#basically a lot of reading but nothing real relevant lol ;;

[genshins1mpact]

Felt happy bc Heizou came home in 11 pulls, then bad cause I nearly hard pitied and lost the 50/50 for my c1 Kazuha, but then he came home only 20 pulls after so uhh mission failed successfully?? and it was a Jean con too so 💅🏻

(open for a surprise, and no it's not a rick roll.)

And then the next 10 pull after another Kazuha was Keqing*.... so I came out of this with a c2 Kazuha c5 Heizou and a guaranteed.... this all went from terrible to incredible wtf 😭😭

*c7 keqing btw.... bc why not lol. at least the first L was to jean but damn lol.

Part of me really wants to see if I can get c6 since I'm like Right There but now that Keqing showed up I really wanna save my guaranteed for Sumeru dangit,,,, also I ended up giving up on freedom sworn bc it was just gonna be way too expensive with the Kazuha cons. We'll see if I end up going for Thundering Pulse or not, but ig I also gave up on Klee at this point tbh.. tis a shame bc of my dodoco case but like 🤷🏻‍♀️

Anyway all of this to say that the session went better than expected in the end given its crappy start, but Heizou is sosososo SO fun to play so far and I have absolutely zero regrets going all in for him. His build is kinda whack atm since I only had enough onikabuto to get him to lvl 60 and slapped kagura's verity on him but he's been doing like 10-12k often and then hit like a 27k crit outta nowhere during comms and I was like HOT FUCKIN DAMN WHAT TF??

....unrelated but I did also get the Diluc skin and.. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it now that it's in my hands lol. I love his voice in EN for the skin, but I'm not digging it as much in the JP for whatever reason. maybe I'm just not used to it yet, or maybe it's bc I was playing on my tab last night so it looks jankier than on pc.. who knows 😪

#was kinda hoping to find a cursed kazuha meme like the one i did on twt earlier but ofc you can't save the ones on there bc twt sucks so #s1mpact.milestones #s1mpact.pulls #s1mpact.gacha #aerinposting #genshins1mpact #aerin.jpg #aerin.gif #ended up linking the gif so fxck it #aerin.txt #long ish post #basically a lot of reading but nothing real relevant lol ;; #i love diluc's voice/s but idk ig im just not feeling the burst change as much #or maybe i just thought jean and keqings looked so stunning that now im kinda ??¿¿ at his :| model lmaaaoo #ah who knows #it'll grow on me... and for the price it was it mf better. 😩👏🏻 #most expensive of all of em so far jeez;;;;; don't think i'd get it w/out the discount tbh hhh

[blissfullyecho]

more harsh truths about life that will prob hurt your feelings and get me cancelled lol

1. scripting, visualizing, using crystals, affirming, etc. all don’t work in the real world. do the work. we’re not anime characters or superheroes— using your “brain powers” while you sit there doing nothing to get what you want is a delusion. script, visualize, do whatever you wanna do but thinking that’s the secret sauce to what is gonna solve all your problems is insanity

2. no one is responsible for your triggers. getting mad at someone because they forgot to put “tw” in the title next to the LITERAL EXACT TOPIC that they’re going to discuss is your own fault that you read it. you knew what it was gonna be about. if you know you’ll be triggered, move on. getting mad at people for talking about things that they had no idea you’re having a hard time with is no one’s fault either. you’re never captive to stay somewhere. if it’s triggering, you make the decision and the choice to move on and get away.

3. attractive people have the advantage of making anything look cool. for example (and no offense because my brother loves this stuff) but if you like anime, a lot of people think it’s weird. but if you’re an attractive person that likes anime, then it becomes cool because an attractive person likes it. looks = status and anyone with status could make anything look cool and be a trend.

4. girls, it’s better not having hairy legs and armpits. sorry but someone had to say it and i’ll be that person. you’re not creating a movement, you’re not proving anything to anyone. everyone grows hair, we get it. but if your body hair makes a statement and expresses yourself, then maybe you need to develop a personality.

5. speaking of personality; some of you are too nice. the nice guy finishes last. always. they seek validation, temporary satisfaction, and it reeks desperation. being too nice makes you look weak and a target to manipulation and weirdness.

6. models, actors/actresses, singers, anyone in the public eye are MEANT to look good and MEANT to look like a fantasy/dream. these people are not meant to be role models and they didn’t sign up to be role models. they were good at their craft and all of you as regular everyday people forced them to be role models because they had a public image. these people are contracted to always look good, set trends, and stay relevant in the media. then you guys started pressing for “inclusivity” and ruined brands like victoria’s secret, hollister, abercrombie, etc. because it got your feelings hurt. those brands sell stories and fantasies. those models sold those brands. STOP TRYING TO MAKE HIGH STATUS PEOPLE INTO EVERYDAY PEOPLE. work on yourself if it bothers you. it’s show biz, baby.

7. if you want anything in life fast, then you either have to have money, good looks, or great manipulation/bribery/communication/people skills. being skilled is a good thing, but don’t expect results overnight like you would if you had money, looks, or people skills. again, this is if you want something FAST.

8. listening to subliminals is a waste of time. wanna change your subconscious mind? get your mind used to living and acting the way you wanna be. do that for 3-6 months and boom, you’re a new person. *high five*

9. it’s cool to gatekeep. why are we telling everyone our beauty secrets and where we bought our clothes? i’m not trying to have anyoneeeeee have anything i have because when people catch on to something, it becomes a trend, then it becomes basic. so no, i’m not telling you what perfume i’m wearing. “i forgot” or “it was a gift”. let me be me.

10. ladies, men want to do things for you. no, that doesn’t mean you don’t have the capability to do it yourself. stop with the equality mess because a man wanted to hold the door open for you. JUST BECAUSE A MAN OFFERS TO DO SOMETHING FOR YOU, DOES NOT MEAN YOU LACK THE MENTAL OR PHYSICAL CAPABILITY TO DO SO.

#harsh truth #wellness #wellness girl #that girl #that girl aesthetic #clean girl #clean girl aesthetic #leveling up #femininity #self care #green juice girl #self healing #self help #self care aesthetic #self improvement #self development #personal development #self growth #self love #high value woman #hypergamy #hyper feminine #hyperfemininity #hypergamous dating #hypergamous #advice

[transmutationisms]

hi! im new to your blog so im sorry if you've already said something about this, but i remember years ago reading an interview of i think jesse armstrong where he said that one of the core questions of the show was how culpable the roy children were in their fate. do you think that would still be true of the show or even relevant, now that we're at the end? of course they're adults and could choose to be less complicit in the capitalist machine than they are, but. do you have any other thoughts around this - do you think the way logan raised them + the pull of power and money doomed them from the start? idek if this question is coherent anymore. no worries if you don't want to answer this, + thank you for sharing your analyses!

yeah i actually think this is something a lot of people think about very simplistically lol. like, theoretically sure, it's possible for the kids to leave. but, for one thing, the business is the family is the business, and for another, logan has always used his vast wealth and power to construct a kind of mirage of a cage around them. the way the kids seek power is very often psychologically driven by their desire to gain his love or respect, and having been raised inside the company and a family that is a microcosm of the company, it's hard for any of them to imagine an alternative in any real sense. i think this is what makes them both despicable and sympathetic. a good example is the dinner scene in 'chiantishire'. like, what they're arguing about is whether logan will buy kendall out. kendall could theoretically walk himself, but he'd be sacrificing a tremendous payout. so, in some sense he's trapped; we can see the psychological levers logan is pulling. at the same time, there's really nothing keeping kendall there except his desire for power and money, and his reactivity to his father. if he dipped overnight it's not like he'd starve. so, the kids have very constrained choices psychologically even though, on a strictly material analysis, they're obviously empowered to diverge from logan and waystar basically whenever they want. this is one of the things the show does really well imo: it doesn't shy away from how despicable or distasteful they are, but it's also deeply exploring why they make the choices they do, and how that's both a function of greed and of more 'sympathetic' drives like the desire for love and approval.

[ricksanchezbignaturals]

↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓ daily click for palestine ↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓

☆profile picture by @piki-miki !!☆

ok tldr: this is my main blog but the rick and morty hyperfixation hit hard so that's most of what i post. there's other fandoms too, just not as often. as for non fandom things ive got queer, leftist, neurodivergent, mental illness shit as well as random memes/shitposts/etc that i find funny.

i tag posts with [media] [character] [ship] and relevant attributes like autistic [character] or trans [character]. totally ask if you want me to tag something, but at the moment i don't trigger tag anything consistently. so uh blanket content warning for this blog (and a list of fandoms and some stuff about me) under the cut.

content warning: nothing extreme enough to piss off tumblr, but there is very suggestive art and general "horny about that old man" vibes. slurs like f*****, d***, t*****, and r*******, and maybe others that i don't remember. discussions or depictions of homophobia, transphobia, fatphobia, ableism, racism, classism, possibly some other bigotries that im not thinking of. canon typical content (like gore, death, probably some in poor taste jokes coming from rnm). loads loads loads of mental health things, suicide, self harm, smoking/drinking/drug use and addiction, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, body dysmorphia, ocd, adhd, autism, overstimulation, meltdowns, dissociation, gender dysphoria

basically i think the content warning can be boiled down to this: anything that happens in rick and morty, bojack horseman, or disco elysium can show up on this blog.

i do not ship rick and morty together but a lot of ship art just looks like regular fanart if you don't know any better so it's possible that ive reblogged something r1ck0rty before without realizing.

i do ship jerrick and rickcest and like to reblog that kind of ship art. i don't consider those ships to be incestuous but i know some people do so i figured id give you a heads up.

☆fandoms in varying degrees of frequency☆

~smiling friends~

~rick and morty~

~cyberpunk 2077~

~king of the hill~

~disco elysium~

~gravity falls~

~seinfeld~

~bob's burgers~

~solar opposites~

~bojack horseman~

☆about me☆

im 21, autistic, and very mentally unwell.

ive got a long time special interest in cats.

big fan of caffeine, nicotine and weed. love me some substances but my stomach is so sensitive that getting drunk and especially getting hungover feels like the whole ass organ is trying to die and take me down with it.

pretty much as far left as you can get without actually reading theory or doing anything lol. i spend every day rotting in bed so im not exactly out there fighting the system.

very queer. bi or pan, idrk which but that doesn't matter to me personally. im whichever one i need to be at any given moment to piss off people saying dumb shit like "bisexuals don't date enbies" or "pansexuality isn't real" or whatever.

a lot of labels fit my gender. im a male-ish, demiboy, nonbinary, genderfluid, genderqueer, transmasc with an interest in more obscure identities that the internet circa 2016 had me shying away from.

as of february 2024 im 3 years on t!

but yeah, that's all i got for now. asks and dms are open, you're welcome to just drop in my messages and start talking about rnm or whatever. im no therapist but if you need someone to listen or commiserate in mentally ill solidarity, im here.

🩵🩷🤍🩷🩵

[rgr-pop]

don't reblog this because it's personal and will look antisemitic from the outside lol

okay so, unfortunately it's simply true that everyone in michigan who has opposed bds in dsa publicly has been the descendent of real estate developers (and not small ones). this is like the detroit jewish evil version of DC consultant class linkedin dsa. little bit culture, could just be a coincidence, but i like to think of it as apartheid legacy when it's convenient to do so. beryl satter family properties pt ii: zionist dsa afterlives. listen--my best detroit jewish friend who grew up in zionist hell, their family is just doctors. you know? be a lawyer. whatever. anyway. sam says this is just how middle class becomes middle class. he was like my grandmother was a navy engineer... then i showed him the wikipedia of a guy that opens with "he was the largest landowner in michigan." nvm. anyway, again

so one of my least favorite antis (for the sake of this we're calling them antis, let me be), her dad was a semi public figure but he wasn't a developer (he was a regular public figure, actually kind of like my own grandfather), so i didn't realize that her grandfather was actually in fact also developer. and compared to some of the aforementioned, it's nothing too crazy. but i wanted to look more into the particular developments, partially because i'm hateful, primarily because i'm nosy, but actually really because this is one thing i always do to learn more about developments in their specificities and their legacies. housing, shopping malls, honestly not for me but this is taubman land. i'll allow you to have a shopping center grandfather

in any case there was a lot of newspaper coverage of this massive development he was a partner on in flint. outside of flint. so i dug into this because i know the place, was interested it. hilariously, if you want apartheid legacy bites, here's one from his company: "to assure the future of a new community such as this, it must be big enough to protect itself against he encroachments of undesirable elements and to set standards for future neighboring development." wow. to this anti's credit, she's not the worst yimby in the bunch.. the irony of that would be too delicious. god won't let me have it.

but i continue to read on this and i notice yet another familiar name, although named here as a designer and not a developer, of a golf course, a last name of a former anarchist friend who had lived in flint and claimed to me that their family owned a golf course. (jewish family but i'm not sure if this side was jewish. flint jews -- too rare.) looking more into this designer i'm not sure there's anything to be ashamed of (kind of neat, if money) but to make this a very "hilarious left" moment, this anarchist, i found out last year, organized a shop with the WORST guy (not relevant here - he's chicago italian), who would later become the worst dsa guy. basically that organizing set him on the course to dsa. powermap this!

anyway i was like "i hate the left" but who am i to talk, my grandfather was the kissinger of west bloomfield

b if you are ever reading this i am sorry if this is embarrassing, i accept your apologies, but i had to post this

[theflyingfeeling]

I am not saying I have s good gaydar but it is beeping loudly at especially Olli 🙈

But a genuine question I know it’s all a joke and nothing serious but do you seriously think Olli and/or Aleksi might be lgbt and do you think they actually might have a crush on each other? I know it’s none of our business really but people (me) tend to be curious 🤷🏻‍♀️

Love your blog btw ❤️

Yeah I can't proud on having anything even remotely resembling a gaydar but sometimes I wonder... 👀🤨🤭

(putting the rest behing a read-more 🫣)

In all seriousness, as I've said many times before, I've always thought there's no way BC is 100% heterosexual. I just don't believe it 😌 as for who in the band is not straight, I'm hesitant to speculate or comment on anyone's sexual orientation (outside fanfics / delusional headcanons, that is), but I mean... obviously it's a possibility? 🤷‍♀️ however, as much as I'd love to see Olli and Aleksi together or even just crushing on each other for real, I must admit them being queer is more likely than them being queer AND having a crush on each other. Then again, they wouldn’t be the first people in the history of the universe to fall for a friend, neither would they be the first people ever to have a crush on Person A while being in a relationship with Person B...

