#like there are certain games i play where it's obviously a core part of the game bc it's literally just a romance game so like. duh lmfao

[northern-passage]

oh im SO glad you said that thing about hating comments on an MC'S hotness. like, no, my MC is not hot. they are average at best. i have a thing about making characters look distinctive over them looking hot, and i hate when it's assumed that everyone is going to make a hot conventionally attractive mc and not some weird little wet rat of a person

LOL well to be fair i think it depends, attractiveness is subjective, people are going to be attracted to different things and i don't necessarily think a character finding an mc hot and complimenting them necessarily = the mc being conventionally attractive. however, the way the comments like that are usually written make it clear that the assumption Is that the mc is conventionally attractive, if that makes sense.

they'll comment something specifically about your looks in a way that is usually out of pocket and inappropriate for the setting/current situation and it's really immersion breaking for me. i try to avoid direct physical compliments like that when it comes to the companions, or at least write them in a way that actually suits the hunter, and i try my best to avoid implying conventional beauty standards. Noel compliments their scars, Clementine admires their muscles/strength and can quite literally grope the hunter's bicep in the lift (lol), and there are times where Merry can call the hunter "cute" in a way that is clearly meant to both annoy and fluster them.

but i can't imagine any of them stopping in like the heat of battle to comment about how hot the hunter is in that moment, or like a specific scenario i see a lot is the mc being pissed off and someone commenting about how hot it is... imagine if any of the ROs came in after the introduction to Duncan and said something about how hot the hunter looks.... i don't know, it sounds so ridiculous to me, and if i was the hunter in that situation and someone said some shit to me like that it would just piss me off mdfnsdkjf

it just doesn't fit the tone, or make sense with how any of the characters actually act or how they treat the hunter. a lot of times it feels forced and is just jarring, like everyone is breaking character to directly compliment the player or something.

this is all just personal opinion, though. i know specifically in IF/VNs/romance focused games, people play them literally Because they want characters to call them attractive/be head over heels for them, i know it's meant to be escapism and fantasy, and i'm not trying to like "bash" anyone that does like it. but for me it just breaks immersion and i typically avoid games like that. i prefer slow build-ups and emotional moments over time rather than immediate, intense physical attraction between LIs and the player character.

edit because i thought of something else: i think my issue w it too is that... attraction is more than just physical!!! some romance content focuses SO much on the physical descriptions/the physicality of it, constant compliments on appearances/looks while completely excluding the intimate moments and the mundaneness of romance, the “i bought this cus i thought of you,” the “i cooked your favorite for dinner bc you had a bad day,” the actual friendship that romance requires. it’s not all just physical attraction, there needs to be something else there for it to be compelling and interesting.

#like there are certain games i play where it's obviously a core part of the game bc it's literally just a romance game so like. duh lmfao #i mean i still wish they were written better but it is what it says on the package you know #other games it Really jars me and throws me completely through a loop though #it's interesting hearing other people's opinions about what they do and don't like. it's so crazy how Divided readers are #like the genre is so vast there really is something for everyone and it's interesting to see the little pockets #tho im always of the mind that trying to divide and categorize IF is something that should be avoided.... #i dont think it helps anyone to try and 'limit' the possibilities or to try and shove games into little boxes #IF is sooo flexible. splitting hairs just does more harm than good imo #breaking it up by genre helps so people can find stuff they like but beyond that i don't see a point #anyways. what was i talking about #anonymous #ask

[mihai-florescu]

Putting a message i sent earlier under a read more, it has some thoughts ive expressed before tho. ES, of course

My thoughts as an EichiP... i view ! and !! as different stories in the way they're approached tbh, what i fell in love with enstars for was the character driven storytelling of one event seen through different perspectives, where you see the antagonist in one perspective become a protagonist in another story and can empathize with the entire cast like this. I fell in love with eichi's story of second chances, getting what you want and regretting your actions in the process, redemption, desperation, overcoming fate and asserting one's self into the story, saving a school in a dying industry that saved your life by giving you a dream; i consider it an arc fulfilling to the reader at the end of ! era. But we still had to continue... and it's not like we didnt get inklings of eichi's dreams of idol utopia, the idol soldier idea goes back to main story 1, but !! loses the charm of the original series through expanding the worldbuilding so much and shifting to a plot driven story that opens 10 cans of worms instead of offering resolutions. There's not really room to breathe if the stakes just keep getting higher and higher...

As for the colonisation plotline, it's been here since the beginning of ES2. The SS arc makes it obvious, but i remember even before, the talks about ES taking over from local businesses, trying to be seen as the standard, it was always the direction ensemble square as an institution would take. But the "antagonist in one story, protagonist in another" approach doesnt work anymore with such subjects. The guys responsible for this are your coworkers you share dorms with. I read the stories but cant empathize anymore, so i've been feeling disconnected from eichi for a while. I see enstars with eichi at its core but i didnt care for his center event, i read it, didnt like the ending, and overall felt off. Eichi becoming the villain of ! to attone for the war kind of loses significance if a year later he is a cartoon villain idol colonialist you can't even sympathize with anymore because of the magnitude of events. However i do think !! has done good things for some characters pushing them further or developing them in a way ! didnt. But for others...

I also have my issues with sci fi elements becoming the norm, even taken metaphorically or as hyperboles, when one of the central themes i love about enstars is humanity. Then again, i am a war era fan that relied on manipulating human desires and perceptions, and the fact that there were no monsters or gods, just humans framed as such, playing on people's fears and beliefs, it's a bit jarring to me to have them introduce AIs forming from escaped comatose brains (im minimizing the switch climax rn, i didnt even hate it as a whole, just this resolution im unhappy with)

It also feels like we've lost some of the meta aspects of the writing i liked, a certain awareness of being characters in a story and there being an audience. But im still struggling to word my thoughts on this matter. I felt it present in main story 2, even if it annoyed me at parts in its obviousness ("good thing we're not protagonists, no one would want to read about us" youre right aira you are not interesting to me. And yet i'll read your story to try and empathize nevertheless. I have other thoughts on aira too, perhaps for another time). I wish we explored a bit more what it means to no longer be the central protagonist, from trickstar's perspective...and brought back the successors topic. But i havent read every ts story yet so i'd be foolish to complain before really making sure i've checked everything. To me ! ended satisfyingly with room left for elaborations and imagination, but i dont feel like !!'s ending is really ending anything at all. Not necessarily bad since it's not like the game is shutting down, but overwhelming worldbuilding wise while underwhelming character wise...

Let's see... im not sure how to end this. Just a bit of a stream of consciousness as a ! fan who still loves enstars despite my critiques. Mainly, well, no one's gonna take away the stories that already exist that i do love and impacted my life greatly. And i do think !! had some really good things too it brought, or at least stories i hold dear too. Change is scary and i don't think it's always for the best, but it's also fun to see where it goes next...

#enstars

[txttletale]

what would you say are the flaws of thirsty sword lesbians? i got it in a itch.io bundle a while ago and i've been on the fence on whether or not to run a campaign with it since

things about tsl that suck

the name. its bad. im sure it was really funny to everyone involved when they pitched it in a brainstorming session and were like 'haha what if we actually called our game thirsty sword lesbians XD' but as the name of an actual game that you have to play and talk about with real people it fucking sucks. instantly dated. sounds bad to say aloud. awful

on a related note, the game has a particular sense of humour--a certain tone and tenor that was super in vogue among, like, millenials who livetweeted steven universe in 2018. there's a move in one of the playbooks called 'i ship it!'. there's another move called 'big dyke energy'. i personally find this shit incredibly grating and insufferable, but if you think it's fun, hey, more power to you. not necessarily a con i just wanted to be a hater

okay those two complaints are just me being a hater but i do have a much more serious one which is that the game's themes are at war with each other in a way that i find bafflng. like, 'you are queer people fighting against systemic oppression' is baked into the rules, to the point of forming an inextricable component of two of the playbooks--the game is built around the idea that you're going to be Fighting Oppression in a major way. like it is very unsubtle about that and often looks directly at the camera and says 'This Is About Homophobia'. but it's also a core part of the game that you're going to be doing, like, flirtatious swordfighting, getting seduced by and seducing Hot Evil Women, longingly gazing at your homoerotic nemesis. and this is also baked into the mechanics, there are special social moves you can only do while fighting someone! so you end up with this really bizarre paradox that to take both these elements to their logical conclusion you need to create a world where all the representatives/enforcers of Homophobia/Imperialism/Capitalism are sympathetic lesbians. and it's not doing something interesting with that either, this isn't the masquerade or helicopter story--it's not highlighting this or asking you to explore this--it's just kind of stumbled into this bizarre unforced error by not thinking through what the logical result of its mechanics & tone is.

now of course it's possible to play around that last one and figure out different things to do with it. the campaign i've been running has the players within a v. broad united front against imperialism, so i've made their homoerotic rivals are ideological enemies within that united front--but the fact that we had to work around the implications of the system as written is kind of a problem with the system!

and, since i don't necessarily want to put you off running TSL, here's my list of things about tsl that are good

the playbook design is incredible. a lot of the supplement playbooks fucking suck but every single playbook in the core book is like, peak PBtA playbook design--mechanically unique, thematically fulfilling, rich with opportunities to shape the world by implication when you design your character. they do really fun and interesting narrative things with the way the playbooks are designed and i like them all a lot.

the social move setup is my favourite that i've ever seen in a game--the phrasing behind the social moves means that you can never roll to 'make' an NPC do something or 'persuade' them to your point of view, only to make them 'give in to desire'--which is obviously phrased to enable seduction as a core gameplay mechanic, but it doesn't have to be played that way! other moves allow you to ask questions and figure out what NPCs want and what motivates them--you have a mechanical basis by which you can figure out that an NPC wants friendship, or security, or power, and the 'give in to desire' phrasing means you mechanically benefit from offering them that thing to get what you want from them. it really elegantly and cleverly circumvents the 'mind control persuasion check' problem that i've always found to be a deeply & profoundly antisocial way to model interaction (as inherently zero-sum, combative, dominatory) & leads to much more emotionally satisfying stories and tense and interesting social encounters

you know those are actually kind of the only two things. but they're really, really good things!

