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pasteilian · 8 months

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Do you have a recommendation when designing a black character? Or tips, or maybe pages you visit for references?

Suck at explaining stuff but I’ll try

‼️ Ethnic Features ‼️

So, the art world is in a very weird place when it comes to ethnic features. The conversation was about how using POC ethnic features as an insult in media was damaging and needed to stop, and that somehow morphed into people being scared about drawing people with those features.

Black people have big ears, big noses, and big lips. That's not the problem. The problem was that media was using it to make us look like giant ape, monkey, monster creatures. It's okay to give them these defining features.

Also, remember that brown people have lighter pigment under their feet, hands, and bottom lips. 🌸 (didn’t really know where to put this but drawing mix people is basically a spin the wheel we come in all different shapes and sizes and features. There’s really no wrong way to draw a mixed POC.)

‼️ It's Just My Style ‼️

I'm so goddamn tired of hearing this goddamn excuse. A style does not mean you can't properly represent POC. I would even go on to say that if your style is stunting you so grossly that you can't draw a proper black person, you have a bad art style. Sorry—not really.

Media has shown us that style does not stop representation. The only thing stopping that is your ignorance and refusal to improve. Great examples of ranging styles still being able to represent different POC are "Adventure Time," "Disney's Soul," "Proud Family," "Afro Samurai," etc. I'm just saying this because I've seen this excuse be more prevalent in the art world, and it's just better to nip that in the bud.

‼️ Whitewashing + I Don't Know How to Use the Color Brown ‼️

I've seen people make the excuse that the skin color is lighter because they use a pastel style, but they never bring up the fact that the only color in the art that's lighter is the skin tone. 💀

Also, the whole thing about people saying they don't know how to shade and color brown palettes is just completely bullshit. I would even say that trying to shade pale colors is harder than shading darker colors. Additionally, there are multiple artists and tutorials showing you exactly how it's done. You have no excuses other than you just don't want to.

YouTuber Sinix has a great video on painting skin tones!

‼️ Black Hairstyles ‼️

I love dreads. Dreads are a very pretty hairstyle. However, we have more hairstyles other than dreads. If you're going to draw black characters, I would encourage you to branch out and explore beyond dread heads. There are so many unique black hairstyles out there. We need to move on from just focusing on dreads.

YouTuber Ari has two wonderful videos on black hairstyles in video games. I would recommend checking them out.

‼️ References ‼️

I love referencing old black media such as "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air," "The Proud Family," and "Little Bill" (before all the Bill Cosby stuff came out). I also appreciate how "House of the Dragon" implemented black people into the lore. Other references include "BOTW/TOTK Rottmnt," etc.

Some artists I reference all the time are Mohammed Agbadi, who doesn't do many art tutorials anymore but often discusses black characters in media, and his art is still amazing. Ethan Becker has a very interesting video on the racist triangle that I recommend checking out.

On Instagram, I love the art of Jojo.Dreamie, Chibichanga12 (holy shit, love their art), Bruniosktch, and Caw.Chan. I also just reference my family a lot. 💀

This is a lot of rambling, but what I’m gonna say is don’t stunt yourself by tricking yourself into believing that your art can’t include POC 🌸🌸‼️💌💖💌💌🎀💕💘‼️🧁

#rottmnt #rottmnt fanart #rottmnt mikey #pastriesart💌#pastrieschat💌#this was long but hope I got my points across #as a Afro head I challenge dread heads to a duel

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astralexpressarchives · 7 months

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The Renheng Iceberg Explained

Alright so there's this renheng iceberg on twitter that I was recently informed about. I'm wayyy too deep into the lore so I skipped to the bottom and everything there was stuff I was already more than familiar with.

So I figured why not put all this information to some use and make a post explaining the more obscure items on the iceberg and leaving out the self-explanatory ones, doing my best to reference as well as possible.

Blade gazing at Imbibitor Lunae statue

This was a hidden interaction where you could find Blade standing near the statue of Imbibitor Lunae at the scalegorge after revealing Dan Heng's vidyadhara form. He says he is 'mourning for folly' and asks you if Dan Heng is happy. You can watch a video about this here.

Good friends who are bad for each other

This is Kafka's description of what she knows about Blade and Dan Heng's history in her companion quest. This answer is a "truth" in her game of truth and lies.

"Apparently, they used to be good friends... Well, good friends who were bad for each other. Bladie forgot nearly everything, so he doesn't remember well. Together, they did something bad — something terrible. It led to horrific consequences. That's the information I managed to piece together. Bladie refused to tell me the details."

Dan Heng gets nightmares about blade

We see this in-game in the cinematic leading up to the Xianzhou questline. This is also suggested in the Only Silence Remains lightcone description.

Matching Jade Ornaments

Referring to this idea.

There is also a vidyadhara egg that says:

"You edge closer to the pearlescent shell and have a dream in which you are a Pearlkeeper who rides the waves, and travels across the ancient sea with your true love. The time you have spent with your lover is full of happiness, but the time of hatching rebirth is determined by destiny. You secretly put a jade pendant in your mouth so your lover can recognize each other in the next life."

And considering that DH:IL 4 story has him refusing to speak during the entirety of his interrogation, death sentence, and final verdict, it definitely leaves room for imagination.

Bracer Lore

This one encompasses a few of the other ones on the iceberg, too. Really, it's worth reading the entirety of the Passerby of Wandering Clouds relic set lore. Keep in mind all relic sets are in chronological order of head/gloves/body/feet. The bracer also mentions this part about 'That owner also once shared company and drinks with the unnamed, the two of them simply gazing at the moon with no words exchanged.' This has an interesting meaning in CN that tells us this drinking was an engagement ceremony. People thought this must be a typo but, despite many tickets from people, their only response has been that they're unable to comment further. They still haven't changed it as of patch 1.4.

Dan Heng polishes and gaze longingly at Cloud Piercer

A recent addition in patch 1.4 where Pom-pom now says:

"Passenger Dan Heng often carefully maintains and polishes his spear. Although the Express is very safe, it seems that he is not willing to drop his guard. Hmm, Pom-Pom can tell that when he polishes his spear, there isn't just alertness in his eyes, but a glint of longing, too. Don't underestimate me, Pom-Pom had dealt with all kinds of different passengers!"

I'm sure by now everyone knows that cloudpiercer was made by Yingxing (Blade).

You can see screenshots of this interaction in this post.

Mirror Inverted Colours

Apparently, a big part of CN character design focuses around the concept of inverted colour palette designs for ships. Because Blade and Dan Heng share inverted colours, this is considered a good sign for the ship as it indicates they were most likely designed together.

Danmei Coded

Danmei is the CN genre for mlm. It has a lot of stereotypical tropes that are very common in this genre and apply to renheng also. My personal opinion is that renheng is very similar to something written by Meatbun in particular - this is a danmei author who wrote erha, yuwu, and casefile compendium. The associated tropes are:

Lovers to enemies back to lovers angst timeline often including misunderstandings involving tragic betrayal

Black/red character x white/blue/green character

Under the moonlight

Amnesia and/or reincarnation themes

Protag did something that made everybody turn on them + complicated political drama plot

Redemption in death/isolation/retreating from the world at the end

Waiting frankly ridiculous amounts of time to be with the lover again

One character pursuing the other character literally

One character considered dead or demonic in some capacity, the other is ethereal and godly

Mortal x immortal

Afterlife/spirit realm shenanigans usually involving fractured souls as a result of torment

Contrasting personalities + others don't think they should get along/are bad for each other (usually the deviant personality is considered to be corrupting the noble/revered personality in some way which often involves a rebellion)

Mirrored Ultimates

Their ultimate animation sequences are very similar with close eyes with weapon - open eyes - attack.

And both of their ultimates take place in different versions of the same location:

Vidyadharas can't identify items belonging to their past yet Dan Heng got the bracer, jade pendant(?), and cloud piercer

There is an NPC named Lingling in the alchemy commission who is responsible for assisting in vidyadhara hatching rebirth. She collects the personal belongings of vidyadhara who claim that they want to keep the items for their next life. She says that:

From what I've seen, most Vidyadhara lack emotions fresh after their rebirth, and are unable to understand the sentiments of their previous selves. Not a single one has ever been able to identify which one of these items used to belong to them.

This is a big indicator that DH = DF and that their romance will be continuing in this life, too. We know from Passerby of Wandering Clouds relic set that Dan Heng is still in possession of the bracer because of the line: "His fingertips could still faintly feel the temperature from the other."

The stars always accompany the moon

This is a reference to their names in CN where the Xing in Yingxing means moon and the Yue in Yinyue jun (Imbibitor Lunae) means Moon. Their ship name Xingyue means Star and Moon, which is often why you will see them referred to with the Star/Moon emojis as well as the sword/leaf emoji.

Blade came to see Dan Heng blushing when Xiyan asked him to act the character in his story

This is referring to this video on weibo where Dan Heng is talking to Xiyan. You can see the characters in the crowd then Dan Heng starts blushing. The next time you see the crowd, Blade has arrived third from the right.

"Eternal Regrets of a High Elder" and "Dreams from a Past Life"

These are arias from the Cloudcry Songbook written by a Vidyadhara named Lingjie who reincarnated into Chunfen. Lingjie was an opera singer and apparently a big fan of Dan Feng and his romantic life.

My friend wrote the poem analysis of both of these arias. I would strongly recommend reading her translations.

TW: These translations do include mentions of a new leaked poem. Some of the content is NSFW.

Dan Heng named himself "Dan Heng" due to the "Dan" character carved by Yingxing/Blade

We know that Vidyadhara do not usually name themselves based on their past lives as they have no attachment to them. The other iteration of Dan Heng was named Yubie for example. Dan Heng's name in CN is 丹恒. The Dan 丹 means red/pellet/powder/cinnabar. You can see Dan is inscribed on his spear that Yingxing made for him, thus the logical conclusion is that Dan Heng saw the inscription and chose it as his name.

The Star of the East (Jupiter, Wood Star)'s god is Ying Xing, and their guardian beast is Azure Dragon/Canglong/Qinglong

This one is the only one I didn't understand when I first saw it, so I had to request the help of my CN knowing friends to figure it out.