So my (boring) answer to your question is it's possible 🤷‍♀️ one might argue that e.g. Olli wearing that t-shirt with the rainbow on the backside that was made/sold in collaboration with his local LGBTQ+ organisation is relevant here, and maybe it is, but at the same time a completely heterosexual person might as well wear a shirt like that to show their support (to a friend or a family member or just in general, because why wouldn't he? he's a good bean and that's exactly the kinda thing I'd imagine him doing). Same goes for Aleksi's "everone is gay" Nirvana shirt. Sure, there are other "hints" the may have "dropped" (accidentally or not, like that moment in Aleksi’s twitch stream when he refused to read the comment out loud once he noticed it was basically calling him a straight person 😂), but not quite enough for me to actually lean towards any explanation more than the other. I know both of them are currently in long-term heterosexual relationships, so it's rather safe to say neither of them are gay, unless they're been fooling their poor spouses this whole time, which I honestly don't believe is the case. But them being bi or pan for example is totally a possibility as far as I'm concerned, since I don't understand why 'heterosexual' should be the "default" and that everyone is assumably straight until something explicitly proves otherwise. I'm sorry but to me the fact they're in hetero relationship is NOT enough proof 😌

And if someone's tempted to make a comment along the lines of jfc what are you on, of course they're not crushing on each other, they're FRIENDS and you're delusional omg, I want you to ask yourself: is it REALLY that far-fetched that two friends who reportedly 1) really enjoy each other's company, 2) have common interests, 3) share the same kind of humour, 4) spend a lot of time together when given the chance, and 4) possibly find each other attractive (just speculation) would have a crush on one another? Just a teeny tiny (🤏) crush? I think not 😤 Especially in Olli/Allu's case, since they've only known each other since idk 2019 or something like that? Suddenly I can't remember when Timebomb came out or when they worked on it lol but anyway, it's a little different in comparison to Olli's other bandmates whom he has known since he was a teenager / literal child, so I'd imagine he views e.g. Joonas and Tommi as his brothers almost. With Aleksi he doesn't have that kind of history, although I'm sure they too have engaged in all sorts of brotherly activities... 🥰

Even considering the case they're both in relationships, it wouldn't be a complete impossibility. Especially in long-term relationships I'd say it's rather common to have an odd crush on someone else from time to time. Whether or not they do anything about the crushes is another story entirely

Yeah, anyway, hope this helps! 😇 have a great weekend, curious anon ❤️

#irrelevant (and possibly immoral) speculation ahead. don't like don't read simple as that <3 #ollixallu #answered asks #anon asks

[heretic-altias]

I’m taking this ramble to tumblr actually bc the group chat kinda changed course when I was only midway. I’ll use a cut for the zenos fans, but in my opinion EW Zenos was a huge letdown compared to what he could have been. So like, only read on if you can handle me complaining about him, you’ve been warned.

EW itself? Fantastic. Let’s get that out of the way. This is nothing against EW, just one character specifically. But I’ve lived with the stance since ShB that Zenos should’ve stayed dead in Stormblood and his EW role only cemented that.

Why?

Well, almost all of EW could’ve happened as is without him there. He wasn’t relevant in any way.

I went into EW thinking of him as a boring character. But then he had a super strong start with in from the cold. I genuinely thought he could grow on me after that questline if he kept it up. But then he didn’t. By level 83 he was back to roaming around like a lost violent child contributing nothing to the plot. He was boring again.

People tell me he’s a foil to the WoL but I just can’t see it. If anything Fandaniel was more of a WoL foil to me, the destruction for the sake of giving up vs our helping for the sake of hope. Zenos’s only happiness is fighting us sure, but a true foil to the WoL for me would be someone like Fandaniel who was actively trying to destroy what we built. Who wanted to end everything we protect. I’m no expert writer, so I could be off on the technicalities of a foil character but that’s how it feels in a story as grand as the WoL’s.

And then his ending battle was treated as some kind of epic culmination. I loved that fight, the vibes were great and the fight was fun. But why was it presented as more cumulative than Endsinger? Zenos had his finale battle with the Shinryu fight in SB. That was his epic full power battle. Man got greedy and wanted another and didn’t contribute anything to the EW plot to earn it. Literally if you take him out, you just have to modify Fandaniel to work alone and use some kind of epic dynamis thing to help the WoL in the end. The core story is basically untouched by him. The Epic Final Battle shouldn’t have been the guy who doesn’t have any direct impact on the plot we were following in my opinion. Endsinger was the threat the plot had us chase this expac, zenos just kinda dropped in and went “heyyy while we’re here let’s fight lol”

I guess I just don’t see his purpose. Man came back from the dead and contributed pretty much nothing concrete for two entire expansions. He could have shown more stuff like in from the cold, but instead he dropped off the radar 3 levels in.

Of course this is all my personal opinion. I know a lot of people who like zenos. But I’ve always found him kinda ‘meh’ for his lack of direct involvement so cutting out the little they tried to give him made his role in EW disappointing to me. It’s not that he never had potential. Just that every time he did it was dropped in favor of him wandering off to do. Whatever. The appeal of zenos in the game as is he is just isn’t there for me and probably never will be. His character arc could’ve been Ok if left in SB (I always found him a little boring compared to Nidhogg and Emet as an expac villain but still, it would’ve been Fine), but it feels overly drawn out being stretched to EW with almost no real plot involvement.

I’m sure some people like villains with such a disconnect, but for me if they’re not involved in the plot they’re not interesting or important, especially when the plot has its own villain that IS involved. This ramble is my personal take on his character that I just never get to talk about bc people are super defensive of him usually.

Anyway I guess my TDLR is that I feel like zenos being brought back post SB was pointless and boring bc he proceeded to have almost no main plot involvement ever. In from the cold showed his potential and then promptly dropped it, leaving it even more disappointing.

#maybe he’s somewhat interesting but to me INTERESTING and PLOT RELEVANT go hand in hand #ffxiv #final fantasy xiv #zenos yae galvus #zenos viator galvus

[littlelasagne]

May I ask how old are you? Bmo is so great and sometimes I think the words that you use are mature. The idea of the fic also seems like the writer has experienced and learnt a lot in her life. Does that make sense? I don't know how to describe it but yeah something like that 🤣

Hey 🌸

Hahah I get what you're saying. I'm 28 years young. 😎

I'll take this all as a compliment lol! I honestly don't think my word choices are all that mature!! There are times that I've tried to express complex ideas, but I am aware of using clear language in those cases. I also don't think I've experienced anything particularly extraordinary, or more than the average person.

Rambly spew of thoughts below...

I don't think being older automatically means you're a better writer. You could be 85 and have lived the most interesting and unique life, but lack the skills to translate those experiences into a convincing, entertaining story.

Similarly, a 12 year old could have amazing technical writing skills better than an adult writer, but lack the experience that naturally comes through growing older and experiencing life's ups and downs.

That's not meant to be discouraging. Writing is a skill that takes a lot of practice, there are trials and errors, frustrations and successes. All of which comes in time and anyone willing to put the effort in will get better, whether for fanfic or original writing.

'Read, write, live' is the live laugh love of writing advice, but it's pretty solid. It covers all the basics: reading helps you learn to how to write, writing makes you stretch those skills, and living and ~experiencing things~, being curious and open-minded helps you create more realistic and interesting characters and stories.

My writing is far from perfect, I know I have a loooooooot to improve on and I know my writing is probs not to everyone's tastes and I accept that. For the time being, I'm having fun with fanfic. 😊 I think I have grown a lot as a writer and editor over the course of writing BMO.

One of the things I set out to do when writing BMO was to make Levihan feel like real people. So I put a lot of effort into making them feel natural and believable. If you've read my fics, please know that I've spent hundreds (the last time I checked before my laptop died in summer, it was just over 1,000 so idk how many it is now) of hours researching, writing, editing and proofreading to get that result!!

There is no magic trick, no shortcut. It's hard work, my brain is exhausted after work, I get totally stuck and lost on how to progress and edit a paragraph. It is a struggle (hence how long it takes to update these days😅) to juggle everything, but I do still love writing fanfic. Nothing beats the feeling of satisfaction when you nail a sentence or finally put what you're thinking into words. And I love levihan and snk just as much as when I started.

Ok, that was a bit of a ramble, but mostly relevant to the ask, I think 🤣. I don't have the energy to be coherent right now ahaha. To answer your question, I'm 28 lol.

I appreciate you sharing your thoughts, whoever you are anon! 🥰💕 Thank you for reading my writing! Are you a writer too? Happy to chat writing if you ever wanted to. 😊

#asks #anon #soz for ramble #i think the age/experience in writing conversation is interesting #Would you say there is an ideal writing age? #Because I don't think so

[i-am-megalodonna]

So in elsewhere and elsewhen getting the collector is basically the whole goal of philip does collector in any way try to change the timeline of him being manipulated by telling luz to not help philip????? Does luz feel anything from the fact that philip knows the collector somehow? Does she ask him about philip? The that part of episode is sorta focused on the collector so it’s interesting to know how that would change

Me when I first read this ask: Huh, that's a good question

Me two minutes later: oh that's a good question

This took me a hot moment to figure out and I had to talk it through with my sibling, so take pride in that I guess, lol. Time travel plots continue to be the absolute bane of my existence in new and exciting ways. Gonna put this entire explanation under a readmore because this got lengthy. There'll also be a tldr at the end.

So this episode gave me... a lot of strife. But that's what makes it fun yknow. Anyway, the main problem is that Luz goes back in time because she wants to meet Philip and find the Collector because they presumably know how to make a functioning portal door. Immediate and obvious problem: she already knows the Collector, so she already knows that that path is a dead end. In addition, I've been working with the idea that the Collector tells Luz Belos' true identity from day one. So Luz would have literally no reason to want to go back in time (that I could see).

The easiest thing to do would be to say "okay, it doesn't happen then". But I can't do that; if Luz doesn't go back in time and help Philip, then Philip doesn't get the Collector, and if he doesn't get the Collector then nothing in the show happens, and neither does my au. Plus we get cool aunt Lilith, and let's be real that's just indispensable. Point being, Elsewhere and Elsewhen is kind of a loadbearing episode.

In all fairness, I could just say that Philip finds a different sacrifice. I'm sure he could. But I'm not going to say that because it feels like a copout, and I don't do copouts (except for when I do, but I'm not here).

So after much deliberating and talking and writing in an attempt to add some sort of organization to my thoughts, I've come to the conclusion that I just need to change my au. The thing I mentioned at the beginning is now null - Luz doesn't know that Philip and Belos are the same. When Luz and the Collector meet at the beginning he tells her all he can about Belos' plans, but nothing about Belos' past. Mostly because he doesn't want her asking questions about their past, but also because they might not have thought it was relevant at the time. This would come back to bite them in the ass later (along with many other things).

When Luz learns about Philip and later on gets his diary, the Collector starts to get a little worried. But he can't rightly stop her from doing that because that would be hella suspicious. So they watch it happen and hope to the stars that it ends up being a dead end. They never did pay much attention to what Philip was writing in his lame book.

This finally brings us to Elsewhere and Elsewhen, where I will make one more small change and say that Luz is somehow prevented from hearing the Collector's name in the echo mouse's projection (which may or may not have something to do with the Collector themself). So she knows that Philip met with someone who supposedly knew how to make a working portal door, but not who. This last minute save doesn't help much, though, as this hole in information only motivates Luz more to go back in time and find out for herself.

Aside from that, Elsewhere and Elsewhen plays out pretty much the same. The Collector whines even more than normal that this is a waste of time and it's not worth it and there's no way they'll ever find one guy in a whole city and they should really just go home already. Unfortunately for him, Luz is having none of it. When they finally meet Philip, the Collector is silent.

When Philip uses them to get the door open the Collector learns something new, and they don't like it.

I considered him telling Luz that truth after E+E, but I realized it would be more effective if he didn't. His choice to reveal the truth to Luz in Hollow Mind is more meaningful character-wise if it's something he hasn't been willing to do before. At least, I think so. I'll probably talk about or illustrate that particular plot point more in a later post. But also, a large part of Luz's shutdown after going into the Emperor's mind is the guilt she feels about kind of being the reason Belos is able to end the world. If that reveal happens earlier, then most of that aftermath is diverted to there and she instead just feels angry at the Collector for lying to her again. This way she gets to feel both crushing guilt and anger. After all, why would I miss the chance to make Hollow Mind even more miserable than it already is?

I could talk more but this post isn't about Hollow Mind, and I think I've gone on long enough. There ya go, that's Elsewhere and Elsewhen. Hope this response sufficiently answered your question (and if not you can always ask more ha).

Tldr: The Collector doesn't tell Luz about Belos' true identity at the beginning, ultimately keeping the past intact. This information is revealed to her, by the Collector, in Hollow Mind.

#collector's curse au #toh #the owl house #the collector #luz noceda #philip wittebane #emperor belos #elsewhere and elsewhen #megalodonanswers

[leohtttbriar]

You know how Daniel and Johnny get off on fighting? Do you think maybe that's why Tory gets so frustrated with Sam, because she's in denial of how attracted she is to Sam? There's also the other side where Tory feels in control and free in fighting but there could also be denial

like, athletic rivalries are automatically romantic/sexual in nature because it's very much a Meeting of Minds and Passions via Bodies. watching sports of any kind is satisfying bc, however strategic and planned and skilled the competition may be, the enduring Push Until The End, Nothing To Do But Push is the best kind of tension. mostly due to how simple it is. also, yelling at some anonymous ref in the midst of getting blasted is fun, but that's not relevant.

cobra kai, whether deliberately or not (hard to say lol), has definitely managed to capture this perfect easy tension. but when you project it onto an actual story in which The Sport plays a large role in pushing the characters to change, interact, and grow, that sort of simple Nothing To Do But Push endurance feels less like a game and much more like a holy investment in someone else. which is then emphasized by the Sport in question: one-on-one martial arts.

and i think the Whole Thesis of the show is a very basic: Actually, these two men are equals in more ways than one. Which is just so easily read as romantic.

sam and tory have a weirder dynamic bc Girls in general don't belong in any sort of aggressive/violent/sporty arena---a thing all girls are Aware of and compensate for in a variety of ways ranging from emphasizing their own femininity as much as possible on or off the field (sparkly scrunchies, rolling sleeves and shorts up, water-proof make-up, spanks instead shorts, etc) to not giving a single shit what other people think.

and bc sam and tory are largely written by men, they don't Know this. so both sam and tory are weirdly feminine and feel no need to overcompensate or address the fact of their gender or anything remotely close to the real experience of athletic high school girls.

anyway, this makes their weird aggression all the weirder bc along with the regular sports tension AND the narrative Sports-Narrative tension, they got the tension of a lot of unspoken things--like the hair in the face, the make-up when exercising, the high-heels when fighting, the love-triangle nonsense, the fact that they are normally the only girl in the room, the vulnerability of their gendered position (made explicit in the show for both of them, first with sam and kyler and then with tory's landlord and the story behind her bracelet)---all these unspoken things which certain readers pick up on automatically, making the relationship between US and the characters even more tense bc we know that they know but their creators don't.

that was ramble-y.

tldr

athletic narrative-rivalries are full of tension that can be easily read as romantic. athletic narrative-rivalries between girls are substantive to self-definition. which is also romantic but in a different way.

also, the ck showrunners should stop worrying about athletic girl/lesbian stereotypes and literally just make one of the characters look like a dyke. imagine.

#cobra kai #samtory #lawrusso

[lazzledazzler]

Lazzle's Rune Factory 5 Review

Alright so here are my thoughts and experiences with RF5! This is a big boy so buckle in earthmates...

Obviously this review will contain spoilers, read at your own risk.

Initial thoughts upon playing...

Great opening! I enjoyed the jazz music~ I did feel like it leaned a bit more towards the male player though. It definitely feels like a rune factory game. It's familiar, and controls are easy to get accustomed to for the most part. The mold is there and rf5 doesn't stray too far from its predecessors which is comforting for veterans. That being said, I'm not going to pull any punches and will critique this game harshly. Keep in mind as updates for the game are released not all things discussed in this review will be as relevant overtime!

Let's hear some thoughts on...

The story/plot. The plot is enjoyable overall. I'm not crazy about the whole Seed organization thing but it was a neat idea. They address the Sechs Territory and it is confirmed that the game takes place some decades after RF4. But by the end of it, I didn't feel like I really accomplished anything because it felt like I barely did anything really. Also they left a lot of stuff unanswered. I'm not even sure I understood the message they were sending, if they were trying to send a message at all. The main story is too short, and it doesn't involve enough of the townsfolk. You're basically doing everything yourself in secret the whole time and the townsfolk barely know what's actually going on. Out of the love interests, Lucas plays the largest part in the story, followed by Priscilla and Scarlett. The story feels targeted at male audiences--at least that's how I felt. You, the player, have a larger role in the game, much like in RF3 and I was glad to see this. As of right now there are only two arcs. Praying for DLC 3rd arc...!

