#i got so many screenshots of johnny looking so good

[hoperays-song]

Sing 1 Commentary and Review Pt. 1

Like I said yesterday, I will be giving commentary through out the run of the movie here! Is this an elaborate plan to distract me from my fic being with my beta reader? Yes! Am I using it for content? Also yes! I will try to remember to include timestamps and screenshots. But probably will just end up doing screenshots most of the time, sorry. Welcome to the madness!

(There will be multiple parts because these take a while and also there's a limit of thirty photos per post so yeah. I got 9 minutes in? I talk a lot during movies ok? It's an AuDHD thing.)

----------------------------

I feel like now is as good of a time as any to mention that I despise minions (aka was forced to watch Despicable Me in art class way too much as a child). So yes, we're not even past the opening credits and I'm already complaining, welcome to watching a movie with me everyone.

Ok just noticed this for the first time, but Old Moon Theatre had lyres (a symbol of Apollo, the Greek god of music) and grape vines (a symbol of Dionysus, the Greek god of theatre) on it, which is just super cool!

I love the fact that Buster canonically talks to himself and narrates his own life. Like same bestie. Love this for you. You're in your delusion era rn but go for it mate.

Lesbians!!

(No I will not be taking criticism here. That pose is one of the gayest things I have ever seen and I just looked in a mirror.)

HE HAS APPEARED!!!!!

Ok three things. One, these cops appeared out of literally no where. Like we just did a circle around the boy and we did not see them. Can they teleport or something???

Also, two, what the hell is in that box? I'm typically not one to judge what random stuff you leave in an alley (yes, yes I am, but to be fair this is the cleanest alley I've ever seen), but is that just a box of cut up springs??

And for number three, you thought you heard someone singing??? You thought you heard someone singing and only spare one glance down the alley behind the bank during a spree of bank robberies??? Ok no, these cops are terrible. The bank being robbed is absolutely their fault, what the hell?!

Ooooo, eight ball keychain!!!

I mean... Johnny did warn them, ten seconds too late, but he did warn them. He's still absolutely grounded but you know, he tried. Also, I just realized they took the license plate off the truck for the robbery. Insanely smart. The best boys. I love them.

✨ 🎶He's a runner, he's a track star! 🎶✨

Also, apparently Johnny can catch up with a accelerating truck... ok then.

Glad to see this skill that I'm absolutely sure will be used again in the multiple other applicable scenarios. What was that? It never comes up again? Yeah, that seems about right.

Ok, how the hell have the not found these guys yet??? Like the rest of the gang are in disguises, horrible ones but still disguises, but Johnny wears the exact same clothes throughout the movie and is not hiding his face in the slightest. You're telling me no one, not a single person, recognized him???

Also, just how many vintage trucks are in this town? Like just look up the truck model and go down the list of all the one's owned in Calatonia. Boom, done. The police in this place suck at their jobs.

ROSITA!!!!

Ok, so the piglets are definitely around first grade judging by the alphabet and number chart on the wall. Also, a learning chart on the wall is so cute and sweet, I love it!

(Theory) So... we can all agree it's summer right? Because not only are Johnny and Meena home (ok Meena's home, Johnny's being a felon, but that's not important) at lunch time but so are the piglets. They for sure aren't in school yet. And yeah, I know they leave with backpacks later on but that could just be daycare (it's likely daycare). So, since a lot of daycares aren't open on weekends (or at least ones near me), Sing 1 starts in the summer on a weekend! That's cool!

Awwww Rosita. I'm so sorry honey. I love you, we all love you, and I wish I could say you have a normal, relaxing life after this movie but... I'm sorry. Not even close to one.

Ok wow, forgot how vertigo inducing this movie was. Wow.

Ash has arrived!!!!

Also, super interesting how Ash's guitar looks a lot more worn that Lance's. It has scratches and faded stickers while Lance's looks shiny and new here.

And Lance... ewww.

Fair man, fair.

And before people get on to my man Harry for kicking them out without pay by the looks of it, most restaurant gigs I know of are not paid, the musicians get tips and exposure, and I'm pretty sure there is not one single person in that restaurant soo... yeah. They weren't getting paid either way.

One of the best expressions all movie.

I'm gonna punt him. I don't care that he's been on screen for 10 seconds, I'm gonna punt him.

(Moments where Lance is puntable counter: 4)

And now we have everyone!!! Meena, welcome aboard!

Also that cake looks amazing. ...Hold up, I'm getting lunch.

Ok, I'm back! Let's dive back in to my lovely ramblings that are hopefully semi entertaining.

Oh boy, let's talk about the happy birthday scene. For one, Meena is a kid. Stop being mean to a kid.

For another, the rest of her family just stops singing??? Like excuse me, that's not how the happy birthday song works. I don't care if one of the singers is a grammy winner, you don't stop singing just to listen to them. It is a group effort. Either everyone sings or no one does. It's the birthday song rules people. They really put her on the spot here and I do not appreciate it, the poor baby.

So, Meena has tried out for choirs and bands before but it never worked out. That makes me think her social anxiety is not new and I am very much disappointed with her grandfather's perspective on it.

Oh great. He's here.

(Mike puntable moments counter: 1)

Their money must be different than ours since that is the design of a penny.

Also: (Mike puntable moments counter: 2)

OK. This is a straight up mugging. Why is no one doing anything?! Like excuse me?!?!?

Oh and now he gave the guy an asthma attack. Sod off Mike.

Why is everyone siding with the mouse man?????? He sucks??? Hello????

(Mike puntable moments counter: 5)

Ok, ignore the monkey man for a minute. The restaurant is legit named 'The Squids'. So do they own it? Do they work there? Was the founder a squid? What's the situation because I'm guessing the don't eat them since they are sentient.

For such a fancy restaurant, they have terrible taste in lighting decor. I'm pretty sure those are the same ones at my doctor's office.

Oh Eddie, my favourite trust fund baby of the series. It's so good to see you.

Ok, let's talk about the implications of what Eddie is saying here. He says that his dad has been paying for the shows. And Buster's theatre has been struggling for way more than one or two shows.

And I don't know about you guys but I personally wouldn't pay for my adult kid's friend's failing theatre more than once if it turned out to be a bust. It's a waste of money and have you seen today's economy. Now if that was my kid's partner? Different story. I would probably be more willing to pay for a few more for both of their sakes.

What am I saying here? Noodlemoon. They're dating. End of story. ----------------------------

I'll be right back with part 2!

(And 30 more screenshot taking up memory on my dying laptop.)

#sing #sing johnny #sing buster #sing marcus #sing ash #sing big daddy #sing eddie #sing noodlemoon #noodlemoon #sing mike #sing meena #sing rosita #mike is the real criminal here #also is johnny the flash? please discuss in the comments #the lance and mike counters will continue until they are both on neptune #i have the attention span of a goldfish #sing stan #sing barry #sing the gang #sing meena's family #i've mentioned the summer theory before but i'm sticking with it because i have already written it into everything #I also once forgot to change the date on my calendar for six months so I do not trust calendars at any point in time. like ever

[roamingtigress]

More things I learned playing Dutch on RDO:

-He'll SALIVATE (?) when he gets into something involving excitement; I just noticed this with the bounty role. Mind you it could have been from the wind while riding (realistic), or some anticipation of EXCITEMENT. It kind of ruined what I wanted to be a cool screenshot, turned out to be an 'oh wow, that's realistic, but ew' moment :P

-He'll look to the moon/stars for what I assume to be navigation, which seems very IMMERSIVE as it seems like something that'd happen in that era (maps are a bit tricky to read in the dark while on horseback). I've hit cinematic mode when he does this and it he usually keeps moving in that direction, very cool. He might not always follow the waypoint but he'll follow the moon/stars.

-He seems a bit . . . BOWLEGGED?? Like idk why I didn't notice it in single player but do notice it Online, particularly when watching him walk from behind.

-He has FACIAL TICS that come and go

-If I'm not careful, when there's a lot of excitement around he'll do things like pull lawmen off of their horses if he's close enough. Without my control. It's how he got his first bounty on his head. He requires ELITE HANDLING.