Yingxing's name is 应星 (where the 星 means star).

The CN god of Jupiter Taisui Xingjun 太岁星君 is known as Yin Jiao 殷交

Jupiter is the planet associated with the Chinese wood element, known as the wood star

Azure Dragon is known as Canglong or Qinglong in CN. This is the guardian of Jupiter (the wood star).

Blade's fansong equates Yingxing with 听星 (judging star) which is an alias for Taisui Xingjun

You can read my friend's explanation of the relevant line in the fansong below.

Dan Feng's crime was inspired by Chang'E, the moon goddess for stealing an elixir of immortality and Yingxing was inspired by Hou Yi, a mortal and husband of Chang'E (he was given immortality but didn't, this parallels and contrasts Yingxing's immortality)

So there's actually a bit more to this. I'm going to just use my friend's explanation here:

According to Shang dynasty’s Guicang, It is said that there is a moon maiden who escaped to the moon after stealing an immortality pill. This story was eventually given more details: The moon maiden became known as Heng’e 姮娥, who was the wife of Hou Yi - the hero who shot down the 9 suns. Hou Yi was given an immortality pill/herb as a reward, but Heng’e stole it and flew to the moon. In some versions, upon finding out, Hou Yi tried to shot down her to prevent her from floating to the moon, but he hesitated and ended up choosing not to in the end because he still loved her. In the moon, Heng’e stayed in a palace called 廣寒宮 (the Vast Palace of Coldness) and cursed to be separated from her husband, alone with only the moon rabbits and the immortal osmanthus tree forever. Later on, her name was changed to Chang’e 嫦娥 because Emperor Wen of Han’s name was 劉恆 Liu Heng, and so the 姮 Heng part of her name became a taboo. The interesting here is that 姮 (Heng’e), 恆 (Liu Heng), 恒 (Dan Heng) are all alternative ways to write the same character, 姮, which originally means moon, Heng’e. In addition, we also have a lot of official artworks depicting Dan Heng with the moon and osmanthus flowers:

Yeah so I think that just about covers everything. I left out the ones that were self-explanatory but if anyone is still confused about any of them I can try to elaborate further in the replies.

#honkai star rail #hsr lore #renheng #xingyue #dan heng #blade #dan feng #yingxing

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raul-volp2 · 10 months

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Tabletop rpgs are a interesting case when it comes to game, not only it's a very social and open form of game but because it's also the most difficult game (tabletop or digital) for people to actually play it.

By nature a tabletop rpg require effort, time and a sizable group of friends. Digital games most of time requires only a single player to boot the game, if it's multiplayer you usually can play with random people online. Tabletop games requires a little more effort reading the rules, setting up the game and having people to play it (there is also solo games), but when compared to ttrpgs the reading is a lot smaller and even the players needed depending of the game is very small than a optimal group size for a ttrpg.

But the biggest effort that ttrpg requires is time, you and your players have to commit to a campaign that even if it's short can spam multiple weeks to finish, and being adults in this capitalist hellscape having time to join with friends to play for 2-4 hours is kinda rare.

But Im not saying this as something bad, while it requires effort ttrpg is a beautiful and unique experience, where players join together to immerse themselves in a world and have fun with the game. But looking this as a game designer I started to see a big risk of developing a ttrpg, and the risk is that there is great possibility that our game even if it's bought by people might never be used in a single session.

People are afraid to change, to try something new, and this include games, that's one of the reasons Dungeons and Dragons dominate the scene, they use this attachment people have with things and products very well, and people see the idea of play another game as a risk, they dont want to risk using their rare ttrpg time to play something new and be unsatisfatisfied, and that's makes sense. Even group of players that plays multiple ttrpgs have difficult to play all the their library because while they are able to play multiple campaigns, it's very difficult to play all the games that are releasing.

So rambling all this my conclusion is that a ttrpg game designer need to have in mind that they are making a game, and try to make a good one please, but also have in mind that a lot people will read their book as a book, they will have fun reading the lore, studying the rules, imagining the sessions they might play but actually never play it, and I am starting to realize that this is ok. But even being ok having a game no one will play even if they get the book and enjoy the reading, another skills that is part of a ttrpg writer and designer that I see most people not paying attention to it, is that the book have not only the job of explain the rules and present the world, but to convince the reader that the game they are reading is something they want to play.

Saying this sounds obvious, because in part we all must know that, but it's usually a skill that a lot of designers don't pay too much attention, and not only designers, look at Mork Borg, it is a OSR rpg like many others, but the book with it's unique layout, art style and writting does a amazing job to convince you to play. Same with Blades in the Dark, John Harper does an amazing job showing great examples of play when explaining the rules, showing the possibility of many cool things you can do in the game. This is not something easy to do, and ttrpg designers have to deal with so many things already, and specially indie ones, but it is something necessary.

All games have voices, and we need to find the voice of our games and make them speak and convince the readers and players that our games is something they want to play it... but also knowing that it's ok if in the end our games end up being just a good reading with cool art on it.

This might feel very confuse and wrong, I work mostly with game art and my game design methods are very confusing and my game (City Noire) will probably fly very unnoticed, so don't pay attention if you feel im talking nonsense.

Thank you.

Raul.

#rpg #roleplaying game #ttrpg #tabletop rpg

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zalia · 4 months

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Experiencing Destiny 1 as a D2 player

I picked up Destiny 1 in a sale recently despite being told a lot about its problems, and honestly I'm really enjoying playing it! I feel a bit like a time traveller visiting important places and events from the past.

I also have friends who played Destiny nearly from the beginning and it's fun to go back and go 'ooooh that's what they were talking about!'. I am also very aware that if I had started playing it without already being invested, I would be having considerably less fun. (Also, being fair, much of the fun is doubtless novelty after playing *mumbletymumble* hours of D2 over the past couple of years).

But it's genuinely been really interesting from a design and narrative perspective going back to it and seeing where the story began and how things have changed and I wanted to ramble about it. Full disclosure, I have played up through the first couple of missions of The Taken King. There are also things I can't comment on such as Crucible (because getting enough players for a match has not happened yet), events (no longer happening) etc. Also haven't managed to run a raid yet but hopefully will eventually!

I will start with the bad, to get it over with. A lot of stuff here will be well known and honestly it's probably less interesting than the good/thinky stuff.

The Bad

Oh boy I have maligned D2's New Light introduction so badly since it is miles ahead of D1 just by merit of actually having one! D1 gives you the opening run through the Cosmodrome where they tell you what buttons to use and then refuses to explain anything ever again. (This very definitely ties into it being a game I enjoy now but would probably not have enjoyed if I wasn't already invested)

You don't realise how many QoL improvements D2 has until you have to go to orbit and select a new destination every single time. Also no fast travel points. And no you cannot just look at a map of the place you're traversing. Fashion is difficult too.

Up until Taken King, I am not sure why they bothered hiring voice actors for anyone except Ghost, Elsie Bray, and maybe the Speaker. And I have no idea why they hired Bill Nighy for that part (I mean I do, it's because they wanted to use Big Names for marketing but still...). The Vanguard could easily be replaced with cardboard cutouts because they are basically uninvolved in anything until Taken King begins. I know they aren't involved in every seasonal plot now, but they do appear and develop.

The story and writing is... well, it makes an attempt to exist. It does not succeed until The Taken King. I went in knowing what happens in the story and I'm still not actually sure what happens in the story because it is basically someone's pre-first draft bullet points of a narrative. The only reason I knew I was starting different storylines is because the mission popup tells you which storyline it is. 'I don't have time to explain why I don't have time to explain' is a meme for a reason, but another bit which I think illustrates the point well is from House of Wolves. Petra tells you that Skolas has entered the Vault of Glass and this is bad so you need to stop him. It is never explained before then what the Vault of Glass is, what it does, why it would be bad for Skolas to be in there, or... anything. While D2 can be obtuse, and sometimes leaves important info in easily overlooked lore tabs (or in vaulted content), it at least tries to tell you what the story is. I feel like D1 actively resents that players do not read the bullet points and fill in everything the writers had in their heads. Another example is the Devil's Lair strike. it's the first one you take on in D1, and after doing it in D2, I was expecting backstory and build up. Nope, you just get sent in with nothing to really explain what is going on, who the House of Devils are, what a Servitor is... I know it had troubled development and the story got torn apart and remade very close to launch, and it really shows in the early stuff. It's a series of missions that were made and then had to be strung together with the thinnest of threads. It gets better in Taken King, but at times is still not great. You first encounter the Taken on Phobos, I think Ghost asks about what they are. I was expecting more discussion about them and what they are and how horrifying it is. But nope, they just exist now and we're all fine with that.

So. Much. Grinding. The pinnacle grind was annoying in D2, the grind to just get your light up in D1 is so much worse. You will be doing bounties desperately to try to get your rep up with the various groups just so you can actually get fragments of story and quests. You will be grinding just to level up your subclass and it takes ages.

The places you visit are very expansive - even the Cosmodrome is significantly larger - which is great when they're used well, but a lot of the time they feel very empty, there to make you play for longer to get between areas than because there is anything to do.

The Good

The game is gorgeous! I'm loving getting to see Venus and Mars and the Dreadnaught. They're beautiful environments. Everything feels very expansive which can be very cool (as above, it can also be less good). When used well, it feels like there are so many mysteries and secrets hidden in this abandoned world. There are hidden bunkers and spaces, huge Vex structures and ruined cities, tunnels burrowed beneath the Cosmodrome and the Taken King's dreadnaught. It's genuinely fun to explore (up to a point).

It does an excellent job of making you genuinely feel like it's post-apocalyptic and the existence of humanity is precarious. And you, the Guardian, are brand new and everything is trying to kill you. You don't have multiple gods stored in your vault in the form of guns! Everything feels more dangerous. For example, I think if D2 is your intro, you look back at the Great Disaster and the first Crota fireteam and go 'but how did that happen when I go onto the moon and take out ogres with a single punch? The biggest threat in the Abyss in Crota's End is falling into a pit or getting hit by a pendulum! Yeah no I get it now. In D1 you are much less powerful and it makes swarming thralls and normal enemies much more of a threat. Things feel dangerous in a way that D2 rarely manages. I'll talk about this a bit more in depth later.

