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thankskenpenders · 7 months

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So I wrote a whole long thing about Amy's tarot cards, but what about, you know... the rest of the Sonic Frontiers DLC? The new alternate story route, the hours of new gameplay, all that?

Having now played it, I'm not sure Sonic has ever had this specific combination of good ideas that make the future of the series look bright, and execution that I fucking hate.

(Full spoilers ahead.)

The good

There's a lot to like here, conceptually.

First and foremost, Tails, Knuckles, and Amy are finally playable in a new mainline 3D Sonic game for the first time since 2006! Seventeen years! We've been begging for this for so very, very long. Nature is finally truly healing from the fallout of Sonic '06. Early on I hedged my bets and expected them to be locked to Cyber Space or something like that, assuming that there was no way they'd be fully playable in the Open Zone. But sure enough, while they're a bit limited compared to Sonic, they're still all full-blown characters with skill trees to unlock and lots of exploration to do.

We also got a more bombastic alternate final boss fight, after the first take on The End kind of underwhelmed. And it's obvious that Sonic Team has listened to our pleas to focus on the 3D platforming over the forced 2D sections, and to reduce the amount of automation in the level design. This update is chock full of Actual Platforming. Wow! I can only pray this means we never get an area as agonizing to explore as Chaos Island again.

Sure, there's still some jank - especially with Knuckles' movement, which is kinda rough. But if this is the stuff they're trying out so that they can refine it further for the next game, then I'm really excited.

On the other hand, good fucking lord is The Final Horizon tedious. And that tedium sapped most of the fun out of it for me.

The frustrating

The new scenario massively increases the difficulty over the base game, seemingly out of a desire to give the hardcore players who were posting speedrun videos and whatnot more of a challenge. It's the Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels of Sonic. This difficulty comes in many forms throughout your playtime, some worse than others, and continues to ramp up over time.

Rather than giving you a tutorial level, the new scenario dumps you directly into a remixed version of the final island and makes you do some fairly precise platforming with Amy, Knuckles, and Tails - new characters with new movesets that you won't have any experience with. You'll also need to find character-specific Koco that give you free levels, because Sonic's friends all start at level one and certain locked moves in their skill trees will be mandatory to progress. They don't even have Cyloop unlocked at the start. And because they're all low level, that means you'd better steer clear of the beefed-up bosses scattered around the map, which will absolutely annihilate Sonic's friends. (I honestly just avoided them and never bothered beating any of them, not even with my high-level Sonic. I have no idea if they're beatable with the others.)

None of this is explained to you particularly well. I spent my first few minutes with Amy wondering why the attack button did nothing, only to eventually think to check her skill tree and realize that I had to unlock her basic attack. If you don't bother to take the time to read through the skill trees, you'll very quickly find obstacles you have no way of getting past with no clues as to what exactly you're supposed to do.

Adding to this confusion is the fact that objective markers often tell you to go half a kilometer into the sky, and you'll have no idea how to get up there because all of the relevant platforms are out of your draw distance. Many objects seem to only pop in for me when I'm within about 60 meters of them, which isn't a long distance for a high-speed open world platformer like this. I was having this problem running the game with high graphics on PC, so I can only imagine how obnoxious it is on Switch. I'd frequently find myself poking around nearby clusters of platforming objects and praying that they'd lead me to a spring, rail, or cannon that would eventually point me in the direction of the floating objective marker.

There were always complaints about the art direction in Frontiers and the way it relies on floating rails and prefab platforms that are visually disconnected from the natural scenery of the islands, but it's even more dire here. The new platforming sections are dense and complex, but they seemingly didn't have the budget to change the topography of Ouranos Island at all, so it all takes the form of these prefabs. It very strongly gives the vibe of a Forge creation in Halo 3, back when there were no blank canvas maps and people just had to make "new maps" by jamming a bunch of shipping containers and barricades together in the sky above one of the default arenas.

I was still more or less having fun, though, despite the jank. It's a big creative swing, I told myself! They're trying stuff out! They're experimenting!

And then I hit the towers.

The towers are agonizing because they're SO close to being great. The logical part of my brain understands why some people love them, but god, I just fucking hate them. The platforming there IS cool! These layouts are cool! The individual challenges along the way are a bit tough, but totally doable. You know what's not cool? Making one mistake and slowly falling 800 meters all the way back down to the ground, forcing you to start over. Because none of these towers have checkpoints. For me, this one decision transforms what should have been a fun set of platforming challenges into a massive, unfun difficulty spike.

I enjoy some masocore platformers, but those are typically games with quick deaths and restarts like Celeste, Super Meat Boy, or VVVVVV. Hell, the Mario games tend to get way more difficult than the average Sonic game, and those are obviously all great. Quite frankly, unlike those games, Sonic Frontiers is nowhere near tight or polished enough to make this difficulty feel fair. Bits of jank that I could ignore in the base game due to its lower difficulty are now matters of life or death. Missing a jump because I boosted off an incline in a way the game didn't like for reasons I don't understand is not fun. Falling off a tower because the camera was pointing in the wrong direction while I was in midair and I couldn't see the next thing I was expected to homing attack is not fun.

And it's such a jarring spike when moving from the base game to the DLC that it feels like the game is suddenly quizzing me on skills it never bothered to instill in me. Maybe if you've spent the last year labbing out the movement tech in this game this is all a no brainer, but for the average returning player it's a kick in the dick.

I'm sure I could've beaten these towers normally if I gave them enough tries. They aren't the hardest thing in the world. But I very quickly decided I had better things to do with my life and turned on easy mode, which adds tons of extra springs and homing attack balloons to make all of the platforming piss easy. I wish there was a middle option between Only Up: Sonic Edition and this extreme hand holding, but when given the choice between the two I gladly picked baby mode. I just wanted to see the story.

(The new Cyber Space levels are also long, challenging, and devoid of checkpoints, not unlike the towers. But I only ever found the entrances to two of them. So I only did two. They're theoretically required, because they give you "Lookout Koco" that you need for... some reason? But in a rare act of mercy, Sonic Team put Cyloop treasure spots that give you free Lookout Koco all over the map.)

As I continued, so many little things started adding up to piss me off. Why do you only reveal like five tiny squares of the map at a time? I would've loved to find all the new 1-on-1 dialogue scenes, but not if I had to do dozens of hard mode versions of the stupid little puzzles and challenges to reveal the whole map. Why does every character need their own unique collectibles? What is this, Donkey Kong 64? Why can't I just grab this EXP for Amy when I find it as Tails? Why can I only manually swap characters by talking to an out-of-the-way NPC unlocked right before the final boss? Why is fast travel disabled? Why are the new vocal themes you hear when playing as Amy, Knuckles, and Tails so monotonous, with a single verse repeating over lo-fi beats ad nauseum? Why is the jukebox feature completely disabled throughout the DLC, even after rolling the credits? Why can't Tails homing attack? Why do I have to wrestle with the camera so much while also holding the jump button to fly as Knuckles and Tails? How many right thumbs do they think I have? Why is this animation for picking up animals in the Cyber Space levels so incredibly slow, and why can I still take damage while it's playing? Why does the stupid starfall event have to make it so hard to see what I'm doing when climbing these towers? Why does this shitty combat trial have a popup that makes it seem like I should be using the Cyloop when the actual strategy revolves around repeated parries? And on and on and on...

The story

What about the new story? Well, there sadly isn't much to chew on here. Most of the DLC has the cast running around and finding different macguffins for arbitrary reasons, as part of some sort of plan to divide up the work on the last island so that Sonic can go train with the spirits of the Ancients and harness the power of his cyber corruption. What the fuck is an Impact Form? I don't know, but Knuckles needs something to do, so go find one.

It's a thin excuse plot meant to make you do platforming challenges around Ouranos Island, with little room for Ian to add any real flavor of his own, even though he certainly tries. Having Sonic meet the spirits of the Ancients who controlled the Titans, who are revealed to directly parallel the personalities of him and his friends, is kinda neat, I guess? It's something. The optional conversations seem to have some fun bits, including both conversations between the supporting cast and additional lore. But again, I only found a few of those because of how tedious filling out the map was.

The writing is also let down by the voice acting - or I guess the voice direction, because I know this cast can do better. Roger's voice continues to be weirdly, distractingly deep as Sonic, which was clearly something that was requested of him just for this game. (For a recent example of him going back to his regular Sonic voice, see this LEGO trailer.) The performances of Sonic's friends are also WILDLY mismatched. This is most clear when they start feeling the effects of the cyber corruption. Knuckles seems to be barely affected at all, Tails sounds like he's moderately hurt and low on energy, and Amy starts completely overselling her pain out of nowhere. The extremely strained performance makes it sound like Cindy's literally being tortured in the fucking booth. I have no idea what's going on over there.

The final challenges

People have debated whether or not things like the towers and the new Cyber Space levels are fair challenges. What's not up for debate is the fact that Master King Koco's Trial is complete and utter bullshit, and I can't believe they shipped this.

Before you can fight the new final boss, the game forces you to do a boss rush of the first three Titans - INCLUDING the pre-Super Sonic climbing sections - with a hard limit of 400 rings. For all three lengthy, heavily scripted fights. Back to back. You can't even cheese it with the leveling system, because you're forced to do this at level 1. This all but forces you to look up speedrun strats for the Super Sonic fights so that you don't run out of rings and fail the trial.

And the real kicker? They changed the parry just for this trial! Originally, you could just hold down the bumpers endlessly and Sonic would ready himself to parry the next attack, whenever that may hit. Now it requires you to do a "Perfect Parry" with specific timing. And you HAVE to hit those parries if you wanna clear this trial and get to the new ending. Miss a few and you're probably fucked. You just have to reset. Time to go through all those fights, all those climbing sequences, all those QTEs, and all those unskippable mid-fight cutscenes all over again. This is by far the most egregious example of the DLC deciding to quiz you on new skills that the base game never required of you, and it's one of the most absurdly unfair things I have ever seen in a Sonic game.

Easy mode does make this trial easier by making the timing window for Perfect Parries much more generous, but that's all the help you get. It's still easy to lose time failing to parry Wyvern's hard-to-read animations, or to lose rings by getting hit on the climb sections, or for things to just fuck up because these fights were always kinda jank. I gave it a few shots. I looked up guide videos. I tried the Quick Cyloop and stomp combo strat that seems all but mandatory. But I quickly decided that, again, this wasn't a worthwhile use of my time. It just sucks. And I really, REALLY didn't want to overwrite all my fond memories of these Titan fights, some of my favorite setpiece moments in any Sonic game, with memories of this shit ass boss rush.

So I cheated! And if you're on PC, you should too.

With the worst hurdle out of the way, I turned cheats back off and moved on to the new final boss. It was pretty cool. It's much flashier than the original fight against The End, that's for sure. It's still kinda annoying, and it requires you to do very specific shit without properly telegraphing it, but it's nowhere near as bad as the preceding challenges. I was hoping for one last new metalcore song to go with the new fight, which we sadly didn't get, but at least the new version of I'm Here is good.

The ending is... mostly the same, with a couple altered scenes that don't really change anything in the long run. But overall the new finale was pretty good. I just wish it hadn't been such a slog to get there.

Closing thoughts

Sonic Frontiers: The Final Horizon wants to be three things:

A patch that adds a new alternate ending that was probably supposed to be in the base game in the first place.

An experimental take on making Tails, Knuckles, and Amy playable again, presumably testing things for the next game. And...

An official Kaizo Sonic Frontiers mod for the sickos.

The thing is, the people showing up for #1 and #2, the main things that Sega hyped up about the update, are not necessarily going to be down for #3. If they had announced some uber-hard new Cyber Space levels for the arcade mode or whatever, I'd be like, neat! And then not play them. I would never touch Master King Koco's Trial if it was an optional challenge. I would leave that for the sickos. But instead, they made the hardest content mandatory for anyone who wants to see the new Good Ending where the final boss gets an actual budget.

I'm mostly left in a state of shock that it shipped like this. I cannot believe they playtested this and decided this was the state The Final Horizon should be released in. That this should be the note Frontiers ends on. That this should be how we remember those Titan fights. That this should be the lingering taste in our mouths as we wait however many years for the next 3D game.

Armchair devs always love to say that things would be "easy to fix," but like... there really would be easy fixes for the insane difficulty and general tedium here! Add a few more tutorial popups explaining what the game expects of you with Sonic's friends. Give the Cyber Space stages and the towers a couple checkpoints. Give the combat trials more generous time limits, especially on the lower difficulties. Remove half of the map puzzles, and make the ones that remain uncover twice as many squares. Skip the startup animation for Knuckles' glide. Let me turn on the goddamn jukebox. Since so much of this update was designed around fan feedback, I can only pray that Sonic Team is still listening, and that they tweak at least a few of these things with a balance patch.

