#i can post any dimension yes but it still crops off parts of stuff which is annoying

[rupertgayesarchive]

That ask and your answer about what if Sam was out of hunting and never left Stanford because Gabriel wanted to stop the apocalypse and threw him into a pocket dimension and I’m like. Obsessed. primarily with gabriel and how Sam would go.

I think he would stick Sam in a like… you remember when Zachariah stuck sam and dean in the office job and it was a parallel universe but also it was real life? like coplanar planes, I think Gabriel would elect to do that instead of his you’re going in my alternate universe, because it’s less detail consuming and I think Sam would notice small things that were off like how he figured out it was him in mystery spot.

You said Sam deserves to have the apple pie life but if he was comfortable with that it wouldn’t like.. work he wouldn’t be ready to ever confront Lucifer or anyone. i agree but also I don’t think he would stick with his normal life. like in the zachariah episode he had a normal life and fake memories of that but he still wanted to hunt and help people and also figure out wtf was happening. I think in this scenario Sam would still be psychic because I love that but Gabriel would probably try like… suppressing his visions and such, because they would lead him back into possible angel business. I think he’d still get little snippets because that’s fun and having reminders in that that the supernatural like.. exists and ppl are getting hurt, I think that would overrule his want of complete normalcy and even his spite toward John.

I don’t think he’d go back into hunting like, completely because I want him to have something good and also be semi well adjusted. but like we saw in the terrible life episode I think he’d like.. if he got bored and started looking up strange deaths well now he has to go help them!!

also it is sooo fun to me if he starts realizing something is wrong but he doesn’t know what. like in mystery spot I love that trope sooo fucking much also in s1 sam gets back into hunting through John Winchester style revenge quest and I want to give him a reason to start poking around that is like.. for himself and not anybody else. he can have a little obsession over it as a treat because i like seeing him be a bitch <3

i think initially when Gabriel found out the apocalypse was like in motion and Sam was at Stanford he’d have an opportunity there to do something without revealing to other players that he is alive because he was pretending to be a trickster. like he’s very much in this for self preservation and if he did some time traveling shenanigans, or disappearing both Winchesters and maybe even Adam out of nowhere, I think he’d worry that the angels would take notice. Randy your vessels!! But Stanford gives him a natural window to hide a key player. he needs to do away with Adam too so Lucifer can’t possibly have a true vessel to fight.. maybe he can kill him in a freak accident because I find that funny. sorry this is long and it will be getting longer

anyway I think as time went on Gabriel would pay like less meticulous attention. he’d still keep away like key players but as other people also started trying to stop the apocalypse he would become more relaxed also he’d be overconfident in himself like in changing channels. I think this would lead sam to notice more stuff that just doesn’t make any sense and maybe start looking for dean or even his dad, or going out of his way to look for hunts. maybe get involved in magic because i think he deserves to be a witch. wait actually that’s how he should find Dean. i think Gabriel would hide Dean from Sam and vice versa, and he didn’t foresee Sam using magic or anything. Also at this point it’s been years and I think Sam is more invested in this than his like… normal life. he’s more well adjusted but I can definitely see him just impulsively quitting his job to figure out what the fucks happening. Also I think he’d feel animosity at dean during this for not being there and not helping him, even though that anger doesn’t make complete sense. sorry i like the early seasons salmon dean reconciling and learning to like each other and sam realizing Your Parents Are People and I would like to see it with them having like, completely different lives and also some fun miscommunication bc of Gabriel. also sam having to reconcile dean having cas OHRHDHJ also dean and cas trying horribly to cover cas being not human is so fucking fun to me. unless this happens during a cas is dead time period which is fun in a different evil way.

I also think dean would only stop looking if he though Sam was dead, but I think… Gabriel might have hidden him but other people ARE still meeting him even with like altered memories. so I think angels or something can sense that Sam is alive but they don’t know where and I think they’d gloat and use it to taunt dean that he is like.. suffering while his brother is living a perfect normal life. Also because this adds another miscommunication that can be discussed and end in reconciliation in a way I don’t think would feel contrived and is in line with it the characters. it’d be Amelia s8 but Sam would be like (Sam voice) I did look for you!!! where were you when I needed you! also I want Sam to find out John died and he’s in absolute despair while cas is standing there like oh yes that’s so awful your father was an. absolutely a man😔😐🏳️‍🌈

idk when this would occur and i think every season offers like… different flavors of enjoyment for an audience of just me. like s7 proto widower arc?? Sam reconnecting with Dean during TMWWBK when he is not familiar with the dean and cas dynamic and has to be witness to Trying So Hard To Be Loyal. additionally that would be fun because bobby is there and dean is like, covering his ears and back talking bobby regarding cas. and if they’ve taken pains to hide cas being an angel Sam being like .who is this to Dean. is suchhh a fun concept.

WAIT post goodbye stranger. or maybe Sam can show up pre goodbye stranger to watch dean go from clingy after cas gets back from purgatory to wrongfooted to like ANGRY. well not Angry… to dean having dean emotions. when cas is off with the tablet ignoring him and he feels betrayed. and this Sam isn’t as close to him so he doesn’t know ANY details until Dean stats divulging them as they reconcile. ALL GOOD OPTIONS..

also if this happens during s6 i think it would be nice if cas started collecting allies, and at the same time as Sam trying to figure out what was keeping him away from dean and the angel business Cas could figure it out FIRST and use Gabriel as an ally against Raphael but he’d feel like he has to hide it from dean and sam. like in this scenario. actually any time I talk about s6 hypotheticals Cas’ conflict IS the A Plot. the Winchester’s were on a side quest idc. s6 is a fun time for these reasons but i don’t like it as much because Cas is still in the process of like.. formative development.

okay one last thing I’m SOOO sorry for my essay. you said if Sam was dispossessed the apocalypse would just.. not happen. i agree to like, a certain degree, because I do think they could have found another way but all of them would have been dust compared to swan song. so maybe Gabriel semi succeeded but instead of stopping the apocalypse he just… prolonged it. this changes a lot but if either Michael or Lucifer didn’t have a viable vessel I think the angels would scramble to actually for real stop the apocalypse but others would still want it to happen even if it was like.. Perfect they just want it to be over. this provides angel politics which I am in love with and we can still have like TMWWBK development for cas. I don’t know where I’m going with this sorry

op this is a lot, this is so much. i love it, i hope you have a google doc open somewhere and are typing away furiously.

