarding why do people dream/sleep, in which the answer was "because they're afraid to wake up." That whole scene was played out with Robin's song in the background which ALSO is all about how with no other choice, the character of the song has no choice but to dream of freedom that they weren't given -- to not face that reality.

Put both of those together -- that Firefly and Robin both stood for the freedom dreams can give and that both characters wind up dying in 2.0 -- I sorta thought about the dream of Penacony crashing down entirely.

But maybe it's also that having both die is just the counter to this question that hangs over Penacony arc: Why do people sleep? since it repeats itself too in 2.1 :]

So I just. I like Robin through the things I've collected about her but also what she may have stood for in the realm of the Penacony arc in its entirety.

I really hope to pull for her when she does come out though :D I was supposed to save my guarantee after losing on Luocha for her but I pulled Acheron asdklfajh So we'll see if I can get her. Ik I'm excited to read more about her character story. And also know whether or not she's actually dead or is that a fake body that we saw.

#when i said infodump #i really mean. im reaaaaally infodumping my speculations and thoughts. weehee #avil plays hsr #jokingly. and with caution. never ask me about my fave characters. theres always an essay locked and loaded ready to fire AKDJFAHLKDSJFH #HEAVY BREATHES OK DONE (<- written after i exhausted all thoughts on robin aslkdjfhaksdl)#answered #thanks friend !!

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bekoobove · 10 months

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FNAF Ruin fixed a problem with the (Spoiler Character)

It's safe to say that the Mimic has been a divisive character. Many have rightfully criticized it being confined primarily to the books, and while it got an awesome design and reveal in its Ruin debut, people have justifiably pointed out the casual player would have no idea what it was or its significance in general. With that said, its part in Ruin did address one complaint that was targeted at the narrative of the Mimic, rather than its presentation- it just being Afton again.

I never particularly saw this as a problem- heck, I made a whole post about what makes the Mimic different from Afton, and how it reflects the themes of modern FNAF. Still, I do understand the criticism- much of what makes the Mimic unique is more thematic. If nothing else, its aesthetic is very similar, meaning that even once you know it's not Afton, it often feels like it is. If all it's going to be is Afton 2.0, what's the point?

Well, it isn't anymore. As of Ruin, the Mimic has shed the Afton/Glitchtrap/Burntrap identity, and taken on a new one- that of Gregory.

You may be thinking, "Well, of course. It pretends to be Gregory to lure us into freeing it." However, its Gregory act goes far deeper. This is proven by the (most likely) non-canon Scooper ending. As I'm sure you know, in this ending the Mimic wears a mascot suit cobbled together from several different costumes. It's a creepy design, but a confusing one. Why did the Mimic go to the trouble of making it?

All praise goes to @lemfern on Twitter for realizing the costume isn't just an random amalgamation- it's a crude representation of Gregory.

This implies the Mimic isn't just pretending to be Gregory in order to fool us. After watching Gregory conquer every threat, defeat everything it had created under its Afton identity, it decided to incorporate him as a new one.

And this is why Ruin improves the Mimic. In future installments, whenever we encounter the Mimic, it will learn from us. If we defeat it once, it will incorporate our identity, maybe even our strategies, into its programming to use next time. Afton was stuck in the past, so willing to blindly follow his own habits he walked head-first into a trap. The Mimic, on the other hand, is always changing, evolving, becoming more- becoming us.

Thanks for reading!

#fnaf #five nights at freddy's #tales from the pizzaplex #the mimic #mimic fnaf #fnaf ruin #fnaf theory #fnaf security breach #fnaf sb #sb ruin #fnaf gregory #william afton

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greenmagic-oilspill · 11 months

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Spoiler-Free FFXVI review

Going to keep it under a Read More because it’s pretty long...

