#basically just a cardboard cutout of a character this whole game

[hecksupremechips]

When I think about Mizuki in aini it’s like, I know something is just so off about her but I have trouble articulating it. It’s really frustrating cuz she was like my favorite character in the first game and when I play the first game I feel like I have a really good idea of who she is as a character. Like she acts strong and and hangs out with people much older than her and has to take on a fuck ton of responsibility but she’s also just a kid she cuddles with a rabbit toy she raises fish in the fridge she can be kinda gullible in the way that kids are and she doesn’t always understand more mature jokes. She acts sassy and hostile towards Date but she’s described as kinda and compassionate by Hitomi and she defends the weak and loves her friends deeply and thinks Aiba is cute. She pokes fun at Date for being grumpy at the shrine and then excitedly holds his hand and drags him over to the offering box to pray for his safety and she gets scared when there’s danger and she hugs Date for comfort but then tries to brush it off because she was taught to feel shame whenever she required basic attention and affection. She was hurt badly by her biological family and finds herself at home with Date despite her fears of him not caring for her. Like she’s a really solid well rounded character with strengths and weaknesses and her story makes me feel every possible emotion known to man

Then I play aini and I was soooo excited to see that Mizuki was gonna be a protagonist and that she had Aiba (its what made me buy the game immediately after finishing the first game lol) and then like. I honestly can’t tell you a damn thing about her character in aini. Like she’s the protagonist for half that game and I can’t think of any particular struggles she has as a character or like any moments where she stands out. It’s like, I know this is Mizuki she has the same basic features of that character but she’s not really given much? And anything new you learn about her is just like, retcons of her already established and well written backstory that just. Really didn’t need to be made and honestly they just kinda do a disservice to her character

Like first off there’s the Bibi twist which. Oof. I have some pretty complicated feelings about Bibi in general like okay. When she appears as the masked woman I was totally on board and thought she was really interesting and I was so prepared for her to be a favorite character her somnium is probably my favorite one in the game. And then she was revealed to be Mizuki. And it was revealed that we were playing as her for half of the B side of the story and we didn’t know it. Like, where to even begin. They stopped writing Bibi as her own character and she pretty much just became Mizuki except idk, she has a bigger grudge against Ryuki and has a heart condition I guess. And like I think it really speaks to how flat Mizuki was in this game if we can play as two completely different characters and have them be indistinguishable. Bibi shouldn’t be anything like Mizuki, they’ve lived completely different lives. And I hate the clone twist like good god I really hate the clone twist because IT ADDS NOTHING TO MIZUKIS CHARACTER OR HER CONFLICT. In fact it like, actively goes against her arc from the first game??? Cuz like half the point of Date and Mizuki’s relationship is there to show that family isn’t what you’re born with, it’s what you make. Both Date and Mizuki feel like their little family can’t exist because they’ve been taught, like most of us have, that biological family is the most important and real and valid way to have a family. You’re supposed to love and respect your biological parents because they MADE you, and Date has to live with the anguish that he can’t be Mizuki’s REAL father because they aren’t blood related. So like, to pull the rug away and go "oh yeah btw I guess Mizuki was adopted lol" it just completely erases what made her story so impactful to most people. And the clone reveal adds nothing like Mizuki doesn’t NEED this at all she wasn’t looking to discover the truth of her backstory because. There wasn’t any truths that needed to be discovered, we already know her deal and so does she. And her having a clone doesn’t really fit with the half to whole theme cuz like, she wasn’t looking for a fucking clone or like a secret sister or anything like that. It’s just stupid it’s so stupid

What Mizuki needed was like, a new actual conflict that required her to overcome challenges and grow as a character. A lot of people, myself included, have complained about how her relationship with Date just isn’t talked about hardly at all, how he went missing for 6 years and they didn’t even get a proper reunion and the game kinda mocks you for wanting one. We dont get any context as to how Mizuki coped during that time like she was completely alone for the most major years of her life she was separated from the one person who was her real family and we don’t know what she felt during all that cuz the game refuses to talk about it. And there isn’t much indication that the adults care about this either, Boss maybe has a soft spot for her but that’s kinda the extent of it, she makes a joke that Date is probably off chilling in a hot spring in Atami so clearly no one is giving Date’s disappearance the weight it deserves. So like, we have this potential thing we could work with here like why is Mizuki a detective now and why does she care about this case? Because her dad was taken by tearer and has been gone for 6 years and she’s been all alone and she wants to find him and find out if he’s even alive and she wants to kick tearers ass cuz he tore (hehe) her family apart. And this can also give her an actual connection to Ryuki too like Ryuki is the one who betrayed Date and knew some shit about tearer and saw what happened to Date and he just never told Mizuki the truth and she’s spent all this time looking for Date so this would be like, pretty major conflict when it all gets revealed. And it actually gives what Ryuki did actual consequences that affect him cuz honestly the fact that no one seems to care that much about Date’s disappearance makes Ryuki’s guilt and depression seem completely fucking useless lol. So here we go, that’s some conflict for Mizuki to have and it gives her a personal connection to the case, we can add more to it but really even this alone is way more than what she’s given in the actual game. And I think just the big problem with her in aini is I think the writers were too afraid to do anything that could ruin her character or cause her to change too much so they just like. Didn’t write anything that could allow her to develop and instead just fucked with already established information about her which. I honestly don’t know how that is seen as better??? In what fucking world. It just feels really pointless to have even made Mizuki a protagonist to begin with since they don’t really do anything with her and lol I think the writers realized this so that’s why like. Ryuki gets all the character conflict but makes lowkey no progress in the case and the real investigation doesn’t happen until the Mizuki side cuz they needed to make up for the fact they didn’t write anything for her alskla

So yeah just to wrap things up, Mizuki just didn’t get to be a character in aini and she wasn’t given any interesting conflict despite how easy it would’ve been cuz the writers were too scared of doing anything with this character that could ruin her but dude. Dont fucking make her the protagonist then if you’re too scared of doing anything with her. Don’t piss me off like that

#aitsf #aini #ai the somnium files #ai the somniun files nirvana initiative #mizuki date #im still working out the kinks for my aini rewrite so i had to RESTRAIN MYSELF from getting into that too much lol #but yeah god like this is a really big problem and like its hard to talk about the fact that mizuki wasnt given any real conflict and was #basically just a cardboard cutout of a character this whole game #without it sounding like idk. complaining about the fact that shes a girl and just automatically writing her story off as bad #because shes a girl and just being really misogynistic cuz ive definitely seen that with her and its like AAAGHHH #i agree that shes not written good but its not cuz women are inherently boring and stupid dipshit #i think we can argue that her story is bad because of misogyny if we wanted to cuz id say its a factor #but yeah its just really frustrating cuz like ive played this game THOROUGHLY very thoroughly and still cant tell you much about mizuki #uh anyways i hate the clone twist i will never not hate it i was so ready to be a bibi stan i was so let down 😭

[beevean]

You've probably said it before but who's your favorite Belmont

Daddy Longlegs Trevor <3

Yeah, I know he's probably the second most popular Belmont after Richter, but sometimes I too am basic :P

I call him the Sonic of Castlevania because he's effortlessly cool, has a bit of an attitude but a heart of gold, doesn't hold grudges against the people who shunned him, and is very, very friendly - you can infere this by how easily all sorts of people follow him in CV3, and how he doesn't hold Alucard's heritage against him when the poor guy was angsting about it. Yeah, so maybe you have to read the manual and really look into the events of a NES game to get an idea of his personality, but that doesn't mean he's a cardboard cutout like NFCV some fans think!

And his sassiness in CoD cracks me up lmao, he's so cocky and confident and he pulls a mean eyebrow and

i may be willing to sell both kidneys for a cod remaster, but only as long as they manage to recreate the sheer amount of raw gay energy exuding from all characters

also i'm a whole believer in the theory that he was so difficult to hector at first because he had a crush on him and was being all tsundere about it. because everyone has a crush on hector. also hevor canon

And even then he's humble when questioned about his title as the one who killed Dracula, he immediately gives credit to his friends <3 he cares <3

Also his design is just really good, the scars that mark him as a survivor, the outfit that is both fashionable and protective (kind of like Hector, but not as confusing lol), the longcoat that goes swish <3 he looks like a professional vampire hunter, practical but not without flare!

And of course,

Another thing he has in common with Sonic: his music slaps me into another dimension. (Beginning is also good! But I prefer his "ohshitohshitohshit the belmont wants me dead aaaaaa" theme :P)

anyway. trevor cool. he's shaped like a friend :)

Aside from him, Leon and Juste also have a special place in my heart! Leon is also just a noblehearted dude who threw everything he had away for the chance of saving his beloved, and after losing LITERALLY EVERYTHING HE HELD DEAR IN ONE NIGHT, he still had the strength to live on and not fall into the temptation Mathias had fallen into. Also his theme is literally my favorite CV track of all time, it's just perfect for him and the part in the game it plays in. Juste is just OP as all hell, and he has a funny personality - he's the prettiest Belmont by a long shot but he's also kind of rude and aggressive? lol - and with him you can start to see the Belmont legacy weigh on his shoulders. I also choose to see something in the way he vehemently denies Maxim the chance to explain what happened to Lydie in the best ending, as if he just wanted to forget everything. And the worst ending of HoD kills me :(

#castlevania #trevor belmont #leon belmont #juste belmont #belmonts......... are cool #you can say something good about every one of them #even soleil if you want to lol #wow i sure hope we got a story where they get treated with the respect they deserve :)

[2goldensnitches]

another complaint I have about feh’s laziness is my most capitalist opinion to date, though it includes fe as a whole: the lack of promotion and extra materials. I’m not one to buy merch just because it exists, and a lot of merch itself is incredibly superfluous waste, but it’s extremely weird that Nintendo’s biggest mobile title (61% of its profits in the mobile market and over 1 billion usd as of February) gets…nothing. No figurines, no plush toys, no dioramas, no manga (the yonkoma are just shorts), no marketing outside of its twitter account, not even those dinky little character cafés even the most short-lived seasonal anime get.

so far only a few characters have figurines (Lucina, edelgard, corrin, byleth, mrobin, caeda, Cordelia, tiki, alm, celica, tharja, Lyn, ike, dimitri, chrom, felix, bernie, Lilina, sakura, camilla, Veronica, Elise, Claude, Lysithea, marth), and plushies (ike, marth, Roy, 3h lords except yuri, the byleths, sothis, lucina, and fcorrin). Of these, alm, tiki, celica, mrobin, and mcorrin only exist as amiibo because of smash; sakura, caeda, and elise only have nendoroids; all three main 3h lords have pop-up parade figurines plus felix, Lysithea, and Bernadetta, but edelgard has a figma as well; fcorrin and lucina both have amiibos and figmas, but fcorrin has a scale figure along with marth, ike, lyn, lilina, Roy, fbyleth, tharja, camilla, and Veronica. Chrom has both amiibo and nendoroid.