now i didn't rewatch a lot of spn past s3 (surprise) in part bc i can't handle the brain damage and some scenes are seared into my cerebral cortex in a way that induced a temporary bout of eidetic memory, meaning i'll never forget the crypt scene in Goodbye Stranger for as long as i live. that being SAID, my s6-s7 knowledge is not as firmly coalesced. so because of that i'm letting your thoughts roam free as i don't know how accurate my own takes would be? but i feel like without sam there, like... hm. would dean even be the same person... would the past however many seasons even OCCUR remotely similar with sam out of the picture for literal years? we might be looking at a completely different world at that point.

my other theory is that the s2 plot of special children - we know azazel was raising a new 'crop' of psychic kids. i think that was a plot thread that they ended up dropping anyway, but if they didn't i do wonder if we'd be dealing with a lot more shenanigans like in s1 and s2 except with kids? and dean and cas trying to figure out what to do with these young psychics that might be turned into a vessel for lucifer or - whatever they wanted to do with those kids. hm.

i also question if purgatory would be a thing. like it probably would come up and be on the table, but maybe the godstiel arc wouldn't, bc if like you're saying dean and cas are together at this point, like. cas might have grown to love humanity (not just dean but like 99% dean) to the point where he might not be doing this risky gambit for more souls. and if gabriel is still around, cas may start petitioning gabe to help throw his archangel weight around against raphael while he tries to do the actual strategizing.

i think sam would still have his visions, like you said, and then maybe those lead him to dean or to a case that dean is also on? or if angels are more well-known later on, he tracks one down, maybe cas, maybe not (if it's NOT and it's one that works on raphael's side. ohoho. the possibilities...)

#asks #spn #fun ideas fun times!!

[phoebehalliwell]

I need some kind of a photoshop lesson for this aesthetic of yours

okay i’m gonna do a tutorial real time for a picspam type aesthetic that will look like this ⇣ a photo i will put here once i make it.

step one. open ps : )

welcome : )

okay so dimensions r a thing tumblr compresses photos like hella so i do all my still img aesthetics 900x900 is you’re trying to do this for say insta i would actually recommend jumping up to 1080x1080. pixels, obviously. idk if i have to clarify that.

so click ctrl+n or create new i’ll be doing 900x900

these r the rest of my settings i personally do not think they matter my resolution stays at 72 the only thing i’ve detected this affecting is font size. (side note notice how this pic looks all fuzzy? that’s bc it’s a ss with a boatload of pixels. and if there’s one thing tumblr hates. it’s pixels. and then it’s users. but who’s counting? tumblr is. i recommend keeping ur still images 900x900♥)

step two is collecting ur images i personally use pinterest for these bc quite frankly it’s really nice & easy to find these types of photos esp if you’re looking for a canon character bc if you type in [character name] aesthetic you’ll get stuff if you don’t quite frankly even just type in aesthetic you can scroll until you find an image you like click on that and go through like images underneath it and keep burning thru. like u probably know how to work pinterest. but i am being thorough and covering my bases. searching [color] aesthetic is also nice or even searching a character that isn’t the character you’re doing this for but who’s kind of similar that also works. i recommend esp for charmed bc their pinterest gets bogged down with screencaps and then like. charms like jewelry searching “charmed aesthetic” or “phoebe halliwell aesthetic” really just doesn’t cut it so what i’d recommend is instead of going through pins, go through boards.

bc like. big difference. other pro tips if you see a board you like, go to the person’s profile and check out their other boards bc odds are you’ll find more you like. another protip if you’re specifically doing ocs typing in oc aesthetic will get you a lot even going to the boards on that as well. yields.

so. you’ve gathered ur images. u need five. open em. i’m making an aesthetic 4 myself which you’ve probably already guessed from the fact i’m putting the finished piece at the top, but it’s not ready yet so it’s still a surprise for me. 

cropping. if ur doing a 900x900, use these setting exactly. 1080x1080 use 1080/2 x 1080/3. i’m not doing the math 4 u ♥

most important part? Delete Cropped Pixels. otherwise ur not really doing anything. crop all five images.

but them in ur document. document? psd? ur thing ♥ place them places. u do not have to commit now. leave one middle one blank. it does not matter which one. i personally like to alternate my text pieces if i’m doing a long post like what i did on my ncwotng set. some people keep them all on the same side. this lowkey bugs me i feel like it throws off the Balance but i imagine some people like The Consistency. i don’t. but w/e. it’s up to u as this is gonna be ur set. also like. as you’ve cropped these to x/2,x/3 settings they should fit nice like puzzle pieces : )

the next step i personally like doing is creating by text box with The Color™ do this bc simply duplicating one of ur images, shoving it in the empty slot, and converting into a sharp object. edit contents.

now. obvi i selected these images w a color scheme in mid. i recommend u do the same. even if it’s just vague. they don’t all have 2 fit. this is my example of my sheridan piece b4 or after. tweaking is possible. layers w masks r ur friend. i can talk about them more if need be.

But. back 2 the smart object. brush tool. paint it.

♥

the text i used was times new roman all caps 40pt font 0 spacing for the title and times new roman 14pt font 0 spacing italics for the subheading. here’s my dency b4 and after for comparison

next step is after you have your text in alright, shove everything into groups. mode on “normal”

then you can start editing. the groups let you edit things like lighting and color without touching any of the layers below it 👍

i’m not gonna do a Major coloring tutorial, for lighting i’ll usually tinker with exposure, levels, sometimes brightness/contrast. for colors, color balance + hue/saturation. i rarely touch anything else.

i’ll bring u along 4 the coloring of this one bc i’m gonna add a layer mask.

so the first thing i’m going to do bc the paper itself is already close to the vibe is i’m going to color it normal and just ignore the background

something like that. then i’m going to add a layer mask (square button w the plus sign)

and then i’m going to eye dropper a color off from somewhere else

now i was talking about the “normal” blend mode stops ur color settings from bleeding over onto other images? does not apply to painting on layers but you’re already masking this bad boy, so it doesn’t matter. just don’t say i didn’t warn u

i’d recommend using a really ridiculous blend mode to clean up ur thing at first, i’m using darken which isn’t that wild but like whatevs.

add a layer mask using this button.

select and mask

use this thing to clean up ur mask

okay so i did a lot since we last spoke

but if i impart any lesson to u. it’s: fuck around. find out. that’s literally how i’ve basically done everything. nothing’s ever really gone horribly wrong. click things. see what happens.

okay so now that you’ve kinda gotten everything figured out. change ur text box color again. i’m introducing u to ye ol trick that is not the paint brush. but. hue/saturation on colorize more yeah babyyyyy

ahaha yes. love this bad boy.