Protagonists. The latest protagonists to join the crew of Earthmates are...decent. Their designs are nothing special unfortunately, though I appreciate Alice's more than Ares's. Appearance-wise they lack personality and creativity. Personality wise I am pleasantly surprised with how sociable they are. They're not exactly quick witted and sassy like Lest/Frey were in rf4, or as endearing as Micah in rf3, but they have a certain realness to them that makes their reactions to things believable. I'm certain Xseed will see to making them a bit more sarcastic in their localizing efforts, so let's all look forward to that. Overall though, while I appreciate their mannerisms, they don't really measure up to all the previous amnesiacs we've grown to love over the decades.

Characters. Overall I enjoy all the characters introduced in Rune Factory 5! I feel like there is someone for everyone in this game on some level. The voice acting was pretty good for every character. The designs are very much Rune factory. Like OG runefa, compared to rf4 ( 4 kind of strayed from their usual style) which I like. Characters still have their own signature quirks that you find endearing. Although I would have liked to see more variety? Like we've had mermaids, univir, half monsters, vampires, etc in previous titles but rf5 only gives us the usual (half) elf, dwarf, and then a succubus (physically she doesn't have unique features aside from the ears and heart eyes), and some were-people. I was hoping for something more unique to really give that classic runefa vibe.

Dungeons/Battles. I'm pretty split on this one. On the one hand, the dungeons have more depth due to the 3D aspects. They've included more contraptions that are very fun to see even if they aren't executed that well. So I'm grateful for that. On the other hand, the dungeons are insanely short imo. It doesn't take long at all to get to the boss. The puzzles are also pretty subpar and few compared to RF4. Fighting monsters is similar to the other games. You can lock on now but I only use it when I'm trying to use my Seed Circle. The lock on feature is actually counter-intuitive and makes it harder to dodge. Weapon mechanics have shifted a bit. There’s a feature that makes you invincible to damage if you time the R button dash correctly. Axes and Hammers are significantly slower than in older games? Like. I thought I was in slow motion it was so slow. Lances are also harder to use as well? I'm questioning my sanity here. I don't know if it's a bug or intentional either.

Farming. Not much has changed from previous games mechanics wise. They added new types of special crops which is neat. The camera view changes to overhead when you go near your fields though, and it can make you dizzy/uncomfortable. It actually makes it a bit difficult to see at times so I wish there was a way to adjust the angle. If you are tilling corn or dried weeds to improve the soil, you need to place them separately if you don't want to use the entire stack. Otherwise, it will till the entire stack on the land if you place them all down at once. The flower shop is unlocked late in the story. Weird thing to do considering you need flowers to make medicine. Not to mention the fact that you wont have access to the fertilizer that increases defense against typhoons? During typhoon season? Thinking emoji...

The town. I have to say Rigbarth's design is poor compared to Sharance, Selphia, etc. It's too big and it takes too long to get around. Everything is too spaced out and there aren't enough warp points to make it easier on players. I don't want to walk an entire mile up a hill to talk to one person and then walk all the way down to the beach to speak to another. It doesn’t really feel like a ‘town’.

OST/BGM. Music was good, though nothing really stood out to me where I'd go "damn this slaps" or something. I think they might've had some old soundtracks from rf2 or something because it felt really nostalgic at times.

We need an exterminator. (Bugs Bugs Bugs)

Marvelous, I don't know how to tell you this buuut...your customers are NOT your testers. When you release a game, you need to make sure it's not littered with glitches because customers don't enjoy dealing with them and will drop the game!

Here are some of the types of glitches I encountered:

Crashing. Game would randomly crash or freeze and close at any moment. Sooooo frustrating! Sometimes you get lucky with the autosave feature, but the autosave only activates every morning at 6am in your room and then when you warp to a dungeon level/floor. So when you're in the middle of your daily tasks in town and it crashes, you have to start all over. Marveloussss no one enjoys losing their progress in a game I promise you that much.

Lag. The dialogue bar is seriously slow, especially after loading your file. Crafting/Cooking screen lags. When you press the Y button to skip through dialogue it lags like hell. Pretty much after every time you load the game will lag, the audio will lag if you're in a battle, everything is just. so. slow.

Repeating dialogue. So if you close your game entirely (or if it crashes) naturally you'll reload your file to continue where you left off. There's a bug that will cause all NPCs to repeat the last dialogue that occurred from whatever plot related thing you did last. So for example, if the last thing you did in the story was unlock Ludmilla, everyone in town will naturally have some dialogue about her. But even after seeing all this dialogue and even saving, if the game is closed and reloaded you'll have to read all that dialogue again from townsfolk. It got really annoying after a while.

Monster taming. One time I tamed a monster but once I named it and hit 'ok' the monster never showed up in my barns? Just. gone. Okaaaay then...? Additionally, I expanded one of my monster barns but all of the monsters I tamed wouldn't appear in the added room. You get 4 monsters for each room but the monsters I tamed would show up in the original room. Meaning I had like 7 monsters in one room! I tried to bring them into the newly added room but they would just warp back to the other room. Sad.

Pond Glitch. I fished in the pond located in Sasayaki Forest and left the fish I caught but didn't want laying around the water's edge. If you leave fish around the pond's edge and go to sleep, the next morning you will be teleported to the pond and trigger the fairy dialogue as if you had thrown all of the fish into the pond??? So the dialogue of her telling you she wants 'X item, not this!' will trigger over and over for all of the fish you left at the water's edge. RIP.

Party member Bug. I had Martin in my party and I made him leave. Then when I went into my monster barns to get a monster pal to join me instead it showed me Martin's portrait???? Also I've encountered a bug where I can no longer ask anyone to join my party for some unknown reason. The R &L button prompt was just gone when I reloaded.

Errors. When cooking or crafting, the dialogue box shows up sometimes...

Typos. Random average typo here and there. Not a real biggie but there is one instance where the heroine will use the japanese male pronoun "boku" instead of "watashi" which really convinced me that this game was completely intended for men lol.

Let's talk about Pros

The good stuff. The stuff that makes you all warm and fuzzy inside.

Plot Advancing. Now I'm gonna put this as a pro because I'm certain the average player will enjoy this even though I do not. There are now markers on the map to show you where to go to advance the plot. This is all well and dandy, but it also made the story less appealing for me because you don't need to go around town and speak to residents for clues or assistance to advance anything in the story.

3D Graphics The 3D models are all amazing. The interior designs of the houses/buildings are also incredibly detailed and realistic.

Collecting items. Now there's a feature that will allow you to collect items into your inventory just by walking over them. This is pretty neat and welcome for the most part. Once the item is sparkling, you can walk over it and it'll go into your rucksack automatically. This also makes lumbering and mining go much faster. Yay!

The miraculous L pocket. Now you can customize the categories that appear in your L pocket by going to the rucksack tab in the menu. This is a super neat feature that makes things easier on players who want to manage their items in a format that suits them.

Weapon/Tool Toggling. You can now toggle between your equipped weapon and tool by pressing the left or right buttons on the trackpad.

Collecting lumber/material stone. Oh lord this is probably the most welcome improvement moving forward from the previous game. You can now put all of the lumber and material stone from your inventory into its storage at once. This also applies to fodder for tamed monsters. Well done Hakama.

Autosave. This feature is a welcome addition to the series. The game will save your data every morning and every time you enter a dungeon. Autosave has really saved my ass a few times when I made a huge error in judgement so I'm incredibly grateful for this feature. And it doesn't save over your actual save file--there's a separate autosave file at the very top. So if you messed up something but already saved on your main file, you can still salvage your mistake by reloading the autosave! I just wish it activated a bit more often sometimes.

Warping. Now we can warp to each level in a dungeon as well as certain places on the map in town. It's pretty convenient for the most part.

Increased party members. Now you can have up to 3 members in your party! Hooray! Party members act more intelligently than in older games. Scarlett can use the Seed circle to assist you in fights. I think she also tosses healing potions at you occasionally. So far, no one has tossed a dish at me if I haven't eaten like Kiel and Clorica did in rf4. But I have been hit by a failed dish (from reinhardt?) and a healing potion (from scarlett). Scarlett, Priscilla, and Reinhardt are the most helpful when dungeon crawling in my experience. Some of them however, (looking at you Doug) don't shut the hell up with their one line of dialogue they have and repeat it constantly.

Seed Circle. This neat feature allows you to capture monsters. By charging it and releasing you can capture monsters for the bounty system or add them to your party temporarily. If you throw it without charging it, you can stun monsters in place momentarily or grab things from far away. When stunning monsters, it can also give you the monster's drop item occasionally. Unfortunately it uses a lot of RP so it can be difficult at times.

Combo attacks. This is a neat feature that I appreciate and use often for boss fights. They do some serious damage so it's good to save them for the bosses. The actual cutscenes aren't that impressive, and feel kind of subpar when you get down to it but I think it's a start in the right direction.

Farm Dragons. I'm listing this as a pro although I really just see it as a new feature. Farm dragons have fields on their backs that you can place monster barns on and farm on. Giving them certain crystals will give your fields boosts in certain criteria, like length of growth, soil quality, you get it. I personally don't use the crystals because I couldn't give a shit lmao I have men and women to woo here. But if you're into this kinda thing then it's a pro.

Storage. When opening your storage box, fridge, etc. you can actually hit the R & L buttons to switch between ALL of your other storages. Looooove thissss. Great addition. So much faster to put items away in their respective places.

Crafting/Forging. Now we can also use the R & L buttons to alternate between the different weapon types/accessory/gear types instead of having to exit the menu and going back in each time you want to make something different.

Cooking. More recipes have been added. Yay!

Days are longer now. More time to get shit doneeeee ayyyy

Fishing. They've added many more fish to the game! Now the player will shout something when you get a bite, making it easier for you to hit B at the right moment. Nice. Also if you fail or press B too early, the fish doesn't vanish most of the time. Also nice. There is now a feature to fish with another person's assistance. Once a day you can investigate the sign near the fishing station and someone might offer to lend you a hand. Press the B button at the right moments on the slider and you can get a rare fish that can't be caught normally.

Monsters. New types of monsters! Love the designs. Even the monsters that are the same but just have different skins are really neat. They look great in the 3D format too. You can even ride with up to two people on certain monsters! Some bosses had awesome designs while others...were bad.

New Types of Furniture. The carpenter store has a wide arrange of furniture you can buy for your home. It also has wallpapers and stuff which is really neat. Though unfortunately you can't even sit on some of the furniture so that's a shame.

Events. Now there is a system where events are triggered by approaching an icon on the map. This is probably an improvement to RF4's randomized system, though personally I found it annoying because it meant that I had to see the events before I could just enter a building normally. Sometimes I just wanted to get shit done and not have to read through walls of text for someone's love event when I just want to buy something.

Voiced Lines. The protagonist seems to have more voiced lines, as do other characters. Good!

Let's talk about Cons

Not including glitches. Oh boy. So many cons. Where do I start?

Dialogue. Probably the most notable con in the entire game. The dialogue is drastically minimal in comparison to previous games, especially rf4. There is probably a quarter of the amount of dialogue compared to rf4's insane amount of content if not less. Townsfolk repeat themselves. Often. Too often. Am I playing Harvest Moon? Originally I thought it was because the dialogue is randomized, but I think it's actually because more dialogue is unlocked as you raise townspeople's FP. Despite this, there's no linear build up where you start off as acquaintances and eventually become very close like in rf4 because of how sporadic the LP/FP is. Townsfolk don't even talk to each other. One of the greatest perks about runefa is the conversations townsfolk can have with one another. Residents randomly gathering in small groups to talk about anything. Previously you could add someone to your party and sometimes a dialogue will occur if you speak to the right person at the right time with that person in your party. This is nonexistent now. The only time they do this in rf5 is during the festivals. But, it will only trigger if you have unlocked all the characters in each marriageable lineup and they can't be in your party. The residents will talk about one another but that's pretty much it outside of town events. They got rid of all the minor dialogue that occurs too. Trying to sleep in someone's bed while they're right there? They wont comment. Inspecting objects in stores while the shopkeeper is present? Wont say anything. Take a character with you to a dungeon/boss fight? Their lips are sealed. Where's my sense of community? :(

FP/LP This ties into the dialogue issue. The rate at which LP/FP increases is sporadic as hell. You can go from 1FP/LP to 4FP/LP just by giving a gift sometimes. I wouldn't even speak to people and their affinity increased by like triple for no reason. Then it increases by like 2% for the longest time. Argh!!!

Graphics. I don't consider myself very picky when it comes to graphics. I don't really mind that the foliage and scenery are at the level of a ps2 game at best. I tried playing on my television initially, but the lag and camera operability was too much so I fully switched (haha puns) to handheld. One thing that sucked is that I literally cannot tell the difference between medicinal herbs, antidote grasses, and green grasses without the captions because the graphics are so indistinguishable. So when you're trying to pick up multiples of those items by holding the A button, you're just randomly walking over anything green in the hopes that you'll get the right ones...

Lack of Sound Effects. Something I noticed is they got rid of the sound effects that will play when you complete a puzzle or add someone to your party. When you try to brush a monster there's no sound for the '♪' they make when you successfully brush them. So it was hard for me to tell if I had actually brushed them or not. I was a bit saddened by the lack of cute sounds.

Too much free range. From the very beginning of the game, you're allowed to go pretty much wherever you want when leaving town. It was too easy to stumble into high enemy level territory without knowing, so when I was like level 5 so I got KO'd immediately.

Artwork. The portraits seem to be lower in quality somehow. Runefa has always had shitty portrait art imo but this time it's even worse. Many character's eyes looked fucked up. Though the 3D models are insanely good for mostly every character except Terry. Terry's 3D model looks Terryfying and I prefer his portrait.

Festivals. They've added some new festivals. Some I enjoy. Some not so much. They changed the format of the eating contest. It's horrible. Good luck with that one.

L pocket + R button? They got rid of the feature that lets you skip to the other end of your items when opening the L pocket by pressing R button. I really liked that feature because it made it faster to reach my items so I was bummed that they got rid of it.

Gotta go fast. Now when you speak to someone, it doesn't 'stop time' as you might say it did in previous games. So people are still moving about as you speak to someone, making it harder to catch up to people! Annoying!!!

Catch and release? Not in my farming simulator! Say goodbye to being able to toss a fish you caught back into the water. In fact, say goodbye to tossing anything you don't want anymore into the water. Now you just have an army of fish flopping on the ground around you. And with the auto pick up feature, they're probably going to end up in your inventory anyways once you try to move. There are still certain ponds with fairies that you can toss stuff into, but you'll have to deal with the fairy harping at you for giving her something she doesn't want.

Shop Hours. Oh god. The shop owners don't even open their stores at the correct hours? It says open at 9am. If you speak to them they won't open their store until like 9:07??? But Priscilla and Lucy will show up to work their part-time jobs at around 8:30am and you can buy stuff through them before 9am. So the actual shop owners (for the bread shop and general store) are pointless usually. Additionally, if the store is empty (but open) you can no longer add a shopkeeper into your party and then enter their store with them to buy things from them. Why. Just why. When you want to buy something that only a specific person sells (Only Hina sells fish, only Heinz sells misc items) you have to wait for them to finally decide to work in their own store. Wonderful.

Monster Item drops. Maybe I'm crazy but the monster drops are seriously a lot harder to get than in previous games. Especially boss drops. It's almost impossible to get the rare drops now. I don't even want to try anymore. And as far as I know, the only place to buy monster items is through Heinz, but his items are actually misc. items, not specifically monster drops. So you'll be lucky to check his store (whenever tf he decides to actually work) for any monster items you might want instead of farming for the drops. Sighs.

Difficulty. This game is too easy. There is little to no challenge whatsoever. I had to increase the difficulty setting to hard mode and it was still too easy. I beat it at level 139, never once did I need to grind or level. In fact, your character levels up way too quickly for the pace of the story. I had zero trouble with any of the bosses and even the final boss was a breeze. Quite sad. Though because I am not new to the franchise, it's likely that newcomers would have some trouble in the later parts of the story.