By making your supers and abilities less powerful, they have weirdly made them more useful. In D2 I usually save mine for bosses since it feels like a waste to use them on normal enemies. In D1, it makes absolute sense to use your abilities basically as soon as you have them. You should absolutely use your Golden Gun on a normal Hive Knight or Fallen Vandal!

There's some great atmospheric touches. I love hearing the snippets of distorted music when I'm near a Rasputin bunker. Going into some of the ruined buildings on Mars or Venus where it's dark and suddenly seeing so many red Vex eyes staring back at you is chilling.

The opening mission of Taken King is fantastic. Genuinely creepy and the Taken in general in D1 feel much scarier and threatening than in D2.

All the different enemy factions are different colours and designs! I love that!

Weapons still go brrrrr in a very pleasing way. And getting new gear feels genuinely satisfying in a way that it rarely does in D2. I junk 99% of the armour and guns I get in D2, in D1 I end up being much more considering of whether something is useful. Legendary weapons and armour feel precious!

I keep picking up random Warmind weapons to turn into Banshee that I know lead to an exotic quest and I am enjoying the feeling of that being another Secret Thing I am discovering.

Honestly, I really like Banshee's weapon bounties - you get given a prototype weapon to test out and gather data by doing certain things (killing X number of a certain enemy etc.) and that gains you rep. And you can then order a legendary version of the weapon from him to be delivered the next Wednesday.

Thoughts/Observations

Knowing that the 'original' story was seemingly going to focus more on Rasputin, and an exo version of him getting stolen by the Hive makes the appearance of some of the Hive areas on the Moon make more sense. There's some bits that are high tech in a way that feels very at-odds with what we see of the Dreadnaught and, other Hive locations which lean much more towards the organic and magical.

Similarly, Rise of Iron feels a lot more hard sci-fi than much of what Destiny has become, and has such a huge Rasputin focus. I believe it was partially developed by an outside studio, so I do wonder if it was based, at least in part, on the 'original' story of Destiny, and was either too far into development, or the other studio just never got the memo about the change in tone.

Vaguely related to the above, but way more speculative, I wonder if Banshee was originally meant to be a Rasputin exo, then that story got shifted to Felwinter, but the seeds were used for the story of Banshee having been Clovis Bray.

Honestly while it's fun to think about, in general I find the obsession parts of the Destiny community have with 'the original story' (of the 'maybe they're finally going back to the original story!' type where the unspoken idea is that this was the perfect undiluted pure story that was 100% planned and set in stone) to be fundamentally misunderstanding how creating stories work. I can guarantee that even if that first story had been used, after 10 years of multiple writers etc. it would still be in a very different place than where the people who came up with it initially thought it would go. It would have evolved and changed and shifted, even if it was following the same vague plan. That's just what stories do.

Oh wow, suddenly all the Nightmare Hunts in Shadowkeep make way more sense! I get it now!

Actually I get a lot of references now XD

Oh wow Shaxx sounds so depressed. I guess this was before he started therapy.

So many identical caves...

Thoughts on Power Creep

D1 leans much more into the post-apocalyptic setting and it does an excellent job of making the existence of the Last City, humanity, and Guardians feel precarious. Everything seems more dangerous, more of a threat. You really are part of the last bastion of humanity. And there's a few ways this is done.

First, you are much less powerful. Yes, you have supers and grenades, but they do much less damage (and are much less flashy) than in D1. There has been a huge amount of power creep! You won't be one-shotting bosses, even normal Vanguard Strike bosses with golden gun easily.

Legendary weapons feel rare and special, and I am still using Blue weapons at times because sometimes I have to just to get the higher light level. I have reached level 40 and have only just got my first exotic armour pieces which I bought from Xur! They are FR0ST-EE5, an exotic I have never bothered with in D2, but in D1 the recharge for abilities when sprinting is genuinely handy. I don't have any exotic weapons at all yet!

It leads to a very different playstyle - I play much more carefully because I cannot just charge in with something like Osteo Striga and wipe out a room with a few shots. In D2 we have killed multiple gods, taken down an Empire, and forged alliances. In D1, we're just some random Guardian and the gameplay reflects this.

And I hate to say this, but I also kind of get the YouTube/Stream BNFs who complain about things not being hard enough. It's just... they're completely wrong about the reasons and the solutions.

They seem to think that what is needed is more enemies with higher health, and nerf Divinity because it makes it too easy, and everything should be designed to stop normal players being able to do it. And it... it doesn't work? Ghosts of the Deep was fun, but holy fuck the health bars on the enemies make it feel grindy and dragged out. Legend Avalon was a slog because there's Too Much - too many elements at the same time so it's just overwhelming instead of fun. (Starcrossed on legend is tough, but feels more enjoyable and managable. I'm looking forward to doing it again instead of dreading it).

More difficulty isn't what makes D1 feel harder, being weaker is what does this. I have no doubt that if I could put my D2 stuff against D1 enemies I would decimate them. But in D1 I am a lone Guardian with scavenged gear and yes, I have the Light and can be resurrected, and it gives me an edge vs normal humans, but not a crazy amount.

In D2 I have so many exotics and weapons that I can just throw them away. I can have intricately crafted builds to take on any enemies! I am basically one of the most powerful entities in the solar system.

And that's not something you can really scale back. They did it with Red War at the start of D2. Maybe they could do it as a result of Final Shape and do smaller stories focused on Earth and recovery and what you even do after your purpose for fighting for so long is gone (and I think there is value in those stories! I would love it personally). But uh... I don't think most people would actually be happy having everything nerfed on such a scale. Give up your 999,999 Celestial Nighthawk boss damage, for a Golden Gun that with a bit of luck might one-shot a yellowbar?

Give up a lot of creativity in terms of what you use and how you play, in exchange for a tougher game with way less choice for builds, but one that is potentially more atmospheric and in-keeping with the post-apocalypse and the dangers of the solar system?

I don't have an answer for that! And it's not even the most important thing. Gamer BNFs gonna always want to prove that they're better than everyone at pressing buttons, and forget that the majority of players are casuals. But it's been interesting playing a different type of difficulty, rather than the forced difficulty of insanely high HP and Too Many Things.

Power creep is a real issue in a lot of long-running media (just look at superhero movies, or many many monster of the week TV shows). You're in a position of feeling like you need to one-up yourself every time. Every new villain has to be the biggest and baddest, and so you have to become more and more powerful to combat that, which means the next villain has to be even bigger and badder.

With Destiny we've gone from a scrappy underdog, to a god-killer.

I'm reminded of Osiris talking about Saint in The Sundial lore.

'I watched him grow from neophyte to demi-god'.

King of fitting for us to have done the same as Saint's inspiration.

#destiny 2 #destiny 1 #destiny the game #meta #gaming #video games #my thoughts

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aconstantstateofbladerunner · 4 months

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Is there a story you despise but whose worldbuilding you like?

Bro so many. I could never list all of them if I tried. Part of what fascinates me about bad books is seeing the lost potential and reverse engineering better stories in my own imagination.

Short list:

I love everything about the dragons of A Song of Ice and Fire. Don’t actually despise the series, a lot of it is very good, it’s just not my cup of tea. But the dragons, man. Nuclear bombs that are your pets. Special but subtle magic bonds. No matter how close those bonds are, no one can ever fully control them. They never stop growing. The implication that they aren’t naturally occurring animals and were in fact created artificially via lost magic. The weird fucked up cultural practices that developed believing it would keep them connected to dragons. The implication that that magic wiped out the empire that created them because they were never satisfied with their already unmatched power.

Bad YA book called Shiver about werewolves whose transformations were tired to temperature as opposed to the moon or their emotions. Shame the book around that interesting concept sucks ass.

The lore of Genshin Impact is super interesting. There used to be tones of gods but most died off in a war with each other. The surviving gods each have a country that they exercise varying degrees of control over, some ruling directly, some indirectly, some just kind of being around. Each country’s culture is shaped by its god’s values and personal hang ups. The gods nuked one atheist country into oblivion. The gods let a handful of designated cool people have elemental powers if they want them bad enough. My personal headcanon is that it’s only socially acceptable to dress differently from the norm when you are a designated cool person, explaining the incredibly drag copy-pasted npcs. Used to play the game but realized I wasn’t having fun, i was doing busywork so i could earn gambling points, so I stopped.

Stephenie Meyer’s The Host is about a race of body-snatching aliens who travel the universe “peacefully” conquering planets and “improving” the cultures of their hosts. One host ends up not being fully dead when a new alien is inserted and so the alien learns that taking people’s free will is bad. Genuinely fantastic sci-fi premise that could have opened the doors for a critique of colonialism and assimilation, or just a fun romp, but because it’s from the author of Twilight all the attention goes towards a love triangle/trapezoid that’s also deeply uncomfortable.

#answers #there are more but these are the ones I’m most coherent about #And most others are more like #I really liked with one detail #Very few stories succeed at doing good worldbuilding while the rest falls flat #One being bad tends to bring the other down

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adobe-outdesign · 1 year

Note

thoughts on the voltorb line?

There have been a lot of various mimic Pokemon over the years (Foongus, Gimmighoul, etc.), but Voltorb is the OG. As a mimic, it's not a bad concept: it's known for being perpetually angry and having a penchant for casually exploding. There's something really interesting about the idea of a mimic not being a camouflaged predator but more akin to a living bomb that goes off if you fall for its disguise.

Which is really the only problem with this line: I think they're too big. The only reason they ever worked as mimics in the original games is because of the simple sprite view; in-universe, no one would ever mistake them for pokeballs, and this is an issue that immediately crops up in open-world Pokemon games as well. It feels self-defeating to have a mimic that can't ever trick anyone, let alone the player.

That aside, there's obviously nothing wrong with the incredibly simple design; just a pokeball with a face and no circular button area. I like the general shape of the eyes and eyebrows, and I really like that it has no mouth, just one kind of implied by the position of the divider line.