Now. Trick To Make Everything Super Cohesive™. put things above All of your groups.

yeah boy.

reorganize ur thing bc u don’t like how it looks.

fuck around w a lot of stuff.

it’s still cluttered.

fuck it. grab a new image.

something like that. never let the fear of striking out keep u from playing the game : )

fuck around a bit more.

vibes♥

save ur image bc u literally Have Not Done That Yet

& then remember the other thing u forgot to do

eyedropper what ur text box looks like move the whole thing to the tippity top and recolor

this is just bc u’ve fuck around a lot w a lot f different settings. this ensures that the text stays the same color u set it as.

okay final step.

turn The Whole Thing into a smart object, smart sharpen

leave out the text box tho. the sharpened text can look weird. it’s ur choice, but with these settings,, cronch.

and wallah. ctrl+shift+s save as png and bada bing bada boom baby. aesthetic

#like i cannot stress how much of this simply is. fuck around. find out. #like just have fun click on things #go ape #like there's no right or wrong way to do this #anyways i used to make these for harry potter on canva ♥ remember ur roots #tutorials #ps tutorial #aesthetic tutorial #ogwork

[hayjeon]

Practical Tips on getting your fics out there!

I’ve gotten an influx of these types of questions here recently, and the more i thought about what i was gonna add, it became really long :(  

disclaimer: a lot of the things i bring up are just from personal experience as a writer on this site, what my followers have told me they appreciate, and what i tend to look for when im looking for fics to read! If you don’t like these tips then pls move on :) 

although i’ll mention them, i’m also not going to be focusing on cliche tips like “write for yourself” or “grammar issues” cause those are pretty obvious!

1. accessibility of your blog 

when you’re trying to get your name out there, make sure that you’re creating an inviting experience for any potential followers! this includes:

a memorable url! be creative!

have some fun designing your blog’s aesthetic! (i love cute blogs because it reflects a bit of the writer’s personality), and (i prefer blogs with white backgrounds because it’s easier to look through/read, say, in contrast to a pitch black one where the words need to be white!) 

put your masterlist link in your bio (even better if you can link most recent fic! found this most helpful when i revisit authors that i like and can easily see if they’ve updated or not)

an organized and easy-to-navigate masterlist (personally, i prefer masterlists organized by band, instead of types of fics ie. i hate when i have to choose between drabbles, oneshots, and series masterlists; i really prefer to see them altogether!) --> see section 3 

organized tags (if you’re going to be posting a lot of non-fic-related content like pictures or videos, tag them properly so followers can sort through and find your fics easily!), or (if you’re going to be writing in different mediums like drabbles, or answering asks, make sure to use a unified #mine or #writing or #fics to centralize your content) 

2. get your name out there!

write write write! once you have some fics that show your talent, don’t be shy! 

join writing groups: when i first started out, I joined a bunch of groups that would reblog my fics in the midst of the content of much bigger writers; these blogs developed a following, and as a result of my content mixing in with bigger blogs’ content, so did my own tumblr! there’s been a stigma recently with these groups, but im sure you can find one thats supportive and not clique-y! 

send your fics to rec pages: what’s the harm? the only bad thing that can happen is that they ignore you! who cares! get out there! 

if you can do the above, i really encourage you to ask your fave writers for advice/to read your fic: again, the worst that can happen is that they say no or don’t respond or don’t have enough time, but it’ll be a good opportunity to get some feedback! i for one read (or try to read) every single rec that falls into my inbox. if i like it, i’ll #rec it, and if i don’t, unless the writer asks me for feedback, i move on!! 

utilize your tags!!: i’m not entirely sure if this is still the same or not, but from my memory, it’s the first 3-5 tags that matter the most? so utilize them well; push back the tags that aren’t really relevant (ie. #writing, #fics) and push more the main subject line of what you wrote (ie. jungkook fluff, bts smut, namjoon angst). these will populate your fics into the tags better!

headers!: when i’m scrolling through an infinite page of fics, the headers catch my eye the most; try being creative! you can find a lot of info out there on how to make ur headers super aesthetic, but i can share my tips too! --> see section 3

3. your masterlist 

here are some practical tips! 

organize by band, not type of fic/member/centralize your masterlist: i went onto a blog recently and clicked their bio mlist link to find a page full of 20~ish “JUNGKOOK MASTERLIST”/ “JAEHYUN MASTERLIST” and when i clicked on each one, they only had like 2 or 3 fics per member. i think it would’ve been better if she’d centralized all her fics! that keeps whoever is looking interested and more likely to click on another fic while browsing

add info about the fics!: when scrolling through a masterlist, it’s easy to get lost; try to add some snippets of info (ie. a short sentence you liked from the fic, a quick summary, a description of the au/scenario, or even a header!) this all gives some info about the fics you have tagged! 

headers: this isn’t a requirement, but i personally love a good header on fics i read and i love making them myself as i finish up a fic and get ready to upload it; here are free sources: unsplash for HQ stock pics, crop/edit/filter in VSCO, and then add aesthetic script with fontcandy) 

try to fill it up!: after i visit a blog after reading one good fic, i usually browse through their mlist to see if there are any more that i’d be interested in. if there’s a lot to look forward to, i’ll almost always follow; try to write as much as you can in the first few months to try and fill up your mlist and give blog viewers a reason to visit your blog again, follow, or even reblog your content!) 

4. try not to reproduce cliche fics: 

honestly tumblr’s writing community (and armys) has grown insanely these past few years and, unfortunately, even from my perspective, in the past 3-4 years, all the writers have sort of become blended together in my brain. but, i can say that the ones who consistently stand out are the ones who produce consistent content and think outside of the box! 

i tend to gravitate towards fics that have really interesting plotlines (ex. btssavedmylifeblr’s VOID is always a surprise to read because it’s sO unique! i usually don’t read ot7 fics but this one is legit my fave) 

I know it’s tempting to try and just write typical smut fics to try and gain some traction, but tumblr is already too overloaded by that kind of content; try to write something that’s special and unique! this will set u apart from the thousands of other writers here --> see next section

5. create unique fics: 

this is also personal to my writing style, but i get so bored writing just casual fics about the members, and it affects the fics i choose to read too; i prefer unique fics which you can achieve through: 

circumstance/au: create a fun au!; don’t just create an arranged marriage, create an arranged marriage in joseon dynasty, or between a werewolf and a hunter! (shameless self plug); don’t just give me friends to lovers, but give me spiderman!jungkook friends to lovers! (ie. cupofteaguk’s exchanges)

jobs: give them out-of-the-ordinary jobs; don’t just give me enemies to lovers, but give me rival!anchors who end up loving eachother! (ie. jimlingss The Newscasters)

fun dialogue: create good back-and-forth, (something i’m still working on!)! this will help your characters develop personality, and that way, readers will start to develop that themselves as well (ie. dad!yoongi from insemination wars by prolixitae is such a specific character that i love so much!, or obiwrites’ garden characters were so memorable!)

create memorable personalities: don’t give me a flat character, try to develop 4d personalities in all of your characters! (im still working on this too!) this way you can really make an impression on your followers! a great way to practice/recognize this is: “Ask my Character.” Can your followers ask a specific character a specific question, and would you be able to deliver an answer that is very specific to that character’s tone/voice/personality? If yes, then ur doing well! If not, try to think of ways that you can make tht specific character from a specific story, really unique and separate from your other characters.