Fishing cons. Idk how you fck up fishing but they sure did. You have to stand further back now because the pole is so long that you'll miss the fish you're aiming for. In fact, it's seriously hard to aim period. You'll end up recasting more often than not. Fish come in the various sizes but they don't seem to have the darker or faded characteristics that can indicate whether it's a rare fish or not. The graphics make it hard to tell. The pros that i've already mentioned are welcomed but it doesn't negate the fact that I do not enjoy fishing like I did in previous games.

Mining/Lumbering Cons. You can no longer strike three times consecutively when mining/lumbering. This sucks lol. Even when you upgrade your axe or hammer, powering up the tool does nothing for getting wood and material stone--it only expands the area of your strike. So it takes longer to get wood/stone from stumps and rocks now since you have to strike the full 9 times but it's not too bad. It's also harder to aim now as well so that's also unfortunate.

Seasonal Fields? Kiss them goodbye! That's right, there are no seasonal fields in rf5 because devs are insane! You instead have the farm dragons that seem to look seasonal based on the fact that they are designed after elements like earth, water, and fire. But no, these dragons are simply extra fields for you to use. Here's a spoiler: you're not going to use those fields. You're just not. They're kinda useless unless you're obsessed with farming. Now you have to grow your crops out of season like the sad farmer that you are.

Farming cons. Seeds no longer tell you how long it takes to grow the crop. Why. As of June 29th, they fixed this with an update. But I still had to play the whole game without it so fuck you marvelous. The joystick is really sensitive? So when you're trying to use a fertilizer or something on your field you're likely to place it on the wrong 4x4 tile, wasting your fertilizer. So it’s best to hold down the R button when farming. Also the crops look uglie as hell.

Sleeping and warping cutscenes. Just like in rf4 there's a cutscene when you go to sleep that can be skipped easily by pressing A. In rf5, there's a cutscene to sleep and a cutscene when waking up. It takes a bit more than a second to skip these scenes so it gets annoying after a while. Warping is this new feature that replaces our beloved escape spell. Overall I appreciate the feature but I hate it for two reasons. One: there's an annoying ass cutscene for it each time you use it that could be much shorter. And Two: townsfolk now use warp even when inside the town. In previous games, someone exiting your party in town would just manually run to wherever they need to be. So you could easily chase after them if you need to talk to them or give them something. Now, party members use warp regardless of where you are at the time. So say you have someone at 7 hearts and you want to try confessing to them. You would have them join your party, save your game, and then have them leave your party and immediately speak to them and confess before they can run off. If it doesn't work you reload until it does. In RF5 this wouldn't work anymore because they will warp. Now you would have to save, run around town trying to find this person and hope they accept the confession. Otherwise you'll have to play hide and seek again because reloading your file will randomize the resident's locations (if they are not working in a shop)!!!! I often just waited until a festival day because then they will be at the plaza for most of the day and it has a warp point there.

Crafting/Forging/Cooking. They've removed the feature where you can press Y on the ingredients in the menu to add more of that particular item. I miss this feature :'(

Lacks incentive. There is no trophy room from my knowledge. The final dungeon that is meant to be like the sharance maze/rune prana isn't that hard to beat for skilled players and is only 20 floors. After you beat the main story and this dungeon there's not much else to do really.

Request Board. Unlike in rf4, you need to make sure you have accepted requests before you complete them or else it will not count. Previously, you could complete all sorts of tasks and Eliza would still recognize your work even if you accept their request after the fact. ie, shipping goods, harvesting crops, etc. So make sure you don't harvest your special crops before accepting the request it's for!

Return of the "Loli" Dragons... Yeah you read that right. We got more dragons in children's(???) bodies with skimpy clothes. I don't know anymore????¿¿¿

Can't marry the Milfs or Dilfs. Tragic.

Still no homo. Grow up Marvelous.

Reverse Proposal? Reverse Uno card-- Laid low by the patriarchy. You now have to buy the double bed and craft an engagement ring to propose to your man if you're playing as Alice. Marvelous this isn't what we meant when we said we wanted equal rightsssssss This can be seen as a pro if you're a softhearted babey who doesn't like rejecting bachelors' proposals because you feel bad :'( But this is a con for me because I don't want to spend money and materials on a double bed dammit!!!

Misc. Still can't stack dishes or fish. There's no green elemental fairy???All the other elemental ones are there except the green one? why??? Still can't tame the giant Wooly. Some bosses that have insanely awesome designs cannot be tamed and makes me wanna eat glass.

Let's talk about Love~

Relationships. We want them. And half of us only play these games for them. I've only played as the female heroine so far but I'll be updating this review as soon as I finish with the bachelorettes as the male hero.

Confessions

As usual, we must raise the love points of our beloved to 7 hearts before we can attempt to date them. However unlike in rf4, if you fail at a confession once, you will need to raise the LP up an entire level before you can try again with any chance of success. It's imperative you save before attempting a confession now.

Love Events

Each love interest has two love events that must be seen before you can date them. They're reminiscent of older game's style but I felt they could have been a biiiit more interactive or so? Or involved the town a bit more for some of them.

Dating

Once you get your honey to be your bf/gf, you get to choose the nicknames as usual. Then you can go on dates. The first three (non-festival) dates are actually events. You need to see all three events to get married.

Marriage Event

The final event you need to clear before you can marry your sweetie. In my honest opinion, so far for the boys, these events were rather disappointing. They lacked the drama and angst that sort of 'test' the love between the two when compared to rf4. Also this is a huge con for me personally and a minor spoiler but there are no special cutscenes at the end of the marriage event like in rf4. Instead, the cutscene takes place during your actual wedding. I was saddened by this because it took away the depth from the marriage events and the actual character? As it is just a cut and paste type of thing instead of an original cutscene for each person. They lack individualism this way. Also it kinda felt like a way for devs to avoid gay relationships and cut corners :^/....sus.

First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes...

Children!!!!!! This is actually one of the coolest additions in the game. Just like in rf3, you can have up to 3 children again! Your first child will resemble you, and you will have the option to choose its gender as well as its personality. There are 6 different children, (3 boys and 3 girls), all with different hairstyles, mannerisms, and seiyuus. Your answers will determine which child you get. A year after your first child is born, you will get the option to have a second child. You'll end up with twins, both resembling your partner. You won't get to choose the genders (it will be a boy and girl) but you will get to choose the personalities once more. The children all have canon names too and each kid is incredibly cute. And of course, you're still able to take your kid with you in your party~ ...Though you can only take one kid with you at a time.

So is RF5 good?

Yeah it's a fun game! My theory is that Marvelous forced the devs to release the game earlier than they were ready for, and that's why it's so lacking. But that doesn't mean it's not worth playing! I'd rate it 3.5/5 stars hehe. Not nearly as good as RF4 (full stop 5/5), or RF3 (4/5) but enjoyable nonetheless. I wouldn't recommend it as a first game to play from the series for newcomers though, I feel it's best for vets who can overlook all the cons thanks to loyalty and nostalgia. By the time it’s released in the West, the bugs should all be dealt with too.

So! Definitely buy this game! We want the series to continue and we want RF6 to be better than this--and hopefully Marvelous will make sure of that next time. If you're not a picky person I think you'll enjoy rf5 a lot. If you're like me and have high standards then, well, still pick it up and let it run its course. Then dust off rf4sp and cleanse your gaming palette >;^)

#rune factory 5 #rf5 spoilers #rune factory #rf5 #spoilers #review #rune factory 5 spoilers

[githvyrik]

Excited about the Zariel headcanons. I’m a dm who isn’t running avernus but Zariel became plot relevant to one of my pc’s personal arcs, so I wanted to consult someone with a lot more knowledge and opinions about her than me. Thank you again!

Hiiiiiiiiiiii I'm so sorry it took me so long to get around to this but here it goes. Also tumblr ate your original ask when I tried to post this the first time #cringe. Fair warning I do not refer to the Nine Hells in a consistent way through this post. (also I know like 2 of my players are on here but they're not super active but if you happen to read this then KEEP SCROLLING lol) This is like 7.5 pages of me analyzing a villain from dnd admittedly a bit too seriously and I think that’s really cool and epic of me 

First off I want to clarify some stuff about the lore I'm using- I'm going off of what was established in MToF and expanded upon in DiA, BUT I've also taken a lot of inspiration from the Alexandrian remix of DiA (in general I'm following neither in their entirety I'm putting my own spin on them because I have issues with both the official adventure and the remix but we didn't come here to talk about that) plus my thoughts will probably evolve as I run DiA. Sorry this is kind of a ramble and DEFINITELY way too much info and also I don’t fully remember what I took from where and what I made up. The first part of this post is like an overview of her history (you can change whatever you'd like, of course, this is just for my setting), then at the end I put together some more disorganized thoughts.

Sooooo, let's just start with the basics that you probably know- Zariel is a fallen angel who is currently the archduke of Avernus, the first layer of the 9 hells.

Zariel was actually a solar, which are the most powerful of the angels as far as d&d is concerned. As this tiktok puts it, "When god goes on vacation, he leaves [them] in charge and nothing changes" (which is in fact a line I'm stealing to have an npc explain to the party how fucked they are if they try to fight her on their own directly tbh). Zariel was a solar of Lathander (also called the Morninglord), who is a god of the sun (dawn specifically but I'm expanding his role to include the sun in general), rebirth, renewal, creativity, vitality, etc etc etc basically all the goody-two-shoes shit that you'd expect a god of the sun to have in his portfolio. HAAHAHA she's a SOLAR of a SUN GOD. According to Reya Mantlemorn, an npc in DiA, her name means "companion of light" (which is a nod to the Companion, the device that dragged Elturel into Hell, wow they really should've been more suspicious about the convenient ball of light that randomly appeared in the sky and wouldn't leave which the leaders of the city made all the citizens swear allegiance to). First and foremost, she is a soldier, she was created that way and it is her nature (which sounds kind of fucked up when I put it that way but I'll try to expand on this more later). She was basically a cosmic being forever tasked to fight for what is Good and Righteous.

Currently, she's an archdevil, specifically Archduke of Avernus. Archdevils do, in fact, include more than just the archdukes, and they're the most powerful in terms of infernal beings- their power is almost on par with deities. While most devils result from mortals who sold their souls, archdevils sometimes have different origins. Archdukes are just the ones who proved themselves to be the Baddest Bitches and most capable of being in charge, typically through displaying their cunning or power. Among the archdevils, and especially the ones who actually rule layers of hell, Zariel is voted Best at Kicking Your Ass Physically. The majority of other devils use deception, trickery, and cunning to get their way, and while they are definitely strong if it comes to a fight, they prefer indirect methods. Zariel typically skips all that bullshit. She can be cunning and manipulative, but her real skills lie in her martial prowess.

So, the thing about Avernus is that while it's the first layer of the hells, it's not exactly Baby Mode. I'm personally of the opinion that considering the hells to be Worse just based on what number you're on removes a lot of nuance. Avernus is the first because it's the one you go into first- there's no getting to any other layer of the 9 Hells without going through Avernus first. As a consequence of this, Avernus is the front lines of the Blood War, an ancient cosmic battle between the evil sides of Law and Chaos- Devils representing lawful evil and demons representing chaotic evil. They've basically been at a stalemate for Literal Eternity (except also not eternity because technically it did have a starting point somewhere- idk time is weird in d&d but on like a Cosmic Scale it makes sense sort of whatever it's handwaved because mortal minds aren't rly meant to make sense of it). Demons come into the Hells by way of Avernus, but almost none of them can make it any further than that; and Devils have held them there but haven't made any real progress into taking the fight to them in the Abyss. Yugoloths, essentially beings of neutral evil, sometimes hang out to fight with whoever the Hell (pun intended) they want.

Zariel's current job is to be The One In Charge of the devils' side in the Blood War- in this task, she only answers to Asmodeus and in a lot of cases she's kind of free to throw his advice aside if she sees fit. Personally, I think Asmodeus is smart enough to know that this is a fight that can never be won, but he recognizes the importance of keeping it where it is. Even though the devils can't win, the demons can't either. Not, like, in the "it'll be bad if either side wins" way, I mean it literally cannot be done.

Now, let's cover how she got from one point to the other (again, I'll say that I'm taking this both from DiA and the alexandrian remix of the setting while adding some of my own stuff):

Zariel fought in the legions of the Seven Heavens of Mount Celestia before the universe really Was Anything and the planes fully became what they are in settings that use the Great Wheel Cosmology. She was a soldier under the command of a celestial marshal named Ashmedai, who would later become Asmodeus (there are like 6 bazillion different origin stories for Asmodeus, I'm going with the one where he's also a fallen angel because Themes or whatever). Avernus was previously a paradise and eeeeeeverybody wanted it to add to their territory. This is a really complex chain of events that mortal minds can't really comprehend (wow this is becoming a running theme) and tbh it's not like. That Important. But it does make it so Zariel has a connection to Avernus from the beginning. What is important is that Ashmedai pulled a fast one and took Avernus for himself and ditched Heaven to align with the (at the time) Eight Hells. A bunch of angels followed him, but Zariel didn't. Stuff happened and Asmodeus became the leader of the Nine Hells, overthrowing whatever leader there was before him (Zargon in my mind but it doesn't really matter, there are also 6 billion versions of lore for this and it doesn’t come up in the campaign really, it’s just a cool tidbit you can throw in if you want). Zariel gave him the middle finger and refused to follow him.

(Important to note that Avernus actually remained a paradise for a long time, and Asmodeus kind of used it as a way to tempt mortals, showing that Hell was really no different from Heaven. This changed when the Blood War started, and now it basically sucks to be there because it's a war-torn wasteland, but traces of this paradise still remain in pockets of the plane.)

Ashmedai and his followers' betrayal made Zariel really bitter, so she was basically given a court-ordered chill-out time. During this time, she met a hollyphant named Lulu, who became her best friend and war mount. Eventually, she found some kind of peace, but it was really only temporary.

Time passed and eventually the forces of Heaven dragged Asmodeus out of the Nine Hells to stand trial for a) his betrayal, b) lying to mortals and beguiling them to evil for nefarious purposes, and c) generally being an asshole. They called in Primus, who's like the Head Bitch in Charge of Law, and it was basically an eternity of angels testifying that Asmodeus was an asshole. Primus eventually got bored and decided he was done with hearing testimonies, but Zariel hadn't gotten a chance to testify to what she personally witnessed and she got pissed, which started a brawl and disrupted the proceedings for a hot minute. As her former commanding officer, Asmodeus had possibly had his eye on her since the beginning, especially since she was one of the few to defy him during his initial betrayal, but this is probably what really drew his attention to her for the first time. After things settled down, Asmodeus' defense was basically that he hadn't violated any principals of the Law, and he never lied to anyone, not even once. He also said he was doing the universe a favor by using the souls he earned to keep balance between the evil sides of Law and Chaos. Primus was like "I'm a little lost but fair enough" and let him off with a warning, but he does basically have to keep a baby monitor on him for the rest of time (a ruby rod that bound him and all other devils to uphold any bargains they made with mortals).

This is important: Asmodeus never lies. At worst, he simply doesn't make plain the whole truth because he expects you to read the fine print and he and the universe at large consider it your fault if you don’t. He is just extremely good at getting to the heart of what people want and he knows how to manipulate that desire so he gets what he wants. Of course, all archdevils in general have an incomprehensible amount of skill with this, but Asmodeus like. Fuckin INVENTED that shit, he was THE first #malemanipulator.

Another eternity passed during which Zariel kept at her Divine Warrior thing, until at one point, the demon lord Yeenoghu decided to start fucking around on the material plane, having his demonic army just murder a bunch of people. (In my version of the Lore, gnolls aren't actual animals, they're a form of demon.) He'd probably done it before, but this time Zariel and a force of planetars were sent to stop him. She caught him at a village called Idyllglen, where her force beat him back into the Abyss, but they had help- from some devils, actually. A small force led by Glasya, Asmodeus' daughter, showed up, and they allied briefly to massacre Yeenoghu's army. After the immediate issue was over, things almost came to a fight between them, but Zariel and Glasya had a private conversation; no one really knows what was said between them, but they agreed to call it quits and go their separate ways.