-He rides like an EXPERIENCED RIDER, with a nice straight, balanced posture, which seems realistic; lots of subtle little animations while he's riding too; swats to flies, rolls his head around to get rid of neck stiffness, occasionally adjusting/playing about with the reins, and sometimes fingernail chewing (?), but all the while keeping the horse balanced. My ponies generally have nice perky ears, and they rarely spook under him (not the case with me smh), particularly under gunfire. My horses would always dump my ass for gunfire. They think they're warhorses under him. He looks best IMO on taller horses like TBs, Standardbreds, Kladruber, and Turkoman, though I like him on Mustangs; I haven't tried him on an MFT and a few others); he's too leggy for the smaller horses like Morgans and Arabians and yet looks too small for the bigger draught breeds.

-WOLVES. I've never encountered so many wolves before. Is it the smell of hair pomade? My OC is a chonk and they didn't come after her as much. He's a magnet for them. I've never seen wolves in Scarlet Meadows before.

-I encountered a new (?) ambush; OIL REFINERY GUARDS. Never seen this before and I've been playing since 2020, never seen that one before.

-In addition to the spurs, you can hear the fabric of his clothes and even his chains crinkle as he moves, if the music is low/off. DETAILS! -SNOW DADDY DUTCH is sensibly so, the most cold-resistant Dutch. Colter!Dutch still isn't warm enough. Fancy Dutch, fuhgetaboutit. I still need to give Snow Daddy a tonic but he's like, w/e, I'll still get the bounty

(he and Johnny Marston had some funny back-to-back arguing in this family bounty hunting trip where they only managed to get one bounty because Snow Daddy drove in the wrong direction on Cinematic Mode (because waypoints are subjective even if they're drawn up apparently) and John kept ordering him to get back on the right path; nothing goes smoothly on the family bounty missions, I miss out on getting some screenshots featuring really funny family feud dialogue because I'm fully lmao because something always gets awry and usually involves Marston or Hosea killing the bounty; Arthur seems to target just the other raspberries and not the strawberries that are needed; good boah)

#had to post some Snow Daddy #rdr2 #red dead redemption II #red dead online #rdo #rdr2o #dutch van der linde #dutch #john marston #arthur morgan #red dead redemption 2 #red dead redemption II online #red dead redemption 2 online

[that-sims-four-blog]

Oh dear, I started a Sims 4 playthrough.

You know what, "Leeb, Leefuh, Love" sounds like a pretty good sitcom name. I'm going to start naming whatever sitcom-fanfic this playthrough becomes—provided I don't chicken out of documenting This Thing out of cringe.

For starters, Metallica—the three angriest men of the year 2003—decided to move to some random house in Oasis Springs. Why? I don't know. Are they there to find a bassist? Dunno either.

Okay, maybe they aren't so angry.

In fact, James and Lars are coming along pretty well. Since there isn't a way in-game for them to start a thrash metal band, each members are doing mundane jobs!

Lars is a lawyer—looking at you, Napster—while James is an Entertainer, probably a comedian because why not. Kirk's getting a start in the Culinary career.

...Oh, yeah, the Welcome Wagon struck that household, too.

Johnny Zest made a fruitcake. I think they liked it—I can't recall what they thought of it... Kirk's social awkwardness begins to pop up, too, although advice from his totally-bandmates did help a bit.

And yes, that's Makoto Yuuki—from the popular PS2 video game Persona 3 FES—in the background. We'll bother about him in a bit. At least he gets along pretty well with the Metallica household, especially James.

Several hours later, Lars decided to become the new Skrillex, and played around with the music-making-table (I can't remember what they are called).

It's got about as much bass as ...And Justice For All, trust me.

Moving over to that place that the developers designed after the British countryside, not that I remember the world's name, the RBY household moved into a house. Weiss won't fit anywhere between the budding lovers Blake and Yang and the hyperfixative Ruby. She might get created at some point, just outside the hellhole.

So, yeah, there they are, living their lives in the moment.

This is probably my favorite screenshot of them, Blake probably being OOC be damned.

Also, most of the household seems to have fairly... memorable faces, especially Yang's psychotic expressions. I might compile them at some point in the future.

Anyways, so, jobs: Blake writes stuff. Yang is a cop—because I can, and I want her to be as silly as Martin Riggs; so she's stuck in a cop-aganda show. Ruby goes to high school, therefore she's stuck in some teenagers-do-stuff sitcom.

Oh, yeah, Ruby did go to high school, and I have some bits to document.

As pissed off because of some fear about unfulfilled dreams, she seems to have a thing for exercise. It's probably an excuse to offer you one of her goofy-looking faces, though.

There's some random person with the Zelda moon following them, apparently:

And there's also that thing.

I can't kill that Landgraab off for the grievous crime of T-posing?

God fucking damn it.

But aside from that, everything went as normal, and Ruby managed to acquaint herself with Cassandra Goth.

That's good, I suppose. There were two other Sims that she managed to befriend, too, but I forgot their names. No, that Landgraab is not on the list—absolutely not, nuh-uh.

Also, later that day, she decided to bring Ruby to the Hijinks-and-other-things Festival. She went off to the art museum, while Ruby's left on her own. Noooo, that never happened before in the show Ruby was from! haha! But yeah, she joined the Pranksters—mainly because I wanted a silly laugh—but upon finding out that James Hetfield is there, I thought it'd be utterly hilarious for her to prank him.

That's the best image I could capture. No, I'm not giving you the aftermath of the trolling.

So, that's one-half of a thing I'm doing, and I realized that I was capturing too many pictures for comfortable reading. Plus, the default Tumblr layout sucks for this kind of thing, and I have no clue how to code layouts, so... Yeah, the second half coming later on.

#the sims 4 #the sims 4 screenshots #ts4 #sims4 #archive convinience tag goes here

[bobapplesimblr]

2, 8 & 9 from the simblr asks, please? 💖💖

2. how would you describe your style?

I got this question a good while back but now I can answer it better!!

In terms of sim style I've noticed these habits when making my sims:

Downturned mouth corners, like they're frowning all the time;

Half closed eyes like they're glaring at me, or just tired as hecc, I think that's really cool and I wish I could close their eyes further >:( there's probably a slider for that, but oh well;

Trendy clothes and sometimes borderline alpha clothes;

Picking a color to be the sim's favorite color, or using the likes and dislikes randomizer, and using that color for 90% of the sims outfits. [insert color here] is their entire personality;

I think that's pretty much it for now? At least of the things I noticed I was actively doing.

8. who is your favorite gameplay blog?

Visually I think I preffer @natolesims and her sideblog @dustbon . Her main blog posts are a mix of gameplay and storytelling, as far as I understand, but her sideblog is fully gameplay and all of her sims and screenshots are so adorable!! I'm very inspired by her ;w; <3

9. who is your favorite storytelling blog?

Aaaaaa this one is a hard one ;-; I don't pay much attention to storytelling posts nowadays but the ones I've loved in the past have been these ones:

@simmersofia 's story with Don Lothario and Johnny Zest, and also from her, the globetrotter challenge story with Vlad and his husband George!

I cannot for the life of me find the simmer that did this one because they changed their url some time ago and I did not memorize it, but it was basically the story of the sims 2 Don and Cassandra Goth but played out in the sims 4. This simmer was my first contact with the simblr community and I will forever keep them in my heart, and my first ever story posts were highly inspired by their post formatting style, but I cannot for the life of me find them ;-; Alecia if you're out there give me a sign I can't find your blog 😭

There's more, there are so many more, I could list off 50% of the people I follow but every time I go looking for the simblrs and their stories to make sure I don't give out wrong information in this answer I completely forget everything else that I wanted to say so I'll list off these two for now ;-; I believe they were the first 2 gameplay blogs that really captured my attention when I started out as a baby simblr.

#thank you so much for the ask!! #ask game #simblr ask #prossims

[blondrichclosetwitch]

I never tried to change you

As if I could and if I were to

What's the part that I'd miss most?