6. some practical writing tips

be yourself, write for your own pleasure, blah blah blah; yeah you know already haha but here are a few more practical tips! 

grammar check: if you can, try and hone your grammar! makes for an easier read 

write like you: i personally LOVE this by obiwrites, but even the way she writes exudes her personality and is so specific; try not to be caught up in adding hundreds of synonyms and exquisite language; in fact, simpling it down and being more concise and honest with your writing is better than a superfluous sentence; this will also give ur characters so much more dimension and funk

use those commas/sentence variation: try to use more commas; this will feel like you’re the narrator to your own story; it also makes it more fluid to read in my opinion, over those short. clipped. sentences. (ie. “he came over, sitting down on the corner of your bed with an expression you’d never seen before” over “he walked over. he sat down, looking sad.”) 

half-half dialogue/narration: a fic with too much dialogue can get confusing, and a fic with too much narration can get dry; try to balance them out, and weave in and out of each! 

quality over quantity: don’t feel burdened to write a 30k word fic. in fact, i think some of the shorter fics (ie. any of versigny’s stuff) made a bigger impression on me over the longer fics because they were short, left me wanting more, and were just so high-quality in such small quantities. try out your hand at drabbles and one-shots, and don’t feel too burdened to try and develop a series right off the bat! 

abandon pigeon-holes: i’m guilty of this; i start series and then end up with no vision for the stories and they end up giving me writers block. its okay. just stop or discontinue them or leave them on a hiatus; it’s okay. your priority is yourself, and if abandoning certain works are part of that, then go ahead. it’ll help you progress more. 

and finally.......

i’ll add more as they come up! but if you liked this, then pls lmk! i’d love to give more tips and tricks; i think i started this blog 3-4 years ago when there weren’t as many writers here, but im glad you’re thinking of starting out/wanting to grow more! don’t feel intimidated! it’s not all about the notes/followers but creating a blog you’re proud of. 

so write what you’re proud of, or interested in, and keep going. i truly thoroughly had so much fun writing this post. if there are any writers who read through this and have some more advice, pls msg me! 

all the best to you! 

#writing tips #story talk #if ur a writer pls lmk if theres anything u wanna add #if ur a reader then pls lmk any questions or comments!

[incarnateirony]

"The real Sam and Dean" sure does point to the main world being there *before* Chuck, doesn't it? Interesting. God can't create souls (like the show has told us for YEARS), so, yeah, WTF are the people in the other universes? WHAT ARE SOULS???? (Lesser question, what is Grace? God's attempt at making souls? Since he made the angels? DOES CAS HAVE A SOUL?) 🤯

Wow multi part thing here

1. Not necessarily but I’ll expand on that.

2. Other souls even in similar bodies? Soulless constructs and duplicates like Gabriel’s grace worlds? (seems less likely with AU Bobby and Charlie). I’m going to go with an educated guess of “other souls in identical meatsuits” for now, expanded on more in the post below.

3. There’s also an answer for that, but no, not really souls.

4. IMO yes, and I can expand on why I believe Cas does.

—

So bundling an answer to all of these.

I’m going to need you to break your brain a little on this, dear reader. I know it’s difficult for some people, and some are just now even coming to grips with the idea that Chuck’s world is a simulacrum to the point I’ve seen based people belatedly go, verbatim, through the same existential crisis Dean spewed at Cas in 15.2. It’s gonna take some nonlinear thinking from here.

Let’s talk about, say, The Empty. What is Nothing? I want you to think about that. 

Congrats, you’ve already failed.

The second you try to define oblivion, you fail. We can try to speak it as closely as possible, but oblivion before creation is itself a paradox. It is timeless, shapeless, colorless – best depicted, perhaps, by a black screen to communicate the idea to the human mind, or sometimes a white one, but people tend to affiliate that with light, rather than the absence of light; so a starkly lit (on actors) black background is our most efficient way to do it. But realistically? Black doesn’t exist yet. White doesn’t exist yet. Light nor dark exist. Nothing is there.

And yet somehow, Nothing birthed Everything.

This is the paradox humans struggle with eternally. The idea of the Big Bang, for example, still comes down to there being an infinitely dense mass that asplodied at some point and everything just kinda raveled itself together from there. Where did the dot come from in nothing? What is the dot? What is this paradox of Nothing Making Everything?

Hermetics propose, essentially, various grades of creation. Depending on the denomination and thought form this may manifest several ways at the upper levels, “Chicken or the Egg” as SPN death put it. Some will say death itself birthed creation and life, for example. Others say it’s a direct result of the human soul, and others say it’s grace.

Real familiar to our current Atomic Monsters, isn’t it?

So anyway, what I’ve been seeing out of SPN since about S13 is that souls themselves, in our structure, are the paradox of creation. After all, there was a “Before God, or Amara”, so how did God simply come to be? Good question, ain’t it?

So let’s take a look at the Shadow. Hermetics variably address The Inky Man or The Shadow (as Jung himself was part of the art) as a primitive aspect of the self, and also address the concept of a sort of group mind, a collective unconscious from which we all come and go, a First Man, or sometimes addressed as Anthropos, the collective spirit of man.

So The Thing That Rules The Empty, The Shadow, existed before God and Amara. God is Light. Amara is the absence of Light.

But God is also Grace. And The Word.

Does it really matter, respectively, how he branded his stuff? He might call it gak in another world for all we know. But Grace is the essence by which Chuck *does* create.

So let’s do another mental exercise here: If one were to remove all human souls from any of Chuck’s constructs, what makes them any different than the realms Gabriel makes where people mindlessly follow scripts he wrote? What makes them any different than the headspaces archangels have shoved their hosts down into? Or the place Sam went to inside his own head in Man Who Knew Too Much that was an entire expansive world, even with a few random hiccups here or there in it?