Before, Zariel's duties as a soldier of Good had been abstract to her, but now she was convinced that something needed to be done about the Blood War. It had led to incalculable amounts of mortal suffering, and to her, that was unforgivable. She was frustrated that the tides of the war never changed and she was convinced that the Heavens could do something about it. Her superiors didn't agree with her; they told her they would let Evil annihilate itself. But she felt that Heaven was complicit by turning a blind eye to the suffering it caused mortals. Evil was not annihilating itself, it was simply continuing. She felt it was Heaven's duty to fight it, and if the other celestials wouldn't help her, it would be her duty alone.

That’s the thing about Zariel. If she believes her cause is righteous, there is damn near nothing that can convince her otherwise. This can be a good or a bad thing, there’s a lot of nuance to it. She will not be intimidated into putting it aside, it is very difficult to persuade her that her path is anything but just. It turns out, it doesn’t matter to her what angle this is approached from. She sees fighting the Blood War as her duty, and it started when she was an angel, it didn’t happen out of nowhere when she became a devil.

So, following her battle at Idyllglen, the villagers there grew to see her as their angelic champion and their guardian angel. A few centuries passed on the material plane and Idyllglen came under attack again, this time by the forces of Bel, the (at the time) Lord of Avernus. The villagers prayed to Zariel to save them, particularly a young woman named Yael, who had organized a militia of sorts. Zariel and Lulu did arrive to help, and over the next few months, the militia grew to attract the attention of surrounding settlements as they fell under threat (though they were also drawn to fight alongside Zariel because it’s hard to just ignore it when an extremely powerful warrior from the upper planes comes to ask you for backup). Eventually, Bel’s forces were beaten back and Zariel said goodbye to Yael and returned to Mount Celestia, though not for long.

This encounter with another force in the Blood War only made her more eager to truly get involved. She had seen the passion mortals had despite how fleeting their lives were, had seen their determination, and it made her even more frustrated at how apathetic Heaven was in comparison. She and Lulu hatched their plan- since the celestial forces didn’t seem to care, they would lead a mortal army into the midst of the Blood War and create a third front. They didn’t have to win, just upset the balance of the war enough to spur Heaven into action.

Zariel returned to Idyllglen soon (though, soon for her is like 20 years for mortals tbh) and told Yael of her idea. Yael was all for it, and suggested she knew ways of bolstering their forces. They grew their army over the next few years as Zariel taught her new mortal followers how to fight fiends. Their cause attracted mortals who wanted to make a difference, to deliver true decisive blows to evil; many in the area even had personal experience with the suffering the Blood War caused the material plane. It can definitely be argued that Zariel was using them to further her agenda, I can’t disagree with that, but I think her true motivation was just the desire to see something done about it and she felt this was her best option- at this point in time, what she wanted was to see her fellow celestials caring about the mortals they were meant to protect. 

Yeenoghu had this massive grudge against Zariel, and when he managed to hear of her plans, he once again attacked the material plane, essentially baiting her into going through with it. They met in combat once again at Idyllglen, at which point Zariel threw him back into the Abyss- though that wasn’t necessarily a bother to him. His job had been done. She decided it was time to mount a full assault into the front lines of the Blood War, and so, soon after, she led her army into Avernus. 

They fought for months, battling the endless onslaughts of demons and devils alike. They certainly did make a dent in the tide of the war, but it wasn’t enough. One of Zariel’s soldiers, a vampire named Jander Sunstar, eventually had enough. He’d watched his friends and subordinates die for an unwinnable war and he had barely seen any real progress. He decided they should cut their losses and leave. So, they did, deserting the army and leaving only a few forces behind. This was where they truly started to lose. 

Zariel’s remaining forces were quickly whittled down, but it took until they were in the single digits for her to give it up. She infused her sword with a spark of her goodness and had Yael and Lulu flee the battle, telling them to escape back to the material plane however they could and hide her sword so the fiends wouldn’t claim it. 

Asmodeus had been contacting Zariel ever since she arrived in Avernus, beguiling her to seek him out, promising her power. She decided to face him herself, and she fought her way through each layer of hell until she got to Nessus, whereupon Asmodeus’ forces finally proved too much for her. The Lords of the Nine all gathered to see her defeat, intrigued by who this invader was. Asmodeus gave the still-living but incredibly injured Zariel to Bel, who was given freedom to torture her in retaliation for all the havoc she caused him. His motivation for this was seeing that Zariel still had it in her to defy him, and he wanted to see if she could be broken.

Eventually, she did break. An eternity later, Asmodeus ordered Bel to bring her before him, and he gave an extensive villain monologue. The way Asmodeus tempted her isn't something that I think can be boiled down very easily. After all, we're talking about two cosmic beings who are meant to be beyond total human comprehension. They conversed throughout multiple planes of existence, and this conversation probably took what the human mind would experience as eons. In the end, it really comes down to the fact that he offered her the ability to continue her fight, but for him this time, and she took it.

Zariel was taken to become a pit fiend- these are basically the top of Hell’s hierarchy, second only to the archdevils and actual lords of the hells. Pit fiends are made from worthy greater devils, who are scorched in the Pit of Flame (the main volcano in Phlegethos, the 4th layer). In my mind, she actually emerged as an archdevil, which Asmodeus thought was pretty cool. Despite that, however, he still had her serve in the Dark Eight, a group of pit fiend warriors that had a lot of duties but mostly were the generals of the Blood War. This meant she was under the command of Bel, but she frequently defied his orders, choosing to pursue more aggressive strategies that pretty much always worked better than his original ideas. This really pissed him off and he kept throwing her into more and more trouble, hoping she’d just die or become too inconvenient for Asmodeus to keep around, but she bested every challenge.

So, there’s this thing called the Reckoning. It’s kind of complicated and a lot of the details probably aren’t super important to whatever situation you have, but essentially, it was a conspiracy orchestrated by Glasya in order to win herself more power, up to and including the possibility of her overthrowing her father and taking rulership of the Nine Hells for herself. She essentially managed to convince one half of the Lords of the Nine that the other half was planning a rebellion and vice versa. She involved Fierna, Malagard, Tiamat, and since she already had interest in Zariel, she got her on board as well. They believed they could seize considerable power for themselves if the archdukes all warred against each other.

Bel was the target of a failed assassination, which left him in a magical stupor. Everyone pointed fingers at Dispater (though in reality, Glasya was behind it, and the assassination was planned to fail). This gave Zariel and Tiamat the excuse to lay siege to Dis. The rest of the Reckoning happened around this, but Zariel spent pretty much all of it in Dis, and since this is supposed to be about her and I’ve already gone on too many tangents already, I’m not going to explore it too much. Essentially, the important bit is that Tiamat betrayed Zariel. The siege of Dis was broken and Zariel became Tiamat’s prisoner. Glasya, Fierna, and Malagard were able to frame Moloch, the Lord of Malbolge, as the mastermind. Asmodeus deposed him and installed Malagard in his place, but Glasya soon betrayed Malagard and killed her, taking her place as Archduchess of Malbolge. Meanwhile, Asmodeus demoted Belial, Fierna’s father, and installed Fierna as Archduchess of Phlegethos. (For the life of me I can’t remember if the Fierna part is actually canon in any official lore, I think I made it up???) 

Then, there was the Rift War. Essentially, a rift opened in Avernus, and a massive force of Baatorians invaded Avernus. (Baatorians are basically just baatezu, the difference really isn’t that important for most campaigns, but they were the ones who inhabited hell before Asmodeus’ time. You could get into it more if your campaign really dives into the nine hells). Asmodeus had Bel and the Dark Eight sent in to deal with it.

Bel’s a fuckin chump, though, so he blew it. Since Zariel had been imprisoned by Tiamat, he left the areas she had managed to conquer vacant and the baatorians were able to seize them. No alliance was made between the demons and the baatorians, but Bel was unable to fight both forces at once. With the situation rapidly deteriorating, Glasya took the opportunity to orchestrate Zariel’s release from Tiamat. There isn’t a solid conclusion as to how she did it.

Zariel went in and almost immediately took control of the situation. She was able to gather the scattered remnants of her legion from when she was a Dark Eight member and reclaimed the fortresses Bel had lost. She cut off the baatorian’s biggest lines of communication and sacked their most important strongholds. The baatorian’s strength was broken. This show of power attracted the other Dark Eight members to her side, who decided to answer to her to handle the situation instead of Bel. They attacked the Rift and defeated the last of the baatorian invasion; the remaining baatorians swore fealty to Asmodeus and the nine hells as a result, as it was the best course of action to avoid being wiped out entirely.

Asmodeus demoted Bel to Zariel’s position in the Dark Eight and promoted her to the position of Archduke of Avernus. She is now the absolute commander over the Blood War, answering only to Asmodeus. He is massively pleased with his decision, seeing her as far more successful and efficient than Bel ever was. I’ll clarify that “successful” doesn’t mean that she’s “winning” because, as discussed, neither side will ever win the Blood War. She’s just a lot better at keeping the demons off of Asmodeus’s turf so they’re less of a distraction to him.

That’s the basic history, now let’s get into some like. Headcanons and disorganized thoughts.

-I made a post saying this but basically, the way I like to view Zariel is that she’s like if Lucifer was the Doomslayer and also a Girlboss.

-THE most important thing to understand about Zariel is her Wrath, followed by her Pride. Both of these elements of her character can be good or bad, depending on her motivations behind them. Zariel as an angel was, like, basically created as a condensed form of the universe's anger at unrighteousness, and this is what I was talking about earlier when I said it's in her nature to be a soldier. It's what made her defy Ashmedai, it's what made her defend mortals from the forces of cosmic evil, it's what made her defy her superiors to go fight in the Blood War, and it can be argued that it's what made her Fall to continue fighting. Her pride is another factor that made her decide to fight in the Blood War, because she believed she could end it and win. This is something she still believes as Archduke of Avernus and general of the infernal armies. This doesn't mean she's, like, stupid or anything; she's arrogant. And she's meant to be. She may know on a logical level that nothing will ever change, but it literally can't stop her from trying because it's what, not just who, she is.

-A lot has been said about what alignments in d&d mean and it is literally impossible to reach a consensus. I personally have chosen to see it as good being selfless while evil is selfish, at least when it comes to mortals. At the core of Zariel's being is the will to fight. In my mind, Zariel fell because her fight in the Blood War came to be motivated by selfish reasons rather than selfless ones. She wanted to continue her fight, but she has lost sight of who and what she was fighting for.

-Asmodeus basically trusts Zariel completely. In his mind, his corruption of her destroyed her former self and bound her to him- she won't destroy him because she doesn't want to, because he gave her what she wanted. Whether this is true or just arrogance on his part is up to you if it comes up. For my campaign, it depends on whether the party wants to go the redemption route or not.

-Zariel is the jewel in Asmodeus’ crown. A fallen solar serving as his best general is one of the best prizes and “fuck you”s to the rest of the planes he could imagine. In his mind, the fact he won her over helps prove his superiority.

-Zariel really wants her sword back. Her motivation for this is nebulous, but it pretty much comes down to the fact that it holds the spark of her Goodness. She either wants it back to destroy it completely, or to redeem herself, or just to prevent it from falling into the hands of anyone who would use it against her. She’s pretty sure it never made it out of Avernus, but with all the searching she’s done, she’s never found it. 

-In DiA, if Zariel shuns redemption but gets her sword back, she destroys it and forges a new sword called the Blade of Avernus. If you think it sounds cool I can send you the stats for it if they haven’t been posted online.

-Fun fact! In DiA, she has the demon lord Kostchtchie’s hammer, Matalotok, and has imprisoned him in a ravine in Avernus. This led to him really hating her but she doesn’t really give a shit about him tbh. (And she shouldn’t considering his lore seems to indicate he’s a misogynist????? idk why that’s necessary but I guess if you’re gonna be a demon lord you can only get so scummy or whatever)

-Glasya considers Zariel to be very valuable to her, and Zariel doesn’t seem like she’s interested in becoming a threat to her for the moment, so Glasya wants to stay on her good side and keep her in power as long as possible (unless she starts encroaching on her territory). Probably a similar case with Fierna. 

-Zariel’s biggest enemies are Yeenoghu and Bel- she and Tiamat also aren’t fond of each other. The only reason Zariel never outright starts shit with Bel and Tiamat is because they’d be a distraction and upset the balance. She usually just avoids dealing with them whenever she can, but tries to keep a watchful eye so they don’t try anything. 

-She's large size category. Just a fun fact. Just saying.

-I have this idea that she never particularly emotes. Like you might get vague hints of emotion when she feels strongly about something, but she’s largely stoic to an extremely unsettling degree. I’m planning on using this to make some moments very dramatic (like in my campaign, if Lulu or Haruman or Olanthius die, she’s gonna lose her SHIT- I think it could make for a sympathetic moment).

-I also included an idea that when she walks, she makes no sound, but her feet burn into the ground and leave footprints glowing with embers. This phenomenon also happens to anything she touches- surfaces burn on touch.

-In terms of her voice, my plan is to make it kind of low and subdued, yet commanding. Even though the tone she uses should make her voice sound quiet, it booms louder than a human’s would. Not necessarily practical to act out, but I’m also adding the details that her voice echoes slightly and that behind her voice you can hear shrieking voices in infernal, like a choir in hell screaming with her, but they’re quiet so you can understand her. (As an angel, it was celestial voices.) She also has fire glowing in the back of her throat.

-Asmodeus’ body is reportedly covered in wounds that never heal. I’ve decided to extend this to all fallen angels, as these are horrific bruises and scrapes they received in their fall from grace. While most didn’t literally fall from an insane height and hit the ground hard (it’s usually like. metaphorical), they have wounds as though they did. Most of them, including Zariel, cover this up with their armor. 

-Zariel as an arch devil has never taken a war mount. She could have any number of fearsome, powerful creatures as a mount into battle but she never has. This is partly cool-factor; imagine someone walking into a full battle on horseback and absolutely dunking on their allies in terms of kill count. The other part is that she has never found one that could take Lulu’s place. It’s mostly subconscious; none of them ever measure up to what she wants and she’s not sure why.

-I personally refer to her with mostly masculine terms- Lord of Avernus instead of Lady, Archduke instead of Archduchess, devils and worshippers call her “my lord” or “sir” instead of “my lady” or “ma’am”, etc. The source material also does this sometimes, but they flip around on it. Idk, it’s just my personal preference, I think it’s fun. She’s a celestial/fiend in a fantasy story, I have zero reason to think she’d conform perfectly to the real-world western gender binary. 

-Zariel is metal as hell. I personally think at least 90% of songs used in moments with her should be metal, if you’re the kind of dm who uses music. The Doom 2016 soundtrack is your friend.

-My top 4 songs I like to listen to while planning for DiA are Archangel by Amaranthe (because duh), Baldur’s Gate 3 by Ilya Bov (just bc I listened to it while reading through DiA for the first time so now the two are permanently connected in my mind but tbh I think it has Vibes), One Winged Angel in the Style of Doom Eternal by Geoffplaysguitar (seriously this song kicks ASS, I’m absolutely using it if my party decides to try fighting Zariel), and The Only Thing They Fear is You by Mick Gordon (also using this in the final leg of the adventure, specifically if they redeem Zariel and have to fight their way out of Avernus).

#zariel my beloved #dnd #long post #avernus #asks

[luigiblood]

Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, NFTs are fucking terrible

I want to talk NFTs, cryptocurrency and blockchain one last time, with all of the arguments that honestly makes it objectively bad, and I'm not mincing my words, I want to crush this technology to death. It's made by incompetent engineers from start to end, or competent engineers with very dystopian views, it's one or the other.