When you're smiling and astride me

And the horny man-child Momma's boy to boot

Johnny is a man

But his overheads are high

And he looks straight through when you ask him how the kids are

We spoke today to a jury

You could see the doubt in their eyes

Our words are trained to delivery

There was nothing left to change their minds

Remember when you were my accomplice

Now we forget why we started this

I just want to stay in my home

We jump in and out of the time machine as if owned it, as if we'd know better

With a picture for your friends

Can you tell me where this road ends?

Everybody knows but me

You just go to take photographs

But yes, I think you go for a laugh

Innocence

It’s kinda like a code yeah

there's always someone, somewhere with a big nose, who knows

And who trips you up and laughs when you fall who'll trip you up and laugh

“Meet you at the cemetery gates.”

I'll be good and keep my mouth shut

I feel like I'm sleeping and I can't wake up

Didn't used to be so needy

Just more broken than normal

We got a love like a violent mind

We get our love from white white lines

We kiss our love with lips like pain

I need to taste your pain for accomplishment

How do I know where you are tonight?

See, I can only take it out on you

Take this power right off her

The more I know

The tighter your grip around me

If there's ever anyone else, I'll understand

And kill him

And I'll overflow your every inlet

You'll welcome me in

And I tell you with my tongue between your toes, so easily broken

If there's ever anyone else

You hide these things so well there's no finding

(During jism, the mattress fell.)

In that pink dress, they're gonna crucify me(I forgot to screenshot I guess)

Take your silver spoon, dig your grave

Heartless challenge

“She’s a Dragon.” (My back lit up at this, Stella I’m guessing reminding me our last name means dragon)

You walked away, leaving me alone behind you and I am left with nothing at all

Born and bred unlucky and cursed, did not smile even for a moment after she loved

And friends, Sussi has but one life but she will sacrifice it a hundred thousand times for Punal

Tell me who forced you

What happened that made you turn and go far away from me?

If you won’t come just tell me why you are cross with me

Why did you stop coming to me and gave such sorrow

I wrote so many letters that I fatigued myself, I wrote so many invitations

I have become a road myself lying in wait of you on the roads where you walk

I'm too much for these hoes

Man, I know I can't tell you about the world homie but I know I can tell you about your girl homie

Her pussy's crazy

Told me Mary was a go so we passed her 'round and 'round

Your bitch texted me, wants it now so I had to knock her down

My mother said to me that I would get in trouble

That's when your car pulls up

Heartless to say

I'll die here as your phantom lover

Stake a claim

With my bark

This forest is in me

I'm high as hell, I only took a half a pill

Come through and fuck him in my automobile

Can you feel the rings of Saturn on your finger

Can you taste the ghosts who shed their creaking hosts

You do such damage, how do you manage? Trying to crawl in back for more

#nusch #679 hours 11min

[thegoodomensdumpster]

ALL THE OMENS

I keep seeing people confused / discovering one or several iterations of Good Omens, so here is a masterpost of everything Good Omens that officially exists (and that I could gather, so there might be mistakes):

WILLIAM THE ANTICHRIST (1987)

The original draft of what would later become Good Omens, written by Neil Gaiman before he teamed up with Terry Pratchett. It notably features a demon called Crawleigh who would then be split into Crowley and Aziraphale.  The draft exists in a book form included in the Ineffable Edition of the illustrated Good Omens.

LINK TO A WTA RECAP (by @fuckyeahgoodomens)

BOOK (1990)

The core material of Good Omens, written by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. Exists also as an audiobook read by Stephen Briggs (for the English speaking crowd of course). There is also some audio of David Tennant reading part of the book during the recording of Playing in the Dark: Neil Gaiman and the BBC Symphony Orchestra in November 2019. LINK TO DAVID TENNANT’S READING (by @merinathropp) @good-omens-covers is a blog where you can have a look at book covers from accross the world

MOVIE SCRIPT (1992)

The script for an aborted movie project. Attempts to write a movie script were made by both Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, but this is the one Gaiman ended up tackling on his own after Pratchett wisely decided to step away. The conflicted requests from the producers lead the way to a story that was related to Good Omens only in name. The movie script is only available in few numbers on specialized websites for a very high price.

THEATRE PLAY (2013)

An adaptation by Amy Hoff made with the permission of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, that was played by the Cult Classic Theatre for the Glasgow International Comedy Festival. As far as I know, no footage or script is available anywhere. I know nothing about this play besides the fact that Crowley looks wild. Amy Hoff’s website mentions that GO is currently unavailable for stage production or adaptation. LINK TO THE (BROKEN) PAGE OF THE THEATRE PLAY LINK TO A PHOTO GALLERY OF THE PLAY

RADIO DRAMA (2014)

An audio adaptation originally broadcasted on BBC4 in 6 episodes, adapted by Dirk Maggs and directed by Dirk Maggs and Heather Larmour. It is however available in an 8 episodes longer format (including bloopers) on CDs and such. The cast includes, notably, Peter Serafinowicz as Crowley, Mark Heap as Aziraphale, Josie Lawrence as Agnes Nutter, and a cameo from Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett.

LINK TO THE BBC4 PAGE FOR THE GOOD OMENS RADIO DRAMA LINK TO AN IMAGES GALLERY

TV SERIES (2019)

A six episodes long TV series, produced by the BBC and Amazon, that premiered on Amazon Prime in June 2019. Directed by Douglas Mackinnon. The script was written entirely by Neil Gaiman as the whole project was the achievement of years of struggle trying to get a video adaptation of GO, and as promised by Neil Gaimand to the late Terry Pratchett that this would get done. 

The cast still includes Josie Lawrence as Agnes Nutter, David Tennant as Crowley, Michael Sheen as Aziraphale, and many other talented actors and actresses that would be too long to list here but are worth watching. 

As derivative products coming out of the making of the TV series, the script book of the entire show (including cut scenes that were never shot) is available, as well as some storyboards that depict, without a doubt, the least expected looks for Crowley and Aziraphale. The TV series is available for streaming on Amazon Prime, in DVD and in BluRay. The soundtrack composed by David Arnold can be found in CDs, vinyls and mp3 sets.  Additionally, there is a TV Companion book for behind the scenes and interviews that can be purchased, and very few official goodies such as enamel pins, and, of course, the very necessary Good Omens Nail Polish. A Q and A with Neil Gaiman and David Tennant is also available on Amazon Prime, broadcasted live and recorded in May 2020. In 2017, Neil Gaiman made a reading of cutscenes in Austin, Texas, for the Long Center event.

LINK TO THE DVDs / BLURAYs MASTERPOST (by @fuckyeahgoodomens) LINK TO THE SCRIPT BOOK MASTERPOST (by @fuckyeahgoodomens ) LINK TO SOME STORYBOARDS VISUALS: PART 1 and PART 2 LINK TO NEIL GAIMAN’S READING OF CUTSCENES

THE LOCKDOWN VIDEO (2020)

As a direct result of the TV series (and a direct result of a worldwide pandemic and a several months long lockdown...), Neil Gaiman wrote a little script for a short video that is, actually, mainly audio, in which David Tennant and Michael Sheen reprised their roles as Crowley and Aziraphale.

LINK TO THE LOCKDOWN VIDEO ON YOUTUBE LINK TO THE LOCKDOWN VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

MUSICAL (still in developpement as far as I know on this date in June 2020)

An Australia based project that has been years in the making, developped by Vicki Larnach and Jim Hare. So far, what has been officially released on the internet are a few videos of a reading by the actors, a sizzle reel with footage and audio of several moments from the show, as well as promotional pictures. The musical has been played on stage in front of an audience a few times these past two years in a version that is probably rather close to what the end product will be, and hopefully, once the final version exists, it will be made available for the widest audience possible.