Chuck installed the world with aspects of himself to keep it tick tick ticking if he offworlded. I’m going to guess he had an oopsie or two in random worlds before he figured that one out KSJDfksjdf but that’s an aside.

But angels are tied to the divine spheres, and to grace. They were given minds and consciousness, but not souls. He can’t create nor control those, after all. And while in almost any form of study the mind is capable of Doubt and Question with or without a soul, I mean, plugging an angel with an installed soul just seems like a super bad idea.

After all, they are wavelengths of intent. HIS intent. They are the editors of his story that keep it running in lines. They are arbiters and heralds of his messages. They are the programs in the matrix that keep it running, until they corrupt and unplug from the central code and then fuck off into the operating system with the rest of people, even if they can never LEAVE the operating system. Except Cas. Cas can. Which I’ll address below.

“What is grace?” Well, we’ve been using storywriting metaphors in canon this year. Grace is the page on which the ink is set. The Word is the letters etched into it. Collectively, with some imagination, the end product, especially when run through your editors, is a complete and fairly cohesive story, with arguable interpretation of validity or merit.

So you’re probably realizing I haven’t really explained *how* then God or Amara came to be, yet.

Okay, so let’s think Big Bang, metaphysical edition. There was absolutely jack shit all nothing that defines our reality, be it light, dark, space, time, dimension, much less material or immaterialism. But somehow, at some point, Nothing woke up and went “Dafuq?” and then all kinds of shit happened. For example, it might have even Dafuqed its own paradoxical nature and birthed duality in it, of Presence and Absence. These, then, would be Light and Dark. So now, there’s Nothing Dafuqing and just wanting to go back to napping/not fucking existing alone, and then two ancient things crop up out of nowhere. And with the Shadow all but absent, they only have themselves and each other.

So Chuck builds his toy soldiers and Amara destroys them as his antithesis. But what does he build his stuff from? 

Grace as a word even falls into several hermetic constructs as one of these cornerstones. If Grace is the page Chuck writes on, and his thoughts/intent are The Word, the result is that what he imagines is what is to become. Be that good or “evil”, though we find now just like in hermetics that evil isn’t really a thing, as much as the absence of good, and the absence of good comes with the absence of a soul.

So now we’ve got Chuck making a library of things trying to find something okay enough to do in non-eternity. After all, he can hop worlds, revert time, go when and wherever he wants, make whatever place he wants to go to, come up with spiderturtleducks if he gets bored enough, what the fuck ever. I totes have it on good sources that there was a universe somewhere with turtlemonkeys with eight arms. Don’t @ me.

Either way, hopefully that clarifies the idea of “What is Grace?”; the page was first proverbial, but made literal and manifest in the world defined out of the nothing, and by Grace are all things made, and by the Word all is known. 

The idea of Anthropos, the Inky Man, or The Shadow – the First Man, the Great Adam, whatever the fuck any given denomination’s term is for it – varies slightly in perennial thought. Our humanistic show, however, and all signs seem to be pointing to an interpretation in which the shadow predates them and yet doesn’t in this ambiguous time space. It is simply a shadow of a place that did and didn’t exist yet at that point.

And that paradox is, very likely – I’d call it a *very educated theory based on the theology that inspires our mytharc* – what defines humanity. 

So am I saying humans don’t even exist? Absolutely not. But they are the thing outside of and beyond creation while living in it, from which we do not truly understand the idea of in eternity if you believe in it. But whether it’s gnostic thoughts that say god like threw man into the universe and trapped him in a machine, bodies included; or the hermetic one where the forefather yearned for a meaning to its nonexistence, and by it made the demiurge we call YHVH or Chuck, respectively, in SPN – and by it found a world to fall in love with and fall into, much as angels fall into man – perennial thought aligns with humans being something far and beyond this cage, and the show supports it, as the most sought powersource that could even end God Himself – as the thing he can neither create nor destroy, just shove in boxes – as the thing he can not control.

Humans are a paradox in definition, and that paradox seeks a meaning to life, and in it, it essentially – by a chain of progress, mind you – creates the world. After all, He Who Has The Most Souls Are Become God, am I incorrect on SPN canon here? Be that S6/7 Cas’ Big Mistake (including not making any sort of chambers of contentment to keep them from fighting back, no leviathan mental headbars, no greatest hits of heaven tucked inside of him), or them recalling this in 15.3 /from two directions/ and by which Rowena became the authority in hell even after Cas beat the shit out of Belphegor to stop HIM from becoming that kind of king – if Chuck didn’t have souls, would he even actually have power? And why else throw men, now forgotten of their source and thrown into bodies, into places like heaven and hell? In hell human souls that went against Chuck’s will destroy each other until they lose their light; if Chuck can’t destroy them, let them destroy each other. In heaven, like in MichaelDean’s headbar, they’re given contentment and also cease fighting back. They don’t return to a source, they don’t amass, they’re carefully segregated and processed.

So anyway back to the Shadow. I’ve mentioned the hermetic ideas of Nous I and Nous II. They’re both God in a way, but completely independent beings. Nous II is what people commonly think of with “God.” The christian god, the creator of the universe, but also a spiteful god by his own words, in the bible itself. To many christians it’s even sacrilege to think of there being anything before God, he created the universe so clearly he yelled FIRST and licked it or whatever, and That’s That. But Nous I is the Forefather, the Shadow I’ve spoken of. And while it doesn’t necessarily dictate the world, it also manifests forward as Anthropos to experience the world.

If there was a collective vat of souljuice in oblivion, and those pieces fell into bodies by force or choice, it is the development of the id, ego, superego, and general self that then defines who we become as individuals. Until “The real Sam and Dean” line I was in conflict, wondering how the AU selves sorted out in mechanics. It seemed in conflict with the very nature of individual souls for them to be simultaneously across worlds but pent up in heavens. But then the answer became simple and remained true to form: we are what we make ourselves, and bond with who makes us complete as a great work that help us master ourselves. The very idea of mastering ourselves, however, is one of great relativity as we are, in the end, just trying to find a meaning to our existence, or nonexistence, or whatever else even if it’s by running through a matrix in a million billion parts that become a million billion different people with different stories, experiences, relationships, personalities all subject to it, but in the end, souls find each other, especially partner souls. 

I hate the term soulmates, really. In the scale of it, it’s more like a 10000000000000000000000000 (or infinite) piece soul puzzle, but some pieces click together more than others and by it we find better selves.