FFXVI is a really ambitious game, and from beginning to end I was invested in the plot and characters -- but it's missing just a couple of things that would really make it great. It’s a beautiful game, no doubt about it, with an amazing score and environments, rich lore and deep worldbuilding, fun gameplay, and some really compelling characters. When it excels, it really excels. But where it falters, I really felt it. I’ve got some recency bias here, working for and against the game (since I only beat it yesterday), so I’m not really sure how my thoughts will change over time. I’ve definitely changed my opinions of many FF games after revisiting them a second time, so this one could benefit from the same.

I’m going to start with the characters and plot, because those are the most important parts of a FF game to me, but I’ll also delve into the worldbuilding, gameplay, and music of the game.

Characters

With as many cutscenes as this game has, the characters really find their time to shine. It’s primarily Clive’s story, and over the course of the game we really see him change. His development is a bit cyclical in some ways, but there are definitely events that shape him and who he becomes over the story, and he really feels different from every other FF protagonist. I like him well enough – I think he’s among some of the better FF protagonists for sure. Clive shows such a wide range of emotions and his VA did a stellar job of capturing them.

My favorite character in this game is a spoiler, so I’m not going to go into that in this review.

One character I really wanted to like more was Jill. She’s got all the makings of a compelling character and a compelling story, but a lot of the time it just felt like she was there. The other day @faerantstory and I were discussing how they’d heard that every female character in this story fell under the umbrella of “Pure,” “Sexy,” or “Evil,” and at the time, I had just finished a sequence of the story where Jill most certainly veered away from “Pure,” but after that she fell right back into it. And then she was just an ever-present support to Clive who did little else. I liked the part of the story that focused on her a lot, but it felt so brief and they could have done a LOT more with her past that they didn’t do – she just felt so underutilized. To be honest, she feels a lot like Tifa 2.0, for better or for worse.

Benedikta and Hugo were both extremely disappointing. I expected more from them. Without going into spoilers that is all I am going to say. Barnabas too, to a lesser extent – they went in a direction with him that I didn’t really expect and I’m not sure how I feel about it yet. Dion, however, was pretty great, and Joshua’s story at the beginning of the game made for a really compelling start. Continuing with the umbrellas that female characters fall under, Benedikta fell under both “Evil” and “Sexy” and not much else.

The villains in general (including the main villain) didn’t really do it for me. The main villain didn’t really do anything new that past FF villains had already done before, and better. Their motivations were interesting and followed the overall theme of the story, and there were some twists, but as a character they kind of fell flat. One of the other villains even felt cartoonishly evil.

Honestly, where this game REALLY shines with its characters is primarily in the supporting cast. This genuinely might be one of my favorite parts of the game. You meet a TON of characters over the course of this game (some might even say too many) and I found some of them more compelling than the characters who got more screentime. The world feels so alive with all of their stories, many of which play out over both the main scenario and also through side quests. Many of these characters live in the Hideaway, the main hub of the game, but just as many appear in the various towns and settlements you visit. They all felt like they had a purpose, and many of them had a surprising amount of depth. I definitely encourage doing all of the side quests and taking the time to talk to them after many of the story beats. Also, none of these really fall under a bland Pure, Evil, Sexy umbrella! That was great! But maybe that’s why they’re side characters. :/

The Plot

It’s hard to really go into it without spoilers, but overall I really liked the plot itself and the structure of it really worked to help tell the story they needed to tell. They had clearly defined goals and the characters never felt like they were simply reacting to everything happening around them. I’ve seen some criticism for the “MMO style storytelling” this game has, and that makes sense coming from the team who made XIV, but if you like the story progression in XIV I feel pretty confident in saying you’d like it in XVI. It feels really similar and follows the same pattern of go to new area -> help people with their problems -> gain the trust of the populace. It worked for me. At times there are parts that may feel like “filler” (I’ve always hated this term because people tend to use it wrong), but all of it helps further the characters or worldbuilding. My biggest problem with it is that at times it felt predictable.

At times things felt really bleak, but it never got too bleak for me, and overall the story has a hopeful message so that really helped.