#ask #ttrpg

[whinlatter]

niche but Neville and Hannah! I love the little snippets of them we get in Beasts <3

thank you for asking about neville and hannah for this ask game anon and being so nice about how i have tried to include them in beasts :) :) :) the lovely @mimisays8 asked about them too!

hannah and neville are such a lovely fun couple to imagine and think about. i do realise this sounds ridiculous because they canonically interact very briefly once, when neville says harry saved the 'philogical' stone :) and hannah is like wow :) (...) still, though, there are these very small little nods to them having certain things in common and to being cutie patooties in their cores that gives fic writers so much to play with. obviously, neville from day dot is a dweeby nervous deeply unconfident little sweetie pie. in hannah's opening scene, too, she '[stumbles] out of line, [puts] on the hat, which [falls] right down over her eyes', establishing her, too, as a cute nervous flop. when hannah worries about azkaban escapee sirius black, she tells everyone black is disguising himself by turning into a flowering shrub. she's got plants on the brain your honour! it's meant to be. i think it's nice to imagine their dynamic as a couple as being too smiley lovely beans taking it in turns to squeeze the other person's hand reassuringly while pulling each other out of the way of passing buses/puddles etc. (more waffle below the cut)

of course, the slightly sad thing about hannah and neville is that they both spend most of canon feeling awful about themselves. neville, obviously, is neville (he thinks he's good as a squib! baby!). but hannah, for an exceptionally minor character, gets all these wee moments where the reader is told she has very low self-confidence. in ootp, hannah abbott vs owls gets its own tiny subplot. ('All the fifth years were suffering from stress to some degree, but Hannah Abbott became the first to receive a Calming Draught from Madam Pomfrey after she burst into tears during Herbology and sobbed that she was too stupid to take exams and wanted to leave school now.') then she has an absolute meltdown during her owls and causes a flamingo stampede in the middle of an exam, which makes everything neville has ever done look slick. losers! soulmate losers. i love the idea of the two of them really knowing what it's like to gravely doubt yourself and feel very very rubbish about your self worth, and channelling that experience into being very supportive partners and parents, one day (and a teacher and friend to a future generation of hogwarts students, later in life!)

one of the other elements to hannah and neville is that they also both know something about grief and loss. hannah loses her mum when she's sixteen: neville grieves what his parents could have been every time he visits them. i don't think shared experiences of loss are necessarily a stable basis for a ship in all instances, but with hannah and neville, i really like it being part of what they are to each other and other people, as something that informs their capacity for great empathy and compassion and a real emotional maturity that comes with having gone through familial experiences that are so momentous and life-changing.

in my headcanon in beasts, i imagine that the period when hannah and neville became closer, and also when they both began to change and grow up as people and gain some self confidence, was during the war in the DA. neville, we know, grows hugely in confidence in that year. but hannah, too, seems to have changed a lot from her 15 to 17 year old self - she's gone from calling herself too stupid to be a witch to fighting in a huge great big battle (nearly getting personally bumped off by voldemort himself, huge slay). obviously i play with the idea that her and ginny became friends through the DA the year before, just because i think it makes a lot of sense as a way to draw hannah in to the wider group of golden and silver trios in a way that she isn't, really, in canon. but in general just think it's lovely to imagine hannah finally getting a bit of belief and self esteem in a growth arc that parallels neville's (and to give another female character an arc in general, in a series that underserves its female characters at every single bloody turn)

#couple of cuties i die #while i typed this beyonce ANNOUNCED A NEW ALBUM #i'm sure both hannah and neville would be very excited about this #neville's a man of taste he says virgo's groove was the best song on renaissance #neville longbottom #hannah x neville #hannah abbott #meta #ask game

[ganondoodle]

the way i think about my stories can be so annoying bc there will be a point when i reach a certain story beat after which i dont know how to continue, and the way i do find are usually ... not good .. or i imagine it is not so i think man i cant do that thats so dumb and annoying i gotta think of something better, but then i cant come up with anything better bc once i got a solution to soemthign i cant think of anything smarter- and then i get bored of it as a whole bc man, this really was stupid from the start wasnt it

(this is all some stupid rambling and does NOT represent anythign that will happen in destiny, i swear the actual story with a proper end makes much more sense)

listen to me rambling but this morning i thought about the essentialyl non-canon good "ending" of destiny, a kind of self indulgent dumb lil alternative where everyone lives blah blah, but then of course it cant just end there, bc the end goal of the both of them is to find out the gods plan and secrets and also kill the gods, as you do, then i got a certain point that i found cool (which initially came from the whole thoguht of what if zelda game but you could play demise and it took place after the alternative ending in which the goal is to get rid of the gods) where the fight one of the gods but are kinda losing and as the god is trying to devour demise, as gods do, he abandons his body and his spirit/core, who cant exist without his body so hes still connected through the spirits tail , and climbs through the gods interdimensional weird 'mouth' while its trying to rip him apart to reach the core of the god in a last attempt to take them down with him, while hylia is fighting to keep the god from severing the thin connection he still has to his body but fails just as he reaches the core so the god is killed but his core is immediatelly starting to dissolve and hylia manages to grab his core and put it back into his body and flee from whatever is happeing to that dead god back into hyrule

he survives but is incredibly weak as his spirit has lost half of itself (blade spirits are also forged throguh sacrificing part of their spirit/core permantently but this is besides the point, none of this makes sense anyway), something he obviously hates but cant do anything about really, once a part of their core is gone its gone (not like lost energy but gone gone) but the core is also slowly dissolving further which is a death sentence with no way to act against- then theres a whole quest to .. well, stop that, while hes falling back into self hatred and fear bc hes now so weak that hylia can break his bones without any effort if she were to treat him in any way similar to before and to a deity that all their life was never so fragile, one whos most defining feature IS his power and strength to keep going no matter what, thats gotta be pretty existentially dreadful (and also its a set back to know that they cant just go fight the gods together like that, theres still two more and he cant fight like that)

then i wondered ok what if then, even if the time doesnt quite line up but at this point the entire prophecy cant be done anymore either so everythings out of order, the cloud barrier weakens and zelda is abducted (not by ghirahim) and link goes and tries to find her, but since everythigns not as it should have been he meets hylia and demise (disguised tho) and they immediately know who he is and then go along and try to help link find his friend (hylia does it bc she got the idea to make him find the triforce and wish demises spirit to be restored, since only a mortal can do that and links the most likely candidate to be able to go through the trials of it since he was supposed to already, even if the circumstances are different- demise goes along with it bc hes still trying to deal with essentially slowly dying and not knowing what to do with himself since hes afraid to get into fights or similar, much to his disdain, so hes acting like a companion of sorts, a mentor figure in a way, not knowing what hylias plan is)

i found the idea kinda interesting to have them be like a lil group that goes on links adventured with him, but with strangely intricate knowledge of how the dungeons work, link still doing the heavy lifting but them being there like parents cheering on their kid in a competetion, all the while putting the whole puzzle and dungeon aspect in a way different light bc half of them were never completed (they wanted to escape the prophecy after all) so they all work completely differently, some bosses being maybe some of the gods creatures instead (like the skysw guardians)- the mid journey point being that they find zelda, and who kidnapped her, it being one of the shiekah having most closely worked with hylia before the whole -break the prophecy- thing started (idk if it would be impa .. idea is neat) and is hellbent on making the gods plan work out like it was supposed to, kinda like the inverse of the games plot, so they got ahold of zelda as part of making her into the new hylia (despite hylia being .. right there, but they dont believe it is her truly since the true tm hylia would never betray the gods- ALSO a paralel to how the downfall of demises world worked bc his mortals turned on him after he started destroying their version of the triforce in the belief destroying it would be the only way to save mortals from going to war agaisnt each other for it over and over, mortals believing that their true deity was gone and replaced by a demon despite demise being ..right there)

after link wins the fight and frees zelda from them they in a kind of last effort to do anything against their group they stab demise, normally that wouldnt do shit against him but in his already fading away situation it basically puts him from very slowly dying to actually dying, as a reaction to it hylia kills the mortal (maybe impa idk), which is the first time she does anything like that to a mortal but i like the idea of her being actually super ruthless when it comes to things she cares about

now with a much more dire time limit hylia sends demise back to essentialyl go hide in her temple and try to not die and to trust her having a plan to make this all still work out- he does and once he is away she reveals pretyt much the entire story around why and what is happenign to link and zelda, hylia herself cant go above the clouds as the barrier is still partially up and she cant do anything to reach the triforce either - so she sends link and zelda to go do that, and it works out in the end bc even knowing the truth know, demise was with them on half of their journey so they know and care, he WILL be mad about them wasting their wish on him (even if he is still happy to be alive- i imagined scene where hes watching himself fall apart and die, alone in hylias temple, having to come to terms with the fact that after everything they had went through hed still die alone- it made me cry while thinking about it, yes, yes you are allowed to laugh)

i didnt get that much further but his spirit was essentially reset to when he was in his prime back in the day through the triforces power- something he both likes and despises, it being the gods power of all things that lets him live again, but also lol to use it agaisnt them by giving another chance to the gods greatest enemy- the next plan is of course to kill the next one of the gods but much better prepared, as they cant just go and do the same thign again (neither wants that), one idea was that hylia goes on a secret quest to try and bring back courage (the third deity that demise killed when his world was still thriving) but it involves diving back into the realm of the gods so she doesnt tell him at first, i do think theyd go together in the end, not to fight but to release courage; the whole thing is also an elaborate revenge plot of hylia, how dare the gods do that to him!!