you’d think this is a respectable amount of character rep to buy, except these all came at an extremely slow pace, often releasing at the tail end of their games’ cycles; I’m not a marketing expert, but I am a fan, and I distinctly remember the numerous complaints this has gotten (and still gets!) over the years. There is interest—so where’re the goods? Ironically enough, intsys made more content for the earlier games, including manga (jugdral got at least 4) and novelisations, small board figurines, and even an ova for archanea. It’s understandable that by the time of the tellius games, only artbooks were made due to poor sales, but you’d think that the success of awakening saving the series and fates making them even more money would mean more content. But so far, it’s just been those few figurines plus collected yonkoma. The plushies and scale figures weren’t even made until much, much later. Hell, kozaki had to release the fates art book himself without help from intsys, and corrin’s scale figure was only announced this year.

even houses, the series’ biggest hit to date, only started out with crap cardboard cutouts of the characters’ sprites plus the dining hall and plastic pouches. its bigger merch came later as well, including a certain tea set that is not only quite expensive, but made many fans angry due its release date (nopes). Engage seems to be a little more confident, having stickers, a notebook, keychains, switch icons, konpeito, and a metal tumbler, but it’s still very little compared to what other series have.

in-game, feh is also surprisingly subdued. No splashy animated seasonal banner announcements, little original music, few shorts, no streaming collabs, no tie-ins. The book openings get gorgeous animation from anima inc but no cutscenes are found in the game except visual novel-style text, and, again, it was only until much recently that we’ve seen some other animation in the form of like, five chibi shorts and four regular shorts (one of which got heavily mocked because it’s basically fjorm’s disney princess love song moment for the self insert protagonist). Banner announcements are just jpegs showcased next to gameplay plus a few voiced lines from the vas.

when you get to other games though? You’re not starved for content at all: stuffed toys, miniature figurines, large scale figures, acrylic standees, notebooks, keychains, stickers, patches, tableware, glassware, yonkoma AND full manga and novelisations AND light novels, food, fashion, pillows, cosmetics, chara cafés and anime; they all have streamed announcements, animated cutscenes or fully rendered illustrative cgs with voice work, silly promotional videos on youtube, cast interviews, and collaborations with other games. Like, you could not even pay me to touch waifu trash like nikke or azur lane or blue archive, but they at least bother to promote themselves, for better or worse, and regularly do cross promos with other brands like nier, monster hunter, evangelion, and even sanrio.

Even tears of themis, which is extremely niche even within mihoyo’s ecosystem, has had character cafés, accessories, and crazy stuff that no one wants like a credit card!

I’m certainly not the first to ask, but is intsys allergic to making money? So incredibly short-staffed that their only resources are for game dev and a smattering of in-game animation? Stuck to nintendo’s teat? Purely lazy? Why does 70% of merch come from fans to the point where even fanart is the preferred type of autograph material for the english vas? I’m not sure i or anyone else will get the answers to these questions, but is it really so much to ask for a real sleepytime byleth plushie to hold and squeeze instead of lyn’s eighteenth alt?

#fe heroes

[paused-waterfall]

Care to tell more about what you think of the plot and characters to the dsmp? Which ideas you enjoy and don't? It's super interesting since I was there during the hype and it sucks that the whole thing seemed to crash in and burn (at least in my eyes). At least a few CCS got to end their characters how they wanted too

Ah man, the plot and characters. First, a caveat: My thorough watch-through hasn't yet reached the conclusion of many of the characters, so I can't properly speak to that. I've encountered plenty of warning signs of controversial and stunted conclusions, so that has been my expectation from the start. With that hanging ominously over our heads, here are some of my thoughts on the rest:

Despite its overt absurdity, the plot of the dsmp feels more like a history book than a novel. In your prototypical novel, one author is really just trying to tell one story. They will cut scenes that don't add to that core story, and simplify their work if they're afraid their audience might get lost in the weeds. Background characters, in particular, get cut down to only existing as the minimally adorned cogs needed to complete the mechanisms of the plot.

In the dsmp, damn near every character is fleshed out by a whole human who is specifically invested in that character. A creator might only play a small part in a given storyline, and any individual viewer might have a complete blindspot for a given character. But there's still a whole person sitting behind every username, monitoring (and sometimes, experiencing) their motivations in real time.

And this lets them do weird shit with their characters. Authors need to keep their whole cast in their head and keep them on the rails well enough that there aren't any unexpected crashes. The creators on the server generally don't bother with this. I haven't gone out of my way to peel back the curtains of the server's writing process -- curtains can hide horrors, I don't touch curtains until I'm ready to flee -- but I have the impression that pivotal characters in pivotal scenes have beats to hit and maybe some scripted lines. Meanwhile, the rest of the players seem to be set loose to do whatever fits their concept of their character, with only minimal guardrails in place to prevent an accidental derailment of the core plot of the day. Nobody looks like a cardboard cutout who is just there to play Shocked Man #3. Even players who are not deeply invested in the roleplay have comprehensible motives, because they seem to mostly be there to just play some goddamn Minecraft. Hey, that's a game I've played! They want to build a nice house and maybe find some netherite -- I know what that feels like!

No viewer can follow all of the uncurated knot of plotlines that make up the dsmp. But I find it so satisfying that any thread I choose to pull on is likely to reveal an earnest line of character motivation. When I complete a novel and want to know more about a character, the best I can hope for is that the author happened to have the same thought and is willing to act on it. When I finished watching the Blueberry TV cut of Doomsday and wondered what the fuck Ranboo's deal was, I was able to dig up VODs and see it all first hand. Plenty of plotlines are cut short and plenty of perspectives have been deleted, but on some level these flaws in basic storytelling are a rarely explored reflection of the real world. Because history is not a streamlined novel. No history book can fully encapsulate the events it portrays, but we know that every character contained within it has their own perspective, and that every thread in the knot can be pulled on further if we're just lucky enough to have not lost the information to time.

There are, of course, a ridiculous number of downsides to this approach to storytelling. But, since this is my first time encountering this specific type of narrative, to me they are new and interesting downsides. Flaws that haven't yet dug grooves into my patience. I'm quite eager to see artists build on this example, wrestle with those flaws, and either find solutions or find some other approach that's even better.

I've somehow rambled for 6 paragraphs and barely touched on any specific character and story beats, but I better cut myself off here for now. If you want more of a rundown of notable design choices, I could certainly be baited into more of that lol.

#dsmp

[marshmallowloves]

Zelda OC #2 - Ixchel + Seracia

>> (list of posts for other OCs)

(just a forewarning - even with the read more, this one is gonna be lengthy 😂)

After being introduced more to the Zelda series by my friend, I excitedly went home and attempted to play through the few games that I owned. I got the farthest in Oracle of Seasons - or at least that's the one I played the most. I can't really remember. But, eventually I moved and was forced to change schools, so I kind of fell out of the hype that my friend instilled in me, and I didn't really touch the games for a long while.

Fast forward to… somewhere around 8th grade, when I was around 13. I couldn't pinpoint the year because to be perfectly honest, most of late middle school to early high school is a complete blank in my memory. Anyway, my mom bought me Twilight Princess for the Wii (I know, I know, put down your pitchforks, none of the local stores even sold the GC version at the time - and we weren't about to pay extra to get it shipped to our broke asses) ...and instantly, I was enamored. Now that I was older, I felt I could actually appreciate the games for their content instead of just going "oh haha hee hee, I am playing the Zelda game! I am into the Zeldas!"

I don't even think I finished the game in its entirety before I chugged out an OC, specifically for Twilight Princess. And this time I was determined to make an OC that would put the cardboard-cutout of Saria Kamia to shame. With the OC Remix "Ancient Hero" playing on repeat on my orange iPod Nano, I scurried over to a now-defunct dollmaker on DeviantArt (thanks, adobe) for ideas, and out came Ixchel and Seracia.

Unfortunately, I do not have the original screenshot from said dollmaker. I do, however, have an old notebook drawing of the first Ixchel (pronounced "EESH-tuh-shell") - she went through a major redesign, but we'll get to that.

(with my real name oh so hastily blurred out kjdhfg)

Ixchel was a name that I found while on Behind the Name - I don't remember what criteria I was searching for, but Ixchel was the name of a Mayan goddess and it supposedly means "rainbow lady." And I do love me some rainbows and names with unusual letters in them! So I wrote it down, butchered the real pronunciation, slapped it on my OC and called it a day.

Ixchel was, for all intents and purposes, a normal Hylian girl (yes I know the "race" part is blank, I know she's a Hylian though dkfjdf). Sure, I slapped on the heterochromia because I needed to make sure she wasn't too plain, but because I was so obsessed with avoiding the Mary Sue clichés, I made it a point to keep her as "regular ol' person" as possible... Well, except for the fact that I later gave her a choker that could literally paralyze people if they made eye contact with her during a very specific phase of the moon. Y'know, normal Hylian girl stuff.

I finally shipped her with Link - because what self-respecting, basic-bitch Zelda fangirl didn't want to jump into Twilight's pants after seeing the first sumo wrestling cutscene? There was no substance, though. I don't remember giving her any distinct personality, nor was there any story as to how they met - I only had daydreams and maybe one or two doodles in which she thinks about him in a romantic context but doesn't say anything. This was at a weird point in time where I kind of knew what self-shipping was, but not by name, and was coming to terms with the fact that I had a crush on a fictional character while being a whole-ass teenager, and not being 9-10 years old and innocently thinking Ash Ketchum was cute - so I think I danced around the ship with Link out of embarrassment, but it was so long ago that I can't be too sure.

Anyway, thanks to this image, I was able to redraw her several years later, looking much nicer and probably much closer to how I intended for her to look. (and here's an extremely rare occurrence - this drawing has a date on it! May 17th, 2016.)

However, this is the last we see of this version of Ixchel. After a while, I decided that she was rather basic - actually more of an "anti-sue," really - and should fit a bit more into the Zelda universe, rather than just be some normal chick with pointed ears. So I did what any loving creator would do - ditched her on the side of the road, appearance and personality and all, and created a whole separate OC with the same name.

The new and improved Ixchel was, in retrospect, hit-and-miss. This time around, my Zelda OC actually had a personality! She was a plucky young adventurer who loved exploring and testing her mettle through battle. She had a very casual attitude, and her thrill-seeking ways sometimes got her in over her head, but she was kind at heart and wouldn't hesitate to help someone who needed it. Her design wasn't bad either, I think - the cargo shorts are admittedly a bit modern, but she definitely looks like a fantasy adventurer, which is what Zelda games are supposed to be like. So this was the "hit" part!