I will try to put the ideology talk aside a bit, and focus more on the technical side of it, because to me it's where the real arguments lie, and not even the cryptocult will be able to defend aside from accepting these freaking terrible design decisions as somehow good things.

I will try to explain the technical side in simple terms, but you have to stay for the long run, it's not necessarily too complex to understand, but I would want to make sure to define pretty much everything relevant so that we know what we're talking about.

If you want to read a tl;dr version, look at the bottom of the page.

Blockchain & Cryptocurrency

The blockchain on its own, is basically blocks of data that forms a chain in a specific order, so basically by taking any block you should figure out which one is supposed to be the previous one, and that's how it forms a chain.

The decentralized nature of it basically takes into account that anyone could try to manipulate the chain, and so works by having a ton of miners look at them individually as they receive the next block, and performs calculations in an attempt to confirm this block, but then the result would be compared to each other, eventually forming a consensus, and if it is the same everywhere, then this block is considered part of the blockchain, and it continues from there.

The immutable aspect of the blockchain is simply how hard it is to change a block once it's defined in the chain; it's where the claimed security is, since everybody is independently checking, it is harder to manipulate blocks, and it is definitely sound there... unless you take control of a majority of miners, corrupt them to manipulate the transaction history (double spending, remove traces of history) for the benefit of someone in particular. This is known as the 51% attack. And it has actually happened several times before. But it is hard to do this, it is honestly not the biggest problem I have about it.

The blockchain is not inherent to just cryptocurrency, it's a fairly sound system based on consensus, and it could work on just about anything that warrants the use of it... except nothing too practical actually warrants this kind of tech. It is merely an alternative that is slower.

There's also different inherent problems: A lot of people believing in this system think this data is forever, and anyone who thinks that way didn't try to think seriously about the system. The blockchain is data that constantly adds up in a decentralized manner, so if you don't account for data loss, you have problems. Just think about torrents that don't have seeders (those who have the full data to share) and only leechers (those who don't). Over time, the seeders will lower because the data will be so big (currently, the Ethereum chain is above 1 TB) that less people would be able to afford the space to hold it all, especially when you mine different blockchains at the same time. As much as the data is immutable, it's not gonna be forever, especially if we convince more people to stop using it (lol).

Another reason why I hate this, and is especially applicable for the cryptocurrency usage of this tech: no human error is tolerated. If you accidentally do something, you will not be able to reverse it yourself. If you got scammed, just assume you will never get that money back, and then they try to gently ask the scammer, and then find out that, yes, people can be fucking assholes. There's no possibility of a regulation, aka having laws and a justice system to punish those who abuse the system.

Then there's the other thing, while not entirely applicable to every cryptocurrencies currently in use, it still annoys the shit out of me: Privacy is fucking gone. You can check every transaction. While you don't know the identity of people, the accounts are anonymized... but not really. If you know the cryptocurrency address of someone, then you can take the time to check who sent money to that person, and what that person paid money for. An address is the equivalent of a unique nickname, as soon as you figure out who's behind them, the privacy is just gone. That is just a dystopian thing to me, where the Panopticon is fucking real (look it up, it's fucking terrible).

But the cool thing is that it's also easy to infer who owns what, and that's how you can easily figure out that, literally all the time, 10000 addresses owns more than 50% of the money. (see https://bitinfocharts.com/) If there are cryptocultists who are into it for anti-capitalistic reasons, please explain why this is happening, this is public information.

Smart contracts

Next, smart contracts: I'm gonna take the exemple of Ethereum because it's the hype one, but I don't think others are too different.

Smart contracts are like accounts, except it's not controlled by a user, but controlled by code. It's honestly a misnomer. They don't necessarily have to manage money within defined rules in the code (they can), there are attempts to make an actual game with this system with decentralized code, by using smart contracts that uses another smart contract, and so on. You can do that.

If you wonder how this code runs, basically a user account interacts with one with a token/transaction, and basically every miner is running the code of the targeted smart contract independently, and the result is supposed to be the same for everyone, which then every miner confirms the result, and the block that contains the result will be officially be part of the blockchain. This inefficiency is by design because we don't trust anyone and basically trust based on consensus.

There's just a huge problem with this; it's code. Not just any code, but code written by anyone, and as soon as you take into account this, you should understand that it gets as messy as the Google Play Store in terms of quality. Not to mention that you cannot modify a smart contract, meaning you can only add up, if you wanna fix a bug, you have to deploy a new smart contract everytime. I can tell you this easily would pile up shit, without any quality control or any kind of curation. Essentially it's THE place where you can put malicious smart contracts and it stays basically forever and you cannot get punished for it.

You'd think you have to watch out similar to how you look out for malicious executables or websites, but usually you have to account for human error: That's literally why anti-viruses and anti-malware software exists. You can't just stay on telling people to be smarter, it's just insulting.

However the fact that every miner is running this code is also one of the scariest things I've heard: If you actually manage to make a smart contract that can escape the sandbox it's running on (and honestly, this is likely), you essentially just made a virus where the spreading is just done by the blockchain! Again, this stuff is NOT curated!

Non-Fungible Tokens

But smart contracts seem rather abstract, isn't it? What about Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs)?

Well this is where the fun starts. Turns out Ethereum has a smart contract standard interface for NFTs called "ERC-721". This defines that a NFT is at least made of a unique identifier (256-bit, if you wonder) and keeps track of the address of the owner. It contains functions that allows to change owners, and so on. This is the attempt to make a unique item in the virtual space, that's the non-fungible part, it's unique.

It's just a standard API, meaning anyone could reimplement this according to the standard in place, and expand it depending on the needs. NFTs are none other than an unique smart contract. Does that sound very secure to you?

NFTs are smart contracts that can be expanded to contain metadata (ERC721Metadata), which could be a JPEG URL, or any kind of URI even, returned by a standardized function (tokenURI). Now, clients could decide of a standard smart contract programming and check it, but that wouldn't make it very open in that case would it...

Then there's the problem that usually, images (could be anything else) are dependent on something else outside of the blockchain. It cannot, under any circumstances, vouch of its security on what it represents, because the blockchain can only vouch for itself and only itself. And it isn't just URLs, the same can be said out of generated images based on the identifier, being dependent on an outside more complex program that generates them. This is completely abstract and genuinely isn't important to the NFT in itself, the most important things are the identifier and the owner.

But the identifier is just a number in that case, which cannot vouch for what it represents, so unless you're wanting to ""own"" a freaking number, you have genuinely no reason to own a NFT. I had people who told me that in the end humans have to do the job of sorting that kind of mess. I mean sure I guess you just have to keep evidence of what that number means in case someone steals it, in which case I have not found a better way than a certificate of authenticity signed by the previous and new owner in real life... which also defeats the purpose of the blockchain, isn't it? Real life is also very good at solving problems because reality just happens to be kinda real.

And then I heard a story where someone got his wallet hacked... by attempting to "delete" a NFT. And where other cryptocultists suggests to use the hide function instead... and that no one actually questions the fact that the act of "deleting" actually runs smart contract code... What the fuck dude.

If you wonder how deleting (or burning) a NFT works: it's actually putting the owner to an unreachable address. Essentially the NFT is still in the blockchain, but owned by nobody. That's why the action of "deleting" is running code, it's the same process as changing owners. If the code is malicious, then it gets funnier. It makes sense, but, again, it just is piling up junk in the blockchain in the end.

People can even send a token to anybody. You can't even refuse it, and if that shit is not secure... you can't delete it, you can only hide it. Imagine if you received malicious spam, where the act of deleting opens it anyway, and your only option is just to pile up shit and ignore it. How did anyone think it was a good idea...

Using technology to attempt to replace a real life system such as money and assets is never going to work out, there's a layer of abstraction that just makes it impossible to be 100% sure of the data itself, and if you're not sure, you kinda need a judge. And if the judge is an AI... I dunno about your opinion, but that sounds bad.

Computer science is not magic, there are limitations in terms of trust and how easily it can be manipulated, and whoever created this system are incompetent and dangerous engineers who don't understand this simple logic.

And I haven't talked about the fraud that is technically legitimate within the system because the system doesn't care about the context, that the system itself is purely capitalist without boundaries, that this system solves literally no problems, it only creates some and is purely a reflection of the current society, that a lot of people rely on the same freaking service to mint NFTs (which OBJECTIVELY MAKES IT CENTRALIZED, hi OpenSea).

Also, literally almost every day, I hear of hacks through smart contracts (or because shit is centralized somewhere) that can steal the equivalent of millions of dollars. Do you really think I want money to be at the mercy of such a bad system without the ability to regulate? Money is not supposed to be a game. It's one of the most important aspects of society.

The short version:

The blockchain is (mostly) immutable but it only gets bigger, and then eventually no one will be able to contain all of it. Think like torrents when there's no seeders, and only leechers.

The blockchain has no real unique use case.

No human error is tolerated, so if you lose money, assume you lose it forever.

Smart contracts are code that can manage money or act as NFTs. This code can be written by anyone... and can be malicious. Every miner runs smart contract code.

Smart contracts cannot be modified, it only piles up nonstop because we love to pile junk.

Smart contracts are literally going to be arbitrary code execution exploits. I'm gonna laugh if we're able to make viruses that can infect every miner by managing to escape the sandbox.

NFTs are just smart contract code that returns an ID, owner and external asset information. The blockchain cannot make sure of how secure that asset information is because the blockchain can only vouch for itself.

Malicious NFTs with code that abuse the standard exist.

You can get sent tokens with smart contracts anytime. Interacting with it in any way can be literally a risk and the only option is to ignore it.

A lot of these problems are inherent of computing logic and limitations as a whole.

The cryptocult really needs to buy a brain. For me, it's an ideology, a very capitalist one, where very questionable security practices are done against those who are fragile. Where the strong thrives, and the weak gets weaker. Fuck that.

There's a moment where saying "it's not a bug, it's a feature" is complete bullshit. It's supposed to be a joke.

#big post #not gonna use the proper tags

[unforth]

A Non-Definitive and Certainly Incomplete List of the Differences Between the Qianqiu/Thousand Autumns Danmei Novel and the Donghua

@blacktigersprings commented on one of my Thousand Autumn Liveblog posts, asking about the differences between the donghua thus far, compared to the book - they'd seen the 16 episodes, but hadn't read it yet. After I wrote down what I could remember I was like...ya know what, I should just make all this into a post.

This is non-exhaustive. I am a tired person with a bad memory and a lot going on, so I am sure I forgot things. I'm gonna ping @baoshan-sanren since they're the main person I know who is in Thousand Autumns fandom also, and I'm willing to guarantee they will think of things I didn't, and also probably be able to correct me if I mixed anything up. I'll try to edit this based on new info, if I have the time, and I might post it as meta on AO3? I did that with my list of differences between CQL and MDZS and people found it helpful so...yeah. I'll add a link if a do.

Note that all posts like this rely to some extent on interpretation; what I write reflects my interpretation and understanding of events (...to the extent I remember them...) and others may have read/watched the same sequences and reached different conclusions. I've made specific notes where I think I'm raising a point that's more subjective than others.

This contains spoilers for all 16 episodes of the donghua, and for the equivalent parts of the novel. I did my best not to put in novel spoilers for past when the donghua ends, but there are allusions to subsequent events.

Anyway - vaguely in chronological order of when they happen?

(read more)

Overall, the basic premises of the donghua and the novel are pretty different. In the donghua, there are several primary conflicts - the intrusion of the Beimi/Tujue, the competition over access to the Solarity, the competition between different sects' top masters, and the search for that ring that Yan Wushi has. In the novel, these are all things that exist, but they're not the primary plot, and they're all at least somewhat difference. While the novel has multiple plotlines that focus on different things, looking at it as a whole, the main plot is a political one about control of the Empire, and how different sects are pulled into that conflict as a result of how the Emperor relates to Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist sects. Which tradition each sect follows is much more important and relevant in the novel. The Beimi/Tujue plot is still relevant and involved, but it's just one thread in the political milieu. The Solarity, which has different and long name in the novel that I never remember - it's like, "the complete works of (some master who's name isn't in my brain" - is in six volumes, and it's definitely still important, but it's importance kinda fades as the novel progresses (though it's still a main piece at the point where the donghua leaves off). The ring is basically non-existent in the novel - instead of it being in Yan Wushi's possession, it's in the possession of the woman who's birthday party Shen Qiao goes to (...Madam Su? Might be her name? I'm sorry, I'm not great with names, and I usually rely on fandom wikis but this one is sparse) - in the novel, she was a disciple of Hulugu, and then she stole the ring and returned to the Empire. That other Beimi/Tujue disciple (...Dong something??) takes it back and returns with it to his clan, if I recall correctly, so it can be used to unify those clans to make war against the Empire.

In the donghua, Yan Wushi is just...generally portrayed as pretty nice, and the YanShen vibes start pretty early - there's an early sign of playful flirting from Yan Wushi that actually seems sincere? At least it did to me. As a result, the YanShen vibes feel a lot stronger than they do in the novel at a similar point in the narrative. In the novel...I'd personally say Yan Wushi has zero interest, romantically or sexually, until well after where the donghua left off, and their relationship isn't canon until nearly the very end, and is always left more implied than...outright. I would personally say that in the novel, Shen Qiao has some feels for Yan Wushi pre-Sang Jingxing, but Yan Wushi doesn't reciprocate (except maybe at a deep level he refuses to acknowledge). It's not until he's healing post-almost-dying (as in, during the time immediately after when the donghua leaves off - I'm trying to be vague to avoid giving spoilers to people who haven't read it) that there start to be some real clear signs that Yan Wushi may have caught some feels, and even then it's complicated. They're complicated. They're also complicated. It's part of what I love about them, lol.

In the donghua, the fight between Shen Qiao and Kunye is shown "on screen" instead of only being described afterwards, and it's revealed almost right away that Shen Qiao was poisoned. Also, a lot of people help Kunye and they all fight Shen Qiao together. In the novel, this fight is off-screen. It's strictly a one-on-one battle between Shen Qiao and Kunye, and the reader doesn't learn that Shen Qiao lost due to poisoning until Shen Qiao goes to Mount Xuandu to confront Yu Ai.

In both the donghua and the novel, when Yan Wushi is trying to turn Shen Qiao evil, he sets up a mission for Shen Qiao and Yu Shengyan, The object of this mission is to kill a family that serves the Hehuan Sect. Shen Qiao refuses to participate, and helps them escape. In the donghua, they don't actually escape, and the "they serve Hehuan" thing turns out to be a ruse; they actually serve Yan Wushi. In the novel, they're actually Hehuan spies, and Shen Qiao still helps them, and they actually escape.

(RAPE MENTION TRIGGER WARNING) In the donghua, Chen Gong betrays Shen Qiao when that jerk noble whose name I can't remember right now (and it's not in the wiki, god the wiki is so slim, I wish I had time to help with that) hunts him for sport, and he doesn't want to die. In the novel, Chen Gong betrays Shen Qiao when that same jerk noble, who as a reputation for using pretty boys as sex slaves, tries to kidnap Chen Gong as a sex slave, and Chen Gong is like, "no no you don't want to fuck me, I know someone WAY prettier for you to rape." (The fall out remains the same in both - Shen Qiao beats up the guy, nothing bad happens to him, and he and Chen Gong part ways).

In the donghua, Shen Qiao goes to confront Yu Ai at Mount Xuandu by like. Literally walking up to the front gate. And then all the disciples for some reason get mad that Yan Wushi comes, even though he...also walked up to their front gate. Why do they even have a gate??? In the novel, Shen Qiao uses a super sneaky back way, only known to disciples, and so it actually makes some kind of sense when Yu Ai et al are like SHEN QIAO WHY ARE YOU SHOWING THE EVIL GUY OUR BACK DOOR?