Worldbuilding

Stellar. The Active Time Lore system is a huge help to understanding and conveying the lore and politics of this game – I can’t stress enough how much I loved that system and the dedicated characters in the Hideaway who discuss these things and tell you more about them. The lore in this world is rich and it feels so alive, as I mentioned earlier with the side characters, who are perhaps the primary reason for it. Everything and everywhere really has such a great atmosphere. The marketing stressed that things would change a lot over the game’s time skips, but I didn’t really feel it to be honest – things changed more after big plot events regardless of how much time passed.

Three of the six nations of this story felt extremely underutilized, though, which was a huge shame. Two of those in particular were being really built up but due to story events nothing really happened.

I don’t know how to describe this criticism, and this is more personal preference than anything, but XVI didn’t really feel like it offered anything “new” or original to the overall series to make it feel like it has its own identity distinct from the others. Every FF game offers some new summon that doesn’t appear in other games, maybe a new marketable/cute/iconic monster, a unique airship or something, a unique race, etc. I don’t know if that makes sense, but every concept introduced in XVI felt like a reference to a previous game in the series (even, to some extent, the main villain, whose very name is a name used before). Because of that it almost feels like it doesn’t stand on its own, in a way.

Gameplay

Battles were a ton of fun once I got the hang of it. Loved how smooth it felt, loved the gameplay changes for certain boss battles. I played with one of the accessories to help with evasion – with it, at times the game felt a little too easy, but that’s not a criticism from me. I like easy. I knew if I took it off I’d have died a lot more often. The battle system itself was the best part of the gameplay.

Customization could have been better – sometimes I felt like I had a lot of options for different Eikon abilities to equip and not a lot of space to equip them, leaving some abilities completely unused despite how I wanted to equip them. Weapons and armor were pretty much always straight upgrades that increased your stats and did nothing else. Accessories had the potential to switch things up a bit and offer some variety, but with only three accessory slots you couldn’t really do much (especially if you have one of the accessibility options equipped, like I did). Character progression was mostly achieved through story events, because leveling up is just a straight stat increase, which I can understand is very boring for some people.

I loved that this game was not open world, and instead used four separate and very large maps. Of those four, one felt considerably smaller than the others though. Open world games tend to be really overwhelming for me, and too easy to get lost, so I typically don’t care for the exploration aspect of a lot of those games. But with these four separate areas, I did actually want to explore them – the problem is, aside from finding beautiful vistas or the locations of certain hunt marks, there was not a whole lot to do. Any treasures to find were mostly just filled with useless crafting materials or gil. Not the highest priority for me, but I can see why people would count the exploration against this game. Speaking of gil, once I got past the early game I almost never had to spend any, so it just kept building up and felt pointless.

My biggest gameplay criticism is the enemy variety. All of the enemies in all of the maps were the same, just in different colors. Every map had crabs, or scorpions, or antelopes, or bandits, or chocobos, or goblins, or spiders, or plant monsters, or a couple different species of dragon, maybe an adamantoise or coeurl. Again, there was nothing new – no fantastical creature that the FF series never introduced before, and many of the series staples (like tonberries and cactuars) were missing altogether. It got particularly egregious when they went as far as to double up on some bosses.

Music

Fantastic, as expected of Soken. Not much to say there. I like his work better overall in XIV, but that’s unfair with the sheer amount of songs XIV has. He was allowed to experiment a bit more in XIV, but in XVI he took some opportunities to use different genres here and there.

Overall - 7/10

I can honestly say I really liked it overall – it’s a beautiful game with really rich characters and lore, and where it excels it really excels. I’m not a big fan of the way it ended but I think that is mostly due to personal preference. There were several unanswered questions and I don’t know if they have plans to go into DLC or even a sequel, and I don’t think there’s enough for that anyway – it ended pretty neatly. I will let this game sit with me and I’ll read up on some discussions from other people to see if my thoughts will change, but I don’t know if I’ll end up liking it more or less.

Thanks for reading this really long review!! I will write up a more spoilery one in a couple of days.

#final fantasy xvi #ffxvi #ffxvi review #video game review

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