I will admit, however, that I'm not a huge fan of Electrode. I guess the idea of flipping Voltorb's colors upside-down has some merit—it's kind of like the polarity of the electrical charge getting reversed—but it just feels like a rather bland evolution that doesn't differentiate itself enough from its predecessor. It's not like it would've been hard to come up with a more unique concept for this line. It could have easily become a better type of pokeball, like an ultra or great ball, or maybe it could've opened up a little in the middle to reveal teeth or something.

It does have one unique thing going for it other than the colors flipping, which is the face; it now sports different eyes, a more smirk-like expression, and a mouth. Honestly, I kind of feel like this is a downgrade; I like that it has more personality besides just being angry, but the eyes feel drawn-on and less organic than Voltorb's, while the mouth feels unnecessary.

It's not really terrible or anything; but it does feel unnecessary, and I do feel like this line could've gotten away with just being a one-stager.

Also, side note: can we talk about the fact that Electrode can float for some reason??

PLA brings us Hisuian Voltorb, which I like quite a bit. It works perfectly with the historical context and different Pokeball designs of PLA, and making it grass/electric only makes logical sense with Pokeballs being made of wood during this time. I also think this has some interesting lore implications, as it indicates the line started off mimicking apricorns and probably evolved into being more like pokeballs over time as a form of mimicry. Granted, I do wish they explained why it had the half-and-half coloration, however. Some form of countershading, maybe?

Anyway, lore aside, the design is pretty solid. The texture of the wood on the bottom half adds a little bit of detail without being too much, and the subtle curve of the dividing line reflects its newfound personality: it's actually extremely jolly. This makes it really endearing, and serves to further differentiate it from its original design.

The hole at the top mimics the same hole in the old-school Pokeballs used in this game, and I think it's neat that it can release electricity from it, mimicking the firework effect after you catch a Pokemon in this game.

The only thing I'm not sure about is the very angular brow; it feels more metallic in nature than wooden, and overall feels less natural than original Voltorb's brows. I do love that the pupils are hollow, however.

And Hisuian Electrode... exists. Technically speaking, it has all the same elements as Hisuian Voltorb—the wood patterning, the inverse expression, the carved eyes (which, as a side note, I do like more than regular electrode's—they feel like they're actually part of the body here instead of drawn-on). And, in that respect, it's fine.

However, it suffers from the same blandness problem that regular Electrode has. Regional lines have worked to different too-similar evolutions before—the Alolan Grimer line is a fantastic example of this done perfectly, so I had high hopes for this evo. Instead, we got the exact same thing again, with the exact same changes made to it.

Here's a few designs that I thought were really interesting, creative, and still similar to Electrode while giving it more of a unique flair:

This one, based off of firecrackers:

This one, which takes the idea of it having seeds and gives it a Bonsly to match:

And another one based off of firework bombshells:

All of these designs are so fun! They keep the general idea of Electrode but actually do something with the new typing and concepts in a way that differentiates them from Hisuian Voltorb. What we got was more standard—but was pretty disappointing in my opinion.

So overall: Voltorb is a solid Pokemon with a good design, hampered only by being too large to be a successful mimic. The Hisuian version works perfectly as a regional and changes up the design in a way that makes sense thematically. Electrode, however, has always been a bit too similar to Voltorb even if it has some fun expressions, and the Hisuian version unfortunately doesn't fix that.

#voltorb #electrode #hisuian voltorb #hisuian electrode #pokemon #pokemon reviews #.gif #long post

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heraldofcrow · 17 days

Note

Oh I forgot but what about 11 for Sephiroth? 👀

Hhhhdfdgfghgdhj

*bars the door* *locks the window* *closes the curtains after nervously glancing around to make sure Katy isn’t nearby*

Buckle in, girl. This is….complicated. And long.

11. How did you “fall in love” with this character?

It all started in June. June of last year. It was a BAD time for me personally. Not even joking. I narrowly escaped death that month dghsj.

And then this happened when I was talking with Katy…WORST FUCKING TIMING. I can’t discover a new character when I’m in the depths of despair. I will just collapse into them and let the feels consume me.

I jokingly credit this convo as being the reason why I adopted this character, but in truth, I very much could have just chosen to ignore Sephiroth again for the millionth time like I had over the years. I could have just simped for those first two weeks and then moved on with my life, happy that I resisted the charms of yet another cool white-haired katana villain.

However, this time it was different because of my mental state, and also, I stumbled across Crisis Core. My interest went well beyond just “Oh this design is so cool and what a badass villain.”

You know me. I’m drawn to FEELS. I am drawn to tragedy, to drama. I was passionately writing all that Bloodborne angst at the time too, so my head was already in the right place.

Seph in Crisis Core was just…perfect.

I mean, let’s face it—he’s not THAT deep in Remake. He’s enigmatic and a troll for Cloud, sure. He’s playing 4D chess and has some fun lines, and the final boss battle with him definitely sent me spiraling into “Oh I love him,” but he didn’t tug at my heartstrings. I watched Advent Children too and felt the same way. I was enamored with all of his exterior details like everyone else.

He was crazy and deadly and fun to watch. His theme was incredible. Masamune was shiny. He had great hair. His voice was intimidating. He was powerful and stabby. His wing was beautiful. He could cut buildings in half and shit…

But the depth! I was looking for his deeper motivations, his real personality, etc., and it was so damn subtle that I was ready to give up. If a character doesn’t have layers, I either have to resign myself to only loving them a certain amount, or else I’ll write them into a more complex character myself. But I was sure Seph had to be deeper than that?? There was no way this Japanese video game villain that had been around since the 90s was only two-dimensional at best.

So, then I delved into OG and got some answers. I was definitely pulled in then, but also more confused. I felt like I was left to analyze Sephiroth like he was a Dark Souls NPC. I was given a lot of contextual clues about who he was, but no direct answers. The Nibelheim flashback was so brief that I didn’t even know how to define his pre-insanity personality.

I actually started to get desperate and went to YouTube lmao, but all the video essays felt so…surface level. I almost suspected the lore-nerds were as clueless as me. They were just guessing stuff.

And don’t get me wrong, I was already in love by this point, but I felt like I was teetering on the edge of fully embracing the character and hadn’t quite reached nirvana. I remember this was the point when I was trying to explain in our group chat how I tended to “psychoanalyze” characters that I was drawn to in order to crack open their minds and unravel the threads. I was doing this with Seph, but I kept hitting brick walls.

Then I played Crisis Core and…something clicked. That game has some really rough writing and pacing issues. The dialogue is also a struggle to take in sometimes, but I could forgive it. It had so much heart and emotion and humor. It had a good soul. It quickly became my favorite <3

And Sephiroth? In Crisis Core?

Dude, suddenly I understood him. No, he WASN’T always an edgelord villain. No, he wasn’t the classic brooding antihero. He wasn’t messy and sadistic and “foreboding” as if it was inevitable he would become the villain. He didn’t fit any of the tropes I was expecting.

Bro was lowkey wholesome af.

He was just…a person. Better yet, a not-normal person trying to be normal. He was really happy to just have friends and didn’t want them to get hurt. He goofed around with them like they were a bunch of fucking kids, sneaking into an off-limits training room just to sword fight lol.

He literally stops randomly in the game and starts telling this to Zack all cheerfully like “Me and my buddies used to do this thing…it was TOTALLY secret but it was fun :D” and shares the whole story about him with Gen and Angeal. The way he talked reminded me of a young person who had begun to experience the thrills of life for the first time.

It was the little details like this that got me. There are so many more that I could go on for days about. I was thinking…”Yo this guy is actually a dork (affectionate).”

That’s why I always joke that he is “the homeschooled goth,” because of how he dresses edgy but speaks innocently.

He wasn’t an arrogant snob about his strength either. He was more the depressed loner that took his work seriously, but also was conflicted. He somehow did his both his job and quietly committed treason to make sure his friends survived.

Then they fucking died and backstabbed him, which is something that I think we can relate to the misery of as humans. Losing people to death or relational conflict is hard enough for anyone, but watching it happen to a character who was…ultimately isolated from normal life and society, who was so “other” and separate that he didn’t even fit into the part of having a real family thanks to being an experiment created by a corrupt company was…difficult, to say the least. It was like watching someone be given some hope and then seeing it get ruthlessly crushed.

This was hard for me as a player too, because I had loved Genesis and Angeal right away. The whole trio seemed like a group of loveable dorks with really…funny quirks? They felt so distinct and characterized? But they all broke down horribly because of their origins and the complexes that came with them.

Then the Nibelheim sequence happened. All of the drama went down. Everything fell into place, and I had essentially, a) fallen in love with a character who was genuinely good despite horrible circumstances, and b) watched that character lose his mind and become painfully cruel. It really hurt.

I felt Zack’s pain as he lost a friend he trusted, I felt Cloud and Tifa’s pain as they lost their homes and families, and I still felt Sephiroth’s pain as he just boiled over with rage and took it out on the world. It felt like everyone was suffering so much, and that’s when Crisis Core became much darker and honestly, beautiful? A perfect tragedy.

That’s when Seph became my set-in-stone favorite. I remember being much younger and adoring Darth Vader/Anakin because of the grand tragedy of his downfall and the impact he left as the villain. Watching Seph, I kinda felt like that little kid again—in love with the villain’s story. Always in love with the angel both before and after the fall, because why not enjoy all of the emotions? Nothing hits me harder than “losing” a character to their darker egos, but I can also have fun watching them go wild and commit arson, yeah? Heh.

Seph also has the added complexity of how his mother plays into the story beyond just dying or being forgotten. “She” is very present and also not present. It’s such a strong complex that it even shapes his villainhood, which is perfect for my love of mother-son tragedy.

Anyway since Crisis Core, my infatuation has only gotten worse, ahaha…and now I see that I really only needed OG to understand this character, but I’m not ashamed to admit that CC gave me the boost I wanted.

The new games are still doing this too.

Ever Crisis: The First Soldier, which is a lil story about Seph’s first mission as a kid, made things SO much more agonizing fgdhjsk. The writers really just want you to cry, I swear. It’s hard enough when young Seph in the official artwork looks like THIS:

LIKE SQUARE ENIX WHAT THE FUCK. I FEEL BAD JUST LOOKING AT HIM. STOP.