LINK TO THE MUSICAL WEBSITE LINK TO THE MUSICAL SIZZLE REEL LINK TO THE MUSICAL INSTAGRAM LINK TO A REVIEW OF THE MUSICAL (by @seraphofshadows) LINK TO A GALLERY OF PICS FROM THE SIZZLE (by @crunchy-goblin)

OTHERS THINGS THAT ARE (AND THINGS THAT AREN’T)

668—The Neighbour of the Beast AKA the sequel that doesn’t exist. Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett talked about writing a sequel to Good Omens, came up with a few things (the most infamous being Aziraphale watching a porno in a hotel room, but only catching glimpses of it and trying to figure out the plot by writting it down in a notebook), but it was never written. LINK TO AN INTERVIEW GIVEN TO THE LOCUS IN 1991 MENTIONING THIS SEQUEL LINK TO A POST ON GAIMAN’S BLOG MENTIONING THE PORNOGRAPHY BIT LINK TO A RECAP OF THE SEQUEL + COTTAGE THING The movie directed by Terry Gilliam Before GO became a TV series, it got stuck for years as a movie project meant to be directed by Terry Gilliam. For various reasons it never happened, and the rumors about Robin Williams being cast as Aziraphale and Johnny Depp as Crowley seem to have started from there. The cottage “canon” The widespread concept of Crowley and Aziraphale sharing a cottage originated from a blog post made by Neil Gaiman, reporting a conversation between him and Terry Pratchett regarding the whereabouts of their characters. Gaiman has since offered the precision that this cottage sharing thing would happen way after the events of the sequel that was never written, so years after Armageddon, and that the location would be Devil’s Dyke in the South Downs. LINK TO THE ORIGINAL POST ON GAIMAN’S BLOG LINK TO A COMPREHENSIVE EXPLANATION (by @irisbleufic) LINK TO A TUMBLR ASK FOR GAIMAN ABOUT THE SOUTH DOWNS LINK TO A SCREENSHOT OF A TWEET BY GAIMAN The New Year Resolutions List (made for Harper Collins, now taken down from their website) A list of resolutions written by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett on request of the publisher in 2005, one list for Crowley, one list for Aziraphale. LINK TO THE LIST ( by @ladylier )

LINK TO AN INTERVIEW WHERE NEIL GAIMAN TALKS ABOUT A FEW OF THE THINGS MENTIONNED IN THIS POST And as an ultimate bonus, as I was gathering all the informations for this masterpost, I found back Michael Sheen’s Spotify Good Omens Playlist. EDIT (02/08/2020): Someone mentionned (in a post I can’t find anymore ?) that on the list of existing merch that was absolutely unexpected, there was a whole collection of Good Omens perfume oils. It was made around 2007 with the approval of Pratchett and Gaiman and was apparently updated when the series came out in 2019. The profits of the oils go to different charities.

I was also reminded of the Chattering Order of Saint Beryl, a group of singers promoting the TV series before its release in 2019.  Their Youtube Channel has a playlist that was last updated in June 2020. There is one video clip of the song Brand New Baby Smell that features a cameo by Neil Gaiman. And I found back @fuckyeahgoodomens‘s masterpost about the merch, even though I mentionned most of these in this masterpost, I’ll include the link for convenience sake.

#good omens #masterpost #all the omens #book omens #scrip omens #shitscript #william the antichrist #tv omens #radio omens #musical omens #merch #fandom #neil gaiman #terry pratchett #long post

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

Of all the Britcom shows I’ve watched in the last couple of years, and there have been a hell of a lot of them, I think Comedy World Cup is the most underrated. I only learned about it because I saw it on a list of panel shows that I came across on IMDB once; I haven’t seen it talked about online otherwise. And for some reason, they only ever made the original seven episodes. I do not understand how this didn’t get more seasons.

I first watched it last May, and have avoided re-watching any of it since then so I can try to forget the answers to some of the questions and then re-watch it while again playing the game of trying to guess the answers before they’re revealed. But I have decided that today is the day to re-watch it. Mostly because my roommate is away for the night and I have spent all day taking advantage of this by washing everything I can find and getting things clean enough so I can actually feel relaxed, and now I’m taking advantage by enjoying an evening of beer and playing audio without headphones. It feels like this occasion should be accompanied by the re-watching of a show that I know is fun to watch.

And Comedy World Cup is so much fun to watch. It’s fun to guess the answers to the quiz’s questions. It’s fun to see the interactions of the panelists. It’s fun to see their jokes and it’s fun to see them get competitive but at the same time there’s this nice relaxed atmosphere. It’s fun to see David Tennant be fantastic as the host. It’s fun to see the mix of guests! Many of the teams were clearly calibrated to have one comedian who had been around for 100 years, one comedian who was well established by the time this was made (in 2012), and one comedian who was quite new to TV work at the time. The time being 2012, so it features baby versions of a number of comedians who have gotten bigger since, most of whom are quite excited to be there. For example, look how much Baby Sara Pascoe is enjoying herself in this screenshot:

But there’s a whole other layer of fun here, in that it’s all comedians talking about their own industry and their own craft (not to be too pretentious in using that last word, but I feel like it applies). It’s a topic that actually interests all of them, and they all seem to be enjoying discussing it. The old ones have lived through the stuff they’re talking about and the young ones have grown up watching the stuff they’re talking about and are now excited to be on TV with those people they watched growing up, talking about those things they watched growing up. It’s so much fun to see.

And I haven’t even gotten to the dramatic storyline of a younger Johnny Vegas and a relatively-new-to-television Josh Widdicombe (it wasn’t his first TV appearance or anything, but he hadn’t done much on TV before it) and Johnny Vegas acting out some combination of a gangster movie and a sports movie as the established comedian and the knowledgeable newcomer jockey for position within their team before learning to work together for the good of the whole team. It’s possible that the reason this show never got a second season is they knew they could never strike gold a second time, with the beautiful story arc of the first season that unfolded naturally in an unscripted show - they just couldn’t repeat that. (Seriously though, they should have made more seasons and I would like Channel 4 to know that it is absolutely not too late to do so.)

Last year I watched it all on YouTube, but when I tried to go back to that today, I saw it had been taken down. So I immediately downloaded it all from Dailymotion, to make sure the whims of the internet would not leave me with no way to re-watch this show. Then I uploaded it to Google Drive, in case anyone else wants to watch it. I highly recommend it.

[tchaikovskymybeloved]

I was tagged by the lovely @bowiepop to do this tag, thank you, Maja! 💋

Why did you choose your URL? It’s pretty simple — I started this account right after I got into The Beatles and I was very much enamoured by Paul (still am, will always be). It was also the time I fell in love with the bass guitar. So I decided to name the account after Paul’s bass guitar, as simple as that. And of course, Hofner’s Violin Bass is one of the most beautiful instruments out there, I’m honored to share a name with that majestic creation.

Any side blogs? If you have them, name them and why do you have them? I don’t have any side blogs, I’d rather dump everything in one place, which is probably not the best idea. I love blogs that have one specific theme — they give an impression that they got their act together, but I also love my little chaos of a blog where I post whatever I’m feeling and loving at the moment.

How long have you been on tumblr? Since fall 2017, if I remember correctly. So three years, almost four years? Have been an active user for like four-five months now.

Do you have a queue tag? Oh please, the queue function only makes sense for those blogs that people actually care about. Still, I never got the point of it, but oh well.

Why did you start your blog in the first place? It’s 2017, I just got into The Beatles and classic rock, I got depression for the first time in my life, I cut off my family and friends, felt I had nowhere to go and needed a place to feel safe in. And ta-dah, this blog was created.

Why did you choose your icon/pfp? Because Johnny Marr looks divine in that screenshot (thanks to @visible-disappointment for providing that masterpiece, by the way) and I happen to love that man like a lot.

Why did you choose your header? Because The Strokes. Because their music has been the main source of my happiness for the last few months. Because I wanted to have them somewhere on my blog to state my all-consuming love for them. Because that picture is absolutely gorgeous. Because The Strokes!

What’s your post with the most notes? I have never posted original content on here. I post rants sometimes, but I don’t think it qualifies as a legitimate post since it’s just walls of text about random things. But hey, my rant about The Strokes was a big hit the other day, it got two likes!

How many mutuals do you have? I have no idea. Probably about twenty? I genuinely have no idea.