But still, after those many, many paragraphs of complaining... this still somehow makes the future of 3D Sonic seem pretty promising?

Sonic's friends are FINALLY playable again, and the focus is back to proper 3D platforming, rather than railroading players into awkward forced 2D sections in what's otherwise an open world. These are the things that they hopefully want to carry over to the next game. The difficulty? Well, that's just because it's the postgame DLC that's supposed to be the toughest challenge in the game. It's just an unreasonably cruel one of those - an example of how designing and balancing for a vocal minority of your fanbase can really hurt your game. But Sonic Team is onto something here, and I hope that they can learn the right lessons from this expansion and not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

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shady-tavern · 5 months

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Missing Piece

@piperjistic had asked for a forest spirit and while this isn't fully in line with your request, I still hope you'll like it!

Minor warnings ahead for non-graphic violence and a wee bit of body-horror towards the end, though it doesn't happen to the main character. Please be sure to take care of yourself!

*.*.*

For as long as the little girl could remember, it felt like something was missing within her. She could never put a finger on it, but it made her a restless child, picking up and discarding games, struggling with consistently staying interested and some days she just felt very strange.

Like that one stained glass window she had seen when her parents had taken her to a nearby city. All disjointed fragments that still managed to be a picture, but it would never be one entire piece.

The stained glass window at least had been pretty compared to the ugly feeling within her.

"Have you ever felt like something is missing inside you?" she asked her grandma, who came to pick her up many a day while her parents worked.

Things were strange between Gran and her parents, she never talked to them and they never talked to her and she never set foot onto their garden, preferring to wait for the little girl at the gate by the little dirt road.

Gran stilled and when the little girl glanced up at her, her face had gone dark and grim and for the first time in the girl's life, her beloved grandma, a joyful soul who loved her with all her heart, looked just a little bit frightening.

But her hand around the girl's remained gentle and the older woman kept walking at a sedate pace so her short little legs didn't struggle with keeping up.

Everyone always said to the girl that she would grow to be bigger and she couldn't wait for that day to arrive. Gran was silent for so long that the girl thought she was never going to answer.

"You best ask your parents about that," Gran said at last, voice quiet and heavy with something unspoken. Strangely, her voice reminded the girl of a draft horse she had seen, who had been forced to pull a too heavy burden, body straining as it slowly and laboriously set one hoof in front of the other.

"Alright," the girl answered and grinned up at her grandmother, hoping to break up the awful mood her innocent little question had created. "Can we make blueberry cake today?"

Gran smiled and it was like the sun returning after a dark, scary storm, her face brightening and looking as kind and loving as ever. "Of course, little chestnut." She leaned in, voice dipping into a conspiratorial stage whisper, "My wife picked an entire basket just this morning."

The little girl giggled and soon the two of them reached the end of the village, all talk about missing pieces and resulting, scary expressions forgotten. The blueberry cake was delicious and maybe a bit messy since the girl had tried to help a bit too enthusiastically and the cute little apron Gran had made for her was stained with purple-blue juice on one corner.

Gran's wife, Tanya, arrived just as they had taken the first bite of a still warm slice of cake.

"You baked without me?" she gasped in a mock scandalized voice. "Oh, the betrayal, how it stings!" She dramatically fell onto the kitchen table and the little girl laughed when the two older women broke out into a full blown performance just to ensure she kept laughing.

Gran brought her back home just as the sun set and a strong, steady wind blew in from the forest, bringing with it the smell of spring moss and damp, cool earth.

"If you ever meet any magical beings, be wary," Gran said as she stopped in front of the gate that creaked noisily as soon as it was two thirds of the way open.

She looked down at the girl, her face serious. "One day you might and if you do, they will offer you deals and nothing good ever comes from accepting their offers. They will only bring ruin in exchange for empty promises."

As solemnly as the little girl could, she offered her little pinky. "I promise to be careful," she said and a shadow of a smile crossed Gran's face as they hooked their pinkies around each other gently.

Gran leaned down to kiss the top of her head before she left with a glance towards the house and the girl briefly glanced towards the forest. It was an old forest, not quite as ancient as in other places, but surrounded by plenty of stories and mysteries.

The girl had heard rumors about creatures living in the woods, of magic being alive in ways the mages in the big cities could never hope to replicate. She decided to be very careful whenever she went into the woods to pick berries and mushrooms. She had promised, after all.

She entered her parents' house, neatly putting her boots beside her mother's and when she looked up at her parents, the question tumbled forth without much thought, "Why do I feel like I'm missing something?"

Her mother, who was currently carving leather, stilled so thoroughly she might as well have turned to stone. Her father, in the process of cooking, seemed to freeze in place, the stirring of his ladle abruptly falling silent.

"You're still growing," her mother answered at last, voice quiet and her gaze on her work. "It will pass in given time."

The little girl stared at her, startled silent and with increasing heartbreak as the seconds passed, for she had just learned what her mother sounded like when she lied.

*.*.*

The conversation with her parents stayed with the girl as the months and years passed and she never asked again. Gran said nothing either, but every time she picked the girl up, she now glared at the house.

Gran knew, the girl realized, but either couldn't say why she felt wrong or she didn't want to tell her.

Though, knowing her Gran, she probably couldn't for some reason. Gran had been born a rebel and she said she would die one, encouraging all of the little girl's bad habits, as her parents called them, with no remorse.

"This world will chew you up and spit you out, if you let it," Gran told her when she picked her up from school, her hand warm and gentle. "So don't be afraid to bare your teeth, little chestnut. Stand up for what you believe is right, that is the only way to slowly but surely kill off all things vile and dark."

The girl wasn't sure she entirely understood, but she nodded seriously anyway. Gran always told her everything no one else wanted to, blunt and direct without scaring her or hurting her feelings.

Gran felt strong, like a rushing river that wore down even the largest, toughest of boulders. The girl hoped she could be like her one day.

It was her Gran's teachings that got her in and out of trouble over the years and her words guided the girl into understanding when something was wrong. And how important it was to do something when she discovered evil.

As the village turned into a cute little town and more and more people moved in, drawing towards a hopeful future by their fertile lands and abundant forest, the girl had grown into a headstrong young woman.

Not once, in all that time, had she shaken off the feeling like she was lacking something. Like something was missing that should be there.

Her parents could no longer deny that something was wrong and their increasingly guilty and troubled looks said it all. It showed in the woman's life, that something within her was gone. As soon as someone looked into the little house she had moved into, they saw that no project was ever finished, every hobby dropped just after she had gained a modicum of skill in it.

She bounced from job to job, working for whoever hired her, before losing that job again, sometimes by leaving, sometimes by more talented, more passionate people coming along.

It was that restlessness that caused her to drift far enough from the town, the feeling of wrongness seemingly guiding her step, to cross paths with what she first thought was a traveling kind of circus.

There was a man leading the entire caravan of wagons, pale and primly dressed, clearly a mage considering his robes and pompous behavior as he hailed her down.

"We are no circus, young lady," he said when she asked about his business, but his eyes were cold and his smile about as pleasant as holding a palm full of slugs. "I am Master Egam and this is my curious collection. I intend to thoroughly impress the local lords."

He made a sweeping gesture at the wagons and she peered past him, at covered cages and grim looking soldiers.

Her gaze almost immediately fell back to the mage, however, and something ugly writhed within her chest. She couldn't put a finger on what it was, but it felt like sharp, uneven edges pressed against her ribs from within, accentuating the feeling of wrongness.

"Now, which way to the nearest town? It's growing rather late," Master Egam said, his smile wide and winning and yet it caused something cold to drip down her spine. There was a sudden taste of wet iron and rotting earth on her tongue.

It took her a moment to realize why, for she had never experienced anything like it. He had put magic into his words and it filled her mouth with a nasty taste. "This way, about a mile or so."

"Why don't you guide us?" he asked, patting the coach beside him. When she hesitated and saw a flash of curious danger in his eyes, she offered a bland smile.

"Thank you," she said, climbing up to join him, careful to keep some distance between them.

He stared at her for a moment and she resisted the urge to shift uncomfortably. "You seem strangely...familiar," he mused after a moment. "Have I met you before? Or family of yours?" When she looked genuinely surprised, he shook his head. "Right, that is very unlikely. Then again, you country bumpkins all look the same to me."

She was desperate to distract him from her, which was thankfully easy enough to accomplish. All it took was a question about his exploits and soon he regaled her with all the horrifying details. Of the creatures he captured, the magic he had soaked up from them, the power he carried at his fingertips.

He was bragging, yes, but she could tell that every word was the truth. That he had chained a vampire into enduring sunlight at his leisure, that he had plucked all the feathers of a harpy to parade her around naked and that he had a griffin eating out of his hand for his amusement.

That he had caught one the most dangerous beings of all, a forest spirit.

She was deeply relieved when her hometown came into view and then she got to see the effects of his magic first hand. His voice seemed to be made of gold, for all he had to do was speak and people immediately rushed to obey, star-struck expressions and delighted, downright smitten smiles appearing on their faces.

She inched away from Master Egam and ended up by one of the wagons instead. Unable to resist, she tugged a corner of the covering up and peered inside.

Green eyes that shimmered like all the shades of plant life in the forest met hers and broken antlers rose from red and gold hair that tumbled down in long, thick waves. The forest spirit, she realized as she stared at him, wide eyed, his face sun-kissed and freckled and even chained down as he was she could see his innate power and grace.

The broken antlers disappeared, swiftly replaced by wolf ears as he now bared vicious fangs at her, wicked claws scraping over the iron lining the bottom of his cage as he growled.

"Careful with that one," Master Egam's voice made her jump and drop the tarp. "He's the most dangerous one I ever caught. A nasty piece of work."

"Why do you catch them?" she found herself asking and as she looked up at him, she already knew the answer before he opened his mouth.

"Because I can," he said, his smile as empty as his eyes were cruel. "Because the wild powers in this world need to know that they can and will be tamed. Now run along and don't tell anyone about this."

His magic was iron-rot on her tongue as she nodded, hastily pasting a smile on her face. It felt like fleeing as she turned and hurried away, her heart racing in her chest and the ugly, vile feeling that had scraped around her ribcage finally lessened.

The wrongness within her was as present as ever, a constant companion of subtle misery that dodged her steps, silent only whenever she found joy in things. Joy that was taken from her by its steady, suffocating grip sooner or later.

As soon as she was home, she began to pace, her mind whirring. She had to do something and whatever magic Master Egam possessed, she was somehow immune against it. She might be the only one who could think clearly around him.

Taking a deep breath, she forced herself to calm. Master Egam was dangerous and she was just a magic-less young woman who was all wrong inside. If she wasn't careful, she wouldn't have to worry about what was missing for much longer.

It wasn't hard, in the end, to find out that Master Egam was staying in the mayor's house, that he had tossed him and his family out and now treated the most lavish place as his. The mayor and his wife and two children seemed dazed but they didn't question what was being done to them, they just went to stay with their extended family.

The wagons were kept by the mayor's house, blocking most of the street and guarded by the soldiers, which were armed and armored.

She watched them as the last sunlight faded, thinking. Beyond the window she could see the mage and people came to his home, bringing downright decadent food with loving smiles and hazy eyes, leaving again empty handed.

An idea began to take form. A foolish one, most certainly, but it was likely her best chance. While Master Egam was busy feasting and ordering people around, most likely fancying himself a king among peasants, he would be distracted.

On second thought, he was most likely not traveling to impress lords, but to work his way up to becoming the actual king of these lands. Maybe even an emperor, holding court among captured creatures and his magic charming everyone into blind obedience.

So she joined a group of townsfolk who came with carefully made little cakes and desserts and they barely acknowledged her. The soldiers didn't even looked at them, most likely long used to this song and dance.

It was less easy to go unnoticed by Master Egam, but the man was easily distracted by the new offerings, already a good way through half the food he had been given.

No human should have been able to consume so much without bursting, she thought and she wondered if this was the price of his magic. That he not only could eat far too much, but had to.

"Bring this to the beasties," he said, gesturing at a little bucket of bones and food scraps and the young woman took a decisive step towards it, keeping her head down as she grabbed the bucket, stepping outside without being stopped. Her mouth was filled with the taste of iron-rot.

The soldiers didn't pay her any heed now either. They looked bored and hungry as they watched another plate of food being brought in, but they said nothing. She wondered if they could even if they wanted to. If they were similarly charmed as anyone else.

"I need to feed them," she said politely to the nearest soldier, who moved woodenly to stare at her with a slightly hazy gaze. Ah, that answered her question. "I need the key, please. Master Egam's orders."