The "miss" part comes in the fact that she once again has a fairy - wait a minute, that's the bitch from the last post!! No, wait, this one is orange, and her name is spelled differently… Those things might have changed, but hoo boy, Seracia (shortened to Sera) did not change her bitchy ways. Still snarky, still sassy, and still insufferable, to the point where Ixchel would regularly put her in glass time-out just to get her to cut the sass - and that still didn't work.

Not only that, but Ixchel also had a pet wolf named Olive. Whether it was because I was in the throes of my teenage years and wolves were cool and edgy, or because I was just that in love with Wolf Link's whole schtick, I wanted a piece of that action too, so I gave Ixchel a rideable wolf that I never drew because to this day I cannot draw animals to save my life. Nevermind that apparently in TP (which Ixchel was made for) everyone in Hyrule shits themselves at the sight of an oversized puppy - Ixchel could literally waltz into Castle town on the back of her giant danger dog and nobody would bat an eye. In fact, that was the opening scene to a story I began writing with another friend at the time - but discussing that story at length would require its own post.

Ixchel's weapons were interesting as well. The idea for them came from (hilariously) Jenna's Phoenix Circles in the infamous Zelda badfic My Inner Life - which themselves are vaguely based on real-life chakram. Here, I called them "Dream Rings" and then later renamed them to "Razorings." They had retractable blades and could be carried on Ixchel's shoulder when not in use.

And lastly, a part that is both hit and miss - I shipped her with Twilight Link as well. At first it was admittedly self-indulgent - there's a picture of them smooching somewhere in my folders. However, I later decided to change it so that Ixchel's love was unrequited. Whether I was, again, embarrassed to crush on a fictional boy at that age or if I was just pants-shittingly afraid of falling into the "loves Link" cliché that many Mary Sues did, at the end of it all, Link fuckin' friendzones her and honestly, that's actually great. It's about time Link successfully escaped the thirsty fangirl.

#zelda #loz #legend of zelda #oc #Ixchel #Seracia #Ixchel and Seracia

[professor-glasses]

Jak shower thoughts in no particular order:

1. Overlooked aspect of animation that Significantly impacts my enjoyment of it. Sense of motion. In 3d type cg I often think of this as the Physics of the animation. This is one reason I usually prefer Dreamworks cg moves over Disney cg movies, purely animation based. The styles of motion from the ones I’ve seen (which is far from everything but I can only reference what I know) are very different. Disney often feels much more floaty and less solid, so I like it less.

Objects are heavy, things don’t just swing around like they weigh nothing. Characters have weight to their bodies, I can feel the motion. I really like that and it feels off if it isn’t right. This is also why I like playing Sky so much, the sense of motion/physics I get from it is great. If it wasn’t I wouldn’t enjoy the pure act of running and flying anywhere near as much.

In 2d animation it’s less pronounced but it’s in this snappy feeling. Not just whether it’s a smooth animation or not, sometimes if everything is smooth always that’s not my preference. If stuff is moving too much always or in a specific way (idk how to describe) then I don’t like it as much either, this is a problem that keeps me from enjoying certain types of animation. I need the sense of motion to be Just Right for me to really enjoy it.

2. Some takes in the PL fandom where they glossed over a lot of stuff and tried to say that Descole had the same dead wife/family backstory repeated and it was lazy. Like that’s the only reason he is the way he is. This is wrong and misses a whole point about the fact that his character motivation was already set when he was a kid. From what happened when he was a kid. The wife/daughter thing is like, 20% of his backstory and character. He was already angry and spiteful. Losing them just made him feel even more angry and spiteful because that was his previous attempt at healing and it backfired on him. It’s not the same thing. Yes it is annoying in terms of the fact we learn nothing about them so they’re basically cardboard cutouts and that’s a copout in terms of writing, and it is annoying that the backstory point is repeated like that, but in this specific case these specific takes I have seen are still wrong and miss the point.

3. I remember one time I found a person who was so livid about Descole and Sycamore being the same person that they committed an insane amount of mental gymnastics to prove why this wasn’t true and why it was a terrible retcon that contradicted the past. The example that stands out to me was how they insisted that Sycamore and original Descole didn’t have the same skin colour because Sycamore’s matched Layton’s and Descole’s was supposedly lighter, and that they changed Descole’s skintone to be darker to match Layton. Which is rubbish because Layton’s and Descole’s sprites have always had the same skintone since he first appeared in the Spectre game. The reason they were livid and did all this was so they could keep shipping Deslay and they specifically said that was the main/only reason they hated it and went through all this. The skintone thing still bugs me, especially because it was wrong anyway.

[chaosnightmare]

The Stanley Parable iceberg explained in simple short words and not a video because god....

A while ago I made this iceberg and said I would explain it in a video. I lied. Had like 5 major technical fuckups with it and then completely lost access to that hard drive so that plan flew out the window, but hey! I can try to explain it simply and quickly here. At least. It's nothing as in-depth as I think it should be, but it'll do as far as basic rundowns go.

Broom Closet - A very popular part of the game. Head through the left door and just before the stairs there will be a room marked "Broom Closet" that you can enter. Que funny dialogue.

The End Is Never - An infinitely loopable sentence that can sometimes display on the loading screen instead of "Loading Loading Loading".

Go Outside - An achievement acquired by not playing the game for 5 years. I'm never gonna get this one.

Out Of Bounds - "Ending" you can get by climbing on an employee desk, crouching, moving onto the desk right next to it, and jumping out the window. No I don't remember what number the desk is but it's the one with the pulled chair right beside the window in the first room outside Stanley's office.

Baby Game - In the Blue Door Ending, The Narrator has you play a game where you continuously press a button to stop a cardboard cutout of a baby from going up in flames. The Narrator says you should play it for about 4 hours, which you can actually do and get a separate Ending.

8 - Refers to a lot of things. Typically an edited voice clip of I think Davey Wreden saying "EIGHT". First showed up to my knowledge in the demo. The achievement in the full game if I recall correctly is acquired by just pushing "8888" into the keypad behind the desk repeatedly.

Random Rooms - The rooms you travel through in between important game content are randomized. Pretty sure William Pugh says it's to make the player feel like the game's more complicated or smarter than it actually is.

Input Received - An ending you get by finding computers in the office that say "awaiting input", pressing them, restarting, and doing it over and over until you end up in button heaven.

TM - If you check the game's captions, The Line™️ always has that "TM" after every reference to It™️. Weird gender.

The Beginner's Guide - Another game by Davey Wreden. Has some fanbase overlap with TSP. Very very good but doesn't have anything to do with TSP outside of a mention at the start of the game.

Demo - Game's got one. The whole thing's basically a big gag. The Narrator spends the whole demo trying to get the ACTUAL demo to start but it keeps going wrong and he keeps getting upset because without a proper demo, the player has no idea what they're getting into if they buy the game. The joke being that the demo is literally a perfect gateway into the full game.

Unused Dialogue Room - I'm always a whore for the unused dialogue. In the Museum Ending, there's a room you can visit with faint cut bits of narration for you to listen to. Technically a monologue. NOT EDITING THE PICTURE AGAIN

Raphael - An allegedly real man who allegedly really emailed the fictional character of The Narrator to tell him how bad he thought the original game was. Email was read and parodied in a trailer for the HD Remake. You should watch it it's very very funny.

Portal Assets - The game uses some. You can even spawn in companion cubes using the dev console and I think also get a portal gun.

Unachievable - An achievement in the game. You can actually get it but every time someone thinks they've figured out how the devs change how you get it. Sometimes awarded randomly.

Once You Go Secret - You Never Go Becret. A dumb phrase used throughout a few secrets in the game.

Serious Room - A room The Narrator will teleport you to if the game catches you trying to activate server cheats. The Narrator scolds you for trying to break the game. If you do it a second time you get more dialogue but after that it's not much until you restart.

3 Minutes Song - A song by Tim Minchin. There's a corner of the red screen that pops up when you turn on the mind control that has the end of a YouTube URL for this song. Joke is that the Explosion Ending lasts about 3 minutes.

Bark - Command you can enter into the console that changes all button press sounds to barking.

Bathroom Wall Writing - Sometimes the game will let you into the bathroom in the bosses office. The writing on the wall in there is randomized.

Aperture Experiment Theory - A theory that looks at the game through the lens of Portal canon and explains the game as a psychological experiment by Aperture Science.

Explosion Ending Buttons - Some buttons you can find in the Explosion Ending are references to other games.

Facepunch - Type this out at any point during the game (without pausing) and the game will swap most textures out with the Facepunch logo.

Whiteboard Ending - In one of the random rooms, you can open an employee door and enter the "Whiteboard Ending". Not an actual ending, just a room.

Clippy CCTV - On one of the CCTV monitors, Clippy makes a cameo. You can't really see it in game, but you can see it in the game files.

Monolith - For a while the very last part of the Baby Game Ending featured a strange, Kubrickeqsue black monolith. This was a glitch in the way the game displayed a door and has since been patched.

Vinh - Typing this during the credits triggers a weird easter egg that I'm pretty sure is probably an inside joke.

Alt. Escape Pod - A fan-modded alternate escape pod ending. Featuring the real Kevan Brighting!

Chell's Body - A glitch that can occur if you stand juuuust right (er. just wrong?) in a certain doorway. Allows you to see yourself in 3rd person, revealing that the playermodel is actually a glitched model of Chell.

Choice Video Changes - In the Not Stanley Ending, you'll encounter a video presentation about choice. You're introduced to a hypothetical real person named "Steven", and told he could either help or set fire to orphans and citizens of impoverished 3rd world nations. Originally, it featured him lighting an orphan's cigarette and then setting him on fire, but this was changed to be more subtle after a schoolteacher complained that the joke was insensitive and Davey Wreden agreed.

CCTV Room Pit - There is a large pit at the bottom of the CCTV room that you can actually jump into by climbing up on a chair. This is unintentional, so there's nothing down there.

Actual Unused Dialogue - I don't remember what this is referring to.

Second Stanley - Exiting the first part of the office fast enough will sometimes let you see a second Stanley walking his own path through a window. Some people theorize that this is actually another employee.

432 - Said other employee. Has a lot of very mysterious references to them throughout easter eggs and whatnot. Thought to have escaped before Stanley.

Demonstation - A typo the team accidentally made during the making of the demo, but they thought it was so funny that it stuck.

Dallas's Mask - An easter egg you can find in the Confusion Ending.

The Narrator And Stanley Are The Same Person - A theory about the game basically stating that The Narrator only exists as a part of Stanley's imagination, and is therefore Stanley himself.

Dr. Langeskov - A very similar (although shorter) game that William had a part in making. If you play both this and The Beginner's Guide, it'll give you a little insight into what parts of TSP were Davey's writing, and what parts were William's.

Hidden Dev Text - There's hidden dev comments and jokes in the game files. Particularly, there's a cup texture that features a full unseen rant from one of the texture artists.