*takes in a deep breath*

So aNyWaY

I still haven’t answered why I feel Cas has a soul, but it required getting that proposal out of the way first, and it’s simple really: minding what I’ve said, anyone notice anything? The Shadow didn’t reflect Lucifer. It didn’t reflect soulless Jack (though it did try to communicate with a creepy smile which lends me to believe there’s a smol soulspark left in Jack to compliment him touching Mary’s name on the table), it didn’t reflect Death. It only reflected Castiel. And in the end… Why Are You Awake? Nothing in the history of Ever has woken up here. You’re outside of the book. There is no book. Why is this page floating around in my Nothingspace, get the fuck out, stop littering.

The entire construct of this breaks out that existential crisis in fandom as much as Dean – does that mean none of this is real? No. Dean answered that in 5.18 long ago, even if he reflected his own words in his fear, terror, and panic.

You want to know what’s real? People. Families.

Nothing about our lives is real.

We are.

Castiel never forgot the reason he fell for Dean, that fateful day, and that fateful discussion. Chuck’s machinations are nothing new to Cas. Cas used to be part of that machine himself really.

How, exactly, he acquired a soul is a whole other topic for another post which has never been answered overtly, but it was either developed on or before the season 8 finale when Metatron referenced it. This later is augmented by the Shadow and by Cas NOT recognizing what it feels like to lose a soul and instead deferring to Sam for the experience, meaning he probably didn’t entirely lose it which also removes some of the old alien stick-in-assedness. There’s plenty of material that could be read as Cas having a soul, but the one that SCREAMS to me the most is The Big Empty, for entire like… cosmogenic construct reasons.

Hermeticism addresses the idea of three principles that, while they have many names, boil down to Mind, Body, and Soul. Soul is the Prima Materia, the essence by which All Things Come, even Mind and Body, and Mind and Body return to Soul and build them as well in this paradox. But the soul creates the prime material, and the mind perceives the material, which then becomes the body. This can be the literal human body or the idea of physical creation as a whole, eg, body of the world. The soul and mind are beyond these things and exist without them, even if the soul and mind are developed and fostered into individuals by the experiences they gain in this manufactured reality.

After all, Eileen’s ghost wasn’t suddenly Hearing, even though it’s not a matter of blown out eardrums anymore. We can just handwave it and say it’s being politically correct, which it also is, and bless them for it – but also, her mind and by proxy soul never really grew and perceived the idea of Sound as defined by the Created Universe as part of her experience. After all– sight, sound, smell, touch, taste – these are all things defined within our universal bubble. We can enjoy the trip through these worlds and learn from them and make memories and meanings, but … there’s no reason to “fix” that. Eileen was her own complete person as she was, hearing or not.  WHY would her ghost even know what it means to Hear? 

Why can cas, theoretically just a program, wake up in oblivion? Humanity. For agent smith to leave the matrix he had to corrupt and acquire a human body. But the perennial thought aligned with matrix symbolism makes that synonymous with a soul.

Cas has a soul.

So bigassed long answer but yeah– hopefully that– answered everything?

When it comes to id, ego, superego, etc– or in older hermetics shadow, animus, anima, self – I tried to break down the show’s use of it, and constructed realities, in this video here. Watch it a few times if you have to. It also includes both primitive shadow and individual shadows as well as Animus (the masculine ego, with daddy issues reflected through their designated archangels) or Animus (the more evolved feminine superego, as given to us by Dumah/Sam’s bartendress [same actress–] or Pamela).

Y’all are probably sick to death of me plugging that but I swear to god if you watch it through and think, even after a few attempts, you’ll start getting it – and what parts you don’t, just send me an ask like this.

And mark my words. Just as Cas figured out both the Empty and Michael were full of shit, the look he had after Rowena declared She Took It tells me he’s going to be key, if not THE key, in their resolution, mirroring her choice. Fight me. Which is one of the many topics I addressed in the new video (including divine masculine vs feminine, paths, lessons, the phases of awakening [black/shadow, white/animus, yellow/anima, red/self], whatever)

On an aside, I might propose dreamwalkers, born on identical days in different worlds, and able to travel across them, may actually somehow share a soul while living duplicitous lives and sharing experiences, but that’s a whole other can of worms.

But if Chuck built himself into the Body of the World to keep it together, well. It’s his one weakness, sure. But also the world itself on removal. Now the real question is how much of this TFW as parents, Cas especially, is going to let fall on Jack. Because they can’t be like the forebearers that made their cursed paths. chuck may be the key but he does not need to be the answer, these are not the same. So yeah, I’m still stuck on my Goddess/Empress-unbirthing-in-Binah-to-make-the-new-aeon spec. Hell, maybe it really just takes unplugging Chuck and sieging heaven and loosing all the souls in a giant rebellion, sure, but what then retains the balance? I’d stare into the camera, but I’m too busy looking at Cas.

It’s worth noting that depending on denomination, the variables may change in this; eg, Chuck and Amara as thoughts spawned from the Empty also mean a Return To God is completion in some Hot Takes, which would be for example going to heaven, whereas Amara removes them from chuck’s light/creation and theoretically drops them back To Live As One within, say, the Shadow again. But our structure does not seem to be pointing to the read of Joining God In Heaven As The Big Goal as much as I Am Become God.

#supernatural #spn #souls #pagan life #meta #my meta #the shadow #chuck #amara #paradox #long post for ts #amaah #cosmogenesis #shadow #demiurge

[hegodamask]

I think you've already talked about this before but I couldn't find the post on your Tumblr, so I was just wondering what your process was for making animated gifs. Like what methods you use to make them, what software you use, etc? Also, what parts do you find most fun or difficult or challenging? I've started making some animated gis, and while I don't know if I'll ever be nearly as prolific as you are, I was interested in learning more about them.

Oh hey! Thank you!! I don’t think I’ve ever gone through the process of how I make gifs in detail before, mainly because I don’t use Photoshop so I just assume my advice won’t be helpful to anybody. I don’t know how helpful this will be to you, but I’ve done a little step by step walkthrough of how I make a gif with a few general pointers thrown in. I was gonna try and keep it brief but it turned out much longer…..sorry.

I’ve put what I find most difficult and fun at the end, so you can just skip to that if you want.

As for the rest, here goes….

So, background: I taught myself how to make gifs using Serif Photoplus X2 because we used their products in highschool. Then a few years later, I updated to Photoplus X7 (made hardly any difference though). Serif doesn’t even make the Photoplus range anymore (they still sell X8 but it’s rubbish and crashes a lot, and their new product Affinity doesn’t even let you make gifs!). I’ve tried to use Photoshop in the past and everyone says it’s better, but I’m stuck in my ways like the stubborn old woman I am.