How many followers do you have? 82.

How many people do you follow? 52.

Have you ever made a shitpost? I’m not sure what “shitpost” means in this context, but since I’ve never posted anything, I don’t think so. Though every single rant I drop can be considered a shitpost.

How often do you use tumblr each day? I would say one to two hours throughout the day, daily or every other day. Sometimes I disappear for weeks when I feel like it. I don’t use social media, so using this app every day makes me feel overwhelmed. Also, I get borderline addicted to tumblr when I use it every day, which I hate. I hate the feeling of being addicted to something, so I stop using tumblr when I get the sense that it’s getting a little out of hands. I need to find the balance I guess.

Did you ever have a fight/argument with another blog once? Who won? The image of me having a beef with another blog on tumblr is one of the most hilarious things that has ever entered my mind. Excuse me while I try to stop my giggle fit.

How do you feel about “you need to reblog this” posts? I don’t like it when people get manipulated into liking/reblogging posts, that feels quite cheap, if you ask me. But hey, if it works for you, then good, I don’t really mind them.

Do you like tag games? Oh yeah. I think the fact that I’m taking the time of my day to do this long tag says it all.

Do you like ask games? I do! I love it when my mutuals do them, but I never do them myself, I don’t really know why.

Which of your mutuals do you think is tumblr famous? All of them, sometimes I don’t understand why so many cool people follow me back.

Do you have a crush on a mutual? Oh hell yeah. I have a platonic crush on a few of them, they’re just that lovely.

Tagging @sixtiesfangirl, @kazookazoo, @visible-disappointment, @stevielynnicks, @wholelottajonesy, @inbetweenights, @polyphonicsounds, @selftitled1984, @merrumeru, @crshdet, if you feel like it and haven’t done this one!

#Tag game.

[your-world-with-nct]

💌 • 9:18pm

“so, any plans for the 14th, y/n?” seungyoon’s voice echoed through your phone’s speaker, teasingly wiggling his eyebrows at you on the video call.

“yoonie, you know the answer is no, i know you’re just saying this so you can rub your plans in my face,” you sighed at your best friend, flopping down on your bed as you inwardly cringed at how pathetic your valentines’ day was going to be, “jiheon ditched me to meet up with this guy she’s been snapping for like, what, two weeks?”

“three, actually, she just didn’t tell anyone when she first started talking to him because she didn’t wanna get her hopes up. and i’m not rubbing it in your face! i just don’t want you to spend the day alone, since, y’know, i’m going out with hyerin and jiheon’ll be busy too,” the boy gave you a sympathetic smile; as much as he tried to make you lift your mood, his pity just made you feel even worse.

“don’t worry about me, seungyoon, just have fun with your girlfriend next week and make sure to get her a good present this time,” you were met with an inhuman screech as you laughed at seungyoon’s overreaction, “i’m kidding, i’m hanging up now so you better stop procrastinating and write that valentines’ day card!”

your best friend hummed in response, making sure to take a screenshot of the unflattering angle you were holding your phone at before promising to finish hyerin’s card and ending the call.

as the room enveloped you in silence, the feeling washed over you again — the painstaking realisation that all of your friends were going to be preoccupied on the fourteenth, whilst you’d be spending it all alone in your apartment, wallowing in your emotions, accompanied by a marathon of terrible rom coms to distract you from your loneliness.

just as you were staring at the blank ceiling, your phone pinged again, ‘probably seungyoon asking for help on what to write in his card’, you thought to yourself, shocked when you saw the notification you got instead.

‘New Memory: One Year Ago Today [20.02.09]’

one look at the date and you knew exactly what would come up after clicking on the blinking banner on your screen, you knew exactly what you were getting yourself into, yet you couldn’t stop yourself from taking a quick look at the memory.

your finger tentatively hovered over it, but, with a swift click, you were met with exboyfriend!johnny’s face flooding the screen, the bittersweet memories flooding back along with the pictures.

you thought that you had deleted all his pictures and anything that reminded you of him after you broke up, but you seemed to have missed your snapchat memories. either that or… past you knew that future y/n wouldn’t be over johnny suh and would appreciate a small reminder of the best relationship you’d ever been in.

the night of johnny’s 25th birthday was an eventful one, and so was the last valentines’ you had spent with him, so it was understandable that you wanted as many keepsakes of those nights to remind yourself of how amazing they were.

however, seeing the way that johnny used to look at you, with his arm lazed around you or his cheek pressed against yours for the majority of the photos, his eyes sparkling as he was enchanted by the beauty stood next to him that he was lucky enough to call his lover, simply broke your barely mended heart, the fragile pieces shattering along with your composure.

every picture, every video, every time you scrolled, it was like sprinkling salt on your wounds, but you couldn’t resist it. just as you were so enamoured by johnny for those three years, so too did you fall back into your old habits of being absolutely smitten with the man.

‘i spent half a year trying to get over him, all for nothing, huh,’ the thought infiltrated your mind as you continued to scroll through the memories of that night. a light teardrop ran down your face, followed by another, then another, until your eyes were blurry with tears and you could barely see what was on your screen, swiping at your face to clear your vision and blindly clicking on your phone.

“y/n, my love!!” your heart hammered against your chest hearing your name being called out so lovingly, blinking rapidly to clear the tears and to check you weren’t dreaming. nope, it really was johnny’s honey-like voice, incoherent mumbles spilling out of his mouth from the video you had accidentally pressed on.

“baby, thank you so much for the birthday present, mwah,” the slurred speech and his reddened cheeks reminded you of how wasted you both were that night, “i don’t know when you’ll see this, but i want you to know that i love you, and i couldn’t have received a better gift this year than you, my love.”

you flinched hearing johnny say those things about you; it had been so long since you had heard that three-word phrase with such emotion and sincerity behind it, you had gotten so used to empty ‘i love you’s you two had exchanged towards the end of your relationship that hearing it without its usual lacklustre had your heart racing.

“i love you, y/n, thank you for the best birthday ever, babyyyyy—” johnny’s short video message was cut off by an extremely drunk you stumbling past him to retrieve your phone, placing a messy kiss on his lips as the clip ended.

as you clicked your phone off, the black screen exposed your disheveled reflection, your face blotchy with dry tears as that same feeling of being left on your own on valentines’ day for the first time in years resurfaced. except, you weren’t going to be alone, at least, not while that wretched johnny suh was still etched in the scars of your aching heart.

#nct #nct 127 #nct 2020 #cznnet #neowritingsnet #nct johnny #nct 127 johnny #johnny suh #seo youngho #exboyfriend!johnny #nct timestamps #nct imagines #nct drabbles #nct blurbs #nct angst #nct x reader #nct ex au #nct johnny timestamps #nct johnny imagines #nct johnny drabbles #nct johnny blurbs #nct johnny angst #nct johnny x reader #nct johnny ex au #nct 127 timestamps #nct 127 imagines #nct 127 drabbles #nct 127 blurbs #nct 127 angst #nct 127 x reader

[gumnut-logic]

For His Brothers (Bit 4)

Bit 1 | Bit 2 | Bit 3 | Bit 4

Been almost a couple of weeks since the last bit of this one, but I hope you enjoy it anyway. And, yeah, I’ve used the above screenshot so many times before, but that is because it just says so much.

Many thanks to @scribbles97​ and @tsarinatorment​ for the read throughs and support.

-o-o-o-

“I have to say, bro, I had to talk very fast to keep Grandma away. Forty-eight hours is ridiculous. You need food and rest.”

“I ate.” The discarded remains of breakfast sat on the sideboard. It had been cardboard and chaff in his mouth. The water had been welcome to wash it down.

And he’d kept it down...mostly.

Gordon glared at him. “More than three mouthfuls. Listen, if you don’t move yourself, John and I are going to move you for your own good.”

Virgil looked up at Gordon in shock. “No.” He had to be here.

“You’re forcing our hand, Virg! I will knock you out myself, if I have to, and I know...I know...Scott would agree.”

“Yes, he does.” It was parched and more breath than voice, but it was Scott.