He handed the key over, because why wouldn't he? When everyone was always so fully under the mage's control, there was no reason to doubt. She went to the forest spirit's cage first, ignoring his low growl as she pushed the tarp up and began to look for the lock.

He fell silent as soon as she slipped the key into it and opened the door.

"I'll get you out," she whispered and his head tipped to the side, his wolf ears flicking as he considered her. And then, ever so slowly without removing those intense eyes from her, he tipped his head back, baring his collared throat.

She crawled into the cage, making sure to pull the door almost-closed behind her, the tarp falling down and leaving her in murky darkness with only her slightly fast breathing and pounding heart. She slowly inched forward, patting the ground, until clawed fingers carefully closed around her hand, guiding it up.

The collar had no lock and she stilled, her heart leaping in her chest. What was she supposed to do now?

"Bleed," the forest spirit said, voice such a horrible rasp that she was half convinced his throat was full of glass shards. "Willing offer."

She wasn't even thinking when she reached out with her free hand, gripping his fingers and pressing her palm against his claws. She felt him jerk in surprise, but the pain was already blooming, blood running down her hand in a hot line. She reached out to press her hand to his collar, smearing as much of her blood on it as possible and the next second the collar clicked open, crashing to the floor with a rattle of chains.

The forest spirit inhaled sharply and then she felt his hands touch her shoulder, careful and helping her shuffle a bit to the side. Freeing the path to the cage door, she realized

"Free the others, please," he whispered, his voice no longer sounding like he was gargling gravel, but instead charming and lovely-sweet. Her mouth was filled with the faint taste of meadow-flowers and cool spring water.

Then he was out of the cage and she scrambled to follow him, catching the door before it could slam shut.

The guards were lying on the ground and she saw the forest spirit springing past the last one he had taking down, vaulting over a confused man with a tart and heading straight into the house, face snarling in rage.

The next cage held the plucked harpy, who hissed a high-pitched shriek at her, but fell similarly silent when the door to the cage was unlocked.

Her collar too opened with blood and then the harpy was out, her feathers re-growing with a burst of magic that was almost painful with its relief. She took flight immediately, though she clearly struggled as she escaped, as did the griffin the young woman freed.

The vampire slunk out of his cage with a look of wild hunger and gratitude before he was gone between one moment and the next. Just in time for all the windows in the house to shatter outward in a massive wave of pressure, the forest spirit crashing to the ground, wheezing and covered in blood.

The young woman was at his side in no time and as she gripped him and saw him in the light of the street lanterns without the distractions of his eyes, she realized just how thin he was. How his limbs shook as he struggled to his feet.

He stumbled, eyes going wide when she dragged him with her, just in time to round the corner before Master Egam came out of the house with magic whipping around him, a howl of rage filling the night as he found all his cages empty, his guards unconscious – or perhaps dead – on the ground.

"What are you doing," the forest spirit hissed, but he seemed unable to free himself from her grip, which told her everything she needed to know. She wasn't weak by any means, but she got the impression that he should be far stronger than she.

"Saving you," she hissed back. "You're in no condition to fight!"

"Return them to me!" she heard Master Egam's voice boom behind her, so loud and rattling it filled the entire town, making people cower and stumble, their gazes going hazy. "And find me the one who did this!"

Her mouth was filled with the taste of iron-rot to the point where she had to gag, but she managed to push on, reaching the little house she had moved into after she could no longer stand the guilty silence of her parents. The moment they were through the door, the forest spirit collapsed to the floor, breathing hard, sweating and bleeding.

"His magic," he said as he stared up at her with wide, bright green eyes that she knew she could get lost in if she allowed it. "It doesn't work on you. Why?"

"No idea," she murmured back. "Come, we have to hide you."

She had managed to empty out a large storage chest and squeezed him inside despite his protest just in time for her neighbors to come knocking.

"No one is here, I came looking," she said, heart pounding and blood still dripping from her hand as she gestured at the hastily strewn about contents of her chest. "I made sure they weren't hiding."

"Come help search," her neighbors murmured, gazes hazy and she followed them outside, hoping that the spirit stayed where he was, that he wouldn't be found.

She searched with the others until they were all ready to collapse and only then did Master Egam order them to rest with such fury that the cobblestone cracked around him. He had long since roused his guards – most of which were still alive – and had sent them out to the forest to capture those that had run for the woods.

"They can't go far," she heard him mutter to himself as he turned around to head back into the house. "Not with the state I left them all in."

He wasn't wrong.

When the young woman returned home, she found the forest spirit still in the storage chest, asleep and looking utterly exhausted. She dropped into her bed and slept until hunger forced her awake.

The smell of cooking food woke the spirit as well and she stared in astonished surprise as he ate at an alarmingly fast rate. Half her pantry was gone by the time he curled up in front of the hearth and went straight back to sleep. She dropped a thick blanket on him and arranged pillows to hide him from the outside and sat down, thinking.

Master Egam was powerful and she had no idea if she could hide the spirit until he regained his strength, especially if he needed that much food every day. And even then there was no guarantee that he'd be powerful enough to defeat the mage. But, she reasoned, he might be able to escape, which was just as good in her opinion.

She dozed off and woke feeling warm, blinking blearily to realize the blanket was now draped over her, the pillows carefully arranged to leave her in a little nest. Only the floor beneath her was a little hard. Peering around, alarm searing through her, worrying that something had happened, she relaxed as soon as she saw the spirit.

He stood with his back to her, looking at all the half finished projects she had lying around, not having the heart to put them away, even though she already knew she'd never finish them. That this was it and her love for a new hobby she had found was instead curdling into quiet, miserable grief.

"Thank you," he said before turning towards her. He already looked far better than yesterday, less gaunt and shaky on his feet. His injuries were gone as well, leaving only a somewhat tattered, stained shirt and worn, knee-length pants over hale and whole skin behind.

He tipped his head and the way the light of a lit candle reflected in his eyes reminded her of the way animal eyes would look when a lantern swept past them in the dark. "What do you want in return for your help?"

She paused after sitting up, then shrugged. "I don't want anything." Gran had been very firm about deals with magic creatures, that they brought ruin more often than not, her voice harsh and bitter as she had said it. As if there was more to her words than mere warnings.

Besides, the young woman had grown up on stories about daring knights, wise mages and courageous princesses and princes. She had always wanted to be like them, to do good with her own two hands whenever possible. Had secretly dreamed about one day saving someone as she had grown up.

It had been far more scary and harrowing than in her imagination, but she'd do it all over again in a heartbeat.

"You want nothing," the spirit repeated, sounding like he didn't believe her. "Everyone wants something, help is never freely given. Especially not from my kind and especially not when you saved my life. Do not take that kind of thing lightly."

"All I want is for you to be safe," she said. "Don't get hurt again, promise me that."

The forest spirit inhaled sharply, pupils blowing wide until only a small ring of green remained and she felt a warm shiver go through the air. Like something powerful had just exhaled a blessing.

He said nothing for a long moment, before he dipped his head, suddenly looking regal as the wolf ears melted away and antlers appeared that looked far more intact than last night. "Very well."

He joined her by the hearth, dropping down to one knee and offered his hand. "Let me see your wound."

She held out her hand and felt a tingle of magic, could taste soft, gentle meadow flowers and refreshing water as relief took away the lingering pain. Her palm was unmarred, not even a scar remaining.

"You have no idea what you just gave me, do you?" he asked quietly when she looked at him, his gaze so very captivating it looked like the entirety of the forest had gathered in his eyes.

She offered a small, crooked smile. "I've never been around magic," she said, all too aware that he was still holding her hand, skin warm like sunshine. "You can hide here until you've recovered."

He tipped his head to the side. "You would welcome me even now, knowing who is looking for me?"

"You're safe here," she answered. "He can't charm me and you need time to recover. Just make sure no one sees you."

"What do you desire for your help in return?" he asked. "And don't say nothing again."

She thought of the wrongness within her and wondered if magic could fix it. Then she remembered Gran's warnings about deals and ruin and bit back a sigh.

"I'll think about something," she said, though she didn't intend to. Once the spirit was strong enough, he would either fight or leave, but either way she doubted she would ever see him again.

He didn't look happy about that, but accepted her answer graciously enough. Getting to her feet, the young woman waved him with her to the kitchen corner. If he was eating her out of house and home he could help her cook.

When it became clear he was actually the better cook, since she hadn't been able to learn too much before her wrongness had kicked in, she happily left him to it and grabbed her money, sneaking out.

The entire town was walking around in a strange sort of haze, half of them still searching and the other half catering to the mage.

She saw people bring more food to the mayor's house, along with other things. Jewels and prized possessions, feathers the harpy had and griffin had lost and one or two held squeaking bats in their gloved hands, as though hoping they might be the escaped vampire.

No one looked twice at her when she bought as much food as she could at the market and she bit back bitter worry when she saw Gran and Granny Tanya bring blueberry cake to the mage with happy smiles.

Only her parents didn't seem to be out and about. Strange.

She brought the food back home and the forest spirit noticeably relaxed once she was back, thanking her quietly before falling quiet again. The young woman, however, could only stand the silence for so long before she began to ask questions.

Before long she knew that the forest spirit had gotten captured in his sleep, that his home was to the north and that he could sense the power of the nearby forest.

They both fell asleep in front of the hearth and by the second day, the young woman dragged her bedding out into the living room and made a proper place to rest for the two of them.

The forest spirit was in a better mood today and she realized that under all the tense grimness he was rather playful and enjoyed teasing and, most of all, making her laugh. She noticed as the days passed how he regained his strength, the gauntness disappearing faster than it would have for a regular person.

They kept busy in the small house in different ways. She watched him finish some of her craft projects and taught him to dance, he conjured sprigs of flowers for them to 'pretty up the place with' as he said and he let her brush out and braid his hair after long baths, the bath water never cooling until they were well and truly done.

Every night they curled up on the hearth together and it was then, as he looked at her, hair a healthy, shining red and gold and fox ears perked to listen better, that the truth spilled out.

How wrong inside she felt and he frowned at her in what she recognized as worry.

"May I?" he asked, holding out his hand and she put hers into his without a moment's hesitation. His face went soft and gentle in a way that ached somewhere around her tender heart as he held her hand with care.

Then he closed her eyes and she could taste meadow flowers and cold water and his frown deepened.

"I - you must talk to your parents," he said and as soon as the words were out, his head reared back a bit, ears pinning flat to his head as he blinked, looking startled and irritated. "Oh, how nasty."

She stared at him, wide-eyed and for the first time got the feeling that something was very, very wrong in a different way than she had thought.

"I'll go now," she whispered and he nodded, giving her hand an encouraging squeeze before she got to her feet.

Her parents looked worried and tense when they opened the door, relaxing a bit when they saw it was her, only for the tension to snap back into their frames. She realized immediately that they knew why she was here.

That there was a reason why she and they alone weren't slaves to the magic-charm of a mad mage. That they did know why she felt like a piece was missing.

"What's wrong with me?" she asked, sharp and hard in a way she had never spoken with them and they stepped aside to let her in.

They stood around the living room awkwardly until her father broke first, guilty and defensive and shoulders hunched, the silence around them heavy and thick and oppressive like summer heat without a cooling breeze.

"We didn't know," he said, almost pleading as he looked at his daughter. "When we met that...that man on our travels. We didn't know."

Something hot was wrapping around her heart and throat and a bad feeling unfolded in her gut, wriggling to get comfortable like a cat in a beam of sunlight. "Tell me the truth. Now. You owe me that much at least."

"We asked for a good life," her mother whispered, staring down at the ground, arms wrapped around herself and her head bent, shoulders tense. "We asked for nothing unreasonable, because being greedy only curses you. We asked for a good, warm, house, for enough money to buy what we desired until our deaths and to lead healthy, long and safe lives. We wanted the sort of fortune that would ensure we would have everything we desired until the day we died."

The heaviness in the air seemed to press down harder, like a thick blanket over sticky, sweaty skin, trapping heat and impossible to shake, no matter how desperately she wanted to get rid of it.

"What was the price?" the young woman asked, her tongue almost numb in her mouth. Though, she already knew. Could feel it in the marrow of her bones, could feel it in the stained glass shape of her soul, all disjointed and wrong and missing missing missing. Always missing something.

"You were but a babe," her father answered before she could ask again. "We didn't think...when he asked for a piece of you, something that wouldn't hurt you if he took it, we thought, well, if you grew up without it...you wouldn't know what you were missing."

Her heart shouldn't break, she thought, as pain and anger and grief greedily dug into her chest and belly. It shouldn't break when she didn't even feel all that surprised to hear what they were saying.