anyway thats most of what i got from that thinking session but its so frustrating bc none of this is even in the actual comic (since it ends in a way that leads into canon skysw, this is some brain fart nooo i want blorbo to live and succeed!!) and its also convoluted and kinda dumb, the idea to inverse the games plot in a way (instead of it being ghirahim trying to bring demise back its someones plan to make the gods prophecy happen no matter what) is neat but i cant have demise almost dying be the thing THREE TIMES, it kinda undercuts his character and is way too much centered around him, all three times also more or less involving it needing help from others to get him back, when his whole thing should be being unkillable bc he jsut keeps refusing to die, also hylia is, as of now in this spaghetti derailment of random thoughts, way too much of a side character, which i dont like, and it all would make people not like demise when im trying to do the exact opposite of that in the main actual comic

i know being super self indulgent and jsut doing what you want is good for the most part but theres a point where it becomes stale cringy fantasies about my blorbo tm and i wanna write at least decent stories- in the end none of this matters anyway as the actual REAL story of destiny is already pretty long and i got no plan to write that alternative 'good ending' anyway and i mostly just thought about it bc "i dont want blorbo to die :(" and "wouldnt it be fun if the entire plot of the game would get messed up and now demise link hylia and zelda etc can all just drink tea together and make plans to get rid of the gods that wanted them all to suffer needlessly"

i probably shouldnt post this as it was really only a vent to get out dumb thoughts from my brain before they poison me into losing interest of the biggest comic project i have worked on so far but i am unable to keep these things to myself so

if you read all of this, im sorry (´。＿。｀)

#ganondoodles talks #zelda #dare i tag it as that #long post #dont read unless you want to cringe #and yes i know even bad art and stories have value #and i know im not as bad as i always think #but this really is the kind of stuff that makes me embarrassed to even be able to think #its all shortened and badly written #but some scenes i got so clearly in my head its like a movie #and those scenes make my brain go wooooooooooooooooo even if they make no sense and i cant fit them together properly #uh oh self doubt #sorry im neither a professional artist nor writer #im autistic with a blorbo and one skill that i only have bc i didnt know what to do with my brains rapid train of thoughts other than draw #big time for “oh no i made people think i am better than i actually am- i am a liar and a cheater oh god” kind of thoughts #the want to just do whatever you want VS wanting to make soemthing of value VS not wanting to embarrass yourself

[baltears]

idk how else to describe this like i think the kind of traditionalist/hyperliteral read of buffy not catching feelings for spike until late s5/s6 just misses the level of iron grip buffy keeps on her feelings. apropos of nothing other than seeing this read one too many times and im not up on my buffy meta scholarship so forgive me if im making the same points everyone and their mother has been making for the past two decades

keeping tight control over her feelings is not something buffy started doing after a certain point, it's a behavior she has coming into the pilot bc we see that at that point there's already a level of emotional distance between her and joyce (not only re the slayer stuff and the later retconned-in betrayal & invalidation trauma from being thrown in an institution when she tried to tell her parents the truth, but also for instance the intensity of buffy's distress over the divorce). she already has a home life consisting of not voicing most of her difficult and 'close to the chest' emotions. when she tries to be genuine in a way that asks for space for her frustration or anger or more 'selfish' feelings, this is often not met with understanding (worth mentioning that giles does a MUCH better job on this than joyce for the most part, but other characters including willow and xander respond poorly a substantial number of times). as a result she is well practiced at suppressing emotions that are too inconvenient or complicated to feel acceptable to verbalize, so she tends to just kind of whistle past things that feel hard to tackle until she reaches a point where she can no longer bear to ignore them. this is a core part of her canon characterization that is also visible at many points in buffy's relationship with angel (s3 comes to mind, when she spends a good chunk of the season operating under the convenient belief that they're in a functional platonic friendship when she subconsciously knows they are still too hung up on each other for that to be feasible). so like we know this is something buffy does. it is not at all unusual for her to feel things that she keeps beneath her conscious awareness + does not allow herself to process and admit to having felt until well after the fact.

this takes me to the oft cited point that from the first time she interacts with spike, there is a different vibe happening than is typical for buffy and vamps. it just feels very obvious to me that from basically minute one (or maybe more accurately from their first fight, when she isn't so much on the back foot) she registers him on some level as a person who happens to be really interesting and hot, but has a fairly easy time of it keeping this feeling out of her conscious awareness bc 1) he's also an unsouled vamp, meaning she can choose to dismiss his personhood as nonexistent and his personality as mere performance or game-playing (ie he is not a 'real' person, therefore the relationship need not be acknowledged as 'real' either – taken to extremes in s6 when she has to actively abuse him and continually reaffirm his lack of humanity and lack of worth in order to sustain the self-told belief that she doesnt see or experience his personhood and doesnt feel a human connection with him), 2) they're mortal enemies, 3) he likes to be really annoying on purpose + as a vampire also has a baseline level of generally acting like a bit of a creep, and 4) for much of their relationship she has other romantic objects on whom she can more acceptably focus her attention (insert reference to spuffy being a queer coded relationship here).

i think this state of noticing-slash-not-noticing persists from 2.03 through s3&4 and into season 5. by then she is so good at studiously ignoring how weird and flirtatious and intense their dynamic has always been that the revelation that spike is now acting very obviously like hes in love with her, to the extent that someone else could notice, takes her totally by surprise. getting more specific idk how else one could possibly explain how her ass was acting in something blue pre-spell, like i absolutely canNOT see buffy behaving like that around any other vamp literally ever. they were both being so unceasingly annoying with their creepy little flirty back and forth that both giles and willow were completely over it and just wanted them to shut up and stop paying so much attention to each other. ig the point im getting at is i think it's weird and dont get it when ppl seem to read buffy's character as if shes basically just saying the things she feels and vice versa rather than like regularly and even habitually lying to herself, bc i just don't think that's in line with the character that we're shown. buffy SAYS for a very long time that she doesnt care about spike and basically says and does everything possible to deny that she has any attachment to him at all, but frankly i think the level of aggression and frequency with which she expresses variations on that sentiment in and of itself gives the lie to that idea. anyways i think she was down bad pretty much immediately and just took a very long time to let herself notice

#spike was too obvi but i feel everyone knows that bc its even more impossible to ignore w him. mr bloody thorn in my bloody side <3 #imo he partly had an easier time coming to grips w it because vamps are all relationship anarchists but thats another post #btvs #spuffy meta #i don't wanna be the one

[owliellder]

Music Recs (for writing)

I thought it would be fun to make a post of the type of music I listen to when I'm writing while also providing music recommendations cause i love finding new music myself. obviously I'll add more as I go along

I use music to help with feelings (like angst, love, fluff, etc) since I struggle conveying those naturally and I only really use apple music because spotify has always evaded me, so I'm literally just going to write each song and then link it on youtube 😭

also heads up, my music taste is EVERYWHERE so there is no rhyme or reason to any of this

Fluff/Happy Mix:

Fall On Me by R.E.M.