1947 - Code to the keypad in the original version of the game. Putting it into the keypad in the HD version will trigger the old dialogue to play.

Purgatory Theory - Theory that Stanley is trapped in purgatory after having died.

The Narrator Hums In The Elevator - In the bosses office, there's a room that will sometimes open that features an elevator you can really walk into, though it doesn't go anywhere. If you stay here long enough, you can hear The Narrator hum along to the music and comment that he's getting bored.

Narrator Letter - A letter from The Narrator in the Collectors Edition guide book. Features his signature! I really recommend finding the book online and giving it a quick read it's great. Everything about this game is lovely.

Canceled Mobile Game - The Stanley Parable had a mobile game in the works that got canned because Davey Wreden didn't sense any passion or love for the project from the team working on it.

DOTA 2 - There's a Narrator announcer pack for this game. You can find the full pack on YouTube and it's very charming and funny.

Broken Short Start - A glitch that can occur at any time but is known to occur on fresh installs of the game. Activated by getting the shortest randomized office, (the one that's just a hallway) standing in the doorway just before the two doors room and just kind of moving wrong. It'll lock you inside the office until you restart. As you could maybe tell, the game doesn't load doorways very gracefully.

Octodad - If you look up at the ceiling during that part of the demo where everything's going to hell in a handbasket, you can see Octodad. I don't know why!

Maladaptive Daydream Theory - Maladaptive Daydreaming is a psychological condition wherein the sufferer daydreams so often and for such incredible periods of time that it becomes detrimental to their daily life. This can escalate to the point that the person starts to have trouble distinguishing memories of daydreams with memories of things that happened in reality. This is explored a little bit in the game, where in one ending, the game is revealed to be an elaborate daydream Stanley is having that is bleeding into his home and work life so much that it's ruining him.

Narrator Loudspeaker - All Narrator dialogue is actually coming from a loudspeaker aways just out of bounds in each map. This likely has nothing to do with game canon and is just the easy way to get dialogue to play with the engine the devs used.

Collectors Edition - A limited edition physical copy of the game distributed by Indiebox. Came with a lot of limited merch.

Soundtrack Titles - Refering to the idea that all of the titles for the game's soundtrack are from The Narrator's perspective.

Franz - A guy who existed? Who maybe died? It's very weird. You can find more info about it on the TSP Wiki.

Demo Surveys - Though hard to see, there are papers lying about in the demo waiting room that feature surveys filled out by Davey and William.

Workplace Harassment In Menu Audio - There's audio of a busy office workplace constantly playing on the main menu. A few people noticed that you can hear a guy being scolded by his boss in the background and some people say it sounds like he's being let off the hook for workplace harassment. There was an Oddheader video that featured this discovery and he pulled a classic YouTuber move and asked "why on earth they'd put this in the game" but I think it was probably stock audio thrown in last minute that nobody cared to check and the guy who made it just recorded his office for a while to sell for a quick buck.

Reddit AMA - Held by Davey, William, and Kevan one day. You can still find the full post. Has a lot of funny moments.

Hi Timmy! - A weird text file you can find in the game.

4 Jokes - Okay so during a talk William Pugh did on stealing ideas and masking uncleverness he told the story of a game called "4 Jokes". It's a ridiculous, hilarious, and very obviously fictional story, but I have no idea if the game it was based on actually existed. As far as I know, it didn't.

NA NA N AN ANA NA - A strange bit of unused/placeholder text for the Baby Game Ending.

Lost Mobile Content - By way of the game being canceled, we have no idea what a lot of the content looked like, but when the cancelation announcement was made on the now defunct blog for Galactic Cafe, Davey released some interesting clips of Narrator lines that would never see the light of day. Because these were never archived by the wayback machine, unless someone has them archived personally, these previews are lost to time.

ui\office_soundscape.wav - A "glitch" in the game that causes the whole game to lock up and not start if it detects a problem with the file "ui\office_soundscape.wav". This is actually caused by the game failing a Steam validity check. Though Davey claims that he has no idea how this happened, it's thought by many to be an attempt at DRM. It doesn't work very well, if that's the case, because it's known to trigger on legitimate copies of the game. It happened on my copy just by me not being on the internet for a bit too long (about a year).

And that's it! There's probably gonna be more when Ultra Deluxe comes out, but that's for another time. Thanks for reading

#the stanley parable #long post

[vampstel]

Out of all the problems the game has, and boy does it have LOTS, this stuck out to me as a writing and story problem, yes I look a picture of my writing xd

This is actually something that’s really bothered me with the story. Yandere Dev clearly doesn’t know how prestigious schools work, and also doesn’t know how to make sensible and good characters lol

This could work if it wasn’t so extreme. The principal and student council react too violently towards Ayano purely based on the assumptions that she’s the same as Ryoba. When really, the only thing they have in similarity (aside from looks, of course) is the whole “emotionless until you meet your true love” shtick.

Imagine what Ayano feels in the pacifist route LMAOOO girly’s just trying to get her basic cardboard cutout of a crush, leave her alone!!!

Like sure, they can absolutely be suspicious of Ayano, but not to the extent where they’ll pepper-spray or taze her for doing…literally nothing. It’s unrealistic, and just stupid.

Yandere Simulator’s story builds upon this one crucial mistake. The principal could’ve easily rejected Ayano and she could’ve never been accepted into Akademi (is that how you spell it? I don’t care eitherway since it’s a dumb name) so like…immediately we have a hole in the story

and then there’s several other holes in that hole, creating a trypophobia-inducing mess lol

This is why Yan Dev should just stick with Ryoba as the protagonist. She’s more interesting, and she actually fits the yandere trope more than Ayano. Like goodness how do you fuck up a story this much???

#꒰ v’s answered asks ꒱ #• about: yandere simulator #AND IT’S ANNOYING TO ME #BECAUSE BAD STORIES ALWAYS HAVE SOME SORT OF POTENTIAL #But I guess I’m asking too much from the man who named one of his characters Midori Gurin #Like sir what the fuck is this 😐

[creativerogues]

A Great Big Guide to Minis, Grids and Combat (WARNING: REALLY FREAKIN’ LONG!)

Part 1: Minis

Finding the right Miniature for what you want can be a monumental task, and because there's so many types of Mini out there, I'm breaking this section down in the hopes that it'll help...

Metal Minis

I'm just gonna say it right now, Metal Minis are hard to find. Wizards of the Coast don't do them any more: They're chunky and heavy, but also extremely durable.

If you're looking for Metal Minis in your area, you can find a lot of Metal Minis at old Wargaming Stores and Hobby Shops, and often at a pretty great price because they're so old and badly painted because they're from the 80's.

I know people that have bought Solid Lead Minis from Wargames from the 60's and they look pretty great even today (I mean the paint is a little faded and chipped, but still...), which is a testament to just how durable these things are...

Metal Minis are great if you want Minis that are durable and will last for your whole campaign and beyond, and you can easily order and buy Metal Minis online from companies like Reaper Miniatures and their "Metal Fantasy" Collection, and with Services like HeroForge Minis, you can even make your own Metal Minis, albeit a little bit more expensive than your average Mini.

Plastic Minis

Plastic Minis are pretty much the standard for Minis. You can find both painted and unpainted Plastic Minis in almost every D&D Store and you can often buy them in bulk online or buy individual minis in store for great prices.

Wizards of the Coast (The People that make D&D) have their own lines of both Painted and Unpainted Plastic Miniatures available online, and you can often find individual Plastic Miniatures available in your Local D&D Store, online through things like Amazon, eBay or Miniature Market, or just buy them in bulk through places like the Wizards of the Coast Products Page.

And while these Plastic Miniatures are cheaper than the Metal Minis, they sacrifice durability for cost, and these Minis can often break at the worst of times...

But, as the standard for most D&D games, and available almost anywhere, Plastic Miniatures are your best bet for finding 3D Minis to use in your Game.

Paper Minis

Paper Minis are two-sided Minis that go on little stands, and the art for them is absolutely beautiful...

Most of these are extremely cheap, and some even give you the chance to use your own Printer to create dozens of amazing looking D&D Minis.

Most Paper Minis come as Downloadable Content that lets you print everything at home, while some come on Cardstock that you can pop out and place in their stands.

Paper Minis are absolutely perfect for play, and even when bulk-buying the Paper Minis printed on Cardstock, you can get literally hundreds of Paper Minis for almost no significant cost.

And while yeah, they're not exactly "durable", they're great for saving money, and they're still beautiful to look at.

Pre-Painted Minis

Pre-Painted Minis are almost as standard as Plastic Minis, and they often go hand-in-hand.

Wizards of the Coast Minis almost always have some variety of Pre-Painted Plastic Miniatures, while their Nolzur's Marvellous Miniatures Line of Unpainted Plastic Miniatures are there for those that want to paint their own.

There are well over 2,000+ Individual Pre-Painted Plastic Miniatures out there that are available to purchase from pretty much anywhere, and while Pre-Painted Metal Minis are rare, and the paint jobs are often kinda old, they are available...

But I will give a fair warning that Pre-Painted Plastic Miniatures can come with faults: Some break in transit, some have bent swords and spears, some are painted so strangely that characters and monsters can have crazy eyes and look a little too silly on close inspection…

But Pre-Painted Plastic Minis are still great to use, pretty cheap to buy, and it's only in rare cases that you'll be unsatisfied with what you get...

Painting Your Own Minis...

Like I've said, the Nolzur's Marvellous Miniatures Line of Unpainted Plastic Miniatures are there for the Dungeon Masters that want to paint their own minis.

This line of Minis is Plastic, and come already covered in a Grey Primer and are pretty much ready to paint right out of the box.

However, while the Unpainted Plastic Minis cost just a tad less than the Pre-Painted Plastic Minis, getting into painting Minis can be an expensive hobby, as you often end up buying dozens of different paints, brushes, and more just to paint a single mini.

But don't be dissuaded from doing it, you can find Paints for Minis on the Wizards of the Coast Products Page and Online where available...

Commissions: There are People out there that you can Commission to paint your Minis for you, and most services are pretty cheap, so ask your Local D&D Store if they can paint your Minis for you, or if they hold classes in painting Minis...

Learning to Paint: Painting Minis takes time and patience, but can be very rewarding in the end, and starting out can be just as easy as looking up a tutorial video or signing up for mini painting classes at your Local D&D Store.

And while your first few self-painted Minis might not look great, overtime you'll become a great painter, and can save a bit of cash over time by buying Unpainted Plastic Minis and painting then yourself, so double win!

Where To Find Good Minis...

There are a LOT of places to find Miniatures, from Metal to Plastic to Paper to Painted to Unpainted, so I'll break it down for you.

Metal Minis: Metal Minis are hard to come by, but can be found online being sold as Individual Minis.