Virgil spun in his chair as the fingers still wrapped in his hands curled around his. Dopey blue eyes pinned him from the bed. “What the h-hell are you doing, Virgil?”

“Scott!” Something inside broke. A dam, a wall of emotion slammed into him at the sight of that crease between Scott’s eyebrows, the twitch of his lips.

It took everything he had to hold it all in.

“Hey, big bro, you’re with us! How are you feeling?” Gordon was on his feet and practically bouncing. A blink and his little brother had thumbed his comms and was letting their family know.

The figure under the bed clothes shifted and groaned. “Stiff and sore. What the hell happened?”

“You got zapped like a bug, went for a swim, and made Alan fly you to these luxurious accommodations.” Gordon’s arm waved around at the white room.

Scott stared at Gordon a moment before blearily turning to Virgil, his expression pleading an explanation.

Virgil pushed it past the lump in his throat, voice parched. “You were hit by live powerlines and knocked from the sky. Fortunately, you were over water and fairly low. Gordon fished you out and saved your life.”

A blink as those blue eyes absorbed that. “What about you?” And there was memory in those eyes, worry for a younger brother, the drive that pushed Scott to give his everything.

For his brothers.

“I’m good.” Now.

“Bullshit, Virg.” Gordon’s expression was beyond exasperated. “You need rest.”

Lips thinned. “I know what I need, Gordon.”

The hand that was still in his tightened and Virgil was forced to look at Scott. Nothing was said, but everything was communicated.

For his brothers.

Scott would not rest if Virgil did not.

He swallowed his beating heart and with a gentle squeeze of that hand, Virgil stood up and straightened his shoulders. “I sh-should let the others know you’re awake.”

Virgil was vaguely aware of Scott frowning up at him as he reached for his crutches, but a sudden light-headedness distracted him. Perhaps he should eat something.

“Virg?” Scott’s voice was weak.

“What?” Virgil turned and the world turned with him.

A clatter of plastic chair and Gordon was suddenly in his face. “Hey, there. Take it slow.” His little brother was frowning as much as Scott, his hand gripping Virgil’s biceps holding him steady.

Virgil got his crutches under his arms. “I’m...good.”

Scott was struggling to sit up.

Gordon let go of Virgil with one hand and grabbed his eldest brother by the shoulder. “Hey, you stay put.”

“Virgil-“

“Virgil is fine, Scott. He is going to go to his rooms to eat and sleep for a good twelve hours even if I have to tie him to his bed.” A thumb to his collar. “John, I need you in here.”

The door opened immediately and their red-haired brother strode in. The moment those turquoise eyes landed on Virgil, his brow creased into a frown, but it flickered as he turned to Scott, relief taking over.

Gordon didn’t give him a chance to say anything

“Johnny, a clear case of Operation Big Bro Tango. You want Scott? I’ll dance with Virg.”

A smirk curved John’s lips. “FAB.”

“What the hell?” That came from Scott.

Virgil had closed his eyes at some point. The world was still going around. The sound of a chair being dragged across the floor and an arm wrapped around his waist. “C’mon, Virg, let’s get you something to eat.”

He didn’t want to eat. He was nauseous and his head hurt and his heart was tied up in a mass of emotion that he could barely keep under control.

“Scott-“

“Scott will be fine. John has him, and I have you.”

“I’m...” But he wasn’t fine and he had to get out of this room before Scott realised it. Before... “I’m good.” That last word scraped over his larynx and left a bloody trail. He forced his eyes open to find a worried big brother staring up at him. John’s hand was on Scott’s shoulder and he was speaking quietly to the man, obviously trying his best to keep him where he was. Virgil forced some steel into his spine. “I’m good. I’m going to get something to eat. Gran...Grandma will probably be here in a moment.” His hands tightened on his crutches and he carefully edged around the chair that had been his constant companion for the last few days.

Gordon hovered.

“Look after yourself, Virgil.” Scott’s voice was desperate.

Virgil didn’t look back. “I’m good. You worry about you.” A haggard breath. “Listen to John.”

He got a grunt for that as Gordon held open the door, urging him through.

A last glance at his big brother, now sitting up in bed, John’s hand still on his shoulder, and Virgil turned his back to him, crutching his way through the door.

He made it all of five steps down the corridor before Gordon had to catch him as he fell.

-o-o-o-

Next

#thunderbirds are go #thunderbirds #Virgil Tracy #Scott Tracy #Gordon Tracy

[sanchoyo]

danny phantom, season 3 episodes 3-6 thoughts!

see prev episode thoughts in this tag <3

-johnny was actually pretty civil with danny and left when he asked! thats nice. also, SKULKER?? HAD A FRAMED PICTURE OF EMBER?? oooo fuck wait had they established they were a Thing Before?? I dont think so. thats weird. its like that country boy/goth girl meme lmfao. I think i am going to choose to ignore this new info and pretend I didnt hear it. 100% unrelated to the jazz/ember fanart I already drew and posted....😳

-LADIES NIGHT EPISODE THIS IS WHAT ITS ALL ABOUT. wish it didnt really center around the guys or them being pissed at them, but. willing to bet this was written by men lol

-THEY ERASED ALL THE MEN??? meanwhile, jack and danny are fishing at. silent hill or something. im glad jack is trying to read a parenting book and making an Attempt. (theyre at lake erie, but, they made it actually eerie...thats fun)

-the girls alt outfits...cute. EMBER MADE A NEW SONG TOO!!! kinda. jazz being one of the backup singers and being AWFUL. NOOOO

-'how are we going to get kitty to blow a kiss?' 'she'll have to think there are still some males in town!' ...i dont know how to break it to you, but I dont know that a 100% het girl would wish for all men to Begone. I think. I mean im not a het or a girl so I dont really know for sure. she Is probably Bi tho. esp having the other ladies in town chanting NO MEN!!! excitedly............(then again, the kiss is to get Rid of men, so, she probably would have blown it at the ladies only if they were actively trying to attack/stop them, so...I MEAN. THE DRESSING LIKE DANNY BIT WAS SO EXTRA)

-I feel like an all female cast ep couldve been way way way way cooler than that was. like. why was it still somehow all about Men. ...anyway. (where was valerie...)

-next ep opens with the observants, and, way way more of them than I expected...existed? I mean I guess them being a council/jury of some kind is what I expected from their first appearance (bc at that time they were basically TELLING clockwork to kill danny, not asking,, so I figured they had SOME kind of authority) but. there were so many. anyway, here goes vlad! letting his own hubris go brrrr. releasing a weather ghost for political gain! #justvladthings

-okay say what you will about him (he IS an asshole) but having an umbrella with his own face on it and more prepared to share is SUPER FUNNY. and him being fanned by huge wads of money by his bodyguards. SO ineffective but so Dramatic. He UNDERSTANDS that if youre rich you need to be. you know. obnoxious and kinda eccentric about it! fuckign hate when rich people are boring about it. I would trust vlad with nothing except to not be a boring rich asshole who wears...fucking khaki or some shit. man knows his Presentation Skills. and that 'V' chair in his mayoral office. is that fucking embroidered?

-maddie get your MAN PLEEEEASSSE. IM SO EMBARRASSED FOR HER. the way jack stays simping for this man. in FRONT OF HIS WIFE!!!! ...my god its like a love triangle. jack clearly loves vlad, who loves maddie, who loves jack. jack fenton is at the very least bi, right................. this is an OBSESSION . 'THE V MAN COMETH'???? i...my god. (also, on a serious note, to have a friend THIS SUPPORTIVE...and still be SUCH A DICK TO HIM (TRYING TO KILL HIM AND STEAL HIS WIFE??) NOT COOL VLAD. JACK IS YOUR 1 AND /ONLY/ HYPE MAN. if someone loved and supported me THIS HARD...LIKE. CMON DUDE.

-STOMP the fucking GAS, JACK

-this would make a great shirt design, looks like a metal band design! we love The Maelstrom

-oh, so vlad did in fact get a mansion in amity park. and its purple! good color choice! not as flashy as a CASTLE or MURDER CABIN, but still pretty eccentric, which I appreciate.