Fresh by Daft Punk

Keep Feeling Fascination by The Human League

Around and Around by John Denver

Sultans of Swing by Dire Straits

Feel It All Around by Washed Out (don't mind me, just adding Washed Out's entire discography here)

You'll See It by Washed Out

Angst:

Veridis Quo by Daft Punk

Face to Face by Daft Punk

Wicked Game by Chris Isaak

It's Raining Again by Supertramp

Take The Long Way Home by Supertramp

Eyes Without a Face by Billy Idol

Goodbye Again by John Denver

Bittersweet Symphony by The Verve (this is a very specific type of angst I feel)

Belong by Washed Out

Phone Call by Washed Out (this version of the song can only be found on youtube)

You and I by Washed out (again, this specific version is only on youtube)

Clap Intro by Washed Out

What Once Was by Hers

Just Wait Til Next Year by John Maus

Sprawling Idiot Effigy by Nero's Day at Disneyland (I do not suggest you listen to this one unless experimental music is your thing cause I tend to listen to Nero's Day at Disneyland when I am too under-stimulated to write)

(In) Love:

Love Story (Instrumental) by Lana Del Ray (I put this on loop for hours it's such a beautiful instrumental)

Digital Love by Daft Punk

Cheri Cheri Lady by Modern Talking

There Is a Light That Never Goes Out by The Smiths

Linger by The Cranberries

Annie's Song by John Denver

The ENTIRE Paracosm album by Washed Out (trust me on this one it all flows as one song)

Eyes Be Closed by Washed Out

Amor Fati by Washed Out

Everything in You by Adventure Time (ft Half Shy) (the Fionna and Cake series ruined me)

Nights in White Satin by The Moody Blues, London Festival Orchestra

Baby I'm Yours by Cass Elliot

Stay by Oingo Boingo

Spice 😈:

not a lot of this yet since i tend to listen to my BG music when writing smut

Lose Yourself to Dance by Daft Punk

Make Love by Daft Punk

Hurt/Comfort:

Something About Us by Daft Punk

Instant Crush by Daft Punk (ft. Julian Casablancas) (I really like Daft Punk)

Why (12" Version) by Carly Simon

Gypsy by Fleetwood Mac

Dreams by Fleetwood Mac

Back Home Again by John Denver

Poems, Prayers, and Promises by John Denver (I also really like John Denver)

Kids by MGMT

The Ghost Inside by Broken Bells

Andromeda by Weyes Blood

Luck by Washed Out

Far Away by Washed Out

Fly Away by John Denver

General Scene Building/BG:

now this is my favorite part since these are what I use most often when writing. you can pick out obvious tone indicators here in the titles 😭

a way i've learned to tap into certain feelings for when i'm writing is by using my own feelings on personal experiences, so a lot of these playlists i'm linking I have a lot of personal connection to (also because they're all so damn specific)

you're inside the last memories of a dying person (playlist) by nobody

you're an astronaut lost in space (playlist) by nobody

i feel like i've been here before (playlist) by nobody

|| nobody here || Silent Hill fog core playlist by Armand Tormo

February 22, 2001 - A liminal playlist by Dan

recalling moments of a christmas that never happened (playlist) by nobody

you're visiting the grave of an old friend while remembering the moments you spent together (playlist) by nobody

you found a place where spring is eternal (playlist) by nobody

you're staring at the ceiling while creating romanticized stories in your head (playlist) by nobody

you're walking under the golden trees watching the melancholic leaves dancing in the air (playlist) by nobody

Lost in the Poolrooms (a visual vaporwave mix) by K1K1n

Music for Vibin' on Jupiter's Hydrogen Sea (vaporwave mix) by olimar124

Unknown Songs (Lost Media Comp.) by Christopher Cherigo (one of my hyperfixations is unknown songs lololol)

[eldenringslut]

Hey people, sorry I’ve been away so long. Uni has been inverting my legs recently so I only managed to finish AC6 last night.

These will be my (spoiler free) thoughts on AC6 as a long-time Fromsoftware and souls game fan. And as someone who has never played another Armored Core game before.

The first thing to realize is that, more so than any other fromsoft game, AC6 is NOT a souls game. It doesn’t play like one and it doesn’t feel like one. It is different on a very fundamental level. The combat, the exploration, the gameplay loop, the controls and the customisation, all of these are vastly different to what you’d find in a souls game.

Now this isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. Fromsoftware are clearly going for something different here, and so long as you don’t go in expecting a souls game you wont be disappointed (although the banging-your-head-against-a-wall bosses remain and still feel amazing to finally beat).

Now for the most important part (in my opinion), is the game fun? FUCK YES!!!

The combat system and controls take some getting used to, but after that the gameplay loop quickly becomes addictive. Even before you enter a mission you are constantly building, customising and testing new equipment. The game does an excellent job of incentivising customisation, with every setup having advantages and disadvantages that are needed for specific scenarios.

The game lets you save multiple setups and easily swap between them as needed. This eventually gets to the point where you’ll have multiple ACs set up, and will be theorising about what you’ll need and which one to bring before the mission even starts. Even better is that if you ever die, the game will let you change your setup before respawing at the last checkpoint. Without having to restart the mission.

This loop is perpetuated by how you’re constantly unlocking new parts. So it will take a long time before you exhaust all your customization options. And i cannot tell you how awesome it feels to slowly and precisely tailor the perfect AC setup for a specific boss and then finally beat them.

The story, music and art direction are, as expected from a Fromsoft game, all fucking amazing. The story is similar to Sekiro’s in that the main plot is told to you pretty directly, but you can still uncover a wealth of other information by reading logs and item descriptions. The game even incentivises this, rewarding you with parts for finding audio logs. There are several bosses that are so goddamn cool to fight that i didn’t even mind when they turn me into whipped cream. The game also has great replayability, with multiple possible mission paths and 3 endings (one of which includes several unique missions that can only be played in ng++).

Now obviously the game isn’t perfect. Some of the missions are objective defensive and can be kind of annoying. And for some of the bosses the best strategy is just to be as tanky as possible and just outgun them (which can be kind of boring). This is also a problem in PVP, with the meta setups being far too oppressive and skill mattering too little for my taste.

Additionally, you really don’t have that same sense of fear and caution you get from playing a souls game. You are much more likely to be worn down over the course of a mission (running out of ammo or health) than to die to any one tough enemy. The low ammo capacity of some weapons can also make them unusable in certain scenarios, which can be a bit annoying.

Overall however, this game is one of the best I’ve ever played and I 100% recommend it. The game is so good that it’s making we want to go back and replay missions to find all the secrets i missed. I recommend it whether or not you’re a souls fan.

9/10 absolutely fucking amazing.

#armoured core #armoured core 6 #ac6 #fromsoft #fromsoftware #fromsoft games #game review #long post #armored core #armored core 6

[prototypelq]

One of the things I really, really, Really miss in MHW is, ironically enough, variety.

MHW is a game with dozens of amazing monster designs, all with unique attacks, strengths and vulnerabilities. And what does the game force the player to do?

Grind your chosen monster again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again, cause you want that upgrade and it costs a (monster name)-gem, which has around 3% drop chance.

I think I won't be breaking any new ground by saying this has been not the best decision on the designer's part.

*to be fair, only the top-est of the top upgrades require a gem, and in my experience you don't Really need those upgrades anyway, cause they will just break the game numbers. that said, my actual experience is just the main story, and I haven't touched the enhanced monsters or the raid ones, also I have not played Iceborne, and I know for certain that the numbers in that DLC are Completely broken right off the start, so maybe that gem upgrade is actually a requirement for it. I can't say for certain

This 'single-monster grind for the rare part you need' is the thing that knocked me off MHW for a while, I am just really tired of farming a single enemy like that. It's so repetitive and boring, despite the combat in the game being stellar. I have tried to switch weapons to make the grind more engaging, however, the skill ceilling for both the weapon and the monster attack patterns is too high far that to work, and you can't get the Gem if you're switching to a less powerful monster version, so that strategy won't work either.

This whole situation is outrageous to me, especially when the game has a few monsters that I have not fought even Once. For ex. Uragaan, it just looks like a Radobaan reskin on a surface level and I don't need it's gear, so I have not engaged with it even once, also Radobaan is just more badass. Here I am, instead, grinding a single monster over and over and over.

Okay, I think I've conveyed my disappointment quite adequately, now for the solution. I think this is a great time to remember about Dauntless.

For anyone who doesn't know, Dauntless is/was s f2p online monster-hunter and I've been a big fan of it for a few years. (sadly, the game has been bought by a chinese magnate and is being driven into the ground by them)

Obviously, as a monster-hunter, in Dauntless the core loop of slaying a beast > getting gear from it > slaying a more powerful beast is the same as in MHW. The difference is that you don't need that much parts from a monster to craft gear (about three kills will secure you an armour, five total should be enough for a weapon on top, those are not exact numbers, and I am speaking from memory), buuuut you need special Orbs to upgrade it. You get Orbs from doing Patrols, and here is the simple beauty of the Dauntless' solution to the grind problem-

Patrols are hunts where your target monster is randomised from a pool of monsters. Later in game, you get Heroic Patrols, which are the same, but for more powerful monster versions, and some new elite ones start appearing only in this category.

Patrols force you to engage with ALL the monsters in the game, and prevent the grind from becoming overbearing. In Dauntless, Pangar and Hellion might seem like model reuse, However the game forces me to experience both fights, and the attack patterns of these two are quite different.

So, the game loop of Dauntless is much more interesting and varied than MHW, because it makes use of 100% of its own content, while MHW has you repeatedly engaging with only 1/31 of it (= monster you grind for gear / total big monster count base game).

From my understanding, this is more of a design oversight, rather than a deliberate mistake, as the Monster Hunter series is quite old, and the 'streamlined monster grind for rare part' was the core eastern design of the series for most of that history, made primarily for the local market. However, this is still a design flaw and MH World was primarily made to bring new audience to the series, so this was the perfect time to reassess some of the carried-over design philosophy.