She thought of her life filled with things she couldn't finish, couldn't dedicate herself to no matter how deeply she loved, like her hands were too restless, desperately trying to find something to fill the void within her. All the friendships she had lost over the years, the disappointed people she had worked with and most of all, how miserable she had been.

She thought about feeling wrong and disjointed and like a stained glass window made by a clumsy apprentice and with the intent to make other people whisper and point and laugh instead of impressing them.

Weird, strange, not-fitting-in. Wrong.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, had sung through her veins for as long as she could remember and she had walked through life feeling like a part of her was gone, but unable to voice it. Unable to even name what was missing.

Thinking that, maybe, this was just her lot in life. That nothing could be done about it and she had tried to do her best with the hand she had been dealt by fate.

And all this time, her parents had just...traded that part of her away. For small comforts. For a future they could have made themselves with their own hands had they cared to try. For a life bartered and paid for by someone else, so they wouldn't have to shoulder the burden.

And then they had lied to her about it, had left her thinking that nothing could be done to make her feel better. That this was normal.

"Who?" she asked numbly and she blinked, realizing she was halfway to the door. When she looked at her parents, hot, angry hatred crawled up her throat like a wave of lava at seeing their wounded, self-pitying faces. "Who did you allow to hurt me?"

"Master Egam," her father whispered, his voice barely audible in the heavy, suffocating silence. "We can't let him see us or he might remember."

She was out the door before he could finish speaking, heart breaking and racing and she wasn't surprised at all, even though she thought she should be. So that was why his magic wasn't working on her – and her parents, if part of their deal was to remain healthy and unharmed at all times. Just what had Egam taken from her to make a deal that protected them no matter what?

She didn't remember the path home, but the moment the door fell closed behind her, she looked at the forest spirit and all the breath rushed back into her lungs. He was waiting with a plate of cookies he had baked that afternoon and his gaze was so gentle and understanding it made the wounded part of her tremble.

He opened his arms, a silent invitation and for a moment there was so much awful anguish in her, she didn't know what to do. Had no idea how to react if someone touched her, if it would drain the pain and anger or make it spill over, ugly and messy and raw. Like a wound that had had years and years and years to grow until it had spread and festered.

Then she moved and let him catch her and cradle her close as she broke down, crying as bitterly and hard as she had never cried before. He held her tightly as she shook apart, her head tucked under his chin and she cried and cried until she felt empty inside. Empty and wrong.

"They gave a piece of me to Egam," she whispered, voice thick and scratchy and he stilled. She tightened her grip on the shirt she had gotten him during one of her trips to the market, where food had started to grow scarce. "In exchange for a good, comfortable life."

He cupped the back of her head and kept holding her, offering no empty platitudes and no 'I'm sorry's, for which she was grateful. She didn't want sorrys. She was...she was too damn fucking furious for that, she realized, now that the pain had momentarily drained away.

"I want it back," she said, biting the words out like they were bones snapping between her teeth. "I want it back and I want this monster gone."

He hugged her tighter and she felt his smile press against her temple, sharp and dangerous and fanged and not the least bit afraid of her rage. Not the least bit judgmental the way others had reacted to her anger over the years.

"Let's shred him," he whispered against her hair, soft lips brushing forehead. "Let's get back what he stole from us."

*.*.*

It hadn't taken too long to prepare. The forest spirit had recovered fully and there wasn't anything in town that could help them against a mage, but in the end, they didn't need much anyway.

They didn't need fancy things or mage slayers. Not when the mage in question would give them the weapons they needed, born out of his own greed and hubris.

Born out of a deal he had made with her parents and Gran really was right, deals only ever brought ruin. Because she and the part Egam had taken from her were about to become his.

The forest spirit gave her hand a squeeze and they exchanged one more look as they got ready behind her house, his eyes fierce and so trusting it briefly stole her breath away.

"When this is over, travel with me," he said, out of nowhere. "I want to show you my home. The brooks and meadows and mountains and lake."

She smiled back, a warmth that had nothing to do with the burning rage spreading through her, smoothing down her edges and settling around her heart like a protective blanket.

"Gladly," she answered quietly, then her smile turned a bit crooked. "What, you aren't going to ask for anything in exchange, leaf boy?"

He laughed softly and leaned down to press a kiss to the top of her head. "You're too precious for deals," he said quietly and she could taste his magic, sweet and cool and it almost brought tears to her eyes, though she couldn't quite say why.

"Let's go," she said instead and he reached up to gather his hair, pulling it aside to allow her to put the pilfered chain from the wagon around his neck. They had scratched out all the symbols on the inside of the iron, destroying the enchantment that would block his magic.

With a bit of glue it would stay shut for now and he caught her hands, pressing a kiss to her knuckles until they stopped shaking. They both took a deep breath and stepped onto the street, a glamor settling over his skin, making him look gaunt and injured once more. He limped, casting her one last wink before people noticed them.

The townsfolk paid attention to her for the first time in nearly a month as she went to the mage's house. Word must have traveled ahead, for Master Egam was already awaiting them and the mayor's house was saturated with iron-rot. She could see a few hints here and there of the chaos that must've reigned before he had gotten things cleaned up to welcome them, sitting on a padded chair like it was a throne.

"Bring him to me, girl," he said, beckoning and his smile benevolent and his eyes glittering like cold glass shards. His hunger was deep enough to cut and she bit back a shiver at the disgust that crept beneath her skin the closer she came to him.

"My prized possession," Egam murmured, already ignoring her and his magic grew thicker in the air, almost making her gag. The forest spirit pretended to fight, snarling as he was dragged forward, looking like he was too weak to resist. "And you put him back in his proper attire too, good girl."

He absentmindedly patted her on the head and she made herself smile at him, empty and dazzled, like the other townsfolk, swallowing down bile. The spirit had told her that Egam had stolen a piece of his magic too, forcefully instead of willingly, but it was in his hands all the same.

It was time to get back what belonged to them.

She handed over the chain, his gaze on the forest spirit like he wanted to devour him whole. Like the monsters and villains in her stories growing up, greedy and cruel and insatiable.

Egam moved past her, already discarding her as unimportant. As under his control. As just another 'country bumpkin'. He was the powerful mage after all and, as he had said, he already had one of the most powerful beings under his control.

A powerless girl might as well be dirt under his boots.

That was the exact reason he didn't see her nick her hand on a small knife hidden in her pocket. Why he didn't see her smile at the forest spirit over his shoulder before reaching out.

He didn't look at her and therefore couldn't react in time when she stepped to his side and reached up, pressing her bloody hand over his heart at the same time that the forest spirit lunged forward.

The mage did react, aiming his magic at the bigger, perceived threat, like they had suspected. And just like they had hoped, his magic slid off of the forest spirit harmlessly, for when the young woman had saved his life and he had offered her compensation of the same magnitude, she had asked for him to be safe.

The forest spirit was unhindered, pressing bloody palms to the mage's chest, right over his heart, sharp, sharp teeth bared and he snarled, "I undo the deal."

"I undo the deal," she spoke simultaneously with him, the words the forest spirit had taught her, steady and patient as each one was nothing but pain in her throat. Because she wasn't supposed to say those words, but then again, parents weren't supposed to give away what didn't belong to them either, so she had a right to this.

A right to undo what had been done to her, as long as she could get through the pain that tried to keep her from speaking. Pain that was worse than any wrongness had ever been, any loneliness and pain and grief and self-loathing for not being like all the other people.

For never getting to keep doing the things she loved, forever searching for something she hadn't known she'd have to buy back with blood and pain.

It was the worst pain she had ever endured, but it wasn't stronger than the rage in her veins, the taste of iron-rot on her tongue and the sun-warm hand that took her free, unharmed one, grounding and strong. The look of startled anger on the mage's face swiftly morphing into fear was everything in this moment.

"I undo the deal made made without my voice, without my consent, without my agreement. I undo it as it was made, in pain and blood and betrayal," they spoke in perfect unison, their only chance to both get back what had been taken from them.

Their only chance to catch him so by surprise that he did feel betrayed, that he was as helpless as they had been, asleep and a babe respectively.

The moment the last word left her mouth, a sudden relief gripped her throat, releasing the burning agony that had torn through it and at the same time, she felt something warm and big spread through her chest.

The wrongness disappeared in an instant, the feeling of missing turning into wholeness so filling and great she almost stumbled back, her skin tingling and euphoria singing through her so brightly she had to sob. Because that wasn't just a missing piece, a sliver of soul that he had taken and that was now returned to her.

Magic, he had taken magic from her. It glittered like stars in the dark in her veins, spilled through her mind like bright sunlight on shimmering waves and wrapped around her with a desperation like it had longed to return to her as relentlessly as she had wanted it to return to her.

Egam was screaming as he stumbled back and they let him, watched him trip and spill to the ground as he writhed, clawing at his chest where blood smeared, hot and red and the forest spirit gripped her hand tighter.

His magic was heavy in the air, making her taste rivers and entire fields full of flowers and even from the corner of her eye she could see how much more vibrant he was now, the glamor dropped. Captivating and downright otherworldly, beautiful and mesmerizing.

"What have you done!" Egam shrieked but his words no longer tasted of iron-rot in the air and she blinked, realizing the power of his voice had been stolen from someone else. As she watched him seemingly shrink down, magic leaving him, her breath caught.

Oh. Her magic had been the first he had stolen. Her magic was what had bolstered all of his and now that it was gone, everything he was unraveled until it left behind a pitiful little man, with eyes so mean and cruel he should belong in a story, not in real life.

"I promised you I would be your end," the forest spirit said and his voice was filled with magic. The sort of magic that had previously been used by Egam to charm everyone. "I think your hunger and greed are better suited in a different shape and form. In something that grows, don't you?"

And Egam tried to scramble to his feet and run, but the magic of the forest spirit was so thick in the air it her own magic sing in return, bright and sparking and the fury was still a living, roiling wave of heat within her. She reached out without much thought, letting her magic wrap around the forest spirit's, who threw his head back and laughed.

He laughed as Egam screamed in a pitch no human throat should be capable of. He laughed as the screams cut off and branches broke out of his back, his skin turning to bark and the mage grew and grew and stretched and the young woman found herself pulled out the house as floorboards and walls, doors and furniture and remains of windows were devoured.

She watched as a tree grew and grew and grew until the trunk was as wide as the house had been and it reached high into the sky, the canopy so thick and wide it sheltered the entire town under its boughs.

And her magic was singing and singing and singing and she felt so hale and whole she felt like she was floating. The forest spirit turned towards her, grinning and took her injured hand, pressing a kiss to the cut, smearing blood over his lips as he healed it.

"We're free now," he whispered, eyes so very green and then she was laughing and crying and pulling him forward and he followed her, pressing kisses that tasted like fading copper and brightly like flowers and cold water to her lips.

They were free. Free and whole at last and she felt like she was truly breathing for the first time since she could remember. Deep breaths that seemed to fill her entire body, her magic twining with his as it surrounded them, forest and sky and her tears were wiped away with gentle, gentle hands.

"We are," she whispered, sinking her hands into his hair until she had threaded starlight through it. "Let me introduce you to Gran and Granny Tanya and then I want to see your home."

He laughed and picked her up and twirled her in a circle and she found herself laughing as well, flowers blooming to form a crown on her head.

Where previously a quiet sort of misery had loomed in her future, saturating all coming days, she now couldn't wait to see what the rest of her life looked like.

Bright, she thought as she held his face in her hands, their foreheads gently pressing together. Her future was bight and free and full of love and she was still laughing and crying, happy beyond words. And her magic, finally, finally returned to her, sang and shone and at long last, she felt nothing but right inside.

*.*.*

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yuurei20 · 5 months

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Hiii!

I was wondering how the rooms were distributed in each dorm. I know that the housewardens have their individual room but i believe that in Hearstabyul Ace and Deuce share their room with other 2 students and in Octaville Jade and Floyd share a room, so i guess it's different in every dorm and i wondered how It was in other dorms and if there was any information abt the roomates.

I rlly like your posts, it's rlly cool learning more abt TW lore and characters.

Hello hello!! Thank you so much, you are too kind! ♡ And also thank you for this ask, it was so interesting to look into!

Some room situations have been confirmed via dialogue while others have not, there are various theories based upon the cross-referencing of dialogue, graphics and the novel, and something curious might be going on with EN-server's Octavinelle:

First-year living situations are referred to at least twice as being four-man rooms. As this information comes from Ace and Deuce it seems not uncommon for people to assume that this must be Heartslabyul's particular setup, but neither character ever specifies that this situation is unique to Heartslabyul: they say it is specific to first-year students.

And the rooming situation at NRC is described explicitly in the second novel:

"In each dorm 1st-year students are four to a room with 2nd-year students two to a room and, as a 3rd-year student, you finally get a room to yourself.