Anyways, when I want to make a gif I start off by capturing screenshots for the frames. I’ve always used GOM Player and their “Burst Capture” option to do this. GOM Player lets you choose the format your images are saved as and where you want the frames saved to. I have a special “captures” folder for temporarily storing the files in. So for example, these are my frames:

A good general tip for making gifs with any software is to use the best quality video you can find. Most of the stuff I make is with 1080p or 720p quality. I find it helps when it comes to colouring and making the gif look clearer.

Once I have my captures, I copy them into my animation “canvas” (or SPP file) which has a base colouring I’ve already made on it. It’s kind of like a PSD on Photoshop. I select my captures and drag them onto the canvas which looks like this:

The canvas is 1080p, the same as the captures but everything will be resized later. I originally captured 100 screenshots here, but I’ve decided to use only 40 in the end because I want to make a 540px width gif. If I used all 100 frames for a 540px gif it would end up being way over the 3mb limit and it wouldn’t work on Tumblr.

Now this is where the time consuming work comes in for me. Once my captures have been copied into the SPP file, they actually become layers which I have to turn into gif frames (if that makes sense). So at the moment they look like this

But I don’t have any actual frames yet at the bottom of the screen. So what I do next is go to the layers tab at the top of the screen and click “hide layers”, making them all invisible

Then basically what I do next is create a frame at the bottom and assign an individual capture to it by clicking the little grey square (making it visible again). So as you can see, my first frame is for my first capture/layer. The next frame will be the capture/layer on top of that.

So yeah, that means I create each frame individually. It’s veeery time consuming but you get quicker at it the more you do it (it’s also faster to do on a laptop touch pad rather than a mouse.). 

Once I’ve created all my frames, I reselect the colouring layers at the top so they’re visible on every frame. It should look like this

Next, you need to crop your gif and resize it. I want my gif to be 540px by 270px so I put 54.00 and 27.00 into the crop feature to get it accurate. This allows me to crop the canvas into the right dimensions.

Once I’ve cropped the canvas, I then go to the Image tab at the top and click “Image Size…” and set the image size to 540px by 270px. I usually ignore the Print Size bit.

540px is the best size for a full width Tumblr gif, anything bigger or smaller will make your gif look blurry. This gifset is a good guide for making sure Tumblr doesn’t blur or crop your gifs.

My gif is almost ready to be exported. But I want it to look clearer, so I sharpen all the layer/captures (yes, individually again). I have no settings for sharpening, but I find using the standard “Sharpen” effect under the “Effects” tab is enough. 

Once I’ve sharpened everything, I get to the colouring and exporting which is the biggest challenge for me. Photoplus’ options for exporting gifs are limited, so the only decent export options are these

“Web-safe” and “Ordered” makes the gif look like this

“Optimized” and “None” makes it look like this. Okay, but the background looks low quality and patchy

“Optimized” and “Error Diffusion” is the only one that to me, looks the best quality. That’s probably why it produces the bigger file size too (the gif below is 2.78mb)

But there’s other downsides to Error Diffusion which I’m still trying to figure out to this day.  Like how it makes parts of the gif “glitch” (that’s the only way I can describe it) or look extra fuzzy. The only way you can fix it is by playing around with the colouring. And by “playing” I mean adjusting and previewing until you want gouge ur eyes out :)

I think that’s why I like giffing The Terror so much, because the film they used has a grainy texture to it, making it easier to hide all my Error Diffusion sins. Though there’s been many times I’ve posted something and hoped no one’s noticed all the mistakes. 

Some general tips for colouring

Unless you’re going for a certain effect, emphasise on the colours that are already in the shot. In my gif  above for example, I turned up the blues and cyans.

Use Levels or Curves instead of Brightness and Contrast.

Zoom in on your gif to spot any Error Diffusion glitches.

Be mindful about whitewashing POC, especially if you’re following the pastel gif trend.

Look at how other people colour their gifs and use PSDs for reference but don’t rely on them too much.

Colouring can increase or decrease the gif file size. If you need to get below 3mb, try toning down super vibrant colours. If the shot you’re giffing is dark, make it a bit darker. If it’s light, make it a bit lighter. 

If all else fails, just make the gif black and white.

Reading all this back makes how I make gifs look like a nightmare lmao. But I’ve been doing it this way since like, 2012 and i love it. I started out making very bad Star Wars and Lady Gaga gifs but as time has gone on and I’ve gotten better, I’ve found I enjoy making things for smaller fandoms much more. I like that if I want a certain set or edit on my blog, I can just go and make it (with varying degrees of success) instead of waiting for someone else to do it.

You appreciate the work that goes into making a movie or show when you make gifs too. Like, you notice subtle little things in the actors performances or something the cinematography is trying to convey. You get to revisit a scene in detail and then share it with everybody else and if you’re lucky, watch them scream in the tags get some nice comments.

There’s lots of other stuff I like about making gifs but I’ve rambled on far too much so I’m just gonna shut up for now. But I think I’ve covered all the important stuff. I don’t know how much of a help I’ve been (there’s still stuff I don’t understand myself) but if there’s anything else you want to know just drop me a message. Good luck with your own gifs!! I’m sure you can do  a much better job than me!

#Ask #unspeakablehorror #phew! this is a full on essay i'm sorry #gif making #Serif Photoplus #photoplus #long post

[pcinvasion-blog]

New Post has been published on PC Invasion

New Post has been published on https://www.pcinvasion.com/tokyo-42-review

Tokyo 42 Review

Tokyo 42 is one of those wonderful games, in that you can probably tell if it’s your sort of thing based solely on an initial description. Here we go: Tokyo 42 is the love-child of Grand Theft Auto (the original one, not the 3D sequels) and Syndicate (the original one, not the bastardised FPS) in which you play a hitman in a futuristic Tokyo skyscape. It’s isometric, potentially stealthy, and tremendously silly.

As an example of the latter: the game starts with you being framed for murder, so the obvious solution to track down the real killer and clear your name is to… become a hitman. But it’s okay! Everyone (except for the person you’re accused of killing, and a scattered few others) are taking wonder-pills that restore them to life after being shot, so being a murderer-for-hire is a bit more of a moral grey than you’d expect. Getting shot in the face is really more of a mild inconvenience than something actually life-threatening.