#i was just fuming about farming around 50 odogarons and not getting the final gem for the glaive upgrade #btw i didn't include investigations in this but they also make this issue even worse #(investigations are hunt quests for specific monster with additional random rewards) #(meaning any time you just slay a monster while free roaming the area cause you are sick of doing the same thing over and over #you are getting less item drops than you Could be if you have done investigations and the gem grind becomes even more tedious) #i don't think rise solved this issue either so here's hoping that mh wilds will #mhw #monster hunter world #mh world

[floating--goblin]

Possible hot take, but since it's that time of year again and people are complaining about who won last year, I wanted to give my two cents--

ESC is not, fundamentally, a music contest. It is a show.

Yes, "contest" is literally part of the name - and yes, music is the core of it. But every year you hear everyone bleat about how "it's rigged!" or "they picked a winner based on political interest!"

Yes. That's true. It has always been - if the contest took place during a time of conflict or change, the winners tended to be picked on a political basis - because we're representing countries here, not individual artists - and sometimes, the spotlight needs to be given to a specific person.

But it doesn't matter! No one will 100% agree on who should've won, everyone has a favorite, and the point of the contest should be that Europe's nations come together to show off their best. It's not like a sports game - you can clearly see who ran the fastest in a race, but you can't measure artistic merit the same way.

When Conchita Wurst won, everyone got mad because "they just picked her because she's trans!" (which isn't actually true, Conchita is a stage persona, the guy playing her is a gay man - so most people didn't even bother to get informed about that). But... So fucking what? It was new to have that kind of representation, and ESC is a significant event, broadcast live even to queerphobic countries - the results might have been rigged, but it was a friendly gesture toward the queer community. In 2014 no less!

Did it change anything? Did anyone die from losing the contest? Did winning Eurovision skyrocket anyone's career? Not really - I mean, when was the last time you heard about Conchita Wurst on the international scene? Do you know what Alexander Rybak is up to these days? Most of you dropped Måneskin weeks after their win, and you don't even know what "Epic Sax Guy"'s name is. Hell, Kalush won just last year, and I haven't heard a peep about them from anyone.

Whether or not Ukraine's win was orchestrated, I don't know - and frankly, I don't care to know. They didn't even get to host the event in their country, which was obviously going to be the case, it wasn't a last minute realization - so is it really that fucking important, while they're in the middle of a war, that they won the singing competition?

Kalush's performance last year was beautiful - but almost as importantly, Europe needed to show solidarity with Ukraine at that moment. That includes socially as well, because - shock of all shocks - countries are made up of people, who have a certain degree of control over political and military matters. Whether or not last year's contest was rigged, doesn't matter - because the bottom line is that all of Europe is affected by the war to some extent, and we must make it clear that imperialist warlords and their supporters are not welcome among the rest of us. Sure, it's just an art contest, it's not any kind of tangible, physical action against the Russian forces - but it is a symbolic "fuck you" to Russia and a "we're on your side" to Ukraine, which is something.

There will be other years. You're free to consider your favorite country the winner. Frankly, everyone's winning if they get to be in the contest, because it's a beloved event where every country can put out their own brand of beautiful or bizarre. Let's focus more on the experience, rather than who gets the most points - celebrate all the beautiful performances you're seeing, and stop treating Eurovision like a football league. If a certain contestant wins because of political bias, you're free to just ignore the results and enjoy the performances you loved - because at the end of the day, it doesn't matter. You still got to see some beautiful art, and a piece of your neighboring countries' souls.

#esc #esc 2023

[less-than-three-3]

Cereza and the Lost Demon is so beautiful

I’m going to be totally honest, I partially bought this game out of spite because people were being really annoying about how “it didn’t look worth the price” and “it isn’t bayonetta so it’s bad :/” (I was interested in it too but that definitely catalyzed it lol)

Were they right? Ok, I think it’s kind of a cop out answer, but I think “if this type of game looks up your alley” then it totally is worth it, and it really carves its niche out fairly well. No it’s not bayonetta but like.... obviously not lmao? Funnily enough, actually, amidst the revival of the dumb “give me back old zelda” with totk on the horizon, I think this game hits a lot of the notes of the more linear temple-centric zeldas... 

It’s also a very pretty game in many ways, honestly possibly one of the most aesthetically appealing games on the switch overall, though I do have my gripes with gameplay. Full thoughts below, with minor spoilers so be warned.

I’m just going to start with what I loved about it, because if I dig into the gameplay first it’ll come off worse than it is, because my only real complaints were gameplay-related. The music was absolutely gorgeous and always so fitting, and the adaptations of music from the mainline games to this new aesthetic were done excellently. It might honestly be my favorite bayonetta soundtrack, and I really like those soundtracks. From fully orchestrated, lush environments, to more jovial lighthearted moments, to serious heartwrenching developments, the soundtrack covers everything so well. 

The art, too, was great. In addition to the painted artstyle, they do the thing that I fucking love in animation where there’s like a still textured background, and as the characters move, they like, move past the background? I don’t know what to call it, and the internet doesn’t know what to call it, but if you’ve seen Chowder or Gankutskuou you know exactly what I’m talking about lol. The painted aesthetic also lends itself to like actually creative uses more than just looking pretty too, most notably a part at the very end that was so touching, when you play it you’ll know what I mean. If there’s any small nitpick it’s just that the storybook format of cutscenes leads to just a few “stiff” moments? But it’s like totally understandable. 

That said, I loved the cozy storybook narration and framing, and I honestly don’t really get when people say it’s tonally inconsistent with bayonetta (I’m going to avoid the worst case explanation of this). The mythological vibes, for lack of a better word, are still extremely present, so people must just dislike that it’s a story about Cereza as a young girl? Because like obviously she isn’t going to be a badass, sexy witch as like, a 12 year old, but it’s not like the game moves the needle in the complete opposite direction and becomes a super cutesy wholesome 100 vibe. The vibe is, like I said, cozy, mythical, maybe whimsical, and yeah it’s at a slightly slower pace than the mainline games, but it’s not so out of the question, especially for a game exploring the journey of a young Cereza.

Her journey is not the deepest thing in the world, really, and it is kind of in part due to the set up of the game, where you have to collect these four elemental cores to unlock powers and get to the heart of the forest. Kind of like zelda, in a way. There are a couple twists and turns, but I think the main element is the growth of Cereza and Cheshire, independently and together. There are some tropey elements for sure, but I’ll be damned if I didn’t still tear up after certain events occur.

And speaking of zelda, I really felt like the overall gameplay loop was very reminiscent of that kind of style, but with a twist. As you traverse through each region, there are obstacles that serve as “puzzles” to solve to continue your path forward, sometimes using some mechanic that you may get in the future (there are literally bomb flowers lol), and then you get the upgrade, and solve more puzzles or traverse new types of land with the powers you unlocked. And of course, there are Tir na nOgs which, like literally everyone says, are pretty much semi-required shrines from BotW. Many of them presented interesting puzzles, some of them were just like tests of strength?? (like botw!) And of course this is all on top of the unique control scheme of controlling both Cereza and Cheshire with each side of the controller which certainly takes a good bit to get used to. The parts where you have both characters separately doing different tasks were really fun.

But, honestly, I felt like there wasn’t enough of that. Like I said there was a lot of combat trials, and honestly, even though I really did enjoy the combat, I almost wished there was less of it? There is a lot of fluidity possible between the 5 different stances Cheshire can get, and light and heavy combos, as well as bind combos, but besides that the enemies were hardly really that threatening (outside the bosses, which were certainly very cool fights) so it just felt more like an annoyance beyond the honeymoon period after I unlock a new skill. And it felt like it took away time from doing puzzles, which I wouldn’t call sparse but I would call just a little deficient. Maybe it’s because it’s relatively short, or the difficulty was designed to a younger audience? And as a result, I really didn’t feel like I wanted to go back to find the other Tir na nOgs, because their main reward was getting spirit orbs fragments of health, which I didn’t really feel was super necessary. And that’s a shame, because maybe I did miss out on some really cool puzzles. There are also upgrade materials for special skills Cereza and Cheshire can get, but I felt like I more or less got the ones I got from the materials I could get more conveniently. Overall it just kind of felt, both from a combat and puzzle standpoint, that they could have and maybe should have really fleshed it out more and get those gears turning. 

I also just would like to mention that the opening of the game felt glacially slow. Not just like introductory stuff, but pretty much everything until your skill tree gets unlocked (and you get your first elemental core relatively soon thereafter). I think I get why, because they not only want to actually set the exposition and I felt that was paced fine, but also let people get used to the dual stick movement once you get to control Cheshire. But man the base combat without any additional upgrades is not that interesting, and the very early puzzles were, obviously, pretty simple to ease you into it. I absolutely think after that part, things start to really open up and feel much much better, but that opening segment has gotta be like, a couple hours or so. 

Besides those gripes, though, I do think it’s at least a very visually pretty game with great music and a cozy story and setting, and the gameplay, if you’re vaguely interested in a game like this, definitely works well. While the extra chapter of this game does tie into Bayonetta 3, a game that I actually still haven’t played and am not planning to play soon, oops, the actual main story is fully independent. So regardless of if you’ve played a bayo game or not, if you think you’d like it, or if you’re one of those people who just really really wants old dungeons back in zelda, then I’d recommend it. Not my favorite, but a solid spinoff that I think they could really expand upon.