I did also do way more research and uncover all the little tidbits I could gather to add to the full picture, and now Rebirth gave me yet another boost.

(I need to mention the first bit of fan-fiction I read about Seph too, which was basically a novel about his life written by the brilliant @altocat called “A Monster’s Threads.” It essentially fleshed out almost all of the lore we know about Seph and made it into a genius story. Alto’s writing is….literally some of the best I’ve seen and that fic ruined my life lol. I seriously don’t think I’ve ever cried that hard reading something. I have been Alto’s loyal devotee and buddy ever since lol. Good writing does that to me <3).

It was all of this that led me from being annoyed that I was interested in another silver katana lad to….

….whatever this was in our group chat when I was defending him from Katy on 9/11 apparently….

That’s love, baby!

(I may need therapy).

In conclusion, I can’t wait to continue letting this character affect my life way too much. Thanks for listening to my rant 💀

—

Favorite Character Asks

#fghsjkdg girl this was a LOADED question to ask lmaooo #but thank you #i appreciate it!#i hold back a lot on talking deeply about this bastard #ask game #sephiroth #ff7 #asks #mutuals

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bluegekk0 · 1 month

Text

Bit of a ramble about something that's been on a mind for a while, about HK and the AU. Not really a vent, but just wanted to talk about it. It's pretty long so I'll hide it.

My relationship with HK these days is a bit complicated, to be honest. I absolutely adore the game, I get this warm feeling every time I hear the soundtrack and I still get the itch to replay it from time to time. It's a work for art and I'm so, so grateful I played it, even if I was quite late to the party all things considered.

But I can't deny that I fell into the rabbithole of having too many headcanons where I can't engage with other people to the extent I perhaps used to. I don't like many of the popular characters nearly as much as the fandom does, and those that are close to my heart I interpret in a way that speaks to me, but one that feels very distant to how other people view them.

It has some downsides. I avoid looking up HK fanart and I'm slowly starting to dislike getting posts about it recommended to me in the For You tab a little bit. Not because the art is bad, far from it, there are incredible artists and other members of this community that deserve all the love in the world. It's just that it keeps reminding me that my interpretations are so personal, and headcanons that go against them almost feel like mischaracterization, as ridiculous as it sounds. Some interpretations end up upsetting me more than I'd like, too. Some of it is misinterpretations that annoy me, but some are just things I personally don't agree with.

But part of me makes me think that it's my fault somehow. I can't quite explain it, I think this is somehow rooted in my self-esteem issues. I often fear that I don't belong, that I'm doing something wrong by not following the general fanon, that my AU feels like an insult against the canon because of how derived and self-indulgent it is. I didn't have that problem before, not to this extent, but as my mental health got worse over the months, it makes sense that something like this would also start to make itself known. Or at least it makes sense to me.

So deep down I'm torn. On one hand, I get weirdly protective over my interpretations and it's gone to the point where I struggle to separate them from the versions other people talk about. On the other, I'm starting to feel guilty that my AU versions are so different that they might upset some people.

I had some moments where I considered turning them into OCs. But every time I I think about that, I reach the conclusion that no, I don't want to do that. I love them the way they are, despite their designs evolving with time, I wouldn't want to change anything about them, let alone turn them into different characters. And it's not like I'm really changing the character from the canon. Some details are different, but it's also easy to forget that we don't really know much about a lot of these characters, so in many ways I'm just filling the blanks and writing the story around it. Not to mention, adapting canon in ways that I find personally engaging is one of my favorite things about the worldbuilding and lore of the AU. And then there's all the engagement from people who like the AU and want to learn more that is genuinely the main reason why it's as expansive as it is. I don't think I would've stuck around making art for it for this long if I was doing it for myself only.

But it's not just art, knowing that people care, and getting all the interesting ideas I haven't considered inspires me to expand the world of the AU even further, I think about it in my spare time, of all the ways I could develop the world, I still get random ideas for it that I eventually want to include, I read about something in the game's lore and I immediately think of the way I could adapt it into my AU. It became a personal project that I find comfort in, and changing it would just feel wrong. And I know how my brain works (well, at least I think I do), I know I wouldn't remain as invested if I were by myself, I need to share it with other people. And I doubt they would be as interested if it wasn't for the connection to HK. I think that's natural and to be expected.

So all that leaves me in a bit of an awkward spot. I love HK, but over the last year I built a wall around me and the sandbox of my personal interpretations, that creates this disconnect between me and the rest of the fandom. I don't think that fact alone makes me upset, either. There's a reason why I'm still sitting there and playing in that sandbox to this day, and it's because I genuinely love doing it. I guess the disconnect just feeds into my already existing confidence issues and worries. Then again, I haven't really left the fandom, and I'm not planning to anytime soon. All I'm hoping for is that my low-confidence plagued brain improves, and stops telling me I'm doing something wrong by playing in the sandbox by myself.

Okay, not by myself, that would be selfish of me to say. There's still a lot of you here, people whom my silly AU clicked with, people who want to see more of it and are still there for the 6th slice of life drawing of the week. I love and appreciate you all, and I'm really grateful I can share the sandbox with you. You're the best, thank you from the bottom of my heart. I'm so, so happy that you found something in my art that resonated with you.

I don't know how to end this post tbh. Again, it's not really meant to be a vent post, not the usual kind at least. Even if some things about this frustrate or upset me a little bit, I think I'm slowly moving towards the acceptance stage. I don't want to change my interpretations so they're more in line with the rest of the fandom, and I don't want to force myself to engage with things that upset me just to feel like I belong. All I'm hoping is that I eventually stop having doubts; about this, and everything in general.

I guess I just wanted to share my thoughts. Maybe someone else feels like they're in a similar spot. Maybe hearing some words of encouragement that I'm not going insane with this would also help me accept the position I'm in. Maybe it's Maybelline.

#getting this off my chest felt nice #makes me wonder if anyone else has ever experienced something similar to this #not just with hk but in general #gekko.txt #feral pk au

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disclosed-spire · 9 months

Text

OKAY MY ENOT LORE, DESIGN, AND RAMBLE TIME!

So if anyone knows and has spoken to me and seen any of my ocs, they'll know I LOVE making things wacky and out there if I have the ability to. If possible, I will have some wacky backstory too! For Enot's case, this is very much possible!

I'm basically just gonna ramble describe my own little thoughts and design choices for Enot with some of my art as reference!

If you want to know my own thoughts and design choices for another character, be sure to let me know! It'll take a little bit as I like to go all out with these as much as possible.

ANYWAYS ONTO DESCRIBING ENOT UNDER THE CUT BC THIS'LL BE LONG!

Spoilers for Enot's campaign below!

Design Choices

So this is my Enot design!

Yes I know it's very strange and wacky looking, but c'mon. I think the little chaos gremlin deserves to have a chaotic design, y'know, as a treat!

I decided to make their whole body fade, but to fix the issue of their limbs blending in too much, their arms and legs are different solid colors, which allow me to draw them easier!

I really wanted to keep the red in Enot's design, but I didn't want to overuse it, so I decided to make it an accent color and sprinkle red throughout the design. I think this makes it easier to look at Enot, and also draw more attention to their face, as that's the most interesting thing to look at! Enot's eyes are red spirals because honestly I think that would be fun. Enot's red whiskers are made to look like a curly mustache because they obviously have to twirl it like an evil supervillain. The last red design choice is seen with their lizard-like tail, which I'm just about to get to.

Enot has a bit of lizard biology in their DNA, specifically white lizards. This explains their strange frills on the back of their tail, their odd distinct head shape, and one of their abilities that I'll list in the later sections.

The last thing I wanted to mention was glitches! As much as I love glitches and stuff with characters (If you have a glitched Enot design I absolutely love it already, please be my friend), I decided to leave this out of the physical design of Enot because I have a cooler idea! Based on text said by Five Pebbles in game:

Five Pebbles obviously wouldn't say this, so I thought of something that I think would be funny. What if Enot was some kind of cryptid or eldritch horror kind of scenario? Whelp, I can say that my version of Enot is.

Enot causes the environment around them to distort and change sometimes because of a reason I'll get to in a different section of this post. Overall though, this explains the strange changes in the world, the weird Five Pebbles dialogue, and fits into the absurdity of Enot's character as a whole.

Personality

Enot is basically chaos incarnate, nobody knows where Enot came from except Enot themself. To sum it up, bro is basically a real time cryptid or scp. Overall they're chaotic, and very loud, but genuinely entertaining if you manage to get to know them.

Yes, manage. Bro is very scatterbrained and is always all over the place.

Other than that, Enot thinks of themselves as some kind of incredibly evil supervillain, but they're absolutely horrible at it. Not horrible in Enot's bad at their job, Enot's bad in terms of the fact that they just don't actually do supervillain things. The most evil thing they can think of is filling a room with their weird eggs, or causing some minor inconvenience as some silly joke.

This basically makes Enot one of those supervillains that is actually not even bad, just a silly guy pulling pranks because they have the power and capabilities of doing so.

Powers

"Enot has a bit of lizard biology in their DNA, specifically white lizards."

For Enot's white lizard biology, this gives Enot the ability to change colors like some kind of chameleon like the picture above. They cannot change shape, just color, which means that if they were to try to imitate another Slugcat, or another species, it would look off.

How to tell the difference between another Slugcat and Enot is obviously the body, but also some of the red on their body. The spirals in their eyes, the red whiskers, and the tail frills always stay red, no matter what the rest of Enot's colors may be. This makes it easy to tell that Enot is pulling a prank or messing with other Slugcats.

"Enot causes the environment around them to distort and change sometimes because of a reason I'll get to in a different section of this post."

Ah yes, the completely wacky idea I had stored for this moment. Enot is some kind of universe or dimension traveler, which explains the environmental distortion, but also the really weird ending of their campaign, the dating simulator.

No Slugcats were found before (minus Slugpups) in Enot's campaign, until the dating sim which just came out of the blue. The lizards changed personalities, somehow all the Slugcats are alive at the same time, moon is now alive yet she was powered off in the campaign previously, and so much more about the dating sim can make me believe this weird belief.