(NOTE this one relies more on subtext and thus is very open to interpretation. What's written here reflects my personal interpretation, and others may disagree). In the donghua, when Yan Wushi hands Shen Qiao over to Sang Jingxing, they have a chat that heavily implies that Yan Wushi is kinda-sorta-not-so-secretly thinking that Shen Qiao could win a fight (and is probably expecting Shen Qiao to do so by using the demonic core that has been implanted in him). Sang Jingxing also says things that indicate that he thinks that Yan Wushi is setting a trap for him. In the novel, while it's never all that clear what Yan Wushi's motivations are, it becomes pretty clear by the point of the Sang Jingxing fight that Yan Wushi was serious when he said he didn't care about Shen Qiao, didn't consider him worthy, and doesn't care what happens to him. He definitely handed over Shen Qiao with every intention of Shen Qiao getting tortured and raped, and had no interest in saving him. Shen Qiao only becomes interesting to Yan Wushi afterwards. Yan Wushi is never only playing one game, so he may have thought that being pushed into a corner would force Shen Qiao to use the demonic core, but it also seemed to me like he genuinely didn't care - he'd gotten bored, and was done playing with the "new toy" that was Shen Qiao.

In the donghua, there is a shot of someone - the clothing is pretty unmistakably Yan Wushi's purple robe of ultimate purpleness - pulling Shen Qiao out of a river after he plunges to his almost-demise in the fight with Sang Jingxing. In the novel, Yan Wushi doesn't pull Shen Qiao out of the water, after Shen Qiao destroys his meridians in the fight against Sang Jingxing. Instead, Shen Qiao collapses in the mountains, where he is found by Shiwu and brought back to the monastery for treatment.

In the donghua, Yan Wushi is fighting the four masters who have it in for him, and before the end of the fight, Shen Qiao arrives and tries to help him; he fights the four masters solo to try to keep Yan Wushi from using his powers and harming himself, and when he's about to lose, Yan Wushi...uses his powers and harms himself. In the novel, Shen Qiao doesn't arrive until after Yan Wushi has been defeated; he finds Yan Wushi almost dead and brings him to a small village nearby, where he stays with a nice girl and her...grandfather, iirc...and tries to keep them safe while nursing Yan Wushi back to health.

In the donghua, it's kinda implied that Shen Qiao goes to rescue Yan Wushi because, like...he likes him? There's not really a reason given, just that he wants to, or maybe to keep the ring from going to the Beimi/Tujue? In the novel it's pretty explicit that Shen Qiao goes to save Yan Wushi because he believes Yan Wushi's position in the Empire is critical to the stability of the world - and he wants the world stable, so that there won't be more refugees, starvation, etc. That he also may like Yan Wushi is the case but is almost incidental; Shen Qiao is focused on doing the most good for the most people, and that means saving Yan Wushi, because Yan Wushi is critical to the Empire, and the Empire is critical to the common people. (this is a major part of the political themes that are more prominent in the book than in the donghua).

I can't actually remember when Bian Yanmei was introduced in the novel? But I was pretty sure it was around when Yan Wushi sends Shen Qiao to that birthday banquet? Anyway, Bian Yanmei isn't in the donghua at all thus far; in the donghua, Yan Wushi's only apparent disciple is Yu Shengyan.

#thousand autumns #meta #or something #unforth rambles #thousand autumns spoilers

[dallonm-archive]

REVELATIONS, REVELATIONS | UPDATE #1

Hello y’all! I refuse to believe it’s been 3 and a half months since I last made an update post for this novel because time is not real :) whoops! This has actually been sat in my drafts for like a month though 

A rundown of things that happened: 

We have a new title! I already went into the meta and possible interpretations (it’s ~ambiguous~), so if you want you can read about that HERE.

I did 3 weeks of Nano and wrote 15k words! On the site I recorded 15053 but I think it was more 15.5k? I’ve edited the original doc now so idk but I’m v happy with that!

After that I took a break and a lot of Life Things happened re a certain pandemic that is taking :) all my motivation :) so I didn’t return to drafting until January. I also really struggled to progress with the story and decided the best thing was to revisit what I already had and work on that

It’s not that the original chapters weren’t working, I was just trying to understand the story for the first time and also Nano was such a hazy blur and I’m 99% sure November didn’t happen. I probably won’t revisit a section this intensely again until I’ve finished the draft but at this stage it really helped because the more I worked on it, the more I understood where it had to go next - I know the structure (for now), the basics for the middle and how the story ends :) hehe :) and I don’t think I’d had those revelations (aha) without revisiting this first part. I got to fall in love with the story all over again and I’m very happy with where it’s going!

This intro is already getting so long so I’m just going to jump straight into it because this update is LONG. I’m talking about all the chapters today even though not all of them are new, but since I’ve learnt a lot about them and this is officially update #1 post-nano, it makes sense to talk about all of them! I’m also going to do a new taglist because I see this as a new set of updates also I am awful at keeping up with taglists so! I’m just tagging friends who have already expressed interest + mutuals who I’m like 99% sure want to stay on so! please let me know if you’d like to be added or removed! 

@kowlazovdi​ @isherwoodj​ @avi-burton-writing​ @pamsdrabbles​ @ryns-ramblings​ @kitblogsthings​ @svpphicwrites​ @aetherwrites​ @radiomacbeth​ @bijouxs​ @writerlywonders​ @haldimilks​ @alicewestwater​ @piyawrites​ @coffeeandcalligraphy​ @shaelinwrites​

usual content warnings for religious trauma and cult discussion, specific CWs will come before excerpts!

So I’m currently working with four parts, and I’ve extended the timeline from one year to four years. This suits the story much better BUT pretty much everything here was written before that decision and I do not have the energy to restructure all of it right now :) Each part is split into two sections, one for each POV. So four parts, 8 sections, Felix and Dorothy get four sections each. I let the structure grow with the story but this one is working very well!

Also I started setting my pages to light green and it was LIFE CHANGING. Much kinder on the eyes and just looks so nice?? Calming?? This post is your sign to set your page colour to light green like LOOK

So we have a prologue now!! The story made a lot more sense once I added this because originally the information we learn was just shoehorned into Chapter 1 in a flashback when really we needed to know this information going into it. That being said I struggled with this for a bit just because to justify a prologue I need that information to be conveyed in a way that is completely unique to the rest of the narrative so I didn’t want to just write this as a flashback. I ended up writing it in 2nd person and it came out in a way where it’s not clear which twins POV it is? Like it’s more of a fusion of both of them where neither of them have their own individual identity beyond “the twins” yet. I can’t tell if this is my funky POV peak or a clarity nightmare but I like it! I want it to only be ~500 words so we can take the risk.

In this they’re fourteen and they do a “blood pact” as a way to symbolically cut themselves from their family (aka: their father) whilst they’re still tethered to it. I really love it because not only is it exactly what these slightly unhinged-but-havent-tapped-into-it-yet, co-dependent-and-dont-realise-it kids would do but it immediately brings up the question of family and what family actually is. I’ve also realised a huge idea in this story is the idea of the tangible and for them, the concept of family and blood isn’t tangible so they struggle to recognise its significance (not that it. has any for them in the first place.) but their relationship, seeing each other bleed and pressing the cuts together is. The writing itself is kinda wonky because of the whole funky clarity nightmare POV but here’s a little taste of the ending:

cw: blood

You’ll slink back into your family room to clean and plaster each other’s hands and you’ll ask yourselves: which bloodstains came from who? Who bled the most and who stopped first? Who will come up with the story for the cuts on your palms and who will dispose the bloodied towel? Who is Dorothy without Felix and who is Felix without Dorothy?

Shiny new first chapter! Originally this was in Dorothy’s POV but now it’s switched to Felix and instead of just showing their reunion (which turns out is....very anticlimactic and not appropriate for an opening lol??) we actually explore Felix’s thoughts an actions after he decides to escape the cult, which was a very impulsive decision and spans about a day and a half. This one is definitely gonna take a few drafts to get right because it’s such a delicate but intense event to write and I’m content with the fact that it’s not There Yet but the prose is! I had a lot of fun writing this chapter and it really helped me get back into the swing of loving this story. There’s something very delicate about it but also very troubling under the surface. The opening gave me a lot of trouble, but the first line hits!

The day Felix decides to leave the sun glows the same, and the pine trees breathe the same, and the chapel cross stabs the sky the same. 

Ironically, a good chunk of the chapter happens outside the cult, as Felix decides to spend his final day taking Lola - a woman his age who is literally the only person he likes lmao - to one of the nearby towns. Whilst the main function of the chapter is to introduce the cult itself, it’s also to show how normalised leaving actually is - it’s just every time he’s left has been temporary, and every time he has left, he still feel separated from this “outside world”. They go to a candy store and a thrift store - where Felix lies about his mom (who he hasn’t seen in 20 years) being in hospital so he can use a phone :) Lola is a new character so I don’t have much to say on her, but all I can say is they are wlw and mlm solidarity but also she knows how to read him 

“I don’t know why Dotty and I loved this place so much - we always got  toothaches.”

“You’re leaving, aren’t you?”

“These apple ones are nice, but I think the lime is my favourite. Do you think the apple or the lime is nicer?”

“I think you’re leaving, but I also think you’re scared, so you’re pretending that I’m going to leave with you and that’s why you wanted to go to town. You chose the candy shop because this is where you went the first time you left, but this time you’re not coming back. Does that scare you, Fel?”

And here is my favourite paragraph in the whole chapter because <3 what the fuck <3 and if pine trees are a key Felix symbol no they aren’t 👁️ yes they are

cw: falling out a window? pushing yourself out a window? description of bones breaking

The day Felix decides the leave, when the clouds bleed amber, he pushes the scratched mahogany dresser so it lines with the windowsill, lies on top and hangs his head out. It’s never comfortable, but it’s always peaceful: sometimes cars murmur on nearby backroads, sometimes a wind chime flutters, sometimes brush rabbits rustle in shrubbery and they all breathe the same oxygen as him. He closes his eyes, inhales the pine air, and plays God: pushes himself further out, an inch at a time, until his shoulders cross the line and he wonders what bones would break if he fell. Would he break both arms or one, both legs or one? Would he break his spine? Which vertebra would crack, and how many? Would he feel them all in one big strike, or all the individual bones burst like popping candy? Evening breeze whispers against his face and he could do it right now, leap out the window and if he didn’t break his legs or back he could run to the bushes, to the pine trees, to the road, the town over East or West, the county line.

If Felix hit the ground, would it be because of a freak fall, or because he pushed himself out?

We have to laugh because I’m pretty sure I said in my Nano update that this chapter was the strongest so far besides one scene but when I looked back that scene <3 took up 80% of the fucking chapter <3 So I just said fuck it I’ll rewrite the whole thing for fun!!!! And I love it!!! It’s so jarring compared to Chapter One and that’s the point!! Everything is so over saturated and originally that was just to convey the absolute shock Felix gets from the Major Impulsive Life Decision He Just Made, but now I think it’s intentional on his part and it goes back to the idea of the tangible: whilst he didn’t grow up totally isolated this is still a new life for him, and he has nothing to latch onto, so he looks to his surroundings and hyper-focuses and latches onto it because it’s something that’s now tangible and accessible to him so he sees it in this very bright, romanticised way (the romanticisation of San Francisco is very amusing to me but it’s also very relevant). But even with that he still distances himself from this environment still - the same way he did whilst living in the cult. He has no idea how he wants to exist in this world and he doesn’t even know how to exist yet.

And so it became clockwork: eyes burst open at two, three, four in morning, doesn’t bother trying to fall back to sleep. Lurk into the kitchen, make a coffee or water or whiskey. Sit under the fritzing lightbulb with no shade, think about everything and nothing and everything and nothing. Or go for a smoke, inhale the vapours until it hurts his chest, breathe in the cool air until it hurts his teeth, wander around the block until it hurts his feet. Sneak back into a room that doesn’t belong to him in an apartment that doesn’t belong to him in a city that doesn’t belong to him. Count the bumps in the popcorn ceiling until footsteps sneak down the hall – Dorothy leaving a room that doesn’t belong to her. Join his sister back at the kitchen, she complains that they need to replace the lightbulb. Over pulpy orange juice and scrambled eggs on toast, she retells her dream and lists the possible meanings and he lists his plans for that day on how to immerse in the outside world, familiarise himself with the city until it belongs to him. Travel by trolley for the first time, eat seafood at the waterfront for the first time. Bump into a cherry-headed conure parrot by chance. Climb Twin Peaks and gaze at the new view of home. Trace the outline of translucent mountains in the air and pretend you’ll ever hike them; trace the outline of high rises in the air and pretend you know the people in them. He asks Dorothy when he’ll stop feeling like a tourist – she has no answer for him.

(context: Dorothy’s roommate, Jolie, is out of town at this point, so Dorothy tells Felix to take her room whilst she takes Jolie’s and they’ll sort it out later. Dorothy has no problem sleeping in Jolie’s bed because her and Jolie are Very Good Friends)

I also realised that, in the nicest way possible to November me, that this chapter was so damn boring because it’s very dialogue heavy but in every dialogue moment they are literally just 🧍 doing nothing. So I wrote a scene as a half-joke of Just Met Like Three Hours Ago Beau and Felix going to the arcade and it saved this chapter. It is SO fun but it also comes straight after this very emotionally intense moment and it’s really interesting to see that reach its zenith and then just. fizzle out but linger in the background? I love this scene but I also can’t take it too seriously because they play Frogger and @aetherwrites​ joked that the game’s a metaphor for Felix leaving the cult and I love her and hate her because she is so right I can picture the LIT1000 seminar where that analysis would be made unironically and it’d be ME who makes it and I am so close to just running with that for real. Also these two aren’t love at first sight but the chemistry is so loud like did you two meet today or have you been married for eight years and own five dogs together what’s the truth? Anyway here’s Felix murdering Beau on sight 

“You know, you could’ve warned me that you’d be that good,” Beau says.

“It’s not that difficult, you could’ve warned me that you’d be that bad.”

Beau leans across to shuffle through cassette tapes in the glove compartment. “I’m not, you just got lucky. I let you win.”

“But it’s not even competitive. You just died seven times in a row.”

I’m a little unsure of the pacing for this chapter now because its effectiveness lies in the fact it takes place a week after the previous, and my job with this section post-draft is to stretch it out longer since it only spans three weeks. I’m hoping I can make it work where there’s little time between Chapter 1 & 2 but still cover more time in chapters 3-5 because I think that’d be jarring in the best way? Like the absolute intensity of that initial week quickly dissolving and suddenly he’s been living this life for months he didn’t notice go by. Again <3 a problem for post draft me <3

I don’t have much to say about this one because in Nano I didn’t even finish it, and now I have but it’s still <3 giving me trouble <3 - however I’ve realised this is probably the most important chapter at this stage of the novel because it’s the first full chapter with just the twins, trying to have a bonding moment and catch up but only learning that they a) love each other b) can’t stand each other whilst not realising just yet that they are c) extremely co-dependent. I like to call this novel multiple plot threads in a trench coat and that’s definitely it, the twins have their own individual plot threads separate to one another, but if there’s a central plot (and there kinda is?? its a surprise :) ) at its essence is them realising how fucked up their relationship is, but wanting to rectify that and trying to understand the difference between a tangled and toxic relationship. 

This chapter introduces that each character has a key symbol that’s attached to the world somehow and Felix has chapters like these in his arc where he tries to navigate the state of their relationship (so there’s one later on titled “Ocean (Beau)”) and his associations with them. We have to laugh here because I was really like “oh Dorothy is sapphic so I’ll make her obsessed with the moon” but then it became a major symbol in the story <3 Dorothy IS obsessed with the moon, and Felix is frustrated because he can’t see it the way she does and he feels like part of him is missing because of that, when it’s just a different perspective but nooo these two need to have unhealthy co-dependency and then get mad when they’re unhealthily co-dependent on each other :/ Anyway I’d just like to talk about how Felix’s need to be like his sister in this chapter is demonstrated through a symbol that’s attached way more to her than it is to him even though in the prose he describes the moon as this fragile, breakable thing which is the complete opposite as how Dorothy would and lets talk about the blade mirroring the prologue!!!!