#bayonetta origins #cereza and the lost demon

[flareonfoxy]

This is going to be totally out of left field but I think the big reason Fire emblem Engage failed was due to Maddening difficulty having fixed growths till you beat it once. The big reason is that part of the fire emblem experience is training your units and seeing how good they turn out from random chance and then adapting in order to compensate that or play into that.

An example of this is that I was playing Maddening in 3 houses ( The game that came before Engage) and I had runs where a unit would just snowball from multiple good level ups and become just a monster. This happend with my Dimitri who had so much speed he couldn't be doubled by basically anything in the game, even the death knight in his first appearance. Random growths can make units who otherwise aren't good, good because they can get lucky.

Another example is I had a Mozu in my conquest playthrough who just decided to become a monster and had like 15 strength and 17 speed by like level 15, like it was insane.

These examples just show the positives of random growths, the negatives though are obviously sometimes characters might not proc certain stats on level up for a few levels, which can be detrimental, back to Dimitri where another playthrough I had he only had like 8 speed at level 9. Which he has a 40 or 45 growth and starts at level 1 with I think 7 speed, meaning he should of had about 2 or 3 speed more than he did causing him to get doubled by enemies he shouldn't been doubled by, this is a big negative because you can have playthroughs where the characters you want to use may be just bad, which sucks but I think it's what makes the games fun.

Obviously it's easier when fixed growths are a thing because the creators can make levels to curate to what the player should have at that point, the problem with that though is when the player wants to play a character the creators expected them to drop. Example being in Engage when you get Alchrest the game expects you to automatically drop Etie who was your archer before this, and that's just something I never do because I like Eties character and design more than Alchrest, like I like Alchrest and he has a better personal but I like Etie more and this pertains to multiple characters who you're just expected to drop when you get a new character. Here's a short list.

1) Framme/Jean/Pangero

2)Clanne/Celine/Citrinne/Ivy/Hortensia/Old guy?

3)Alfred/Amber/Bunet/other guy(can't remember name)

4)Chloe/maybe Rosatto?

5)Louie/Jade

6)Boucheron/Anna/Pannete

7)Etie/Alchrest/Fagato

8)Alear

9)Yunaka/Zalekov/maybe Merrin?

10)Lapis/Kagetsu/Goldmary

That's ten different basically groups that once a new character shows up in that group you're expected to jump ship and use that unit because that's how Madding on fixed growths was designed.

Obviously there are exceptions where some units are just worse that the ones before them, like Chloe could be made the case that she should be in her own group just purely because she never falls off and Rosado and her use different weapons but they are both physical flyers which is why I looped them together. Bunet is just not good so don't ever use him.

This is the big problem with engage is that they expect you to use certain units at certain points meaning the system that is meant to make maddening a "fair challenge" just doesn't do that, and that's what annoys me about engage is the first time through maddening fixed growths, I haven't beaten maddening yet because of this problem. Because I want to use certain units and the game doesn't like that.

This is why I think many hard-core fire emblem fans just don't like Engage.

#fire emblem #Out of left field rant #fire emblem engage #The problems

[joshhhhhhhhhhhhhhh]

Okay we're stopping playing Sonic for now because it's nearly 1am, but some thoughts woo, completely unstructured because yeah. Important context but I'm not actually finished with all the stuff yet either soooo

I think this update is fucking awesome! Like so much so that I don't even know where to start. I guess the most obvious part is playable Tails, Knuckles and Amy - all of them are fucking fantastic. I'm not without my nitpicks for them - Tails not having a homing attack really sucks and Knuckles' gliding is clunky, Amy though actually perfect lol - but I think in terms of general feel as well as how multiple playable characters should be handled in 3D Sonic, they're great. Cause the thing is they're all fundamentally still Sonic, even down to having the boost and shit, so before you've even gotten the chance to play them you already know most of what to expect - the surprises just come in the form of their other mobility and combat options, but obviously everything controls the same and nobody's like ungodly slow or locked out of the spindash or anything like that, it's genuinely awesome. Honestly there's a degree to which they leave Sonic himself in the dust with their absolutely ridiculous aerial mobility, especially Tails who gets a certain upgrade that is like, actually fucking gamebreaking (and btw I'm completely about it lmao). But yeah no they're incredible, and it still feels downright unreal playing as them in a new 3D title. Would be more than happy for this to be the template going forward in terms of multiple characters.

That's very much the main new thing and core appeal of the update, so I'll have less to say going forward, but I'm still really enjoying everything else on the table. One of the main things is just that the story additions and various optional character conversations do a shockingly huge amount to flesh out the Ancients and the Starfall Islands - in a way that makes this entire aspect of what is now part of series lore and canon feel so much more rich and alive. All of a sudden we have some answers to "what's up with those ruins over there?", and it feels nice! Although one huge narrative L is that they clarify that Big's presence is an illusion crafted from Sonic's memories, which I think is significantly more boring than Big just comedically being here for whatever reason. That aside though I think the steps taken here to flesh out the world and these backstories and the Ancients themselves who play such a key role in the story anyway is a really good call.

Guardians and specifically island mystery whatever thing M120 aside as detailed in my last post, I also really enjoy the general difficulty increase within this update's content. The island puzzles are generally a lot more involved, and will take multiple steps to complete and/or operate on significantly stricter time limits - it's a nice level of challenge for the final major area of the game. Doubly so for the various platforming challenges - which are about on par with the "new koko" challenges from update 2, i.e. really quite long and involved and precarious and it's awesome and many of them make great use of Tails/Amy/Knuckles' different mobility from Sonic. On Sonic's platforming though, holy fuck am I glad they added more tower climbs. Not even kidding the Rhea Island tower climbing was one of my favourite things about base Frontiers, it's an extremely tense and enjoyable platforming challenge that takes full advantage of Sonic's capabilities and expects a lot out of you, the player, and your knowledge of how to use said capabilities to their fullest. And dog they added more of them? Shit got me hype as fuck dude, greatly enjoyed the challenge, and the feeling of getting better and better at specific sections over time as well as learning the layouts such that I knew where to aim for if I fell so I could lose the least progress and shit, they're just so kino man. I fucking adore them.

One thing I haven't really engaged with surprisingly, is the new Cyberspace levels - I've done 2 of them and I mainly went for just beating the levels as opposed to spending time working on the misc objectives, but the ones I did do were kinda sick as hell and the objectives are all new compared to just red rings and x amount of normal rings and clearing in x time, fuck some of them even have different goals amongst themselves. I think cyberspace levels really grew on me after a couple more stabs at each level so I'm excited to give more of these new ones a shot - I think I'm kinda just mentally prioritising them less than the story content and character upgrades lol. These do seem really awesome though, and again are a pretty great level of challenge, at the very least the two I did were like, Unleashed DLC level of challenge or something, albeit shorter obviously. The S-Rank times seem pretty damn tough this time around too, going through a cyberspace level once and having cleared all the missions without even trying this is not. And I'm super about that lmao.

Must say I find the tower trials I've done so far are, kinda bizarrely balanced. First one is defeat a few normal Soldier enemies in a more than generous time window, third one is defeat those circling dog things that you just parry in a very generous time window, fourth one was defeat a Ninja or Shinobi or Kunoichi or you know that family of enemy with ten entire minutes on the clock, and the second one is you've got 2 minutes to defeat 4 of the enemies that you need to cyloop their shell, which I beat with less than 5 seconds left because they set a certain stat level for Sonic so all I could do was cyloop, homing attack, stomp, repeat - with fairly little room for error else I'd run out of time. If I'm missing something obvious that makes that trial way easier then woe is me but I did find it very funny that it's the only one that took me more than one attempt.

I'm running out of things that come to mind immediately, so just gonna leave off by saying the new music fucks hard. Fun update, looking forward to completing it, and further ahead than that I'm looking forward to doing a playthrough of like, the complete Sonic Frontiers experience, updates 1 and 2 already did a lot of work to make the game just feel more like a complete product, so I'm excited to kind of holistically look at it now that it's done. Good stuff.

#sonic #sonic frontiers spoilers #final horizon #sonic frontiers #is that enough #30.9.23

[miggylol]

Hi! Long time liker, occasional reblogger, first time asker piping up to ask what your favorite Rimworld mods are! I just picked it up and am enjoying it so far, minus getting wrecked by rabid squirrels an embarrassing amount...

OH BOY LOL ARE YOU IN FOR A LONG ANSWER

First off: I am someone who takes zero shame in enabling Development Mode, so my subscriptions are big on adding complexity to the game while being able to address things spiraling out of control with a panic button. If you're not into that, I would ramp up slowly with these.

Putting behind a cut, because again: long.

For context, though they're not all currently active, I'm subscribed to 268 mods. ...I am not going to recommend them all.

Here are some favorites I would recommend for starting to round out the game. I'm grouping them up into significant vs. smaller QoL improvements. If you enjoy a mod, I would highly recommend going to your subscription page and checking out that modmaker's full workshop to see what else looks fun. That's how I discovered most of these.

Big Deal Mods

Harmony - a framework mod required by a lot of other mods.