-...vlad knows the difference between picasso and da vinci? in the ep last post where we were watching him fail at conquering every historical time ever he didnt seem to know history well enough to like. be effective...was vlad taking art history at college?? (was he an art MAJOR??? we never DID KNOW WHAT HE WENT TO SCHOOL FOR. I kinda assumed business because in the masters of time ep he was still rich without ghost powers so he had to have..known something about business or something, right...but also, art and or theater FITS HIS PERSONALITY. possibly also something science-y, I guess, but I always felt like he got roped into that, esp how pessimistic he was about the ghost portal in the flashbacks to college, like, i felt like he was just there for maddie and was uninterested/un-invested at the time...)

-THIS GHOST JUST ELECTROCUTED MADDIE (THE CAT) BITCH!! THATS MY FAVORITE MADDIE!!! vlad going after vortex and being ~shocked~ .....WHEN. WHEN WILL YOU LEARN. THAT YOUR ACTIONS. HAVE CONSEQUENCES!!!

-the way this random man with a camera sees the mayor laying in an alley covered in TRASH AND DECIDES TO TAKE A PICTURE HAHAH

*snap* this ones going in my cringe compilation!

-vlad 'if we're going to defeat vortex, we're going to have to do it together!' *immediately dips after dropping danny off in front of vortex* JKASDFHKJHJKN

-DANNY CAN DUPLICATE!!! ...he couldnt even attack with it, but he DID IT!!! INTO (4) OF HIMSELF!!! SO PROUD!!!!!!!!!!

-'THE ROLLER COASTER EMOTIONS OF A TEENAGER THREATEN MY PLANS!' ...0 self awareness of his own dramatic moodiness. incredible, how dumb this man is. its very close to circling around to endearing, if he was less of an asshole. at least its very very funny to see danny shooting him with tiny lightning bolts anytime he's even slightly irritated! vlad you should be nice to danny anyway. this is what you GET

-...making sandwiches and ice cream and playing video games with your nephew is a totally normal thing. WHY is vlad acting like this is the end of the world. if you were a GOOD UNCLE YOU WOULD ALREADY BE DOING THESE THINGS!!! bitch I make my nephew food all the time and dont forget what he does and doesnt like. if u didnt know danny didnt want tomatoes, thats on u. if u, a grown adult, are gonna piss of the 14 yr old by not letting him win, u deserve to have to pay for the arcade machines he ruins because he now has uncontrollable storm powers because YOU THREW HIM INTO A FIGHT WITH THE STORM GHOST. fuck u vlad. paypal me $400,000 while ur at it tho. (also, gamer vlad confirmed)

-VLAD CAN COOK THOUGH???! I assumed he had...people working for him that did that. I mean. billionaires usually dont do that. then again, we've only seen those vultures working for him (and I guess the dairy king was AT his old mansion, but it was never really clarified if he worked there...I think he probably just Hung Out and they Enjoyed Cheeses Together. thats what I think, I dont think a KING would be working for anyone and also the dairy king was nice <3) but then again he would be a private person and we cant have anyone accidentally finding Ghostly Things, so...still, that's hilarious. pour one out for that really cute banana split that got ruined 2 seconds later

-vlad just fucking picking danny up and THROWING HIM AT VORTEX TWICE WITHIN LIKE A MINUTE. JUST ABSOLUTELY LAUNCHING HIM. BITCH THATS MY SON BE CAREFUL!!! HES GOT ORGANS AND THINGS!!!!

-danny seeing those animal commercials and feeling sad is the biggest 2000s throwback so far. i legitimately had to change the channel or walk out of the room when those came on bc id CRY AND BE SAD ABOUT THEM FOR DAYS AFTER. fuck those commercials and fuck that IN THE ARMMMS OF AN ANGELLLL song 😭

-'vlads ego almost got the town destroyed!' yes danny thats the entire episode. the entire series anytime vlad shows up honestly. this episode was just him being really embarrassing the entire time, and, me laughing about it. 10/10 would laugh at him again

-NEXT EP WE HAVE A SHAPESHIFTING GHOST?? I've said it before but shapeshifting is the power I would want when asked those 'what superpower do you want' questions...its the Best power! this guy looks like a homestuck character. ive never read homestuck but thats the vibe

-I love every time we see tuckers family, they are by far the most functional family. and dash has a lil chihuahua!!! named pookie!!! i am crying (I've had 3 chihuahuas, so I am very biased, but...) AND HE WATCHES THE ROMANCE CHANNEL WITH POOKIE. POOKIE I WILL DIE FOR YOU YOU SWEET LITTLE BABY.

-danny can lift a bus! I shouldn't be surprised, but i am proud of my son. hes got lil kid fans. i am going to cry about this

-JAZZ KEEPS A SCRAPBOOK WITH DANNY'S LIL HEROICS AND NEWSPAPER CLIPPINGS!!! we've actually seen it on her floor before, but I didnt realize it was a scrapbook!! thats sooo cute.

-...and danny has to stand there listening to his parents saying danny phantom sucks and is a 'filthy ghost' and calling him egotistical...i am once again stealing their kids!

-THIS GHOST RIPPING JAZZ'S SCRAPBOOK!!! ILL KILL YOU. SHE WORKED HARD ON THAT!!! BITCH

-yes, maddie, the one with red eyes is For Sure Actually Your Son. ignore the, red eyes... (CLEARLY she hasnt watched the other 2 eps where danny has been evil, she doesnt know red eyes= evil!!!)

-'billy fenton'.......................

-danny being stuck as phantom in his own house, no way out is a fucking NIGHTMARE. his parents pointing giant weapons against him and SHOOTING AT HIM. THIS IS A HORROR MOVIE.

-NINE INCH NAILS POSTER.

-this is the most screenshot of all time

-amorpho turning into mr. lancer because hes 'someone no one will want to be around' BUT HES WRONG, I WOULD BEFRIEND AND HANG OUT WITH MR LANCER SO FAST.

-tucker dressing as danny, now I have the full Tucker set of him being sam and also being danny. also saying 'the ghost...uh...RIPPED MY FACE OFF.' and then running. SMOOTH. NOT AT ALL CONCERNING TO ANY PARENTS.

-sam accepts the toast from jack. and then 2 seconds later is like 'why am i eating this.' THIS SHOWS HUMOR IS SO UNEXPECTED SOMETIMES ITS REALLY GOOD. and then the scene after, mr lancer running into his ghost doppelganger and being like 'YOURE GORGOUS' THEN FAINTING. I AM CRYING. AND DASH FAINTING TOO.

-sam disguising herself as danny again to help tucker run from the fentons. but leaving him shirtless in the streets. incredible. 'plEASE DOnt NOTice MY FACELessNESS I MUST LIVE IN EXILE' this episode is destroying me the humor in this show is exactly my brand of corny and cheesy

-the impromtu story made up by danny and amorpho to explain stuff to the fentons. my god they are both such bad liars. but amorpho is a good egg. wish danny wouldnt have said he didnt wanna see him in town again!! I want him to be reoccurring. not that thats gonna matter since I'm almost done with the series, but the idea of this being the Only Time We See him is :(

-NEXT EP SAYS STARRING MARK HAMILL??????!!! hello ! mr . joker....mr. star wars.... I feel like I should be. idk. taking off a hat im not wearing in respect. I shouldnt be surprised tho bc hes in a lot of cartoons as a very good voice actor, and dp has already had a lot of talented ones so I've been looking out for ones I might know, but....mr. hamill....

-sam has her own greenhouse, names all the plants, and says thank you to them (in the languages from where the plants are from) whenever she harvests from them. thats SO cute. and her lil gothy lunch box...

-and danny's lil red fuzzy lined jacket!!! ive said it before but every time the characters get alt outfits im like :D

-danny has ice powers now!!! THATS WHAT FROSTBITE MEANT. HE KNEW SOMEHOW WAY BACK THEN

-THIS SHOW NEVER LETS YOU FORGET VLAD IS A BILLIONAIRE, HUH.