Most old Metal Minis come Pre-Painted but might need a new lick of paint, while some are entirely unpainted.

You can find most Metal Minis at your Local D&D Store, as well as online at the usual places of eBay and Amazon.

If you're looking for Custom Metal Minis, I'd suggest taking a look at HeroForge Minis, and while they might be a little expensive to some people, I think having a custom mini that's pretty darn durable is worth the price.

Plastic Minis: You can find Pre-Painted Plastic Miniatures in almost every D&D Store and pretty much anywhere online. You can buy in bulk and get full sets of minis, or buy them individually (and normally for a cheaper price) at your Local D&D Store.

I'd recommend places like Miniature Market and Amazon when looking for Pre-Painted Plastic Miniatures, and for Unpainted Plastic Minis, not only can you find those Online and in your friendly neighbourhood D&D Store, but there are plenty of great companies out there that produce some absolutely stunning custom minis for you to paint.

Painted & Unpainted Minis: You can find the Nolzur's Marvellous Miniatures Line of Unpainted Plastic Miniatures both online and in-store, as well as the Icons of the Realms Line of Pre-Painted Plastic Miniatures for those people that want them.

There are also companies out there that do Custom Unpainted Plastic Minis, like Reaper Miniatures or Gale Force 9, and I'll be sure to leave a Comment with as many Links as I can find...

Paper Miniatures: My personal favourite place for Paper Minis is Printable Heroes. They have a whole selection of Free Downloadable Content that you can print off at home.

But, if you're looking for Paper Minis that aren't just D&D, Paizo makes a line of Cardboard Cutout Miniatures called Pathfinder Pawns.

Cheap Alternatives to Minis...

If you unfortunately can’t afford to spend money on Minis, there are plenty of really fun and really cheap alternatives to Minis.

Tokens from other Tabletop and Board Games, Lego Pieces, even a bunch of colourful M&Ms can still be used to show where your heroes and monsters stand…

Part 2: Terrain

I'm going to break this Section down just like the Minis Section, because there's just as many options for creating Dungeons and Maps as there are for Miniatures and Monsters.

Markers, Maps & Gaming Paper

You can buy Markers pretty cheap from pretty much anywhere, and basic blank Maps that you can draw on and erase with relative ease.

And some advice: Check the Markers you're using on your dry-erase or wet-erase maps, because you don't want to draw in permanent marker by accident and suddenly have that one "Permanent Dungeon Room"...

You can find entire rolls of Blank Maps that you can draw on from places like GamingPaper.com and Chessex.com, as well as Online from Amazon (because Amazon is our overlord, provider of all!), and these Maps come with Hexagonal Grids and Square Grids that suit whatever kind of game you want to play.

Flexible Battle Mats

From my own experience, this has been the most common type of terrain I use: They're flat maps, sometimes a variant of vinyl, sometimes just straight up fancy cloth, but they're the most available thing I can find, and have always been available to me through my Local D&D Store as well as Online in the usual places.

I call these "Flexible" because you can fold them and roll them and they won't warp or bend, and none of the Markers I use smudge or stain these maps in anyway compared to the cheaper options that might not last as long.

These maps are often just a single depiction of a generic area: A map of the woods, some mountains, the dock of a port city...

And some can get pretty weird if you look in the right places. I found a Map for a Githyanki Warship floating over an Ocean, and I've used that specific map about 4 times already!

You can find these types of Maps in your Local D&D Store for pretty cheap prices, and since most of them are maps of forests or mountains or underground caverns, they're gonna see a lot of use…

Dungeon Tiles

A lot of Companies produce modular dungeon tiles that are essentially dry-erase boards that clip together, and I personally think these are the coolest!

You can draw a dungeon room on each tile, and slowly piece them together as the Players explore the Dungeon, and really evoke a sense of exploration and "Fog of War".

You can buy these Dungeon Tiles Online, Wizards of the Coast even produces a line of Generic Dungeon Tiles, but I'd recommend Tac-Tiles with their dry-erase Dungeon Tiles, and again, check that the Markers you want to use don't stain or smudge when drawing lines…

3D Terrain

3D Terrain is great for keeping the sense of immersion during combat, and many times has the word of DwarvenForge been spoken to me as something from the sacred texts.

You can buy modular 3D Terrain Tiles from DwarvenForge, yes, but don't forget that there are plenty of other companies that produce 3D Terrain that's just as good.

You can buy Cut-and-Assemble Papercraft Terrain, buy Terrain that's been sculpted using moulds, resin and plaster, you can buy Miniatures from Wizards of the Coast themselves that are pieces of Terrain like Wagons, Carts, Stalactites and Stalagmites, and all of these are relatively cheap compared to buying hundreds of pieces of DwarvenForge.

But trust me when I say DwarvenForge is BADASS, their stuff is practically indestructible, and it lights up, and it even has a square grid on it too!

You can find all sorts of all kinds of 3D Terrain to enhance your experience of D&D, and you can typically find it in the usual places, but I'll put a whole bunch of links in this Post to help guide those that are looking...

Cheap Alternatives: Wrapping Paper

The other side of Wrapping Paper often has a square grid on it that's normally used for measuring and cutting paper, but I've seen and even used the other side of Wrapping Paper as a cheap and disposable alternative to a battle map, and it even comes with it's own square grid that you can draw on!

Yes, it does bleed and smear a lot when you use Markers, but it's so cheap and disposable that I can hardly complain…

And the best part, you can buy rolls and rolls of Wrapping Paper for ridiculously cheap prices and those rolls can last you a long, long time...

Part 3: Status Markers

What are Status Markers? Why do you need them?

Well, Status Markers are colourful little things you place on Minis to show that the Mini is under some sort of condition or spell effect. Status Markers are great for helping Players and the DM remember Spells and Conditions affecting multiple Creatures over multiple rounds of combat.

And these Status Markers can be anything from old plastic milk carton rings to professional 3D Printed Rings with every condition and spell effect accounted for.

If you're looking for professional status markers for your Minis, you can buy them by the butt-load from eBay, Amazon, and my personal favourite, Dakota Irish, who make some beautiful Status Markers designed to fit your D&D Minis, and they come in a variety of colors to suit your style…

Part 4: Initiative Trackers

An Initiative Tracker let's both the DM and the Players visually track the Initiatives of all the DM's Monsters and the Player's Characters.

And you can place all of them directly in front of you and the rest of the group, letting Players know "Hey, I'm up next!" or "Oh sh*t! It's almost that Bad Guy's turn!".

Many a time have I said "It's your go, what do you do?" and their response is "Oh sh*t! It's my go already?"

With this system, both myself and all my Players can see whose turn it is and who is next up...

My personal recommendations for Initiative Trackers are the 25 Piece Dungeon Master Set from Dakota Irish, and the Initiative Trackers by AxenShield that let you write your Party Member's Name or the Name of your Monster on one of the 8 flags, and flip the flag to the opposite side as turns are taken.

Are Initiative Trackers needed for Fun Combat? No.

Are they fancy as heck and help forgetful Players? Definitely.

Part 5: Combat Risers & Combat Pillars

These Combat Risers (also called "Combat Pillars" or “Combat Tiers”) give you the ability to show elevation and create a 3-Dimensional Space for your Miniature Combat.

It also gives you the chance to have combat at different heights with a series of combat stage platforms, and it's great for aerial combat. And trust me I say it makes underwater combats so much easier, just because it lets you accurately represent three dimensional combat on a map.

You can find multi-coloured and clear transparent Combat Risers on Amazon (like everything else here) and from some of the sites and places I've already mentioned, such as the Combat Risers Clear Mithril Set from AxenShield.

Part 6: Spell Effect Miniatures & Spell Effect Overlays

Spell Effect Miniatures

Spell Effect Miniatures are just like Monster and Hero Miniatures. These Spell Effect Miniatures are often Pre-Painted Plastic Miniatures that represent some of the bigger spells like Bigby's Hand or Spiritual Weapon.

Wizards of the Coast have their own line of Spell Effect Miniatures as part of their Icons of the Realms Line of Dungeons and Dragons Miniatures, with a Set for Spells like Wall of Fire and Wall of Ice, as well as a Box Set called "Arcane Fury and Divine Might", which contains several different Spell Effect Miniatures.

And there's more Spell Effect Miniatures to come! With Wizards of the Coast releasing a new Spell Effect Miniatures Box Set called "Mighty Conjurations", with Spell Effect Miniatures for Flaming Sphere, Forcecage, Guardian of Faith and more!

Also releasing in Early 2020 is Halaster's Tumultuous Templates, a set of Wizards of the Coast Branded Spell Templates that represent a bunch of different Spells, from Burning Hands to Moonbeam to everyone's favourite: Fireball.

You can find these Spell Effect Miniatures as Box Sets in your Local D&D Store, as well as online in the usual places like Amazon and eBay.

Spell Effect Templates & Spell Effect Overlays

Spell Effect Overlays let you as a Dungeon Master check the Range of a Spell, whether the Creature is in Line of Sight with the Caster, and help you as a DM (or a Player) remember Spells affecting an area or Spells affecting multiple Creatures over multiple rounds of combat.

My personal favourites are the Spell Effect Overlays from Arcknight, with Spell Effect Overlays for Fireball, Lightning Bolt, Web, Cone of Cold, Burning Hands, Fear, Dragon Breath, Faerie Fire, Moonbeam, Tidal Wave, Wall of Fire, Thunderwave and More, as well Buff Tokens, Inspiration Tokens, Monster Summoning tokens and so much more that I can't even fit here…

Every template comes on a die cut transparent plastic that's printed on both sides: With cool graphics on one side and notes on the spells effects on the other.

But if you're looking for a simpler template, AxenShield provide Spell Effect Templates and Overlays in various colours, with grids etched on to show the range and area of effect for each spell.

And, like always, you can always take a look on Amazon and eBay and everywhere else on the Internet for alternatives...

#d&d #d&d 5e #dnd tips #dm tips #dnd advice #d&d miniatures #metal minis #plastic minis #paper minis #pre-painted minis #d&d miniature painting #cheap d&d #d&d terrain #terrain #gaming paper #d&d battle maps #dungeon tiles #3d terrain #status markers #initiative tracker #Combat Risers #Combat Pillars #Combat Tiers #Spell Effect Miniatures #Spell Effect Templates #Spell Effect Overlays #creativerogues

[witchyangela]

Twilight tag game!

pick 5-10 characters and write your take on the canon version of them vs. fanon version of them. fanon doesn’t have to be what is generally accepted in the fandom, it can be your own idea of what you think a character is like. then tag the same number of people as characters you pick, if you can.

Ay thanks so much for the tag @leahclearwaterdefensesquad and @teamjacobthot !!! Gonna use this opportunity to talk about my BOIS, cos ngl running @incorrectwolfpack has given me many ideas !!!! (I also wanna do characters I haven’t seen many of these about!! So I’m leaving out som of my faves!!)