I will say that “love-child of GTA and Syndicate” is mildly misleading, in that it doesn’t really play like either of them, but despite being inaccurate in almost all of the details it still gives a pretty good idea of what Tokyo 42 actually is. And yes, I realise how contradictory that is.

The rooftops are future Tokyo are a weird place.

In any case, you have an utterly sumptuous open-world viewed from an isometric perspective (rotatable in 45 degree increments). Movement is controlled via WASD rather than clicking, but aiming is entirely mouse-controlled. In that sense, it’s a little like a traditional twin-stick shooter, although the isometric perspective and ponderous bullet speed makes aiming a little bit trickier than you might expect.

In this open world, you’re ideally aiming to complete the main story, but plenty of terminals offer up side contracts and there are an assortment of unlikely allies with their own mission chains to complete, as well as gang strongholds to complete. And yes, the gangs are all as ridiculous as you’d expect. Guys in suits and punks? That makes sense. Mini-golfers and nudists? Not so much.

Some are relatively in-depth, while others focus on one particular aspect of Things That You Can Do. One series of terminal-based missions set you up on a high point and task you with sniping distant targets in a time limit, which requires a good amount of movement prediction; another throws you into a free-for-all combat arena.

Stealthily slit some throats, or just open fire and hurl ludicrous amounts of grenades? Both are viable options.

Main missions give you a lot more freedom, and usually task you with picking off a particular target in a heavily guarded area – occasionally, using a specific weapon. It’s up to you whether you opt to sneak through, using temporary disguises to blend in and a melee weapon to silently dispatch foes, or go in guns blazing and shoot the hell out of everything with a minigun. Yes, of course there’s a minigun. This claims inspiration from Syndicate. Miniguns are mandatory.

That said, this is pretty far from an actual stealth game. If you get spotted then, yes, pretty much everyone within a ten-block radius will open fire on you, but they’re entirely undisturbed by the sight of dead bodies and a guard won’t react to suddenly discovering the corpses of their three rooftop colleagues. While it’s a little odd, it works rather well for the game. Dragging corpses around and trying to hide bodies would slow the pace down immensely.

Also, getting spotted isn’t really a huge deal, most of the time. It can be disastrous if your mission is to murder someone with a katana (or golf club), and there are Ninja awards for finishing a mission without being spotted (also Ronin awards for murdering everyone, and Roninja awards for murdering everyone without being spotted) but as far as I can tell they don’t really mean much except as a badge of honour. Often enough, it’s a case of being stealthy until you slip up, and then opening fire with a minigun, a shotgun-pistol, or a rocket launcher.

There are some utterly wonderful uses of perspective, like this bit where I ignored the front door and scaled a building by hopping along the tops of the external elevators.

I want to take a step back and talk about the tone again for a bit, because it’s a large part of why I really like Tokyo 42. Despite the subject matter, it’s really rather light-hearted and ridiculous in an endearing, over-the-top way. Completing a mission often results in a Nemesis being sent after you – someone who looks just like a random civilian until they open fire. Other than trying to spot them in the crowd, your method of detecting them is… to use a robot cat, which wanders around and sniffs people until it finds them.

A golf club is a suitable replacement for a katana, and “bananas” are one of the things that can fit into your grenade slot. The world is full of secrets, ranging from new colours for your weapons and your Trackacat to weird little things you can tag with your binoculars, like a man dancing in a room full of giant pills. Leaping across rooftops, jumping onto moving flying cars and using them as impromptu transport, and dropping off skyscrapers are all things you’ll do more than once (and you’ll probably die attempting most of these, too, resulting in a very quick respawn). Hell, the game has a dedicated button – Caps Lock – for putting on a trenchcoat. This does absolutely nothing except make you look and feel more badass.

This tone… does get a little bit sidetracked towards the end, annoyingly, as the game suddenly starts to develop a bit of a cyberpunk-y plot and takes itself a little bit seriously. It doesn’t last very long, but it’s a tiny bit jarring after 20-odd missions of sniping golf magnates and unleashing cyberkitties.

Despite the slow-ish bullet speed, massive battles are… hectic.

Tokyo 42 also isn’t an especially long game – doing the main missions and a large part of the side quests will probably take around seven or eight hours – but it feels just about right, and ends around the time it’s starting to feel a little bit tired. While you’ve got a fair few options as to how exactly you go about things, most things boil down to “sneak around with camouflage and ducking behind stuff and stabbing people” or “take cover behind stuff and shoot at people”, and it lasts just about long enough to let you make the most of these.

Problems appear when it tries to go outside of these limits. There are some motorbike-related missions which are genuinely painful, and a few parkour missions in which you have to hit very specific checkpoints in a very tight time limit… and, with the viewpoint and the often levitating nature of these things, the perspective can make it really hard to figure out if you’re going to touch one or not. Similar goes for the motorbike stuff, really: rotating the camera repeatedly is a necessity just to make sure you’re actually going where you think you’re going, because the addition of height as a dimension and little things like “buildings” often get in the way of your view.

For instance: the need to constantly shift perspective in this bit to not block my own view, see around corners, and pay attention to guards on three height levels, nearly gave me an aneurysm.

Arguably, this perspective stuff is actually Tokyo 42‘s biggest weakness. Most of the time, it’s not a problem and lets you thoroughly enjoy the lavish world design. In one or two areas, it’s a massive headache with buildings blocking your view no matter what perspective you use. When you start getting into massive fights with ten or more foes, with bullets flying everywhere, it’s an absolute pain to figure out quickly if you’re in cover; or if you’re going to walk past or into a bullet. Again, this is more a problem with the later missions or the specific occasions when you have less choice as to how to go about things, but it still crops up regularly and it’s a pretty fundamental issue with how the viewpoint works.

This is a problem. I also wish that Tokyo 42 embraced its somewhat ludicrous nature and offered up more of a sandbox of possibilities; I’d have loved for more absurd weapons and situations, and more unique interactions in this wondrous future cityscape. Mention is made of how the police will chase after you if you start mowing down civilians, and how you can avoid pursuers by changing appearance when out of their field of view (as long as you’re not still near enough to be suspected) but these things rarely come up over the course of gameplay, and that makes me a little sad.

Still, some of this is a little outside of the game’s scope, and saying “Oh, if only it had this” isn’t really fair. So instead, I’ll say this: its issues and occasional shortcomings didn’t hugely detract from my enjoyment, and instead just left me with a longing sense of “what if”. Tokyo 42 is still a good game. It’s just one that comes close enough to being a great one that its flaws sting a little bit more than they probably should.

#Tokyo 42