HugsLib - same deal. Use autosort with your mods, and these will get moved up to the top where they need to be.

Humanoid Alien Races - and another framework. Needed for a bunch of new race mods, e.g. if you want Star Wars alien races. (I'm sure someone's made that somewhere.)

Hospitality - you can host visitors from other factions, improve relations, and even convince the visitors to join your faction.

Expanded Prosthetics and Organ Engineering - exactly what it says. A huge new range of options to buy/craft, from very low tech emergency options to very powerful upgrades.

Pawnmorpher - quite possibly the inspiration for Biotech, and in some ways I still prefer parts of it to that gene system. (But I do have a bunch of fun playing with genes.) You can upgrade pawns with fur for their boreal home, or downgrade them all the way into mindless animals.

Ambition of the Cosmic - adds a bunch of high-tech research tiers above and beyond the core game.

Glittertech - adds a bunch of new tech and gear, along with a new faction (commandos) who pose a strong lategame threat. They'll ignore you until you're worth their while.

Misc. Robots - this came well before the Biotech mechanoids, and here, I clearly prefer it. It requires research and materials (or buying from a trader), but you can get mindless hauling and cleaning robots that let your pawns focus on more important tasks. They're available in different tiers for speed/battery life.

Misc. Robots++ - adds the other types of robots (crafting, cooking, etc.). I enjoy setting up a custom starting scenario with one rich, pampered explorer and a bunch of robots.

Prepare Carefully - lets you super-customize your pawns for the starting experience you want. I use this (and the next one) to craft myself a group of pawns from [some fandom] and watch the chaos develop.

Character Editor - I actually use this one a lot more. It's a great way to change the basics of individual pawns at any point, and can also adjust their health conditions. I refuse to let some beloved pets bleed out! (The pawns themselves... whatever.)

More Vanilla Biomes - obviously only applies for newly-generated worlds, but these are some interesting new conditions to deal with. I'm a big fan of grasslands and cloud forests.

Dubs Bad Hygiene - adds hygiene/bladder needs. This will make the early game harder, as your pawns deal with being miserable and filthy. As you are able to take better care of them, you'll instead see them with mood buffs from being nice and clean, enjoying the swimming pool and hot tub, etc. I don't know why, but I love this mod to pieces. Lol.

TD Enhancement Pack - DOWNLOAD THIS ONE, IF NOTHING ELSE. All this shit should be in the base game.

Quality of Life Mods

Metals Trader - adds an orbital trader that's the best place to find certain materials. Not a big deal if you like to play mountain bases, very useful elsewhere.

Smarter Deconstruction and Mining - should avoid your pawns bringing down roofs on top of themselves.

Faction Customizer - yep. What it says. You can easily make other factions your allies or enemies.

Variety Matters - pawns expect a certain level of variety in their diet, based on colony wealth. Like with Hygiene, it'll be more challenging early on but can add buffs later.

Tier 2 Temperature - you can research additional temperature control devices.

Vanilla Plants Expanded - also look at Oscar Potocki's Workshop linked at the top of the page. Vanilla _______ Expanded is a MASSIVE collection he's created, and there's a shitton of neat stuff in there.

Healer Mech Serum Choice - you can pick which condition it's used on.

Stockpile Ranking - I put this as a QoL mod, but honestly, it's pretty core to how I play. You can prioritize different stockpiles, so—for example—I can set medicine to critical inside my infirmary, and rest assured that it'll be placed there instead of over in the general spillover warehouse. (While still allowing myself lots of room to store all of the different types of medicine I have access to with all of my mods.)

Tilled Soil - with effort, your pawns can turn any growable soil into fertile soil.

Prisoner Harvesting - :)

Incident Person Stat - get a feeling for what sort of stranger you're dealing with, so you can avoid admitting a pawn being chased by maneaters only to discover they're a pyromaniac.

Apparel Tainted Only When Corpse Rots - it's so much easier to clothe your pawns in early game with this.

Bad Can Be Good - re-balances some bad traits and gives them tradeoffs.

VGP Vegetable Garden - again, linking for the workshop at the top. Tons of mods for new crops, etc.

Ore Yields - yep. Adjustable.

Tradeable Meals - another way to make money, if you're flush with crops and meat.

Tech Advancing - you can customize when you move up to the next tier (e.g. Industrial -> Spacer).

Smarter Construction - get this one. Your life will be much less frustrating.

RimHUD - a nice redesign of the pawn info window.

Lightning Rod - once you have the resources to spare, storms become much less of a threat.

Replace Stuff - yep. Replace it without dismantling the old one, first. Terrific for situations like, say, upgrading your freezer walls to something non-flammable.

OgreStack - adjust stack sizes for all items. Get this one.

Medical Tab - adds a tab where you can see everyone's medical conditions at a glance. Check this workshop, too; there are other good tabs you can add.

Mad Skills - adjust learning speeds, slow or turn off knowledge decay, etc. Very useful.

Map Designer - you can set specific conditions (e.g., maybe you want a fuckton of ruins, or mountains at a certain angle, or a river so wide that it's nearly impassable). You can also reroll a map to get variations on its core features. Love this mod.

Adjust Quest Chance - there are some quests I hate and will never accept, and others I'd want more of. I can go in and adjust my chances accordingly.

Quick Stockpile Creation - so simple. So nice. The very definition of a QoL mod.

Underground Power Conduits - and finally: NO MORE UGLY WIRES EVERYWHERE.

Okay, as mentioned, this is just a small fraction of my subscriptions, but... I am sure it's more than enough. More. Than. Enough.

#turtledovlin #rimworld

[cadyrocks]

Casually wondering if there's any good way to legislate against dark patterns in web and video game design.

Like, it's an extremely broad subject and constantly evolving, and frankly the entire field needs to die in a fucking fire, but where would we even start? Obviously there are dark patterns that exist now that we could target - why in the ever-loving fuck is loot box gambling still legal in games for children - but that kind of piecemeal approach would require constant updating.

At the same time, any one of these patterns being banned might lead to outcry about "legitimate uses". MTG booster packs are basically just loot boxes (doubly so in digital games like MTG Arena), but "cracking packs" has always been an integral part of how TCGs work. Not sure if that's actually a good excuse for what is basically gambling.

Maybe an independent agency would be the way to go? Something like the FCC, but for bullshit in software and game development. Even then, it's hard to say how to define their mandate. Past a certain point, we're essentially asking companies under capitalism to not be evil for profit.

Good luck with that shit.

If anyone has any thoughts, feel free to add them. But this shit is everywhere, it's toxic and manipulative, and it's only getting worse. And it'll keep getting worse, because it's profitable. I have watched increasingly desperate grabs for cash essentially ruin a lot of my favorite hobby for me - if your game has loot boxes and isn't a free to play TCG where card availability is a core mechanic, I'm not fucking playing it - and I've watched it increasingly encroach on the everyday interactions I have with internet sites. This sucks. I don't want to feel like every fucking interaction with Ultimate Guitar is a psychological battle where they withhold features unless I pay extra. I don't want to play games where for all I know, matchmaking algorithms are intentionally manipulating me to spend more money. I am so goddamn sick of the "accept cookies / more options" buttons that make you work extra to reject that shit. It's nauseating and infuriating.

#software #Gamedev #Dark patterns #magic the gathering #Mtg #mtg arena

[icharchivist]

Considering what happening with remake. What think new in Crisis Core 👀

(COMPLETELY FORGOT TO REPLY SORRY DLKFJDF)

And oh man.

from what i could understand so far the Crisis Core's "remake" is more like a remaster where they just retook all the animations and everything and just did a graphism makeover. if so, it's possible they won't actually change much to the game so it's not too much work.

But if they do add things, i think it won't be like the Remake in the sense that, the Remake deviates from the Original Game/is canonically an alternative timeline and the changes happening to it are set up as weird deviation from the story.

I think it'll be near impossible to do it for CC because this "deviated plotline" is meant to happen in the Remake timeline and i don't see them really come back to the CC timeline and change things around. So at least i don't think they'll change anything major, unlike the remake. Unless they want to explore on the "alternative timeline moment" we see in the Remake, regarding [REDACTED]'s death

But if they add things in general, just like, more scenes, more quests?

I know what i want but i can't be certain Square would follow me through it.

(rambled, also includes spoilers for Crisis Core's game, not just the ending, under the cut)

What i want personally is them to put in the scenes they wrote and cut for CC because the support of the PSP couldn't handle a longer game than what they did. They mentioned cutting a lot of Zack & Cloud scenes specifically for this reason (because we clearly needed another Loveless monologue rather than seeing those two being friends, obviously) and i just want them in game.

Another thing personally that i'd love is a revamping of the side quests we can do on the mission tab, especially if it's to give them the weight they actually deserve.

Those missions are easily ignorable when you progress and they honestly drop vague hints at character's depths near the end of their mission tree and in my opinion this is criminal. Like, there's a whole mission tree that is spread out through the whole game where Zack is asked to hunt down Wutai's rebels, so, rebels from a civilization Zack helped destroy and colonize as he was still fed Shinra's propaganda and didn't realize how wrong he was.