Paul

Paul doesn’t really have a huge amount of personality in canon that isn’t just ~angry~ which ... hmmm has some implications.. plus like annoying to Jake and loyal to Sam? Like okay let’s give this boi some flavour!

Anyway the way the fandom stuff I’ve seen and I interpret Paul is as a Snarky irrerevent lad! Like he’s a lil mean sometimes but it’s always like fun mean, and he would never hurt anyone! Plus he has a *super secret* soft side that literally everyone knows about, plus he still defo steal Jakes chips because ngl that was funny. He’s also super close to his friends, especially Jared and Sam, and he loves them with his whole heart.

Jared

Really he’s much the same as Paul in canon except with even less personality! Like I looked at the guide and his only personality was “good vision” ... I ...

Anyway my Fanon Jared is just the most of a himbo a mans can be! Like he’s the epitome of pure of heart dumb of ass. He loves his gf and his friends and he loves doin dumb risky stuff cos of his wolf powers! He is super close with Emily also ( ac this is kinda canon) and he loves to bake with her! He’s just alround nice and fun, and his kindness and dumbassery is really well balanced out by his BFF Paul’s sarcasm and way more common sense.

Embry

Again! Canon Embry is kinda a typical boy, like cars and that and his dad is a mystery and like... that’s it? This is one of Jakes best friends Smeyer, a personality pls!!

Anyway my fanon Embry is a bit of an emo, a bit anxious, but he’s trying! He has a lot of work though especially dealing with not telling his mom about being a wolf, and I think that it makes him a little more serious sometimes, still he can forget about that when he’s with his friends!! I’m also very married to the idea of him mama Mia-ing his potential dad jsut cos of the power of that! Also he’s a car boi like Jake and he’s learning to surf... with mixed results.

Quil

This is getting to be a pattern, but yeah again! No real canon personality... like he likes cars less than jake and embry and he was worried about them when they phased but..?

Anyway I see Quil as probs the most book smart of their lil trio, like he’s one of those people who gets straight As without really studying? He’s also probably the most confident, he has a super close supportive family and he tends to be loud and outgoing.( an aside to this, wtf didn’t Smeyer let any of the wolves have two parents?) He is always ready to tell people what he thinks, and and is his high school has a debate team? He is on it.

Emily

Canon Emily could honestly be in the running for most tragic woman, which is wild cos smeyer loves to make her women suffer... she’s an angelic survivor of male violence (ugh i can barely type this) and she lives only to cook for her boys. She suffers under the racist, sexist writing and is basically a cardboard cutout.

Anyway the first step of my Fanon Emily is that Sam can’t have been the thing that gave her the scars. It is such an awful story point and goes completely against the idea of the wolves as protectors. To better fit the themes it works if she was attacked by a predatory vampire or even just a regular bear. Then was rescued by the wolves. It fits better and shows how they actually help the people in their communtity. As for her personality, I see her as someone who is deeply sensible and self assured, the kind of person who would make a fantastic teacher, and who is deeply passionate about the traditional crafts she teaches. She loves working with her hands and tends to stress bake, which is why her house is always full of too many baked goods. Oh and she’s still best friends with Leah.

Anyway hope y’all enjoyed my rambling 😂 I’m tagging @twilightisgaynow @big-idiot-wolf-boys @embrycallsmuffin @missbellaswan @jasperwhitcock and anyone else who fancies a go!!!

#tag game #twilight #paul lahote #jared cameron #quil atera #embry call #emily young #sorry jake and leah i love u but everything i wanted to say has been said before and better!

[nadziejastar]

How exactly did you reacted when you figured out that the 'Mystery girl' Subject X has been shoehorned into Lea and Isa's backstory?

Honestly, I was just baffled. I couldn’t believe that Nomura was just gonna throw away ALL that foreshadowing only to tell me that Lea and Isa were not the real test subjects....they were just FRIENDS with a girl who was a test subject. That just made no sense to me. I was speechless. It would have been a million times more interesting for Lea and Isa to be test subjects. Axel is super popular and complex. And Saix needed a tragic backstory to redeem him. Why would you NOT make them test subjects? It fit them SO well and ALL the hints were already there. It felt like such a waste to retcon it to a new girl. Especially a flat, boring, cardboard cutout Union X character that nobody really cares about. It was just SO unbelievably stupid to me, I couldn’t believe it. From what it looked like to me, KH3D was meant to set up Lea’s role in KH3. He needed to be a Keyblade Master because he was supposed to use the power of waking on Isa, just like Riku used it on Sora at the end of DDD. THAT was the story I was expecting to get based on ALL the foreshadowing in the side games. I never even entertained the idea that Lea would NOT rescue Isa. It was just something I took for granted, like saving Terra, Aqua, and Ven. It’s one of the reasons I bought the game in the first place. When the scene from the KH orchestra was shown, Kairi wrote in her letter that Lea wanted to save his best friend, and I naturally assumed he was talking about Isa. Because that’s what ALL the build up in KH3D was hinting at. I was excited to see Lea save Isa ever since BBS. So, 2009. Literally waited an ENTIRE decade to see that.

So, once I realized that Lea wasn’t even going to even rescue Isa, that was the exact moment I gave up on the story and realized that whatever they were building up to in the previous games was no longer gonna happen. I stopped expecting the story to get better in the Keyblade Graveyard and just accepted that KH3 was not really the game that I paid for. It was basically another Versus XIII. After Versus became FFXV, the story was totally rewritten and the new story was, IMO...meh. And I realized the same was true for KH3. It wasn’t following the same story that KH3D was, that’s for sure. It was following Union X, a game I couldn’t care less about.

Once that sank in, I was SO mad. I did not pay 60 dollars to play a sequel to Union X. I was mad I wasted 60 dollars buying it day 1. It was definitely not worth 60 dollars. I was honestly tempted to sell the game right then and there because I was so disgusted with it. That’s how angry and disappointed I was. I felt betrayed by the series. And I felt stupid. Like I should have learned my lesson with how much of a disaster the recent Final Fantasy games had been. But I thought KH3 would turn out better because I trusted Nomura. I liked all the side games. I truly thought KH3 would be good. Well, it wasn’t.

Yeah, what truly angered me was not even necessarily the fact that she was shoehorned in. It was the fact that Lea and Isa weren’t even test subjects anymore. SHE was. SHE was the real victim. Lea and Isa’s flawed characters, their pain, their tragedy—they weren’t gonna be explored in any depth. SHE’S the one Lea was trying to save the whole time he was in the organization. There was no longer any emphasis on saving Isa anymore. THAT’S what truly pissed me off. That scene destroyed all the anticipation for their fight because their fight was now pointless. Saix was not even possessed. Lea wasn’t gonna save him. The story I had been anticipating for the last decade was never coming out. I waited all that time for nothing. It really was depressing. I lost pretty much all my emotional investment in the rest of the story after that scene. The Keyblade Graveyard sucked, just as I expected it to.

[hecallsmehischild]

Recent Media Consumed

Shows

The Twilight Zone. I finally sat down to watch all the way through instead of an episode here or there. So far, I’ve watched two seasons. There’s five total, but one is missing off Netflix, so I’ll only be watching four out of five. This is a show that understands tone setting, sustaining a pace, and creating intrigue. This is a show whose writers spin narrative phrases as rich as silk. This is a show whose characters we only get to know for a little bit, but who are living breathing personas. It is rare to see a cardboard cutout on the personality carousel, and caricature is a dirty word. Each character is acted like they have had, and will continue to have, seasons of development, even if you only see them once. Sometimes I cringe in humiliation for the characters. Sometimes I choke up. Sometime I want to leap up and cheer. Sometimes I nod, “Good riddance. Serves you right.” This show is still brilliant. (most of the way through the second season) Starting to get some “bad” episodes, ones that grate on me so much I can’t watch all the way through, but still pretty creepy/interesting premises, and still worth watching.

Books

1984 by George Orwell. This book was scary to read in high school, and it’s even scarier a little over a decade later. The whole “2 minutes hate” and “hate week” feels like the direction our online culture, especially, has gone (yelling furiously about the thing we’ve been directed by the media to yell furiously about, getting caught up in it because the people all around you are to the point where you can’t really help yourself). The surveillance is basically accepted at this point. Thought police are us, not “them.” 1984 ages really well on a regular basis and that is the most unfortunate thing I could think of.

Once Upon A River by Diane Setterfield. This is one of those stories that is like eating triple layered chocolate cake. It’s just a pleasure to read, from the way the stories interweave and flow, from the narrators understanding of that and comparison to the river, to the usage of words throughout, to the resolution (or deliberate open-endedness) of each branch of the story. Lovely book I happened to pick up in an independent bookstore, a very fortunate find.

Games

Her Story. When you figure out the twist, it’s a real smack in the face. Then once you’ve figured out the twist, the story gets progressively more disturbing. This is a good game, if a little frustrating at times. I’d recommend keeping a Word document on hand to type up important details, it will help you figure out the story better than the crude organizational function of the ancient computer the game gives you to “use”. It’s a lot of fun to play with two people, not that it affords two users, but two people sitting down can discuss the details as they are dripped out. It makes for a fun few hours.

Oneshot. Admittedly I did it very walkthrough style because I wanted to really get it right (getting a bad ending is heartbreaking so I try to avoid it). But I enjoyed the story a lot. It has a lot of Undertale vibes in the manner of meta storytelling and fourth wall breaking. It’s a sweet story, worth a play through.

Eliza. This is a visual novel. I haven’t really done visual novels much, but that might change. Based on the therapy chatbot of the 60′s that’s still available online, this story is about a company selling chatbot therapy with a human proxy speaking all the chatbot’s lines. Your character is one of the original programmers who dropped off the face of the earth for three years, following a tragedy, and returned to see what became of her work. It’s a fascinating character study, for her and everyone else in this tale. I know I probably say that a lot, but there aren’t any cardboard cutouts here. Lots of really different and interesting people with a variety of problems, but no cardboard cutouts. Worth playing. Or, watching? Reading? I’m new to this genre...

Fanfiction

Moving by VonRaptor. Mystery Skulls Animated chapter fic, ongoing. aaaaAAAAaaaAAAaaaAAAAAAAA. This is good. This hits the right notes for me, so much. The pace is slow, but it’s a good kind of slow pace with a whole lot of attention paid to detail in the interactions. The gang slowly works out their interactions as they move in together, post-Hellbent, and boy is there a lot to work out, and their enemies might not be totally behind them either. (edit after reaching the end) NOPE. ENEMIES ARE NOT BEHIND THEM. But it’s coming together beautifully and I can only hope this story continues as the author feels able to update because this fic is a good, steaming cup of mocha for the soul. Starts off with nice warm comfort and then THERE’S THE CAFFEINE SPIKE.