Housewardens are the one exception, with their own room regardless of year."

So it is possible that roommate arrangements are the same across all seven dorms. But! Many things have been changed in the novels from the original game (Leona's introduction, the prefect going to Pomefiore alone, etc), so it might be better to not use the novels as a reference for what is or isn't game-canon. This neither proves nor disproves the possibility of the game following the same roommate system, but it does give us something to go off of :>

Ace and Deuce were hinted at having the same bedroom in a vignette, and this was confirmed during Spectral Soiree when Ace says he can hear Deuce grinding his teeth in his sleep.

Comparing their bedrooms themselves, objects from Ace's bookshelf can be seen in Deuce's room.

Unlike the overlapping objects in the Ace/Deuce shared bedroom, there is no proof of Cater, Trey or Riddle sharing a room with anyone, which may support the "third years and housewardens have private rooms" theory.

Further support comes from Cater's comment that he and Trey only shared a room for their first two years at the school.

This might point to them sharing a room with two others in their first year, having a room alone together their second year, and now they are in private rooms.

There is an interesting situation at Savanaclaw where they have empty rooms in the dorm, but students are still rooming together rather than cleaning out a room to use for themselves.

It is possible that "first-years are four-to-a-room, second-years are two-to-a-room" is a rule at the school. Only some first- or second- years getting private rooms or fewer roommates wouldn't be fair to the others, so they have to share rooms even though there is space available.

Leona has a line about Ruggie sharing a room with at least one other person during Spectral Soiree, so Ruggie having a roommate is also confirmed.

(The Japanese language doesn't really have "the" or "a," and EN chose to write this line as "a guy in his room," as though there are multiple people besides Ruggie. It could technically be interpreted either way.)

Much like Ace and Deuce, illustrations show proof of other people living in Jack and Ruggie's rooms, while there is no such proof in Leona's.

There is also no visual proof of Azul sharing a room with anyone, while there is proof in Jade and Floyd's.

Based on visuals alone it seems there might be an argument for the twins sharing rooms with other people: the positioning of the chairs and a stack of books in Floyd's room do not seem to correlate with Jade's room. A stack of objects in Ace's room can clearly be seen in Deuce's room, so it seems like such details would be carried over if that's what we're supposed to think is going on.

But, unlike most other characters, it has been confirmed in dialogue that Floyd and Jade share a room on JP!

The Japanese language doesn't really use possessive pronouns in the same way that English does, as things like that are generally communicated via context.

Since English forces you to specify such information (which Aniplex USA might not actually know), they added "Jade's room" to Floyd's dialogue in his birthday vignette, despite how Floyd did not specify Jade having a separate room at all: he just says that Jade is always keeping an unspecified room clean. While he could technically be talking about Jade's room, he could also be talking about their shared room.

This is a kind of vague example and may not be particularly convincing either way, but there have been at least two more references in-game:

In Floyd's original, in-game dialogue, he says that he doesn't want to go back his room because he wants to be alone, but Jade will be coming home soon. The word "room" was changed on EN to "dorm," not once, but twice:

In another vignette he says that Jade smells so earthy all the time that it brings his mood down just to be in the dorm room. So I think I can understand someone playing EN and thinking that the twins might be in separate rooms with different roommates, but that does not seem to be the case!

Much like Riddle, Leona and Azul, there is no proof of roommates in the bedroom illustration for Kalim, but another student's rug, bookshelf and desk can be seen to the side of Jamil's despite how he is a vice-houswarden. This may be in support of the "two students per 2nd year bedroom, housewardens are the only exception" theory.

Neither Rook nor Vil have any proof of roommates in their bedroom designs, while what may be another student's closet can be seen to the side of Epel's.

There is no proof of a human roommate in Idia's bedroom (the blue stand off to the right is heavily hinted in Book 7 as being for Ortho), and he has a voice line about being miserable sharing a dorm room until becoming Housewarden.

Despite being counted as a first-year student (while he has technically been at the school as long as Idia), post-Book-6 Ortho's room also does not seem to have any proof of being a shared space, but it was confirmed in New Years 2024 that Ortho does have multiple roommates.

There is proof of roommates in both Sebek and Silver's room illustrations, with what are presumably other students' desks seen in both of them.

There is no proof of roommates in Lilia or Malleus' bedrooms, and we learn in Spectral Soiree that their two rooms are located next to one another:

#twstask #twisted wonderland

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shinki26 · 11 months

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The Sims 2 Disc Installation and fix guide for Windows 10/11 PCs

I’ve been seeing around the internet people demonizing the discs and saying they are “bad” “old” “unsupported” “buggy” “ancient” and a bunch of other bad words and also outright refusing to give support to disc users.

I’m writing this guide to hopefully instruct people on how to properly install, fix and run their disc based The Sims 2 game and also educate you on why the discs are not as bad as everyone makes them to be.

Just a warning: I’m a Windows 10 user, I don’t know if exactly everything is going to be 100% accurate to Windows 11, but the game SHOULD work the same on it.

First things first, some clarifications about common misconceptions of both the Ultimate Collection and TS2 disc games I’ve been seeing being tossed around:

1. The Ultimate Collection has compatibility patches for modern hardware:

This one is actually kinda true? The UC did have some patches made to it compared to a fully patched disc game but no one has been able to tell what exactly it did.

A fully patched, fixed and correctly installed disc game should work the same as the Ultimate Collection, with no difference in compatibility or game performance.

2. SecuROM doesn’t work on modern OSes so you can’t run the game off the discs:

Totally untrue. People who says SecuROM doesn’t work on Windows 10/11 haven’t actually tried running a game that uses it at all. It 100% works even on Windows 11. What doesn’t work on modern OSes is SafeDisc, which all packs released before Bon Voyage used. So if you install BV and any pack released after it, the game IS going to run normally as it’s using SecuROM instead.

3. But SecuROM makes the game lag:

True, for some machines it does happen. But as I will explain in the guide, you can uninstall SecuROM with the official removal tool and just use NoCD executables to have it not install itself again.

4. The discs requires Flash and it’s been deprecated:

No, the discs DO NOT require Flash. The only thing that uses it in the setup is a pop up that used to ask you if you wanted to register your game. Since of course you can’t register it anymore, you can just close it and it WILL NOT affect anything.

That out of the way, let’s get to the guide!

What you are going to need:

-All original TS2 patches released by EA back in the day: They’re all hosted HERE on ModTheSims.

Please, be aware that there may be multiple variatons of a patch. You need to pick the right one for your game. If you have The Sims 2 Base Game DVD version, you will have to download the second option where it says “DVD Patch Notes”, for example. For Pets and Seasons the “DD” patches mean Digital Download, so if you have them on either CD or DVD them both are going to use the “Disk Patch” If you seem to be not able to download them, right click the download link and choose “Save Link As”.

If you have The Sims 2 Deluxe / Double Deluxe / Holiday Edition / Other compilations you’re not going to need the Base Game patch as those versions are already updated!! You also don’t need the Nightlife patch if you have Deluxe or Double Deluxe!! The same thing applies for the Collections: You don’t need to patch their EPs!!

-Grumpy Loader: Get it HERE on ModTheSims.

-If you have Bon Voyage and/or packs released after it... SecuROM Removal Tool: Get it HERE.

-If you have Mansion & Garden Stuff... Sims2RPC: Get it HERE on ModTheSims by @lazyduchess! If you DO NOT have this pack, you’re going to need to source a NoCD executable of the game based on your latest installed pack.

-If you DO NOT Have Mansion & Garden Stuff... 4GB Patch: Get it HERE.

-Graphics Rules Maker: Get it HERE.

Having downloaded everything, you can start inserting your Base Game disc one! Or your Base Game DVD!

Installing the Base Game:

There’s no mystery in this part, install your game normally as you would back in 2004 following the instructions of the setup.

Three of the biggest problems I’ve seen people have when installing the Base Game is:

1. I get a red pop up saying “This app has been blocked for your protection”

This happens usually on Double Deluxe games and later EPs such as Bon Voyage, FreeTime and Apartment Life.

There’s two ways you can circumvent this. First one is the one that I personally prefer:

-Open the Task Manager -On the top left, click “File” -Click “Run new task” -Click “Browse...” -Now go to your disc drive in your PC and open it, select Autorun.exe -The target box should be pointing to “D:\Autorun.exe”. The “D” letter changes depending on what letter your disc drive is set to in your PC -Check the “Create this task with administrative privileges” box -Now click OK.

The setup is going to run normally now. When you are installing EPs that show you this error, you can do the same thing to every one.

The other way is just to change your PC’s date to somewhere before 2020. This is going to work too, I can’t explain to you why though! Something about licenses expiring!

2. I get a Flash pop up when I try to install!

As I explained earlier, you can just close it and the installation will continue normally.

3. The setup just hangs at a specific percentage and won’t progress anymore!

This is mosty probably the setup asking you to swap discs! DVD users do not have this problem. What happens sometimes is that the setup GUI is supposed to make a pop up window appear in front of the GUI asking you to swap to disc 2, but on modern OSes it doesn’t appear sometimes. Actually, it does. It just is in the background, if you minimize every open window on your machine you’re going to see the little pop up! Just swap to disc 2 and press “Ok” on the pop up and it should resume installing. The same thing can happen when having to switch to Discs 3 and 4.

After installing the Base Game:

Yay, you did it! See how the discs aren’t the devil??

So, after installing the base game you are going to need to patch it.

Open GrumpyLoader, on the top left select “Load...” and on the window that opens, choose the Base Game patch’s executable you’ve downloaded and open it. It’s going to automatically patch your game, if you are on the 4 CD version of the game you may have to swap discs. Sometimes GrumpyLoader throws errors when updating, especially when it ends. But you can just ignore it.

After patching, your Base Game is FULLY installed and properly patched, congratulations!!!

But if you didn’t already try, you will see that you can’t run the game as it doesn’t open. That’s because the Base Game uses SafeDisc that doesn’t work on modern OSes as I said earlier.

Installing Expansion and Stuff Packs:

It’s the same process of installing the Base Game. Follow the setup instructions. After installing each one, PATCH them with GrumpyLoader. For example: you just installed University! Do NOT immediately install another pack right after. Follow the same GrumpyLoader patching process you did on the Base Game but choose the University patch instead. Do the same thing to ALL EPs and Family Fun Stuff.

Also, there has been some info online about installing packs out of release order can mess up your game.

I personally don’t think it’s true as I never had any problems but I prefer to be better safe than sorry.

If you want to, Install them in this order:

-University (or University Life Collection) -Nightlife (skip if you have The Sims 2 Deluxe/Double Deluxe) -Christmas Party Pack (I don’t recommend if you have Happy Holiday Stuff or The Sims 2 Holiday Edition) -Open For Business (or Best of Business Collection) -Family Fun Stuff (or Fun with Pets Collection) -Glamour Life Stuff -Pets (skip if you have Fun with Pets Collection) -Happy Holiday Stuff (skip if you have The Sims 2 Holiday Edition) -Seasons -Celebration Stuff (skip if you have The Sims 2 Double Deluxe) -H&M Stuff (skip if you have Best of Business Collection) -Bon Voyage -Teen Style Stuff (skip if you have University Life Collection) -FreeTime -Kitchen & Bath Interior Design Stuff (skip if you have Best of Business Collection) -IKEA Home Stuff (skip if you have University Life Collection) -Apartment Life -Mansion & Garden Stuff (skip if you have Fun with Pets Collection)

If you’ve installed all packs, great! You can even launch your game from SP9′s (Mansion & Garden Stuff) disc and executable as it uses SecuROM which WORKS on modern OSes.

Getting your game to work properly:

Your game is fully installed, patched and even running if you have Bon Voyage and later released packs!

But you probably noticed very heavy lag, crashing, bad graphics and things not running as they should. That’s because, just like the Ultimate Collection, the game is a PITA to get running properly on Modern OSes! If you have Bon Voyage and/or later released packs: I HIGHLY recommend you to uninstall SecuROM from your machine. This is going to help greatly with game performance. Use the SecuROM Removal Tool I’ve linked earlier and remove it from your PC. Do NOT open the game again as it’s going to install itself again if you do so.

If you have Mansion & Garden Stuff: After uninstalling SecuROM, you’re going to need to install Lazy Duchess’ Sims2RPC Launcher I’ve linked earlier. Follow their instructions on the download page and be sure to apply the 4gb patch in the launcher as it’s going to GREALTY help with the crashing.

Or... if you DO NOT have Mansion & Garden Stuff: Get an appropriate NoCD executable for the pack you are using to launch your game and apply the 4GB patch to it. Open the 4GB patch executable and use it on your game’s exe.

After doing all that, all that remains is fixing your game performance, resolution and graphics!