He closed an eye and pointed the blade at the moon. If he could, it’d be so easy: surgeons precision, swift wrist flick, carved and plucked from the sky. Laid out on his palm like tissue paper, half translucent and as breakable as skin - a birthday present for Dorothy, if he doesn’t tear it. He’ll try not to, but it’d be so easy.

In further development of the Moon Imagery, I’ve started using a lot of Star Imagery with Felix and a lot of general space imagery in both of their POVs and I’m delighted to say I have no idea what the meta means with that but I like it!! It fits the story very well and they’re probably mirroring each other or something!

This little chapter taught me that I need to be flexible with form <3 this was originally meant to be the final scene of the last chapter, and I was so hyped because it was one of the first scenes I conceptualised, but then it ~sucked~. However I didn’t realise until recently that it sucked because I was writing it in a traditional storytelling form - which most of this book benefits from, but this moment certainly does! not! I’m really glad because I think this book is the perfect playground for experimental form - although here it’s relatively simple though, most of the setup for this happens at the end of the previous chapter and then this is just all the information condensed as much as possible. This chapter is focused on memories so it really works for it to be cut off from the previous which is in the fictive present, and Felix’s perception of memories right now are ~a little jarring~

The final scene of Moon (Dotty) depicts Felix and Dorothy breaking into a park at 4am, promptly having an argument that results in Dorothy leaving, and Felix sat next to a fountain picking pennies out of it and trying to associate a memory with the year on the back - this chapter is those memories and this introduces the fluid relationship characters have with their past. For Felix, he’s seeing the last 20+ years from a bird eyes view in a very sporadic way and it’s starting to sink in that those 20+ years actually Happened. Some of the memories are very distanced, others are as intense as flashbacks, and some are a mixture of the two. This one is very interesting to me because he completely separates himself from the memory halfway through Fel do you wanna talk about this (unfortunately I cannot drop the name because of plot <3)

cw: light/implied homophobia

IN GOD WE TRUST / 1978

The first time Felix held a boys hand was in 1978 in the back pew at morning service. It was the first time [redacted]’s father preached and they got stuck in the back because they arrived late, because they laid in the grass together, wearing each other’s identical pecan coloured blazers as sunrise peeled back the night, and they slunk into the back of service like ghosts everyone could see and maybe they knew why they were late. [Redacted]’s father had a razor voice and he made sure every word sliced into his son and his son interlocked fingers with the boy next to him. His son didn’t look at the boy he held hands with the same way he’ll pretend his blazer is his and not the boys and the same way he didn’t look at the boy the first time they kissed behind the chapel building and the same way he didn’t look at the boy during Bible study for the week after.

Whilst I’d say in Chapter 2 the chemistry between Beau and Felix is as clear as day this is the first instance where Felix’s queerness is explicitly introduced and I’m taking this chance to say this book gets more queer every fucking week. Like I think in the last updates I was like ohhh sexuality doesn’t play much into Felix’s arc and know it’s like 99% of his damn arc and we LOVE it. But at this point he doesn’t realise like when I tell you guys this man is so repressed

I am literally only putting this here because I talk about all the other chapters and it’s weird to me to leave one out. Also because the graphic and title is pretty. Not gonna lie I love making these posts and that is 10% to ramble about meta 90% making pretty graphics that is literally just cropping photos on Unsplash and putting Garamond text over them <3

Anyway this was originally Lessons in Holy and when I revisited that chapter I realised it was so fucking messy and I tried to fix it but it didn’t really work and I’ve been scared to touch it since. However the meta is top notch so here we are - it mirrors Chapter One, Everything Holy, which explores Felix’s decision to leave the cult and with that, leave God. Everything Holy / In San Francisco explores his relationship (or lack thereof) with God and how much Felix’s life has changed since he left - and how “holy” it is. It definitely goes back to the idea of the tangible because the holiness preached to him growing up was not something tangible to him, whereas with this he looks at real life experiences, so he tries to find holiness in that. It also ties with Cyan City and the romanticisation of San Francisco as something tangible and something he can find holiness in, which a) he needs to learn that things don’t have to be “holy” to be valuable and b) it would be a shame if :) he centred everything good about his life around SF and then :) something bad were to happen whilst living in SF :) the way he and Dorothy both do this

My plan for this is basically: Condense The Shit Out Of It. The hardest part about this chapter is it is very thematic and you know as a lit major (derogatory) I love that but with more theme centric chapters the line between subtle and Too Much can be verrryyy thin, but I think focusing on character exploration over theme will fix that pretty easily. I’d also like to separate the Isaias introduction into its own chapter because it’s such an important moment and November me just? Latched it on at the end? And that plus Felix’s crisis in the same chapter is just too much. This chapter is gonna get changed A Lot but for now here’s Felix’s very chill and relaxed ending to his POV section :)

cw: drowning, drug mention

Felix didn’t speak to God for three weeks and everything unholy became holy: the coffee scorching his throat, the kaleidoscopic t-shirts and high waisted jeans, the punk rock they play at the record store – loud and electric. It’s unholy, but he sleeps through the night now, he folds coloured card into butterflies at breakfast and scribbles biro eyes over the newspaper's sudoku on his lunch break. He earns money and he spends a pinch of it on himself: on new wave records and playing cards and earrings he can’t wear yet. Sometimes he buys marijuana it’s not a sin because marijuana means he only smokes tobacco twice a day now – one at breakfast, one before bed. He bar hops with Beau on Saturdays and hikes with Dorothy on Sundays and he tells strangers he studies American Literature and he smiles with his eyes more and nobody notices that somebody’s holding his head underwater. And he doesn’t know whose hand it is, but it knows how to grip tight. And he doesn’t know how to swim, but he knows how to swallow water. And he doesn’t know if this is the punishment or the sin because the water stings his eyes but he chooses to keep them open, and the water will tangle in his lungs but he chooses to keep his mouth open. And hellfire can’t touch him under here, so he’ll keep swallowing water and it’ll burn him in a different way, and he’ll like how it scorches his throat.

(Once again context I didn’t share because I don’t like the writing that talks about it: Felix has a deep fear of drowning from past trauma, but he’s also very obsessive about it and often imagines himself drowning.)

(also the way these excerpts are just showing off my love for repetition my Intro to Creative Writing Tutor that called repetition lazy is seething rn!!!!)

Overall though, I’m v happy with how this section came out now that I actually know what the story is! As I’ve finished drafting it, I have noticed where the missing plot beats are and this is what I expected because I Do Not have a lot of experience with novels (I’ve never passed 15k on a novel before so we’re in new territory now) and generally struggle to see beats before I finish a draft. I’m thinking there’s at least one chapter missing and maybe a shorter one, like MSATBOTF, but I won’t be touching this section again until I finish the draft. Most of all I learnt a lot about the story’s form and I’m excited to play with that and be a bit more flexible! 

I’m currently drafting Indigo, the first chapter in Dorothy’s POV, and I was going to talk more about it but this post is too long and the next update will be <3 all about her <3. But the chapter introduces her and Jolie’s tumultuous relationship and here’s a lil peak! 

Me, a sapphic, capable of writing happy sapphic relationships: 

Me instead: 

cw: light/implied homophobia

If she didn’t display the ticket on the bedside table - like she had something to prove - she could have easily been in Dallas, in New York, London, Cannes, Moscow, Tokyo, Cairo, Sydney. But wherever she went, Dorothy and Jolie have had four airport reunions before today - four times they’ve had to soften themselves, disguise themselves. Old high school friend flying in to be her maid of honour, college roommates who don’t see each other as a day past eighteen, pen pals reuniting for the first time since the seventies, business trip colleagues in casualwear. The fifth time, there’s nothing to hide, and as they walk to the car, Dorothy has to wonder: if they were seen by nobody, would Jolie have hugged her with both arms? Would she have kissed her? Would Dorothy kiss back?

I’m midway through this chapter, so I’ll keep the rest of it for the next update! That I promise won’t be in three months!

If you read through all of this then I am in love with you <3 

#i'd say im sorry this is so long but it was so fun to write so i'm not! #also pls be proud i cut 2k words from this bc i RAMBLED #atlastracking #writeblr #writing update #revelations revelations

[mugionthewater]

Tsumugi Shirogane Deepdive: Prologue

I’m in a DR mood right now, and really enjoying revisiting Tsumugi in particular, so I thought I’d do a chapter-based retrospective focusing on all the cool Tsumugi material! A reread project especially rewarding for a character like Mugi, so I’m really excited.

In this series, I’m focusing a lot on all the foreshadowing, and also what we can extrapolate about Tsumugi’s true character along the way. I’ll be doing this chapter-by chapter, including the prologue as well as an installment for her Free Time Events.

Full spoilers for V3 under the cut.

The Pre-Prologue

We first see Tsumugi in the gym by the exisals to get their uniforms and their memories. Tsumugi herself has four lines of dialogue in this scene, nothing that particularly stands out, but there are a couple of things worth noting about how she (and everyone else) is dressed.

Kaede describes how she was kidnapped on her way to school, and it sure looks like that’s the case for almost everyone in the room. We’re used to seeing DR characters in flashy outfits that vaguely resemble school uniforms but actually reflect their individuality, so when the game first shows them in an ensemble lineup like this, it’s a lot more striking.

Not so much in this CG. While there are plenty of visual details that tell us about these characters (Saihara’s already hiding under a hat in his sprites; Iruma is revealing; Kiibo and Gonta are buttoned up and orderly, but Kaito’s shirt and jacket are undone to show a bold-colored undershirt), their uniforms look like they’re doing what uniforms are supposed to do: be bland and blend in.

What about Tsumugi? Tsumugi wears a basic uniform like everyone else, but this is where we get the game’s first indication that all is not what it seems with this girl. The clue is the blue. She is the only one in the lineup whose primary color isn’t a neutral tone. What’s more, it’s the same shade of blue Tsumugi is associated with throughout the game. Visually, part of her is already in character as Tsumugi Shirogane, SHSL Cosplayer.

Of course, there’s a much bigger item foreshadowing Tsumugi as the bad guy, which is that in advance of everyone getting their “memories”, the main emphasis is their new clothes delivered by the Monokubs.

There are a couple of reasons the clothes are significant. For starters, there’s a direct line to Tsumugi’s cosplay talent. For anyone inclined to suspect her before starting the game on account of her talent (and her general don’t-look-at-me-I’m-not-suspicious vibes), this is immediate theory fodder. This also primes the audience to look at the setting of V3 with a critical eye, between the contrast of the kids’ boring outfits and their flashy new ones and the Monokubs making explicit references to starting the “story“, there is an immediate suggestion of artifice that runs all the way down to their identities. Not for nothing is Kaede’s magical girl transformation visually similar to the memory light.

Another thing: pre-memory light, the person in the room whose outfit is the least uniform-y is Amami.

At the very least, it’s a look that’s noticeably more casual than what most of the cast is wearing. After Chapter 6, we know that Amami made it to the end of the 52nd Killing Game before he and Tsumugi were condemned to execution via participating in the next killing game- which he seems to be realizing in this scene- so it’s possible they’re coming right off the heels of the last killing game. It’s an ongoing mystery what his relationship with her was like up to this point? Does he know she’s the ringleader? Is “Tsumugi Shirogane“ anything like the person she was in the last killing game, assuming she was even there?

I’m not confident Tsumugi really switched to a new persona for the 53rd Killing Game, even though fake identities is kind of her whole deal. I’ll get more into why in this series, but I think a lot of the character we see in the game is the “real“ Tsumugi, to the extent that such a person even exists.

Introducing Tsumugi Shirogane: Professional Cosplayer, Sex God

If you go back and read the promotional blurbs for V3, Tsumugi’s mention her tendency to get so lost in thought that she’ll ignore everyone around her. This little trait isn’t super weird at first, until you realize later in the game that she doesn’t carry the shtick past the first chapter. It’s like she wrote the character blurbs herself, realized everybody has a wacky “thing“ that would come up immediately in the introductions, and came up with an act of low-grade wackiness so she’d fit in in the prologue.

This is great stuff, looking back. It gives an intro in brief to the many contradictions of Tsumugi Shirogane. On one hand, it’s overly phony and performative. But on the other hand, there’s a core of truth there about her character- she really is someone who stays in her thoughts without a care for anyone around her, albeit less in the cute way and more in the horrifying sociopath kind of way.

It also tells us something important about Tsumugi’s commitment to the Killing Game. She cares about maintaining the integrity of this world and its characters, but is pretty indifferent about maintaining a role for herself. She doesn’t give a shit about having a storyline or even much of a character. The pleasure of DR comes from what she can get as an observer/consumer. 

This is entirely consistent with what she tells Kaede and Saihara about herself and her feelings about cosplay in the actual introduction.

This is the ethos that makes me wonder how dishonest Tsumugi really is. She’s dishonest as hell, of course, but given that she later applies the entire DR LARP reality show experience as “cosplay“, what she says about her convictions largely rings true. She clearly cares about making her tribute an authentic one (lol), which extends to her being the primary creative director inside her fiction bubble.

It partly explains why she spends the next five chapters being little more than furniture. In her mind, her job as a producer precludes her from being a character in her own right, because doing anything to pull focus is tantamount to self-promotion, and, well, that’s an abuse of power that gets in the way of the story!

(sidebar: there are some fascinating things we could speculate about what she says about cosplay relates to her relationship with the rest of Team Danganronpa and the outside world, but this post is getting long, so I’ll save it for another day)

Like everything else about Tsumugi, it’s not until the end that you can fully contextualize how sinister she’s being here. What she passes off as a cute passion for cosplay is actually a bone-deep sense of consumer entitlement taken to a logical extreme. Tsumugi is a more vicious indictment of terrible nerds and a selfish fandom than anything Hifumi Yamada could embody. She loves DR so much, and feels so strongly that nobody should be participating in DR with any corrupt motives, that anything less than the real deal is unacceptable. To this end, she will happily transplant entirely new emotional realities on the others so that even the emotional torture of the Killing Game is authentic. In Tsumugi’s selfish nerd brain, this is the important part of the drama of Killing Games, and anyone who disagrees with her approach is a fake fan who doesn’t deserve any kind of creative control.

Anyways, there’s more to say about Tsumugi’s introduction, so moving on

Some pretty overt foreshadowing here. In the Japanese script, her reference is ep. 53 of Kiteretsu Daihyakka instead of Doraemon. I like the change for the dub, even though it’s pretty obvious. Someone who knows DR primarily through the dub is less likely to know about the franchise’s connection to Doraemon, anyway.

Tsumugi also points out the weird dragon statue in the hallway that will lead into a new part of the school down the line. It’s a neat little metatextual trick on the audience, because it’s the kind of thing that’s not suspicious at all on a first playthrough. She’s an NPC in a DR game, of course her dialogue is gonna point out plot devices that will be relevant shortly, but on a reread you know she’s being deliberate about it. This is far from the last time this kind of thing happens with Tsumugi.

Lastly, this charming observation from Kaede about why she’s maybe not so plain afterall.

Kaede puts it in the worst way possible, but it’s interesting that she, a person with a generally good read on people, decides immediately that there’s more to Mugi than meets the eye. Not only that, she relates it specifically to an audience spending a lot of time looking at her. If she were any less gross about it, Kaede making this kind of observation would land like a big clue.

This leaves us with the biggest question from the prologue: if Kaede wasn’t too busy being horny and gay, could she have put two and two together and thwarted the ringleader?

There is SO much more to say about Tsumugi, so I’m really excited to dig deep into other chapters!

#tsumugi shirogane #ndrv3 #meta