#child loves books #child loves movies #n00b gamer child #child loves fanfiction

[choices-owns-my-ass]

My hopes for Distant Shores:

- MC grew up in a rich family but didn’t want to follow that life path and became a pirate in their youth instead.

- OR if MC comes from a pirate family and has been doing this their whole life so they’re a pro at sailing already.

- When we enter the plot, MC at least already knows the basics, I can understand if they’re going to be joining a new crew on a new ship for plot purposes so exposition is easier but I don’t want them to be a complete newbie who has no idea about anything and we have to watch them learn.

- At least one LI who isn’t super badass and rugged, I love those types of LIs too but I think we have a lot of them already in choices books and I’d love to see MC be the badass protecting their LI who’s talents lie elsewhere (like an academic or someone of high political status.) I think it would provide some good contrast for this type of book too so every LI isn’t badass athletic sarcastic pirate who never takes shit from anyone, I think one LI like that would be popular but it’s too easy for this type of book to have all the pirates have the same personality type and I don’t want the LIs to be cardboard cutouts of each other, I really want them to be distinct from each other.

- FACES OTHER THAN THE GODDAMN OH FACES PLEASE PB PLEASE!!! I DONT CARE IF THEYRE RECYCLED FROM ANOTHER PAST BOOK JUST PICK SOMETHING THAT HASNT BEEN USED IN MORE THAN TWO BOOKS BEFORE!

- Cute pirate outfits, I don’t care if they’re historically accurate or super realistic just don’t let them be ugly.

- The young girl in one of the promos is really pretty but she looks around 13 so I’m hoping she has an older sister LI who looks similar and has a similar hairstyle.

- Bringing back the flirt mechanic from MOTY so accidental flirting isn’t a problem.

- One or two customizable LIs, either gender customizable or character design, or both if they want to do that much work.

- Found family dynamics with the crew!

- I’d love for the story to start like TH:M did, where the crew is in the middle of an action sequence when we’re introduced to them and it turns out to either be a flash forward or a flash back.

- If MC is already a part of the crew when the plot starts it could also be sweet to start with a flashback to when they met. Alternatively it could be really dramatic if during a really low moment, we flash back to when we met. I just don’t want it to be paywalled if MC is already a part of the crew.

- Logic puzzles if we ever do something where we have to find treasure or go on some kind of adventure. I personally like when PB has the prompt game where you have to hit the button the corresponds with the prompt in time or logic puzzles that make you think as a part of the book, it makes the story feel less like a visual novel and more interactive.

These are just my personal thoughts while I’ve been thinking about what the book could be like.

I’m also really excited for Blades of Light and Shadow but fantasy is harder to think about and predict for because we have no idea of the mechanics behind the world it’s set in yet so I might write down some thoughts, hopes, and predictions about that book when we get more information about it.

I might add more if I think of them. Feel free to add your own thoughts, hopes, and/or predictions for DS!

#playchoices #i speak #distant shores #choices distant shores #choices ds

[atamascolily]

Continuing with The Vein of Gold exercise, more films, more themes. I’m so predictable, y’all.

(Aka what Captain America has in common with Matilda)

9. Matilda

Nobody does montages like this film. There are at least three, and they’re all amazing.

10. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (live action I, II, and III)

(I didn’t hallucinate these films, okay??)

11. The Shadow

12. Jurassic Park

13. Captain America: The Winter Soldier

This particular gif looks like it ought to be Renaissance painting or something.

14. Night at the Museum

15. Hanna

Apparently, freeway fight scenes are a thing for me? They’re a staple of CA:TWS, along with Terminator and the Matrix films. Not to mention a lot of the Inception set pieces. Basically, if a film is set in modern times and has any action scenes whatsoever, I want one on a freeway, kthanx. Maybe because I hate being stuck in traffic? Or maybe just because it looks cool?

Identity issues: boy does CA:TWS have them in spades. From Bucky’s brainwashing--”Who’s Bucky?”--to Natasha’s “Who do you want me to be?” questions abound. Natasha is constantly changing her identities--literally in the climax--and her hacking saves the day. Her final scene is very reminiscent of Sarah Connor’s in Terminator, too. For the first time, Steve faces an opponent who’s literally his equal and opposite, so the doubling/duality motif is reminiscent. And the Winter Soldier is also a slightly-more-human version of the Terminator! He even has a metal arm and programming!

Also, the film as a whole is super-suspicious of technology, and there’s the ‘80s references of the old computers in the bunker and “Shall We Play A Game?” Not to mention HYDRA’s surveillance thing is kinda like Skynet, plus they intend to target people for what they might do in the future, and not stuff they’d already done...

(NB: Both Terminator and CA:TWS are thematically reminiscent of Three Days of the Condor--which I have not seen, but have read the novelization. I fucking hate Condor, because it is such an obvious Male Fantasy, with an obvious Male Gaze, Cardboard Cutout Female Characters and a Doormat Obligatory Love Interest. Maybe the movie is better?? God, I hope so. But aside from its initial premise, Condor  is thoroughly grounded in “the real world,” lacking super-soldiers or robots to make it engaging for me.)

What can I say about the three live-action TMNT films? Um, so they tap into the “underground” theme I have going, and also “nifty puppets/sfx”, “so much the ‘80s/early ‘90s,” and martial arts mastery. April and Casey are weird foils to Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese, and the Shredder and Darth Vader have a lot in common, as do Splinter and Yoda. April is inducted into the weird alterworld of mutant turtles and yakuza gangs, and the turtles get mistaken for entertainers/performers at several key points across the three films. The first two films are set in New York, with a focus on sewers and urban squalor, but also a pastoral retreat to April’s family farm during the training montage/rest and recovery sequence. Leonardo--always my favorite--communicates telepathically with Master Splinter, and the turtles stage a rescue like Luke tries in ESB and succeeds (on several occasions) in ROTJ. There’s a constant tension between maintaining the masquerade and uncovering the truth. There’s even a time-travel plot to take them back to medieval Japan, thus melding all of the themes/motifs together!

Not to mention the radioactive ooze that creates the turtles in the first place as a comment on questionable tech--it also creates some of the antagonists in The Secret of the Ooze AND GIANT MUTANT DANDELIONS.And there’s a sequence where they break into a lab full of early ‘90s computers that could be straight out of Jurassic Park. So, um, yeah, about that....

Jurassic Park:  amazing sfx and puppetry. Human interactions with the other--usually but not always negatively. Badass botanist (wish Ellie were the main character instead of Grant but still!). Ominous jungle setting. Tension between science/tech and biology. Mutations as a plot point. “Life, uh, finds a way.” A corporate museum getting trashed by a T-rex in the climax--contrast with Night at the Museum, for a more docile take on the same motif! Tension between the truth and maintaining the masquerade. The perils of corporate power--see Ian Malcolm’s speech on the importance of moral responsibility and power. (Yes, he is an asshole and the author mouthpiece, but he’s also Jeff Goldblum, so he gets away with it.) Contrast this with Cyberdyne System in Terminator, and HYDRA’s surveillance system in CA:TWS. Also, shirtless Jeff Goldblum - contrast with the male nudity in Terminator, and Captain America’s and Luke Skywalker in tank tops and short sleeves. Also, “Dinosaur eats man / Woman inherits the earth” exchange. And GIANT REPTILES just like TMNT!

The Shadow: huge Asian/martial arts influence on the hero. Rigorous training with mystics in the wilderness. Psychic powers. Secret identity, keeping up appearances, and maintaining the masquerade. Self/shadow--it’s the hero’s superhero NAME; IT’S NOT SUBTLE. “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? THE SHADOW KNOWS! *ominous cackling* Fabulous fashion. Plot points involving a sarcophagus and busting into a museum (paging Night at the Museum). Amazing scenery, especially all of the hotel sequences. As always, I’m more interested in the female side character--in this case, Margo Lane--than anything else. Also, a scientist character played by Ian McKellen with questionable tech!

(I will never claim this film is good, and it has a TON of problematic elements, but even so, it made an impression on me, especially since I had been listening to a lot of vintage “The Shadow” radio dramas before I saw this, so I was familiar with The Shadow’s basic schtick. Also, even though it sounds like a cliche, The Shadow pretty much invented all the superhero tropes, so technically Batman and Dr. Strange owe him a debt and not the other way around... )

Hanna is very similar to Terminator, CA:TWS, and Matrix in that it features a protagonist being relentlessly hunted--in this case, by government agents very similar to those in the latter two films, only played by Cate Blanchett. Amazing underground lair/chase sequence, plus a fight in a German subway station; not to mention great desert sequences (hi, Star Wars!) and an abandoned theme park.

Matilda: the power of reading, a young girl saving the day because Adults Are Useless, classics references, newts, telekinesis. Like Steve Rogers, refuses to be cowed or lie, even when it would be in her own best interest to give in to tyranny. Interesting foil with Hanna, in that both are named after their super-powered protagonist, only Hanna’s powers are all based in incredible violence. Hanna is also wrestling with the question of who she is and what her purpose is in life, and she’s a survivor, just like Sarah Connor in Terminator. Also, a question of heritage and origins, as in Star Wars.

Night at the Museum: I usually don’t like Ben Stiller, and I think this movie would be stronger with a different lead actor, but Robin Williams is great as Teddy Roosevelt (mentor figure!) and it’s a natural history museum coming to life after hours with a giant T-Rex skeleton. Also, the miniatures are hysterical, and Akmenrah is great (contrast with The Shadow for their museum MacGuffin, too). Great sfx, too. Contrast with Jack Pumpkinhead and the Gump in Return to Oz, too. See also Steve stealing his uniform out of the Smithsonian in CA:TWS. It’s also a Found Family (or Family Reclaiming, depending on your point of view) along with The Secret Garden, and Matilda, and Star Wars and...

Anyway, I’m pretty sure a bot armed with this information could be used to generate stories tailor-made for me, which is both hilarious and frightening to think about.

Stories: I have a type.