Enot can just go to different dimensions just because they think it's funny and likes to mess with others by doing that. I don't make the rules, Enot does.

Egg

Yes the egg gets its own section.

Enot can lay eggs because I think that would just add to the absurdity of their character. I don't actually know how they would do it , so maybe they just throw up an egg like an scp scenario, similar to a hairball. (Also to keep up the weird factor about them)

REGARDLESS.

These eggs are an active threat when thrown, so I think it's at least worth mentioning. I don't know how to describe the fact that Enot's eggs are singularity bombs, so I'm gonna try to explain how it could work by how I've been making the rest of this post with my weird logic.

My best guess as to why Enots eggs are the way they are is because of the fact that Enot is a weird universe traveling cryptid or something similar to that, so all eggs that Enot creates are pretty unstable, and when thrown, this disrupts the balance, similar to a fire egg.

Relationship Descriptions

OKAY SO THE FINAL SECTION. Wow this has been quite the wacky post. I'm just gonna explain why my relationships for Enot are the way they are. A lot of these are gonna be grouped together.

All of them have pranks pulled on them because it's Enot. Why wouldn't Enot do so?

Iterators

All of them are neutral except for Five Pebbles because Enot never really had a wacky connection with any of them, except for Pebbles and Moon. Enot just really likes Five Pebbles' strange personality. Too bad it's one sided though.

Downpour Slugcats + Hunter

Enot is relatively friendly towards all of them, having crushes on the others (except for hunter). Think of it like having a crush on an actor from a tv show or a movie. Enot doesn't have that strong of a crush, but it's still there.

Enot does have a small bit of respect for Artificer as they know what Artificer went through. This was unfortunately found out from a prank they made, but once they found out about the whole incident, they backed off and apologized.

Enot does have a huge amount of respect for Gourmand though, as it has to do with when they first met. When Enot and Gourmand met, Enot was looking for a place to call home, so Gourmand decided to take Enot under their wing and accept them into their colony. Enot has a lot to thank Gourmand for, as they wouldn't have met anyone of the Slugcat crew, and wouldn't have a home.

Also sometimes Enot and Hunter hunt together, which does give bonus points for the friendly factor.

Monk, Survivor, and Their Family

Enot is generally friendly towards all of them, but especially has respect for Monk and Survivors family. (This is my own little made up campaign for them that's part of my own little story for the Slugcats, so keep that in mind.) Enot thinks that the whole family going in for Monk and Survivor, despite the little hope left is very admirable, and generally finds it heartwarming that they all could reunite again.

Nightcat

Nightcat at the very least is very close to Enot, as they both have very strange origins, and both are oddballs out of the Slugcat colony. At the very most though, Enot and Nightcat would be together as they both are pranksters by heart, and can fight the uncaring world off together like partners in crime.

OKAY WOW WHAT A RIDE! I hope everyone enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing this! I spent quite a while writing this, so if you'd want to see more of other characters, be sure to let me know!

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thesweetsvillainshowdown · 24 days

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MAGOLOR PROPAGANDA: Magolor is a REALLY cool character. I think he's got a pretty great design, and there's a lot of great music associated with him. Go listen to "Settling a Score - Atone for One's Misdeeds" and "C-R-O-W-N-E-D", those are some of the best. Maybe listen to "Interdimensional Traveler" and "I'll Never Forget You (Memorial Arrangement)" too if you like those at all. Looking past design and music, he's a GREAT character. He has more dialogue than any other character, probably more than every character combined across the whole series, and just about every word of it is a joy. The lore drops, the silly puns, the explanations, learning to have friends, everything. It's all so GOOD. As a villain, I really like him. He shows up at the start of Kirby's Return to Dream Land by crashing his Interdimensional Boat Spaceship, the Lor Starcutter, and you spend most of the game gathering parts to help him repair it. He has you fight the dragon, Landia, who shot him down in the first place, but it turns out Landia was stopping him because he was trying to steal the Master Crown, a source of unlimited power that would let him rule the universe. He takes the crown and reveals his grand plan with a pretty great speech (which Kirby does not understand very much...) and leaves to set this into motion. Kirby, with the help of his friends and Landia, fight him. The Crown takes his body, turning him into little more than a shell, but Kirby shatters the Crown off of him. After this, his (playable and very fun!) redemption arc begins. He is trapped between dimensions, and all of his power is lost. He travels and gathers it all by collecting shards of a Gem Apple and with Magic points, along the way making lots of puns, pathetically holding onto villainy by saying things like "thank badness!" and eventually realising he LIKED having friends and remembers that he wants to make people happy (his life goal is to run a theme park). The shards of the Crown take over the (now fully-built) Gem Apple, and it takes form as a giant tree. Gathering all of his magic into a sword, he cuts it in half in a flashy showdown and redeems himself. He spends a while in a parallel world, and eventually returns to Kirby. He builds theme parks to apologise, accomplishing his dream in the process. He's happy now, but he's still quite mischievous! He loves to play pranks and add a bit of extra danger to his attractions. Also, he ties into a few Christian themes which I find quite interesting. The yellow in his design is there because it's the colour of betrayal in Christianity, Magolor Day canonically falls on a Sunday and the first one ever was an Easter, the room he keeps the Apple shards in is literally called the Room of Eden in the Japanese version of the game, and both the temptation of the Master Crown and his connection to apples could be taken as tying into this as well. He is also a JOY to play as in all three games where he is playable. Especially Magolor Epilogue, which is the one where he redeems himself. You upgrade his powers throughout it with lots of fun dialogue about it, and the levels and challenges are all a blast. I've tried my best to explain him, but if anyone reading this is interested: Go read his page on Wikirby! Or, even better, go and play Kirby's Return to Dream Land Deluxe if you have a Nintendo Switch! He is genuinely such a great character and I want as many people as possible to have a good time with him too!

I see! Well, you've heard the propaganda, now take your new knowledge and let it help you vote!

#ultimate villain showdown #the third ultimate villain showdown #villain propaganda

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tobiasdrake · 29 days

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AA4-2, Investigation Day 1, is such a unique investigation day. One thing the Ace Attorney brand has always excelled at is shaking things up with introductions to its cases.

Sometimes it's simple. Someone comes to the office and goes, "Hey man there's a murder will you defend" and the attorney goes "Yeah man I got you" and then we're off to conduct our trial preparations.

But other case introductions are more... unconventional. Given the circumstances, 4-2 has no choice but to be an oddball.

The Wright & Co. Law Offices don't exist anymore and, having just successfully sent his boss to prison for murder, Apollo is obviously fucking fired from Gavin & Co. So. Even though Apollo is licensed to practice law, there is no law office for a prospective client to walk into.

Which means we gotta get creative with three odd jobs in place of a typical crime investigation.

Three seemingly unrelated requests that all seem more like police work than attorney business. This sure is a weird way to introduce the second chapter of a lawyer game. The first time I played this, I was very confused and spent much of the chapter wondering when the lawyering was going to kick in. Much like how Apollo feels.

This chapter's introduction is very off-putting. Intentionally so, but I do wonder if the extremely unconventional nature of this setup is part of what alienated the player base.

Guy Eldoon, incidentally, is a pretty significant piece of Ace Attorney lore that doesn't quite come across in the American version. In the original Japanese, Maya's "burger" obsession was an obsession with "ramen". They localized it into burgers to try and make the game American back in AA1.

The series has been paying the price for the decision to localize ever since, as it's had to wind itself increasingly in knots to try and explain away how aggressively Japanese many parts of it are. One of the consequences of that decision is that Guy Eldoon loses his punch.

The reason Eldoon's Noodles is such a big deal is because this is the noodle vendor that Maya was getting all that ramen from. Her burger supplier, if you will. This man's family legacy of noodle stands is a critical piece of Ace Attorney lore, but he and his stand are also so obviously noodle-designed that it'd be impossible to try and call it a burger grill. So the bit just. Broke.

Without that vital piece of context, funny jokes like this simply don't land.

HA! It's funny because Maya is fucking obsessed with burgers ramen so of course Phoenix had a tab back in his attorney days!

Meanwhile, not to be left out, Trucy's here with the references to the good ol' days as well.

She is absolutely Phoenix's kid. She's absorbed his talent at being pedantic incorrectly on the topic of ladders.

In any case, these three seemingly unrelated events are fairly trivial to solve, but they begin to weave together the complicated tale of a bizarre and inscrutable crime spree last night that sees even the local yakuza family hit.

What makes this investigation really interesting from a creative standpoint is that all of these seemingly unrelated errands come together in the end to paint a picture of a single crime.

But. What makes it frustrating from a player standpoint is that until you become aware of that, it just feels like you're running around doing pointless errands. Ultimately, I like the idea of this case introduction more than its execution.

It ultimately becomes a huge relief when an actual client finally makes themselves known. Courtesy of Trucy having shrewd yet amoral business sense.

Trucy do not sell our services to the yakuza thank you

Too late. We're mob lawyers now. Now we get to defend this dipshit.

I particularly love Bad Badger there on his shirt. This wannabe gangster is running around wearing a cartoon mascot of a stereotypical Crime Dude as depicted in police propaganda. That's like self-identifying as the archnemesis of McGruff the Crime Dog.

I genuinely can't decide if he's trying too hard or just the right amount of hard. It's such a perfect combination of gangster edge and childish dipshit. I love his shirt so much.

In any case, once the hurdle of the opening errands is cleared, we pick up our two new additions to the game's principle cast. First being our rival prosecutor Klavier Gavin.

Gavin's intro is a little gross, gotta say. I like Gavin's role in the plot, but they're going for this suave rockstar aesthetic. He's both the "rockstar" of the court who vanquished legendary attorney Phoenix Wright seven years ago and literally a rockstar.

To that end, we see him (24) flirt with Apollo (22)...

...which is fine. But he also does it with Trucy (15).

Gross thing to call a minor, dude. Godot was a weird creep too but at least he didn't hit on underage girls. So this isn't a great first impression to the game's main plot-important rival.