Install Graphics Rules Maker and open it. Firstly, you’re going to have to add your Graphics card to the game’s database. To do that, go the “Device Info” tab and add it there.

Back to the “Settings” tab, be sure your game is set to “The Sims 2″ and is properly recognizing where your game is installed, if for some reason it isn’t, click “Browse...” and point it to your latest installed pack’s folder. For example: “C:\Program Files (x86)\EA Games\The Sims 2 Mansion & Garden Stuff”.

-Force Texture Memory: Use the auto-detect button and it should automatically calculate the best value for your graphics card.

Check “Disable texture memory estimate adjustment” and “Enable driver’s memory manager” boxes. If you have an AMD Radeon HD 7000 series, also check the “Fix AMD Radeon HD 7000 series recognition”. If you have Intel integrated graphics, check the last two boxes. Now you can set your resolution! Choose your default (which one the game is going to start with) and maximum resolution your game is going to support.

After doing all that, you can click “Save Files...”

And... Done! You got your disc-based The Sims 2 game fully working, properly patched and fixed!!!

Any Feedback on how to improve this guide is very welcome!

Happy Simming, y’all!!! :)

#ts2 #sims2 #ts2guide #guide #discs #help #sims 2 #the sims 2

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toomanythoughts4myhead · 3 months

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Pairings: ???!Coriolanus Snow x fem!scientists!reader

Warnings: blood, death, kinda dismemberment, tall of death, gore, Dr Gaul, mutated animal (nothing is too graphic)

Six feet bellow (preview)

Coriolanus Snow was a smart talented man, a gem amongst his peers - both in academic and personal performance.

Simply his name carried weight with it and it continued to linger in the empty classrooms of the Acadmy or even amongst the Capitols Citadel.

Coriolanus Snow was a never ending whisper, a legend with no face or form to match.

A ghost of his own that haunts any and all facilities his presence graced. Some say he went off to the districts to follow in his father's footsteps, some say he was killed or threatened to leave after his supposed win in the 10th Hunger games, but that's just a theory.

No one had seen that year air, people aren't even sure it happened at this point. You sure don't care much about it.

How couldnyou have known you would be the one to find out? And more importantly how could you cope with what he had become from your hands?

It's been almost seven years since then and the Hunger games were in their full swing as of now.

You hear the name of Coriolanus Snow often, funnily enough people compare you to him. With your excellent grades and mostly the liking that Dr Gaul had taken to you through your second year of the Academy, some people pointed out the similarities. You'd heard of the name before that, mostly seen it in greathalls or even engraved on a marble stone amongst the other students who were top of the class before and after him.

It isn't until Dr Gaul herself mentions him in one of your meetings, your activities after your university classes finish usually consist of long talks and even studies and experiments. As an official part of her scientists team and a prodigy in her DNA modifion studies you were no Saint.

You were born tainted, by your parents and their own blood soaked riches and even by your own choices. You picked this path for yourself, as unconventional as it it was for one of the heirs of the richest bloodlines to be a scientists. Yet here you were, you can sya that you are decently respected and mostly a mysterious figure in the frivolous antics of the Capitol.

Which is why it surprised you when Dr Gaul compared you to her old student Coriolanus Snow, the swift and ever charming golden boy of the Cademy frok almost a decade ago. You couldn't see her expression as she played with a mutated white rabbit who's long, now purple tongue scraped the bottom of its enclosure. Her tone didn't change but you haven't seen her weaver before.

Well until now, or maybe it was a figment of your own tired mind. She seemed almost tired and her usually plank straight posture seemed more relaxed, dare you say human.

"You remind me of someone i knew long ago - someone who failed me long ago, Miss Beaumont."

You raise an eyebrow but your expression is half hidden by the mask that keeps all chemicals in the laboratory breathable. You don't try to interrupt, especially after working with Dr Gaul long enough to know her drama prone nature. It also didn't rub you the right way to hear unreasoned remark, your work was pristine and your loyalty hadn't wavered. But Dr Gaul should know that after all these years with you by her side.

You hope your eyes don't twitch as Dr Gaul continues.

"But i do like you, child. You have your head on your shoulders, dont let me be wrong about you. I do hate being wrong"

The sickening squelch and the swift snap of the pair of scissors that cut off the rabbits tongue, followed by its screeches ring out and fill the deafening silence of the room. Your gaze doesn't weaver even as Dr Gaul makes her exit and leaves you to clean up her mess.

You didn't likenit when she got like this, her thirst for blood and odd sadistic desires were nothing new but when she started to talk in riddles things were usually on their way to become "interesting".

As you put the rabbits suffering to an end with a precise cut you can feel your determination surging. Whatever test Dr Gaul has undoubtedly decided to throw at you, you will concur. You are in way too deep, your hands were red with more than this rabbits blood.

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autolenaphilia · 11 months

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It's remarkable how easy Linux Mint is to use, compared to Linux's general forbidding reputation. It was really easy to set up for me who has no coding knowledge. I had to fiddle with the boot order in my BIOS a bit but no biggie. Follow the installation guide on the website, and you will be fine. You can boot from an USB too, and test out the OS before installing it and wiping your drive. Transfer data to an external drive before you do.

And you probably won't have much trouble once it is installed either. The default settings are reasonable, and can be changed. It's a very easy to use OS. I have had no problems doing most of the ordinary things I use an OS for. My most used programs on Windows was already things like Firefox, VLC media player and Libreoffice on windows, and they function just as fine on Linux Mint (and are indeed installed by default).

Gaming has given me some trouble, but honestly Lutris has solved most of them. Granted I run mostly so old games on this laptop that Scummvm and dosbox is a solution for many of them. And installing 32 bit libraries has solved others (running the command in this link in the terminal solved so many issues alone). I play very old games, if you can't tell.

Sure, part of how Mint is so user-friendly is that it imitates Windows graphical user interface. But to be honest, it does mean users coming from Windows are already used to the interface. And Mint imitates only the parts of it that work, like the taskbar. And Microsoft has had a bad habit of making the gui look like a phone or a tablet for years now, so Mint does a Windows-like gui better than Windows at this point.

Mint is better than Windows in being a user-friendly operating system in general. Windows being spyware and full of bloatware is well-known and LInux gets away from that bullshit. And just how polite MInt is about updates is a massive improvement. No forced reboots here while an update takes ages to install.

Mint is a long-term support distro, which means it focuses on stability over the latest updates to packages and programs, introducing updates not when they are first released, but after a while when any bugs have been ironed out. And that improves the OS's stability a lot, which I value over getting bleeding edge updates. If you want updates as soon as they happen, and are willing to tinker a bit to fix things, there are other distros which use a rolling-release model.

It is less demanding on the hardware without compromising functionality. Like the majority of Linux distros takes up way less space on the drive and less memory compared to Windows, you can get more life out of an old computer this way.

There are so many older computers that still function fine hardware-wise, but since the specs on that hardware are too weak to switch to a newer more-resource hungry version of Windows, the machines are abandoned because the OS ends up unsupported and unsafe to use. Windows 10 support is going to end in 2025, it might be extended, but the end of w10 support is going to be a blood bath for this very reason. So many computers can't meet the specs for Windows 11 that the switch will be painful. And I would urge you if you are affected by this to upgrade to a LInux distro instead of getting a new computer just for windows 11.

#my writings #more like my ramblings #linux #linux mint #computers

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elionwriter · 1 year

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Sherlock Holmes the Awakened: a Review

(SPOILERS AHEAD)

Sorry, sorry, sorry, but I just NEED to talk about this game! I have been a Frogwares Holmes fan since the very beginning and 'The Awakened' was always among my favourite titles. Not to mention one of the games that had scared the wits out of me. So I have to speak about the Remake now.

First and foremost, I think it needs to be reiterated that this game was made DURING THE FU****G INVASION OF UKRAINE! During such dark times, the team kept working on this. I would have supported this game even just for this reason alone.

Now, let's be honest: Frogwares never had the most marvelous graphics nor the most polished of gameplays and this entry is not an exception. I still feel the map system is a bit difficult to navigate (I may be an idiot, but I had the same issue with Chapter 1) but I really appreciated the added help the game gives you when you're recreating a scene, letting you know which passage you got wrong. Last game I found myself changing everything trying to hit the right combination so I really liked this fix.

This needs to be said: the game doesn't feel under any shape or form a product for a new fan. Everything from dialogues to game mechanics sort of take for granted that you've at least played 'chapter one'. Honestly? I'm ok with this, I hate having to always go through nearly identical tutorial stages for games I know inside out (like Pokémon) and I believe that most of not all people who are going to get this game ARE old fans!

I wasn't originally a big fan of the new Holmes and Watson models when the last game came out but....I dunno, they have grown on me. I find myself liking them now for, I suppose, no other reason than 'they are very expressive' and 'I've gotten used to them'. I think it's gotten to the point that these might be my favourite models of the two to date. Please ignore how fickle I am! (In honesty, just to draw a similar parallel, when Roger Craig Smith was first announced as Sonic's voice I hated it and now he's my fav Sonic v. actor)

This game has something.....compared to its predecessor, that makes it less scary. I can't really put my finger on it, but I distinctly remember the feeling of claustrophobia building in me when I was in the Black Edelweiss. Or the sheer jumpscare I got when the sacrificed American detective on the altar had tentacles coming out of it and severing his head making it roll to the ground. I remember almost not wanting to paddle the rowboat under the tree of hanging men in the Bayou. I remember how viscerally sick I felt at the lighthouse by all the gore and blood depicted. This time round.....I just didn't. I'm honestly not sure why this didn't hit me nearly as hard as its 2006 predecessor did!

And talking about comparisons, one thing I'm a bit disappointed they didn't grab the chance to do in this remake was fix the loose ends that were left hanging in the 2006 version. I mean....they still abandoned completely the search for that one Maori servant, what happened to all the people they managed to rescue? Who hired the private American detective that was killed? Why give out the cheap pendants? I know I'm a bit dumb and need extra explaining than what is necessarily needed but...I can't be the only one right? Sometimes you want to be told just a bit more.

Now, getting into the really good bits, that make all of it worth it!

'Chapter One' acted as a 'de facto' reboot of the Frogwares Holmes series, and I honestly think that was for the best. I don't really see where they could have gone with things after 'Devil's Daughter' and their Holmes had changed too much to be the same guy from 'The Silver Earring'...let alone Watson. But like this? They have a fresh, clean slate to start off from and they can rebuild the two mains' relashionship and lore from the ground up in a more strictly consequential manner. And the way they are doing it? I think it's state of the art!

The fact that they poke fun at themselves on certain points like Watson stating: "What about when you used to roll up only one of your sleeves? Did you get bored halfway through?!" I think the Devs themselves realized this was a cringe design choice and I like that they said so out loud.

The meta-conversation they wrote in towards the end, 'because yes, this HAS Happened before and the story still has the same outcome', is brilliant. I don't think I've ever seen another remake that acknowledges that it is a remake, and in the general madness that is mounting in the narrative this makes perfect sense! It adds one more layer of horror and inexplicable to the tale. The villain's warning 'that the Final Problem is coming and Sherlock will fall in the abyss too' is such a powerful way to use Canon. The prophecy is only made more real and dreadful by the fact that this person is aware of what has already happen in a similar but different scenario!

Also, not them using that one quote from 'The Valley of Fear' novel which happens to be one of my all time favourites!

I say, Watson,’ he whispered, ‘would you be afraid to sleep in the same room as a lunatic, a man with softening of the brain, an idiot whose mind has lost its grip?’ ‘Not in the least,’ I answered in astonishment. 'Ah, that’s lucky,’ he said, and not another word would he utter.

I think the thing that has most benefited from the Remake is Watson's character. Compared to the 2006 version, this Watson is a truly compelling character in his own right and this time round he's not just along for the ride. In this version, you simply cannot imagine how Holmes would have done it on his own. Watson was in every way a key component to the solution of the problem and the reason why Holmes didn't drown in madness. That point is driven home by Rochester asking 'How did you defeat me?' and Holmes answering 'I made a friend!'

Much of the narrative in the game was focused on Holmes truly learning to accept Watson's friendship and him as a person when he was still clinging so much to his old imaginary friend. You can see how, at first, Holmes refuses to be honest with the Doctor about what he thinks and feels and it's only as they move forward in the adventure that they both open up to each other. You can see as the adventure progresses that Holmes shifts his desperate cries from 'Jon' to 'Watson' to 'John' and the Doctor goes more and more often from 'Holmes' to 'Sherlock'. Mycroft also points this out when he says that Sherlock 'went from one Jon to another'. But this one, John Watson, is real and there to stay. In the context of a story that happens mostly in the detective's mind, Watson's friendship is really what turns the situation around!