#personal writing meta #favorite gifs #fun with tropes

[koukoupepia]

i posted this on twitter but i might as well post this here too, somewhat aimless rambling about the destiny trio in kh3 and how it did them dirty under the cut. beware, its kind of long. kh3 spoilers, obviously

this isn't my thoughts on kh3 as a whole, its more of a kairi/destiny trio rant. this isnt entirely coherent either. god ok im sorry for all the kh3 talk but i dont know how long its going to take me to stop being pissed about what happened with kairi when for a long time they were building her up to be a character who Does Stuff now. she gets her keyblade in kh2! it was revealed she's be joining the 7 guardians in the ddd secret ending! she's talking to yen sid with riku at the end of 0.2! and when we were let down i saw people saying "well, what did you expect? it's square." like its not common knowledge kh doesnt have the best writing but i dont thing its unrealistic to have expected better than THAT. a cardboard cutout who got fridged for manpain. like kairi wasnt always the best character, certainly wasnt very well treated, but i cant believe that fucking kh2 treated her better than kh3 did.

anyway i keep thinking about how it makes me sad that the destiny trio is really not a trio, but also that their relationship progression... doesnt make a lot of sense. when info came out about kh3 having a theme of relationships changing, i wondered if they were actually going to be leaning away from the romance angle (still too much to ask for, but god.) i wondered if sora and kairi were going to realize they weren't as close as they used to be, since they have spent SO much time apart with no contact. and sora and riku continue to be very tight, because every game since kh2 has woven them together like the tightest knit sweater. i like the idea that sora & kairi have puppy crushes on each other in the early games - -in kh1 theyre very sweet. i wouldve been happy with canon sokai if their friendship continued to be as sweet as that. it's kind of interesting how in kh2, when sora sees sally and jack dancing, he imagines himself and kairi dancing together, but it's his current self and a younger kairi, because it's how he last remembers her. at that point he still feels closest to kairi and his relationship with riku is strained.

kh2 changes the dynamic when sora and riku finally reunite and they make up in a very healthy way (catch me crying about the scene on the dark margin, ive never seen two characters mend their relationship in a way that made me cry that much.) sora leaves the islands again, but the scene where kairi regifts the charm she made him after he gives it back is important because it shows that they both have faith that they'll continue to be friends no matter how far apart they are, and they'll find each other again. by Days you see the utter dedication that riku has to sora, he basically treats living a waking nightmare with the single goal to make sure sora wakes up safely as atonement. sora doesnt know the extent of this but you, the audience, do. the series REALLY emphasizes their relationship and their closeness and their dedication to each other, how they support each other in the ways they need. re:coded has the journal decide that riku was the best form to take to protect information about sora's journey. ddd shows riku as the only one fit to dive into sora's heart to wake him up. (and as of kh3 we know that dives to the heart exist in a place where the line between sleep and death is very thin -- aka, riku really risked his whole ass life AGAIN for a CHANCE to wake sora up.) when riku is told he passed the mark of mastery, sora is too busy being happy for him to feel sad for himself.

the relationship between riku and kairi.... is very minimal. but i think it's interesting that in kh1 when maleficent manipulates riku's feelings of jealousy to draw him further into the darkness, he thinks "oh god i have to get kairi. sora can't abandon her, too." i like that in kh2, kairi is able to tell that it's him immediately and she refuses to let him walk away without reuniting him without sora. in kh3 they dont interact at all, its weird as hell. it's like they dont know each other and kairi is sora's friend only.

i was disappointed at the minimal interaction between riku and sora in kh3, and i know that it's partially because this is the first game where their individual goals and motivations dont revolve around each other somehow (sora's goals in this game are all over the place in a bad way but that's a different post) but i was really hoping for a good chat and/or heartfelt moment between them like almost every other game has, since their relationship is probably the backbone of the series. one of the things that irked me about how they treated kairi is that sora actually thinks about riku on multiple occasions throughout the game and wants to talk to him, and the part where he thinks about how riku thought he had to push him away to protect him re: elsa was an "oh shit they really did go there" moment for me. on the other hand sora did not think of or mention kairi even once before their first conversation -- they didnt even have him wonder how she was doing, or wish he could call her, or have anything remind him of her. between the end of kh2 and ddd he and kairi dont interact or contact each other once, because nomura only cares to stick kairi where she can be a romantic prize for sora and doesnt treat her like theyre actually friends.

then the actual first scene they have together is so damn jarring. this was 24 hours into my playthrough of a game that took me ~30 hours to complete. theyre on their usual spot on the paopu tree, kairi points out that riku is by himself, which is not ooc for riku, but when they have her use that moment to pull out a paopu fruit and go "heysoraiwannabetogetherforeversoletssharethese" my reaction was "where did this come from suddenly and why is it happening so fast." theres NO buildup to this scene whatsoever. and then sora's attitude completely changes after that in a really weird way, like kairi is suddenly the Thing That Matters Most when he's never ever acted like one friend meant more to him than another. nomura if you revisited your damn games you'd know sora loves everyone intensely and indiscriminately. when everyone fucking "dies" in front of sora and he's following a light that he calls riku's name to and it turns out to be! surprise! it's kairi for some reason! when i think about it, it hurts a little but i don't know why. i like that she did actually find a way to protect him, but i dont like that it had to be this weird deus ex machina that has no explanation (is this part of kairi's unexplained powers? is this just a plot device?? who knows.)

dont FUCKING get me started on xemnas kidnapping kairi in front of sora and xehanort killing her in front of him in a scene that reduced my enjoyment of the game by a solid 25% because it's BULLSHIT and FRIDGING WOMEN FOR MANPAIN IS SO ORIGINAL AND NOT CHOCK-FULL O' MISOGYNY.

sora saying kairi's the reason for his whole journey is blatantly not true (ATTENTION NOMURA REVISIT YOUR FUCKING WRITING) so he should go look for her alone while riku is standing right fucking there and riku just. lets him go??? like kairi's not his friend too??? what the fuck??? the last scene where it pans up the paopu tree to kairi and sora holding hands and sora fades away while everyone else, including riku, is just having a good time???? what the fuck???? you know sora /would/ drop everything to go save a friend but i dont like that suddenly he acts like kairi outweighs every other person in his life simply because theres some romantic interest there. with someone he was never written to have an actual relationship with. in a game about friendship. and like, shipping aside, sora and riku have one of the most SOLID friendships ive seen in any media and riku just gets ejected out of his own damn trio because of a hamfisted romance AAAAA

in conclusion: Not My Destiny Trio

#kh3 spoilers #kingdom hurts #am i done yelling about kh3? no. am i done being mad about kairi? also no

[curemoonliite]

The more I think about it, the more I think that good storytelling captures the same feelings children get when they receive gifts. Shaking a gift to guess what’s inside is a natural extension of a child’s curiosity, and in the same way, fan theories are natural extensions of fandom. Theories capture the same sense of wonder that many of us had as children, and in the hands of a good writer, a reveal is never 100% disappointing.

When a child opens a gift, they will either find that it is A) exactly what they expected and wanted, B) something they wanted, but didn’t expect to get, C) something they wanted a little less that they still like, D) a completely unexpected item that still caters to their interests and hobbies, E) something that you expected and didn’t want, and F) a completely unexpected and unwanted item. Say, for instance, that you asked for a guitar for Christmas and see a roughly guitar-shaped box. Your six options here are:

A) expect a guitar, get a guitar

B) expect your parents to get you a banjo from the pawn shop, get a guitar

C) expect a guitar, get a bass

D) a lamp made from an old guitar

E) that old banjo from the pawn shop

F) a life-size cardboard cutout of a guitar

For many, A is the most satisfying option. You got what you wanted and you expected it, leaving you with a victorious feeling of “calling it.” B comes pretty close, even without the feeling of “calling it.” But even C-E aren’t entirely disappointing, even if they come with feelings of initial disappointment.

You still think basses are cool in this scenario, and figure it’ll be easier to find a band that needs a bassist than one who needs a guitarist. The lamp can’t play music, but it’s pretty funky and impresses your friends. You can’t stand banjos, but you know your parents don’t have much money and maybe there weren’t any old country singers who wanted to pawn their guitars where you live. But even that’s okay—it can make music and it shows you that your parents care.

Just like this scenario, I like to think that A and B are the options that truly make fans lose their shit. Sure, the “X is really evil/Y/Y’s sibling/Y’s parent” twists are pretty predictable at this point, but they can give the same feeling as the guitar in this story. That feeling of either “I called it” or “I was hoping for it, but I never thought the creators had the balls to actually do it” fuels fandom. At first glance, you’d think this would disappoint fans, but often, this just fuels them to ever more passionate theories. For instance, “we know now that Y’s brother was evil, let’s predict how he became evil” is a common fandom line of thought because it uses the sort of engaged reading and prediction-making commonly taught in schools. Children who are able to pick up on subtle foreshadowing and make accurate predictions are hailed as “bright,” while authors who use these sorts of details in children’s books are seen as “classics.”

So why is today’s media so populated by unpredictable, unexpected, and unwanted plot twists? This topic has been covered to hell and back on Tumblr, and I can’t claim to have any more of a definitive answer than anyone else on here. But here’s what I think—surprise, as an emotion, is becoming increasingly valued in our entertainment trends.

Think of gacha games and LOL Surprise dolls. There’s nothing inherently wrong with either of these two, but they both market themselves almost exclusively on the “it’s a surprise” gimmick, as opposed to past toys and video games that didn’t. They are, in a few short words, surprise for surprise’s sake. There is no guarantee of satisfaction when it comes to these objects—in fact, the rarity systems that many of them have practically guarantee that you will stay in the E-F slot unless you have a lot of luck or spend a lot of money. And make no mistake, these things are made to maximize profits—a giant LOL Surprise egg can set you back $205.00, and that’s just at Walmart.

So here we have a commodification of surprise taken to its logical extreme, where satisfaction is almost completely removed from the equation and disappointment is basically inevitable. Why does that sound so familiar?

Because a lot of places where we hear about twists ruining the plot are multibillion dollar franchises—Game of Thrones, Star Wars, Marvel, and so on. Now, I can’t say that any of these lack artistic merit—in fact, many of these are known for great scores, cinematography, costumes, and the like. Their writing is intensely flawed, but we still get bright spots from them where everything seems to come together. But at the end of the day, they seem to be built with the same principle as a gacha game.

Didn’t get the character you wanted? Spend more in-game currency until you do! Didn’t like that plot twist from the last movie? Check out the next one to see if it gets better! And on and on and on.

These plot twists aren’t inserted for artistic merit, at least, not most of the time. Mostly, they’re for the money, the social media buzz, the equivalent of seeing how many views the next great unboxing video can grab. Not to say that no lesser-known authors have ever relied on shock value, but as a whole, something about their twists often feels more genuine, because they understand that the world is not their unboxing video. It’s a home video of their son, daughter, sister, brother opening the gift they’ve spent months or even years waiting to give them.

Surprise, as an emotion, requires thought not just about your fans, but about your stories, too. It requires knowledge and passion about both, and a drive to make a twist make so much sense that if your fans don’t love it right away, they’re sure going to love it by the end.

Because at the end of their day, gifts and surprises are meant to touch someone’s heart, not the algorithm of things a website assembles for you. And the best gift-givers are the ones who find things that people’s hearts need, whether the receiver recognizes it or not.

#long post #fandom #writing #media #this started as a theory and turned into a ted talk so sorry guys #whoever thinks heavily foreshadowed theories aren’t satisfying needs to spend more time in fan communities #su is the first one that comes to mind but i INTENSELY hope bnha will join it in the canon fan theory front if you know what i mean #my post