Fortunately, it's quickly followed up by the triumphant return of Ema Skye, who was retconned into existence just two years before Apollo Justice's release to tease her presence in the new status quo. She immediately endears herself by being equally grossed out by Gavin.

The thing I really like about All Grow'd Up Ema is that her personality's changed from the girl we knew in Rise From the Ashes. She's still Ema where it counts.

(Hahahahaha look at it! That's it! That is the burger joint! Serving ramen, ramen, ramen, and rice ball! I bet you Maya's favorite was probably the ramen, medium grilled with tomatoes and lettuce.)

Still a determined forensic analyst at heart. But it's been nine years since last time we saw her, and she was only 16 years old when we knew her before. People change a lot between 16 and 25, so it'd be weird if she was still the same ol' Ema through and through.

Ema's here to be our new Detective Gumshoe. But the wide-eyed optimism of youth has been replaced by jaded bitterness at a career path that hasn't been so glamorous as she once imagined.

And one that has driven her to a newfound snacking habit. This is a character trait I adore. It reflects the classic stereotype of the whiskey-addicted detective worn down by life and with no more fucks to give, except her drug of choice is chocolate.

Incidentally, I had to take so many pictures of this woman eating to get that one frame where she pops the Snackoo into her mouth that now I feel like a total creep so let's move on.

Point is, Ema's new disgruntled attitude is a lot of fun, and makes for a sharp contrast against the easygoing and carefree nature of Dick Gumshoe. Though she becomes less hostile and combative with Apollo and Trucy once she learns who they are....

And though her attitude improves tremendously any chance she gets to whip out her forensic tools....

Her demeanor towards her actual job remains sour. Though we do get some explanation as to why.

With Gumshoe, the joke was always just dunking on his salary for fun. Haha, Gumshoe screwed up and now the prosecutor's angrily cutting his salary! He has to subsist on cup ramen! LOL

Which can be aggravating as a "running joke" if you know what it is to be poor.

That's not to say there wasn't more to Gumshoe's character. He was a good-natured nice guy with a tendency to miss subtle details. He liked giving his all for his "team" even though the prosecutors rarely appreciated him, but he also respected the defense and even put himself into physical danger to protect them from violence multiple times.

Gumshoe was a great character, and he will be missed.

Ema's point of friction with her job is a lot more character-driven. Because we had time to get to know her back when she was wide-eyed and optimistic, we can feel it when she expresses that this is a waste of her talents. She should be in a lab doing DNA analysis on a bloodstained knife, not picking it out of dirt and putting it in a bag for the prosecutors' office.

Ema is a welcome addition to this new cast.

With all that sorted out, there's just two characters left for the investigation day to introduce. Since we're mob lawyers now, thanks Trucy, we gotta meet the mob. We met Little Plum and her sword-concealing sweeping broom earlier. But we also need to meet the head of the yakuza with a distinctive Godfather look about him.

And our client, the ever-rebellious Wocky Kitaki desperate to make a criminal name for himself.

Though our time with them is brief, it quickly becomes apparent what our biggest conflict of this trial is going to be: Our dumbass client wants to go down for murder, because he is a child of a criminal culture who feels like he has something to prove - despite his family's efforts to convince him otherwise.

Wocky reminds me a lot of Ron DeLite. This is hardly our first time at the defense stand having to battle our own stupid client who's all too eager to confess - Something that, in actual case law, wouldn't be a thing? Like. If your client wants to plead guilty, you can't stop them. But Ace Attorney takes extreme artistic liberties with the law.

(Remember that one time when Phoenix's client fired him in the middle of a case, and for no clear reason he was allowed to remain in the courtroom and continue defending her anyway? Good times. Also, hi, Ema!)

But the difference is that Ron was a gentleman thief and Wocky's a teenage wannabe gangster, so the difference in temperament is palpable.

All in all, this investigation is... meandering. While a fun idea in theory, chasing down all these errands can easily leave the player just... waiting for the plot to start. There's a lot of busywork here, right down to Ema making you leave the crime scene to go talk to Phoenix so that you can come back and talk to Ema only this time she's cooperative.

The Kitaki family are a fun set of characters once they're introduced. Eldoon's Noodles is a significant piece of Ace Attorney lore if you're familiar enough with the non-localized version to catch it. Ema's return is a lot of fun. Trucy's charming and likable. But the connective tissue between all these things needed work, I think.

#ace attorney #ace attorney apollo justice #revisiting aa4

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purecalcium66 · 7 months

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this game is extremly fanartable for some reason??? (please don't ask me about the background i cannot explain it either, Im not a good backgrounder)

by accident i finished Infinite sooner than i expected, so here under the cut is my opinion/rant about this game, as someone who knows next to nothing about politics, racist stereotypes and all the problematic stuff the game tired to show. Just a really casual opinion, i just needed to write somewhere. Don't take it seriously if you want to read it please.

in advance: sorry for any mistakes, english is not my native language and im writing this straight from my heart so im not thinking about grammar rn

first thing: I reeeeally enjoyed this game, which after reading so many negative comments i did not expect. It has its flaws, but everything has flaws. Of course it isn't better than the first and second Bioshock, but i dont really consider it as a continuation of the first two games? Rather like a stand alone title. It's soooo entirely different, and as much as I prefer Rapture, Columbia is incredibely pretty and i had to stop every 10 seconds to take a screenshot.

Even though the story was... uh.... well, some plot holes were so wide i could fit my whole fist through them, but nevertheless it was overall, enjoyable. Im pretty sure, that even the creators got lost in that lore at some point, and im still cannot tell what exactly happend at the end...? I went crazy when i attempted to make a timeline of events. But the idea of tears and all that dimension travel was pretty interesting i think. Anyway. Plot twist was forced, and that Rapture cameo at the end was too, as much as i dont want to admit it (even though i almost pissed my pants from excitement when i saw my favourite city in its full glory again). Burial at Sea might add something to the story i guess, but from what i heard, it only adds existential dread to the fans of the series. I will see about that soon. Even if its really that bad, at least I will have a loooong snappies taking session with those georgous graphics hehe.

Also im really dissapointed in how both Comstock and Fitzroy get disappear forever 5 seconds after they appear in person, like come on, i hoped to see more of them than just some rambling over the radio (the voice acting was amazing though, as usual in Bioshock).

oh and also the boys of silence appeared for only one location? Their design is so cool! After watching the trailer I expected much more! The design was inspiring as hell.

oh also Skylines were the best thing that happened to this game imo. Amazing feeling.

and last but not least: characters! This time i did not really get attached to the characters as much as in the previous games. I liked Elizabeth and Booker, they are pretty solid, i think, and i would totally cosplay as any of them if i had someone to cosplay the other one with me. And the other characters? The Twins were really fun, Songbid was badass, and Daisy was cool too, before she appeared in person for 5 seconds. They all were not nearly as fun as the characters from the first game.

Whoever read this whole, I love you, but please do something better with your time. Stay safe guys, and remember to slap a bald head from time to time (it helps keeping your mental state well)

#bioshock infinite #elizabeth comstock #im losing my grip on reality with every post #booker dewitt #sorry #too late tho #bioshock #calcite art #2k word rant lmao

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chaosbutautism · 8 months

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Why I think the ‘Lucky Guy Isn’t real’ theory would be bad if it was true

Lucky Guy, we all know him, but actually, we don’t. There is so little information about him, the main theory in the fandom is that he’s just a placeholder for a different person. But…why?

Now, I’m not calling the theory itself bad. It’s a logical conclusion to make when you’re faced with the info we have. I just think that, if Netease is actually going this route, there is a lot of wasted potential. Plus, they did a horrible job at it.

Evidence for this theory includes: his subtitle being ‘Deduction Substitute’, the ‘I’m me, and everyone of you.’ quote, the vagueness of his rumor ‘We don’t know how many people have taken apart in this game; we know that he played the game.’ and the general lack of information we’ve been given on him.

These do point to the idea that Lucky Guy is just a figment of Orpheus’s imagination, a placeholder for a real person…but why this guy? Look at his design, it doesn’t fit with any of the other characters. If he’s, if the theory is right, supposed to be a placeholder character, why is his design so out of place? How did Orpheus come up with this modern-looking guy? You could say ‘Well, Netease didn’t have enough time or resources to make a new character, so they just used an old one!’ But Netease is known for their attention to detail in both characters and skins. Also, why would a placeholder character have such a distinctive appearance? Did Orpheus just…make up a person on the spot? This person, who looks nothing like any other character? It would be so much more logical to make a simple, completely blank model, one that could resemble Tracy’s bot. It would be low on resources without breaking the feel of the game. If Lucky is purely here to serve as a placeholder, he’s doing a bad job at it.

Also, a placeholder to what? That note was mentioned once, only to be completely dropped and never mentioned again. Like, come on. You could, again from a non-lore perspective, argue that they needed a completely blank, skill-less character for the tutorial, but Netease was completely fine with using Leo, a hunter with his own skill set, as the tutorial for hunters. If that page was purely a plot device for the tutorial, why didn’t we go for an actual character’s diary, like one of the other veterans, immediately. Why did they make a cutscene with another character we never see again when we could’ve gone over the first game’s story, or at least just a simple tutorial sequence using Emma, the face of the game, instead? If a placeholder was not needed, why use it?

Now, after showing that the whole placeholder shenanigans weren’t even that needed for both a lore and a gameplay perspective, I’m going to talk about the actual meat of this rant/ theory combination. Why it would actually suck if Lucky Guy was just a placeholder.

First, details and info that directly contradict the narrative that Lucky is not real; he has a birthday, there’s a description on the site ‘His world is like a slot machine that he always wins; but what will happen if he stops playing?’, he has listed likes and dislikes and there are snippets from quizzes that dig into his personality while Netease hasn’t had a problem with leaving him out of other things like birthday letters.

And for my main argument: why it would be bad, narrative-wise, to just leave this character to rot.

His design looking modern compared to other characters could give us a plot with time travel, which would reawaken the more mystical and grim magic elements of the story. In the games, where things happen which are not explainable with science, this would actually be a good element to see. Fiona’s, Eli’s, Hastur’s, Yidhra’s, Patricia’s and potentially Arthur Byers’ stories already show the more magical elements of the story and how they compliment the world of identity V, time travel would be a very interesting plot point to explore.