I could add of little tid bits which were so random and on the nose that somehow worked, like the possessed 'Heidi' doll or the fact that you had to actually 'Kill Holmes' with the booby traps instead of avoiding them.

Also, "The director Guygax was randomly killed.....by a doll?!????!?!?! Yeah, let's just walk out of here no questions asked. That's too deep a wormhole even for this f***d up Adventure to go down. I'm sure nobody is gonna ask us questions, suspect or stop us as we go out the main doors!" 😃 -Holmes, probably.

So, yeah, I loved this game despite it not being perfect and my love and support goes to Frogwares more that ever!

#sherlock Holmes the awakened #sherlock holmes chapter one #sherlock holmes #john watson #frogwares holmes #sherlock holmes devil's daughter #holmes x watson #sherlock x john #sherlock and jon #jon #mycroft holmes #chtulhu #eldrich horror #lovecrafian

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sharb · 8 months

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Sharb's SAGE 2023 recommendation list

SAGE is over and I've taken a look through some really good games this week. Wanted to shout out some of the ones I thought were really cute in no particular order.

With over 200 games I can't play through and recomend all of them so please if you're interested in any of these I recomend going to https://sagexpo.org/games.html andlooking at some of the other games available.

These are just the games I've played, if you don't see your game here that's not a comment on the game's quality, just what I had time to check out.

Remember to click the thumbnails to get access to the game's pages

I was immediately interested in B.U.D.D. for it's art and references to games like wonder boy, what really surprised me about it was the humor as it's actually funny in a cute way.

If you like wonder boy or classic sega adventure games I can't recommenced B.U.D.D. enough.

@cyanroxanne pitched this to me as a SHMUP for people that have trouble getting into SHMUP games, after playing the demo and taking a minute to figure out how the game works I actually had a lot of fun with it. I could definitely recommend this to people who wanna get started with the genre, really amazing art too feels like it's a treat just seeing what the next area looks like.

RPG games can be really hard to push on SAGE because of how many games there are to go through and how long they can take to complete, a lot of streamers tend to pass over them for the sake of time so they can cover more games.

So here's my RPG recomendation, Cubenen Gardens is a game being made by @thegamedawg who actually got me to play test his game months ago, the game's still in development but what I've got to mess with so far the game's strongest aspect is it's characters and world building as you help Micheal (the saddest sopping wet creature on the planet) navigate a mall trying to find a rare monster but gets wrapped in more and more conflict.

David gets keen is really short but it has a really strong gameflow to it, my only gripes with it is that the ability HUD could be given more clear graphics as your moves are represented by circles which can make it hard to figure out what they belong to without pressing their corresponding buttons.

Beyond that the grass stage is amazing, playing the level normally gives you a pretty average platformign game but when you start building up speed using your spin move on slopes you can get to insane speeds and just fly through the level skipping puzzles and enemies and clearing the level in seconds, it's really fun when you get the hang of it.

@wootinaboot

Meander land is a really small game by @whiskerfjords game's really fun to play casually, I thought the story and characters were really cute and I'm actually really excited to see what Whisker makes next.

Out-class Hunter from @7hrone returns again with a brand new level to check out, it's a return to Doom style third persons games, specifically SRB2, it's been fun following the development of this game and watching it improve each demo.

Lemme know if you can find the cool cactus, you'll know which one I'm talking about if you follow my games ;)

Prototype N is just a really really solid action platformer game from @arriettylunaris each level has a lot of thought put into it's design and the weapon combinations can be a lot of fun to mess with, I really can't recomend Prototype N enough.

I can't get over how much character personality this game oozes, feels like around every door I'm going to run into something new I like either being a character or a game mechanic that's just fun to mess with, each character brings their own moves and their levels take advantage of a lot of their movements.

I'd compare this to those old 90's Disney game adaptations but this game easily out does them in terms of design as the designs look like they were ripped right out of an old 1940's cartoon shorts.

Peak meme aside, I actually had a lot of fun playing this, Super Freaks is a fun lil platformer game with references to a tonne of other works, you probably saw this game referenced countless times this Sage but it is just really goofy fun, tho I would really recommend playing this with friends if you can, game feels like it was designed around the kind of multiplayer chaos, if you saw the stream I was part of you can see why.

Sorry to all my friends who have heard me talking about this game all week non stop and seeing me reverse engineer SMBX 2 to [redacted] but this was easily my favorite game this SAGE if not the most replay-able, I keep booting this up just to try and make it thought the level as quick as I can.

So if you're like me you've probably been seeing @punkitt-is-here s pony comics or more specifically, the Susan Tax payer comic and the charm, humor and personalities of all of them absolutely coats this game.

It requires a bit of set up, you have to download SMBX2.0 separately in order to play this and SMBX has it's own set of issues that kinda bleed over into some of the issues in the game that need to be ironed out but beyond that this is a really fun demo to play and I absolutely can't wait to see where this goes.

Techpack currently is one Namco inspired arcade game, Tech has put a tonne of time and research into how to nail the old arcade style. The only thing holding it back right now is that the only game available is really simple and short, but man I'd be kicking myself if I didn't mention the presentation on it alone is enough for me to recommend checking this out, really reminds me of the old Namco collection games on playstation.

Now put my rabbit in as one of the cameos :gun_emoji:

Ok that's all the indies I could cover, some honerable mentions that I've been wanting to check out include

kid bubblegame JLFJ 2 Veggocalypse Mekanikko

As for the fangames I've played

Here's a game I wasn't expecting I'd be recommending, Mushroom Kingdom Fusion has been in development for over 15 years and always felt to me about quantity over quality but this new demo really impressed me.

The game is starting to take shape and there's actual structure to everything where as before it was just an open sand pit for them to figure out what to do with.

There's still a lot to be done but what's here is just a blast to mess around with. something really satisfying about struggling with a level, switching over to Samus and just blasting all the enemies and bosses away, tho I assume these characters will be unlocked in the final game as most of them are completely over powered.

This does bring me to one complaint though, Mario needs a buff. Mario is by far the hardest as he has few defense options and a lack of a health bar that almost everyone else have a huge advantage over him, and Mario having a health bar isn't too far removed from games like SMB2 and the modern 3D games.

But regardless I never thought I'd play this game and actually try to beat levels so I could see more, secret hunting is finally rewarding and expanding and finding more of the world is really fun. The game's length is absolutely HUGE, one world is about the size of an average Mario game which is insane.

And I'm really happy to see that loading has been optimized tho I don't know if that's because I'm running a machine that's not made 15 years ago.

@velacosmos has been working hard on creating a new Demo for SAGE and this one actually surprised me.

Taking influence from mario maker 2, Shang Mu Architect is a Freedom planet challenge level maker. which is quite impressive on it's own but has a tonne of extras.

Namely now there's actually a story mode to go along with the game, truth be told I'm not too big into freedom planet's cast to really know how well this game captures their personality but I still think it's really cool to actually have something that doubles as a proper freedom planet fangame since as far as I'm aware we're yet to see an actual game that actually follows the original games style.

Your mileage is definitely going to depend on how much you enjoyed the original freedom planet but I definitely think this is worth checking out.

Of the top of my head way back when stealth was pitching a mobile port of sonic 3, I swear I remember one of the ideas was expanding the match stages into full fledged level.

Sonic 3 Chronicles is an interesting "what if" scenerio where after angel island instead of falling into Hydrocity Sonic and co continue past the cutscene area and into the endless mine from match making.

I never really thought of those match stages as being connected to the main stages but this does a rpetty decent job of introducing new gimmicks and mechanics to go along with those stages.

The game is definitely rough around the edges and needs a lot of tightening up but what's here is a cute game that does it's best to follow sonic 3.

Also Mighty is here... I don't know why but thank you.

Gatoslip is a hack of Sonic the hedgehog created by @vadapega a very small demo with a tonne of personality put into it.

Yes, this is a hack, you're going to need an emulator in order to play it. Now which emulator do I recommend?

Probably the steam workshop if you still have your copy of sonic 1 before SEGA took it off the store page.

Vada's always been an inspiration for my art and it's great to see him finally go for something that really expresses his personality. The writing's great, the battles are really cute and I love the strategies for defeating enemies. Game's filled to the brim with visual gags with one gag in particular giving a lot of "replay value" (you'll know what I mean when you beat it)

can't wait to see where this ends up.

Again check out

https://sagexpo.org/games.html if you haven't yet, this just scratches the surface of what's available and there's a tonne of great games I looked over in this list.

#sagexpo #sage2023 #indie game #fangame #sonic

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retronator · 8 months

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I never played Karateka in the 80s, but as a big fan of Prince of Persia and Jordan Mechner's journals, I was stoked to hear that an interactive documentary about Jordan's prototypical cinematic platformer was in the works by Digital Eclipse.

Released this week, The Making of Karateka on the surface looks like any other game you buy through Steam ($20, Windows-only), GOG, or whichever favorite store or console you prefer (available also for Xbox, PS4/5, Switch). Once the thing loads though, you really get 3 things: a documentary, the original Karateka, and a new remaster.

The documentary part is an audio-visual slideshow retelling Jordan's development story starting with his teenage years pitching his earlier title Deathbounce to the publishing house Brøderbund. It's an interesting look into the iterative process, seen through correspondence letters, journal entries, and many playable builds at various stages of completion. After we reach the eventual rejection of that title, Jordan comes back with a prototype of a visual-narrative experience unseen on home computers. We get to follow Karateka's full life cycle from pre- to post-production, ending with the conception of its sequel (which eventually turned into Prince of Persia). It's a real treasure trove! Fellow pixel artists will appreciate the many graph-paper sketches and interactive overlays of final game sprites compared to rotoscoped outlines and filmed footage. There are also video segments, from a comprehensive breakdown of the music to interviews with other developers reflecting on the impact Jordan's games had on their careers. You'll even encounter a fan letter signed by the one and only "John Romero, Disciple of the Great Jordan and worshipper of the Magnificent Mechner!" (I kid you not, you can't make this stuff up).

Perhaps just as crucial for an interactive documentary like this, you can launch any of the floppy disks in the emulator, trying out various iterations and ports of Karateka.

The emulation is fantastic and lets you fiddle with display settings (monochrome or color display, scanlines, pixel perfect or zoomed) as well as enhance the frame rate. You can even rewind the many deaths you will face if you've never played the game before (like me). If you spend some more time obsessing over the weird artifacts of the Apple II hi-res graphics, you might even go down the rabbit hole of realizing that on the Apple II you didn't really paint colors as much as you used different monochrome dithering patterns that the graphics display would then turn into 4 different hues. A fascinating learning experience if you include some of your own research online!

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Add to this the Commodore 64 and the Atari 8-bit versions to compare how the graphics got adapted across the earlier ports and you have a nice way to relieve the mid-80s with a bit of help from modern emulation (I did beat the C64 version without rewinding though!). I'd love to see more art from the other remakes, especially the 16-bit Atari ST port, but I understand their decision to omit playable versions of those due to the lower quality on the gameplay side of the translations.

This brings us to the final part of the package, the modern remaster. Unlike the 2012 complete reimagining of the game (with 3D graphics and all), Digital Eclipse approached the remake as the ultimate port of the original to an imaginary system along the lines of a 90s VGA PC.

It's well done. Some of the fully-redrawn scenes are a bit overpainted for my taste (I'd prefer a pixel art rendition of the castle than a blurry photographic collage, although there were many games in the 90s that did take this approach), but the in-game graphics are really in style, including the smooth animations that are like one would imagine granted a beefier CPU. It's also a sort of director's cut with previously unseen scenes added, in particular, the battle with the leopard as a clever action-puzzle in the middle. The AI is unfortunately even less challenging than Jordan's implementation. As great as the 6-move fighting system could have been, you yet again resort to simply kicking away opponents as they tirelessly crawl into your range. There isn't even the nuance from the original where you were the one who had to approach some enemies with skilled timing. On the other hand, you now have optional goals and achievements that make the repetitive/easy combat work in your favor (stringing various combos, beating opponents or the level under a time limit …). As the Digital Eclipse president Mike Mika admits at the end of the welcome commentary mode, they didn't manage to achieve their perfect port, but they did come close.

In conclusion, I thoroughly enjoyed playing both the original as well as the remake and while the combat system lacks any sort of depth beneath its stunning animations, Karateka is instead a monumental experience for its presentation. Big characters with personality and realistic motion are displayed through cinematic camera cuts and story vignettes (3 years before Ron Gilbert came up with the word "cutscene"). There are details like animating the unfortunate falling off the cliff at the start of the game, or respectfully bowing to the first guard as they bow in return. Jordan's creative work is precious and worth the attention this release gifts it.