By the end of this mission tree, near the end of the game when you unlock it, Zack becomes more and more reticent into doing those missions and it ends with a scene with a Wutai's rebel noticing Zack doesn't kill them, and realizing also that Zack is having doubts about Shinra. At the time this mission unlock this is the first time we see Zack expresses that he's disatisfied with Shinra and the part he's made to play, and imo, this whole scene justifies his whole "Shinra is a den of monsters, don't go there" to Cloud in a whole different level.

Because if you don't do the sidequest, it's just Zack mentioning it about the experiments that happened around Project G/S and everything that triggers it, and like, that's all sweet and nice, but that concerns 3 people and a tank of failed experiments. So the way he goes on afterward about himself being a human weapon meant to obey blindly comes out of nowhere, and while SOLDIERS do get some experiments done on there, it feels incomplete. and imo, this completeness comes from having finished this mission tree and knowing Zack includes himself as a monster not only because of the experiments made on him by a shady corporation he believed in, but because he sees himself as a monster for his own involvement in the war.

There's also the whole mission tree with Yuffie that echos this sentiment, since he basically indulges her out of the building guilt he feels for destroying her country, which again, is a hard one to finish.

There's others mission tree with similar interesting lore building that could be explored even more fullfront in the remake (like the fact Zack unknowingly helped Reeves build Deepground without Reeves even realizing he was doing just that as he was told it was a project to help people, or the fact one of the tree involves Zack having to take down the Original Avalanche, which the Remake already did weird things with, so might as well actually explore all of this). But especially when it comes to Wutai i really want this plot to come full front and not be locked in a throw away line at the end of a tedious mission tree most of us ignored.

So yeah basically: Revamping the side quests so that they're accessible, required even, and give them the depth they were hinted into having to start with and dig on that.

On the side of Revamping: Revamping the Wheel system and the memories/adding memories to the wheel AND/OR actually show the memories in game.

In the game there's this whole roulette System where Zack can get random buff or power during the fight. Those powers especially are determined by character portaits put in a slot machine, and depending on which portraits you allign, you get a power up from this character (ex: 3 Aerith will give you a full health restore as well as invicibility for a bit). During those, as the slots rolls, sometimes the game interrupts it to show you various memories Zack have of those people. Some training missions with Angeal, some dates with Aerith, runs up with Cloud ect.... there's only a few of them, they're not voiced in CC and they're in very bad quality, but they also drop some lore in them (from good things like the unique way Sephiroth used to treat Zack, or some i'm less fan off like implying Aerith's pink design is due to her waiting Zack back home).

I say: make more, make them voiced, make them pretty. Revamping them.

Other things i'd either ask for or could see Square do:

Expend on the material you have. Expend on Genesis's backstory in ways that are actually impactful and not just the last 10mins before fighting him for the last time in random journal entries please.

Also expend on Deepground since the Remake's DLC also did it and like. If anything has to expend on Deepground it SHOULD be CC since Genesis is literally introduced in DoC because of Deepground. and the only thing we have in CC about it is the fact Genesis gets taken away at the end of CC and promises to come back and it's like heyo you were introduced because of Deepground can you ACTUALLY explore what it means and not just have it be a throwaway line. Like in DoC his scene was really just "wow i wonder what's up with this guy and his connection to Deepground" and CC only answered the first part of this question, never the second one lmao. (that said they might explore that in the Remake instead to explore what was happening in Deepground with Genesis between the time he was taken to it in CC and the time he comes out of it in DoC).

I'm also begging them to fix the Nibelheim incident and not have Genesis be the trigger for Sephiroth's spiral. I'm honestly a "Genesis is an okay character i don't mind him" apologist but i do really hate his involvement in this scene retconing it in ways that removes Sephiroth of his agency in his own downfall.

I want more time with Angeal, i want more scenes in general to flesh out the world. I want sidequests about the fanclubs that last forever.

And oh my goD i almost forgot but i waNT MORE CISSNEI!!!! AND KUNSEL BUT ESPECIALLY CISSNEI!!!

Cissnei is a character i love and her last scene in CC is her wanting to find Zack and hints on perhaps wanting to betray the Turks for him, and "i need to find him so i can tell him my real name", and then we've never heard of her ever again. If they're not going to put her in the remake i beg them to expend on her in CC.

for Kunsel it's just for me because i love the guy and people usually barely know who he is unless you combed the game and read every single email this guy sent you. He's namedropped in the remake too in a scene that filled me with Glee, and i would love people who esp got into ff7 with the remake to get into the new CC and see Kunsel and UNDERSTAND why the CC-hardcore people were so happy about him being here. I fear that if Kunsel is just done exactly like in CC some people might completely overlook him, which is already the case of the 90% of the fanbase who aren't unhealthily obsessed with CC lmao

Also they can expend on the Luxiere storyline just so we all really feel how disgusting it is so i'm not the only person who goes "if i see Luxiere it's on fucking sight"

If they can/want to explore more i would love it, especially with the Tseng's plotline, since the remake did a good job at showing how he's torn, i really wish people to see how he was when he was younger and more hopeful in a way.

But yeah tbh i don't expect more than a 1:1 remaster with just prettier designs (tho idk, the trailer is objectively pretty but i find it kind of charmless...? The colors are so dull and the models feel so perfectly polished in way that i find almost uncanny. It's not like the graphisms of CC aged "well" but oof some scenes just felt wrong. But i'm someone who played maybe 1k hours of CC in the past 15years, i'm not an objective judge here).

But if they do add more, i want them to add back what they had to cut and expend on the half done ideas that were done in CC.

I genuinely don't want them to try to do like the remake and be ~meta~ and absolutely try to connect with the continuity of the remake. I'm coming to term with the remake being its own story as long as i remind myself it's not a remake, it's an alternative timeline that is taking a whole different route, but if they force a CC Remaster to do the same i think i'll start getting annoyed.

Kinda getting tired of companies taking stuff we're nostalgic about and then do them with themes of "isn't it BAD that you're nostalgic about them" like idk dude you're the one making money on making us nostalgic and then telling us it's bad. And that's kind of the irritation i have with the remake atm and i kind of don't want this cynism to get into the CC remaster.

OH AND SPEAKING OF, one thing i'm REALLY WORRIED they might "change" is specifically linked to the Wutai plotline. The trailers already showed scenes from Wutai in it, and if they don't change anything, whatever, but i'm genuinely terrified they might try to "whitewash" Zack's crimes as Soldier. Because they did that with Avalanche in the Remake (constantly bringing up that the deaths are totally made by Shinra you guys! Avalanche is totally not responsible for eventually killing people in their quests guys!). Zack is a war criminal, albeit you can't forget he was a teen brainwashed into doing this bidding and when he realized with horror his involvement in all of this he saw himself as a monster and it's why by the end of the game he has to rethink his own definition of being a hero. Zack's arc in CC is subtle but is there and the subtext is that Zack is to be considered a war criminal who had to realize the horrors of his actions and redeem himself in some way, if even just by having Cloud carrying his legacy as he would undo everything Shinra had Zack do. But after what happened to Avalanche (which is already making me dread so bad on what will happen to any conversation about the morally greyness of Avalanche in later events, which is supposed to especially impact Barret's and Reeves's arc) i am genuinely dreading them trying to have Zack's crimes be less so than they are in CC or somehow even less addressed than in CC (which, would be so much considering CC does keep it buried to start with).

Do NOT whitewash my war criminal he's my little mew mew and the person i am today is because of him i WILL yell if you change him.

But also more in general i wonder if we'll get development drama out of it too. The original CC was mostly developped by Tabata, who was a newcomer at the time, and aided with two of the biggest story developers from the OG: Nomura (General Director) and Nojima (Specifically the writer of Cloud's backstory and the Zack's portions). But Kitase, the third big one (responsible mostly for everything surrounding Sephiroth) was noticeably absent as he mentioned hating working with Nomura and he originally hated the love Zack got.

But nowadays, to consider, is that i don't think Tabata is working at square anymore? He was in charge of the 15th FF, and it was so surrounded by controversies that were all put on Tabata's head that i don't even know if he'd be trusted with something like that again. Not to mention Nomura has beef with him because of what happened on the 15th so i doubt he'd want to work back with him, or worse, he might try to address what Tabata left on purpose just to rearrange things like he wants. Nomura has a tendency to do just that after all and Tabata's fingerprints are all over CC, it would be hilarious to see Nomura try to both erase them and pull a Nomura. And finally, nowadays Kitase is making efforts to work with Nomura on the remake and has mentioned understanding the impact Zack had on the fans, so the question is, will Kitase join the project that made Zack this popular because now he mellowed or is his beef still getting in the way?

if we get a 1:1 remaster, none of this matter, but if we get changes put into it, there's definitely going some ego clashes with the producting room and i both want to watch the trainwreck AND want to cry because this trainwreck is on a game that's precious to me damnit.

So idk, i guess that's what i think would happen: wishlist/what would realistically be added: expending on the source material in the ways i mentioned. Things that might happen: ego clashes from the devs trying to either try to do like they did with the remake, or trying to undo Tabata's original work, or worse, trying to lessen the wrongs of our protagonists.

Either way it's going to be a trip and a half. We'll see when we get there...

#ichareply #nadejdaro #ichafantalks ffvii