An alternate idea, often used by fan-writers of the game, is that Lucky has been in the games longer than others, maybe even competing in multiple rounds. This could give leeway to explore the nature of the game, something we’re narrative-wise creeping up on. Netease could give us more information on the actual nature of the game. Again, with multiple gods, multiple dead people, characters with magical abilities and prizes that oftentimes seem to good to be true, there must be some magical elements to the game. There are also hints that the games are used as trial grounds for testing of some kind, with every participant being given some kind of code. This could be something Lucky Guy dives into as well.

And what if Lucky Guy doesn’t remember anything about his life before the manor. Amnesia is a commonly used trope for Lucky Guy in fanworks about him. If Lucky Guy doesn’t even know why he’s in the manor or for what prize he’s fighting for, he could give a truly interesting look at what the games feel like for someone who doesn’t have a goal. He would just be a lost person, no identity to call his own, just trying to survive the best he can. This could be an amazing perspective on the manor game he’s in now, since he’d have to focus on the people around him and adapt accordingly.

He could also be a puppet to the manor. A helping hand to Miss Nightingale for running the affairs of the game. This ‘traitor’ idea could be a really good plot point for the game. While still keeping him as not real, he now has a much more interesting role which could be used to make a truly dark story around one of the cannon games.

And last but certainly not least, they could give their technically first character ever the same respect as every.single.other character in the game and just give him a backstory. Not every story has to be connected to the manor itself, there are plenty of characters that were not connected to the manor in any way, shape or form before their game. All characters have a story, survivors and hunters alike. If they are not their own person, they are a part of a different character’s identity, used to propel their story forward. Why would what arguably is the starting point of Identity V as a whole be exempt from this? It’s no fun to have a character with nothing in a game specifically known for its interesting characters and wild stories. Even if it’s a bit of a late start, Netease, you have the foundations. Through quotes, introductions and snippets, you have a base. It’s not too late to give a character that is rotting both in lore and in gameplay a bit of use. Every single detail can be useful of storytelling, a big corporation probably doesn’t need a teenager to tell them that. Why would you let as big of an opportunity as a full character pass by? There is so much that can happen by adding an extra character to a story, especially one that has potential, as I have shown in both my own writing and this mini-essay written out of pure passion for a character. It’s never too late to pick up an old project and work on it again. Who knows, maybe you’ll make a masterpiece?

As a more personal, opinionated reason of why this post has this title; I think letting a full-on character go to waste is, well, wasteful. There’s so much potential in this character, especially since Lucky, right now, is still empty. That old diary page could be turned into a full-on book, that face with no name could be turned into the pillar of a story. You already have framework, the fact that he’s coming in later can now actually help focus on where there’s more expansion needed. He could be a perspective we haven’t gotten yet. A confused, lost guy who’s slowly figuring out what’s going on, not being blinded by the race to the prize, a pawn for the puppet master of the game to set in and pull something wild, someone who’s tired of the fighting, trapped inside a hellscape for far too long, someone with the knowledge of times not yet past, able to give insight to things others can’t have yet, a person with his own desire, trusting on his luck to keep him safe or even something entirely different. There’s so much more that you could do with this character than just an old placeholder with questionable logic behind it that wasn’t even needed in the grand scheme of things. You have a character, Netease, do something with it.

#idv #identity v #idv lucky guy #lucky guy idv #identity v lucky guy #this is a fucking mini-essay #but it brings up a good point #I might send this to Netease #but I doubt they’ll appreciate my thoughts

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yusiyomogi · 3 months

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here's my final spoiler-y thoughts on echoes of the eye dlc

i absolutely fell in love with the stranger and the history of its inhabitans. in my opinion exploring the stanger was the best part of the dlc, in many ways because it was pretty much a pure outer wilds experience, everything that i deeply enjoyed in the main game.

the introduction of the stranger was one of the most wonderful things i've ever experienced in video games. everything about it: hunting for it in the shadows, being mystified by its creepy and metalic exterior and then finally being completely joyfully overwhelmed by the interior. the design was perfect on every level.

exploring its secrets was fun (even though heartbreaking sometimes) and the only thing that i deeply missed was the text, because i enjoy reading and i think the way original game made those written conversations feel personal while also explaining "the lore" was a particularly cool decision. it makes sense that you can't read the text, and reels were a pretty nice substitute, but they felt very different.

what i feel conflicted about is obviously the dream world. on the one hand, "the lore" is still great. i figured out pretty quickly that this was some kind of simulation, and as i slowly learned about the reasons it even exists, i started to like that place from the conceptual point of view. i think the basic puzzle mechanics were good, even though a bit confusing sometimes, because each location really tried to be its own thing. but what deserves full recognition is the absolutely amazing solutions for the final puzzle (devs do actually hate genre conventions don't they).

what i didn't like, well. first of all, i obviously don't appreciate basic horror stuff. i hate jumpscares as much as the next person, and i also dislike typical monster-chasing moments, and this dlc did make my heart race on a few occasions. yes, the original game had anglerfish, but you could pretty much avoid them entirely. this time it's a bit more complicated.

but i felt really bad for the inhabitants, so it wasn't like i wanted to hate them like i hated anglerfish? sometimes i felt a bit silly even, like when i intruded on their party and literally asked out loud "what are you even doing here??" before they kicked me out. anyway, i would prefer it if this game focused only on atmospheric horror, but i guess it wouldn't be as interesting.

what i also didn't like was the way clues were distributed. i was literally stuck for an hour because i didn't try to push one button in the subterranean lake area (i thought it was obvious that it wouldn't work so i didn't even try). i had to search spoiler-less hints for the dlc to figure out what i've missed and it was that one button. otherwise it was pretty smooth, but still, it's not great when you mostly have to stumble around in the dark when you don't know what to do. i was sick of those areas by the end of the dlc. i didn't have this problem in the main game, because there were always something to do, to try, always multiple clues to find.

thankfully the ending was amazing. really good thematic addition to the ending of the main game. and this time, i must admit, it is actually about death.

#outer wilds #outer wilds spoilers #games #i'm gonna miss this game #sorry for my english #text post

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theladyregret · 11 months

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I've seen you make commets concerning Drow skin color here and also in the authors notes of your fics. Could you go into it more? I find it a lot more interesting then what a lot of people insist on doing. Also how do you balance it with in game racial lore or do you just dismiss it completely?

God, I love asks like these.

I'm pretty sure I've already gone into it somewhere on my blog but it was in response to an angry ask so likely something people would skip over because...drama. Which is of course totally valid but I'm glad I get to go into it again in response to a nice ask instead.

I'll start with the lore question which honestly isn't very complicated in it's solution. You can choose whatever lore you like for your preference and you really don't have to change anything. All you have to do is sweep it into the nice neat corner of "creationist myth" or "religious propaganda". That is to say that these things are not meant to be historically accurate or factual retellings. Hell, they could just be outright lies depending. Even goodly folk and religions with goodly deities can have these things and followers who take it as fact and it doesn't make them bad people necessarily. Ignorant maybe? Bad...it depends on how they go about it once being faced with the truth.

So when lore says "Drow have dark skin to show everyone else that they are evil and they were banished to the depths of the Underdark as a punishment" that is just something someone decided was true...but really isn't, but people certainly may believe it is. Just as the Drow are taught that they were forced underground by the evil surface races and that Lloth is their sole protector and they are the only goodly people in the world. It's not true...but some of them certainly believe that it is.

The key is to remove the idea of black and white in terms of what is good and what is evil and whether both can exist within every race regardless of stereotyping. No race is inherently one thing or the other regardless of cultural norms or upbringing. Every race is capable of evil and good. Period. Anything that says otherwise is a myth people may have been taught and may believe is true even though it isn't.

As for the skin tone thing. I have always been a big promoter of the fact that magic existing in a world does not mean science does not. So...even if it is a fantasy world with magic...genetics still exist. Evolution and adaptation still exists. Not everything is just magic. I'm also completely against the idea of locking races that aren't human into set ethnicities. Every race should be capable of having varied ethnic features based on where they are native to and I don't mean subraces either. So...if humans in a certain area have certain ethnic features like darker skin and hair, hair texture, certain facial features...that should equally apply to all other races that also come from that area in addition to their racial features. So a gold elf can have dark skin, darker hair, broader or narrower facial features because they come from a warmer region...and still be gold elves. Same for a wood elf, or an orc, or a halfling, or a gnome etc

Applying this to Drow is a bit different only because the Underdark is a fantasy construction but largely they can have the same differing in ethnic features but also...it's always been my belief that their dark skin tone (which tends to be more purple or blue toned rather then orange) is the result of an adaptation to the Faerzress radiation. This also explains why other Underdark races also have this adaptation...even the goodly races. And why do they have white or extremely pale hair in contrast to their skin? Because the adaptation that makes their skin dark is not the same as melanin and is not designed to protect against UV light but a completely different type of energy. As a result their hair doesn't have melanin and likely their skin would be sensitive to sunlight similarly to how people with low or no melanin would despite being so dark. If a Drow has darker colored hair...or red hair, this could either be a left over recessive gene or a gene mutation. Still possible just not common.

This can also explain why red eyes are so common as well because low or no melanin levels can make eyes appear pale blue, pink, red, or pale purple as well as not being able to filter glare from light well (among other things but I'm not going into all of that here). Humans don't typically have red eyes with albinism but you can bend those rules for the fact they're elves and not humans. Just like with the hair color it's also just as possible for some of them to inherit a recessive gene that puts more melanin in their eyes giving them an unexpected color or higher tolerance to light. (this could explain Drizzt's eye color certainly but I actually think that's a whole different thing which I have also talked about before in another post and won't go into here)

So yeah, this is generally how I feel about the whole thing and have for a very long time...and honestly...solves a lot of recent issues people have with it all, I think anyway.

#asks #dungeons and dragons #the legend of drizzt #Drow #dungeons and dragons lore #fantasy racial issues

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