I highly recommend The Making of Karateka to all retro gamers and/or game developers for its immersive documentation which provides an experience that goes beyond the usual video documentaries. It's interactive—just like the subject it's talking about—something I want to see more in the future. And if the $20 by any chance seems high to you, consider that the original retailed at $35 (and that was in 1984 dollars).

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#Feature #Gaming #Pixel Art #Digital Eclipse #Jordan Mechner #Platformer #Documentary #cover2 #title3

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dedalvs · 5 months

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Fiat Lingua Top 10 for 2023

It's time for the annual Fiat Lingua rewind!

Background: I created Fiat Lingua over ten years ago with the idea that it could be something like the Rutgers Optimality Archive: A place where conlangers could post work that they wanted to showcase, or work that was in progress. We've had tons of contributions over the years, and some standout work I'm really proud of.

Using our fancy statistics program (you know, the free version) we're able to determine the top 10 visited posts for this year (though, note, the numbers for the current year's December post will always be down a little bit, since it didn't have a full month. If you'd like to take a look at it, Carsten Becker did a version of "Silent Night" in his conlang Ayeri!). Here they are!

NUMBER 10

"Road Trip Conlanging with Kids" (August, 2023) by Mia DeSanzo: Fiat Lingua is supposed to be an archive of long, detailed conlang articles, and also short, breezy conlang ideas, and this is one of the latter! It's less than a page long, but a fun idea, and it was quite well-received!

NUMBER 9

"Art & Anxiety: Conlanging through impostor syndrome" (February, 2023) by Jessie Sams (now Jessie Peterson): This is a personal reflection by @quothalinguist on how she has dealt with impostor syndrome, and how it's impacted her conlanging.

NUMBER 8

"Taadži Linguistics" (March, 2023) by Lauren Kuffler: This is a wonderful introduction to the Taadži language, which features a writing system reminiscent of Mayan epigraphs.

NUMBER 7

"Tone for Conlangers: A Basic Introduction" (April, 2018) by Aidan Aannestad: Making a second consecutive appearance in the top ten, Aidan Aannestad's introduction to tone has been an invaluable resource for conlangers producing tonal conlangs for just over five years now!

NUMBER 6

"Afrihili: An African Interlanguage" (April, 2014) by William S. Annis: Afrihili is an a posteriori auxlang from the late 60s that uses Bantu languages as its source, and it is fascinating! One of my all-time favorite auxlangs, and William provides a wonderful introduction. Of interest, this article was number 6 in the top ten last year, as well!

NUMBER 5

"Names Aren’t Neutral: David J. Peterson on Creating a Fantasy Language" (March, 2019) by David J. Peterson: Up four spots from last year, this is my article on best practices when coming up with names in a fantasy setting—even when no conlang is present.

NUMBER 4

"Grambank & Language Documentation: Zhwadi and Its Features" (June, 2023) by Jessie Sams (now Jessie Peterson): The first of the game-changing mega-resources for conlanging Jessie created in 2023, this is a short description of how to use Grambank in conlanging with a link to a fillable Google spreadsheet any conlanger can copy and use to introduce their conlang to others.

NUMBER 3

"Patterns of Allophony" (April, 2015) by William S. Annis: Definitely one of the most popular papers on Fiat Lingua, William illustrates graphically a number of very common sound changes. This article once again occupies the third spot of our top ten!

NUMBER 2

"A Conlanger's Thesaurus" (September, 2014) by William S. Annis: We have a new number 1 for this year! This has, historically, been the most accessed article on Fiat Lingua, and it's obvious to see why. The article is relatively short, compared to the information and use you can get out of it. William Annis details ways in which languages relate words to other similar words. For conlangers who struggle either with coming up with words that are different from English in meaning, or who struggle with coming up with words at all, this reference article should prove very useful. Using the word maps in this article, you might be able to come up with words you never dreamt of before, but words which could exist in some language. A great resource for conlangers who are desperately trying to break out of the influence of their L1 or L2!

And now for the top viewed article for 2023 on Fiat Lingua...

NUMBER 1

"A Surreal Conlang" (January, 2023) by David J. Peterson: Quite the surprise! Late 2022 I wrote an article about how one might go about creating a surreal conlang—neither naturalistic nor regular and artificial like an auxlang or engelang—and it went up on Fiat Lingua on January 1st. I think (or hope) it served as a useful jumping off point for conlangers who are looking to try something really different from what they've seen done elsewhere.

* * * * *

And that's it for 2023! I'm looking forward to posting more conlang articles next year. If you are a conlanger, a conlang-researcher, or conlang fan who has something to say in .pdf format about a specific conlang or conlanging in general, please consider submitting something to Fiat Lingua! We take any and all articles related to conlanging in whatever form you have them. I'm also happy to help you think up ideas, or refine those ideas you have. There is no strong review like in a fancy journal: I just want to get what you have up. I'm especially in interested in hosting personal conlang stories—stories about how or why you started to create a language, or your experience creating your own language—personal stories that are often lost, but are so vital, as there is an absolute dearth of literature about conlangers! If you think you have even the seed of an idea, please get a hold of me! I want to share as many stories and ideas as I can.

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chalkeater · 5 months

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I think you need to have a serious read of this post:

http://undertale-science.tumblr.com/post/137797519093/ive-settled-the-issue-of-frisks-design-once-and

This is a racist post?

The reason yellow is used because the first “smiley” was made to boost moral,so a bright yellow color was used as a green face often represented poisoning or sickness, a red face was evil or angry, and a blue face was sad. Black on yellow stands out the best compared to other basic colors. It’s why our school buses are yellow, so they are easy to find and see. Because of this and the historic use of yellow for smileys, that shade of bright yellow gold is what is considered the standard for race neutral.

I was talking about how Frisk being drawn with yellow skin is way too close to racist propaganda. I am talking about Yellow Peril and Yellow Face. The color theory of SYMBOLS and graphic design in Logos is a stretch when talking about HUMAN representation.

The yellow face has nothing to do with Asians, or with race at all.

In emojis it wasn't meant to present any one Asian at all- this is especially because there is more than the -_- emoji. When I talked about yellow face I'm talking about yellow peril and how yellow face was used against Asian people. Asians never PICKED yellow, it was assigned by racist people.

Instead of making a bunch of options and eating up coding time to make it so you can customize the sprite to look as much like you as allowed by the options, Frisk’s design relies on something far stronger: your imagination. such a blank face can be interpreted in a number of ways. It’s a default poker face, watch poker, people actually make the real life version of that face, squinting a bit, trying to have relaxed eyes, flat mouth.

No one is saying to make Frisk customizable BTW!

I bolded "squinting a bit" because this is where this post admits that people will interpret it this way. And I never said that people were even inherent malicious for seeing it this way-- it is racist, but it's INGRAINED into our society to read stuff like this AS Asian. Just like how Goblins and what we associate them with are so normalized to us and we don't see it as anti-Semitic even though it is.

Frisk cannot be a caricature of any race, because by design, they are as close to raceless as possible while still maintaining a form instantly recognized as human, which is important considering the monsters versus humans story of the game.

There's a reason why POC have said that Frisk is heavily implied to be POC, even if they're bright yellow. Since this post mentioned Color Codes, I'm going to point at the difference between Frisk and Chara.

Chara is literally closer to white. I bring this up because I've said before that Chara being pale-skinned next to Frisk is ODD and can imply that that Frisk is a POC! Especially matched with their face/eyes design. If Chara is white-skinned (how humans classify white skin colors) then it's odd that Frisk, who literally in the color codes is darker than Chara, is colored in yellow.

Asian people are nowhere near that color. Just like how Native Americans are not actually naturally beet red, Africans are not actually pitch black, and Caucasians are not actually printer paper white.

Yeah, Asian people are not yellow! And while I know this post is not directed at me, you sent me this post to review carefully. I'm happy to tell you that yes: obviously Asian people are not yellow. I look at the mirror and don't think I look yellow at all. that's the point of what I'm trying to say, too! Asian people aren't yellow. Trying to explain that "Frisk being drawn with yellow skin and closed/squinted eyes has weird coincidences with yellow face and yellow peril" does not mean I think Asian people are yellow or that Asian people are literally yellow.

I don't think white people are Gesso-paint white, either.

But here's an article that briefly mentions how Dr. Seuss had to have his work edited to remove the yellow skin because it was racist to depict this.

According to the facial muscles, the “-_-” face is about the closest way you can depict the resting face when you only have 6 pixels.

Not really. I'll add on to this in a bit.

you are at the base “neutral” face that most people have when completely unconscious.

So is this an argument for Frisk is unconscious? I'm not saying it's a bad headcanon or that no one can use this. I think it's a fun idea that Frisk might be unconscious the whole time, but I'm not sure why this was mentioned.

Your eyes do not actually squeeze shut all the way when sleeping, some people even have eyes that do not squint as much and appear to be sleeping with their eyes open.

Yeah, this is the kind of thing asians, especially east asians get made fun of for, and it's been a long-time issue. "Can you even see?" "Are your eyes even open?"

"Appear to be sleeping" "appear to be closed when it's actually open" in order to excuse Frisk's face design? People with monolid eyes or epicanthal folds are not closed.

This is racist! Hope it helps.

Going for such a neutral character, Toby would not go and give the character a canon iris color. The only way the eyes could be changed is to make them 1X1 black pixel with no white pixel sclera (white part of the eye) to avoid making it appear like they have black colored irises.

There are people out there who have REALLY dark brown eyes that it looks basically almost black. There's nothing wrong with that. Also, as pixels, like this post suggests, we as humans have seen black colored irises in media ALL the time, and make our own interpretations.

See: Adventure Time, Gravity Falls, Loud House, etc. Adventure time doesn't need a white sclera to be seen as eyes, and Something like Gravity falls are still seen as eyes even with a sclera. If you look up Fanart of any of these media, a lot of people make their own interpretation of eye colors even if their irises are black.

A 4x4 eye is too big for that size head, as we see when Chara shows that look with their creepy face. 2 tall by 1 wide eyes would look too surprised and awake. When making a neutral face, this was the best way to go while still looking relatively human.

There is no mention of 2x2, so I feel like this is an unfair argument. Below I edited their eyes to quickly show how even this part isn't so hard.

If someone draws Frisk yellow with slanted eyes, just imagine them with whatever race, sex, gender, and emotion you have in your “headcanon”.

If people draw Frisk with yellow skin and slanted eyes, I think we should be upset, or at least tell this person not to do this.

Here is the image Dr. Seuss illustrated, again. This has gone through several revisions years after it was first published because of the racist depictions.

There is no true race or gender or sex or emotion or age or body type. It’s done on purpose.

This ignores one of the most widely spread headcanons and/or analyses of Undertale: which is that Frisk is their own person (which Flowey and Chara reinforce), and while we start the game by projecting ourselves on them, we literally learn through the pacifist route, that Frisk is NOT us. We play AS Frisk. Especially because no matter what name we give the True Name, Frisk will always introduce themselves as Frisk when asked by Asriel in the end of the game.

Again, we are NOT Frisk. We play AS Frisk. As we play the game through Pacifist, we learn more about Frisk- they like to Flirt, they are the ones who choose to call Toriel "mom". Players might just not associate these with being Frisk traits, because we originally project onto them until the reveal.

"No true gender" is also frustrating to see, because this is going to be the same argument to say that Frisk does NOT use They/Them, and that we shouldn't advocate for people to use They/Them for Frisk.

I also saw in another post on their blog that they believe that Chara does not necessarily use They/Them either (that Chara is also someone to project onto), even if Asriel uses it for them during the epilogue. "[Name] wasn't the best person."

Source: Undertale, images derived from this dialogue dump.

When it comes to Deltarune, if this argument was used for Kris as well it would be incredibly false due to the fact that it's even more so canon that Kris is NOT the player, and that the player is NOT Kris.

That's all! Thanks for the post. It was frustrating to read.

Here's some sources I also looked at to make sure what I'm saying made sense; some of these are repeated links that I mention earlier just for reference.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/dr-seuss-got-away-anti-asian-racism-long-rcna381

https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691140315/becoming-yellow

https://caata.net/yellowface-what-it-is-why-its-bad-and-action-steps-to-fight-it/

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/09/asian-eye-surgery-and-media-racism/279770/

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-newzealand-passport-error-idUSKBN13W0RL/

https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article249528800.html

https://digitalgallery.bgsu.edu/student/exhibits/show/race-in-us/asian-americans/asian-immigration-and-the--yel

https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/fox-eye-trend-asian-cultural-appropriation-trnd/index.html

#ask #Anon #To old time followers of Susie: Hello! I am a different alter fronting‚ so do not mind how serious I sound.#I am not mad‚ I just speak formally!#Yellow Humans Discussion

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