-danny's lil 'holy hibiscus!' first off the 50s batman swearing is hilarious. 2nd. my username is from the flower sanchoyo hibiscus, so, shoutout to ME this ep. hi :)

-EURGH UNDERGROWTH MAKING EVERYONE PLANT ZOMBIES. HIVEMIND PLOTS SCARE THE SHIT OUT OF ME. and this dude made the city SO overtaken so quickly like how long was danny asleep?? oh god

-evil fucked up sam! now the whole trio has gone evil at some point! the voice actress did a really, really good job with making her sound like a zombie...

-frostbite's paws are so so so big compared to danny. oh my god. i want to hug the snow dog...

-the far frozen has an advanced medical stuff!!! very cool. very smart snow dogs

-im so glad danny has a friendly ghost snow dad to explain this new power and teach him!!! this is so sweet. DANNY'S GHOST SENSE WAS A PART OF HIS ICE POWER?? OOOH. COOL. we love a training montage!!!

-danny saying if he cant defeat overgrowth, that he'd want to stay with frostbite...oh my god...do you think this is the first real supportive adult figure in his life (I am NOT counting his parents because they threaten him on the daily even if they dont realize it.) I mean mr lancer is a Teacher, but he was also nice but this is different, but this is a GHOST WHO IS WILLING TO HELP HIM with his powers and also will help him when hes injured and is so so nice and comparatively so much more mature than 90% of the adults in this show!!!! god. dad frostbite is my everything.

-the framing and lighting this episode, and all the angles...they went all OUT and it looks really really good. this is my nightmare scenario, tho. like, FUCK zombies and dead city zones and hivemind shit. and using the humans as 'nutrients for the children' i am going to THROW UP.

-MALEFICENT VIBES WITH THE HORNS AND GREEN EYES! this costume kicks so much ass. sam is now mark hamills daughter, I guess.

-danny's ice powers making his eyes blue!!! thats neat. and him going for the roots underground was SO SMART. i will not stand for danny ever thinking hes stupid, hes SO smart.

almost done with the show... :"( thats a sad thought!!!

#sanchoyorambles #dp thoughts #danny phantom

[wild-aloof-rebel]

a schitt’s creek fashion cheat sheet for fic writing

there comes a point in so many fics where you need a designer/brand name to throw in for a random item of clothing someone is wearing, and it can be really hard to know what to pick if you don’t know a ton about fashion. how do you decide which designer to mention for that new sweater david’s been eyeing? which one for the shoes alexis is currently packing in her suitcase? 

to that end, here is a very basic guide to choosing designers and brands that fit the aesthetic of the characters, match what they wear on the show, and thus make you sound like you know what you’re talking about...

david

is it a funky shape (weird draping, extra fabric, etc.), or does it have a drop-crotch? without a doubt, rick owens

is it neoprene and/or does it have lightning bolts or geometric colorblocking? most of the time, neil barrett

is it just a random other sweater or sweatshirt? your safest bet in most cases is givenchy

other designers you’d be safe to include in the mix, as they appear several times each include saint laurent, alexander mcqueen, valentino, and dries van noten. also, acne studios, though most of what david wears of theirs has more of a streetwear vibe, so don’t use it for like, fancy mohair sweaters, etc.

skirted pants? rick owens or dries van noten

other jeans? rick owens, dries van noten, and neil barrett 

shoes? 80% of the ones he wears are rick owens, so that’s always a safe choice

the leather jacket from our cup runneth over, sebastien raine, etc. is rick owens, while the one from the wingman is acne studios

his wedding look is entirely thom browne

and the tux from the s6 promos, if you need that for any reason, is burberry

his silver rings are maison margiela (the gold ones are custom made)

alexis

dresses and skirts? isabel marant is your best bet

other designers you’re safe to include are derek lam, chloe, proenza schouler, dolce and gabbana, and reformation

shoes? mostly pretty evenly mixed amongst céline, chloe, isabel marant, prada, and valentino (i know it can be tempting to say louboutin because they’re so well-known, but alexis doesn’t actually wear them much)

purses? chloe and miu miu are popular options

moira

the safest bet for just about anything for moira--dresses, shirts, jackets, shoes, whatever--is alexander mcqueen, doubly so if it’s on the funkier side of things

other good options for pants, skirts, and shirts are sandra angelozzi and givenchy

other good options for dresses include balenciaga, junya watanabe, msgm, and haider ackermann 

other shoes are mostly a mix of prada, alaia, balenciaga, céline, and miu miu, plus moira specifically mentions alexander wang and fendi in reference to her shoes in various eps

purses? prada and proenza schouler both appear often

johnny

shirts and suits? mostly either ermengildo zegna or canali

i honestly haven’t ever paid enough attention to johnny’s shoes to even try to identify them, but zegna would again be a pretty safe bet or another conservative/traditional, italian option like berluti

patrick

jeans? levis or paige, exclusively

most of his shirts/sweaters are largely unidentifiable, but he does wear a jacket from j.crew in moira rosé, so probably think brands along that line

his wedding look is hugo boss

they all certainly wear other designers/brands on occasion, but this gives you a solid base at least if you just need a name to throw out. 

on the other hand, if you’re looking to name the designers of specific looks they’ve worn on the show, i’ve got a quick list of all david’s [identified] sweaters, and @holmesapothecary​ has posts by season with pictures for all of david’s clothes by episode. i’ve also got a post just about david’s shoes if you need that. @patrickbluer​ has screenshots of all of patrick’s outfits by episode, if you need any of that for reference. various other things have been id’d in my #fashion reference tag. you can also check sites like spotern or wornontv. and finally of course, if you ever can’t find something in any of these places, don’t hesitate to ask me, and i’ll see what i can do!

#fashion reference #schitt's creek #schitts creek #fashion #david rose #alexis rose #moira rose #johnny rose #patrick brewer #fashion is just such a big part of the show #so inevitably you end up having to write something about it somewhere #even if you don't know much about it #and that's hard! #it's hard to write things you don't know #so hopefully this is helpful in some way #putting all this random knowledge in my head to some kind of use lol #and my spreadsheets of course haha #reference

[adastraperfortuna]

I Played Cyberpunk 2077

Ultimately, Cyberpunk 2077 is an excellent video game. It’s hard to talk about it without acknowledging the backlash that it received around its launch, but the backlash was directly proportional to the amount of marketing that it got. This happens to a lot of games – and frankly, a lot of my favorite games. If I were working at CD Projekt RED and I was responsible for the kind of marketing that resulted in the kind of expectations that they built for themselves, I’d have to take that sort of stuff into deep consideration. But, as someone who bought the game, enjoyed the game, and desperately wants to talk about the game, I’m not sure that it matters. So, to reiterate: Cyberpunk 2077 is good.

There’s so much game to Cyberpunk that it might be easier to start by talking about my favorite part of it that isn’t a game: the photo mode. I’ve joked before about my favorite gameplay loop in Star Citizen being “taking screenshots,” and that’s not my intent here, but some of my favorite games in recent memory have made it easy to look over the memories I made during their runtime. Interspersed within this review will be some of my favorite screenshots that I took – the inclusion of precise controls for things like depth of field, character posing/positioning, and stickers/frames helped to make my screenshot folder feel less like a collection of moments in a game and more like a scrapbook made during the wildest possible trip to the wildest possible city.

And what a city it is. Night City is my favorite setting in a video game in recent memory. It’s not incredibly difficult to make a large environment, but to make a meaningful environment where every location feels lived-in and the streets are dense with things to see and do? That’s a challenge that very few studios have managed to step up to. More than that, Night City feels unique in the landscape of video game cities – whereas a city like Grand Theft Auto V’s Los Santos is rooted in a reality we’re familiar with, Cyberpunk’s retro-futuristic architecture (and overall aesthetic) help lend it a sensibility that we’re unfamiliar with. It really feels like stepping into another world - fully fleshed-out, fully envisioned.

The environment is obviously beautiful and unique, but I was surprised by just how ornate it was. The thought and consideration that went into details as minor as the UIs you’ll encounter in and on everything from car dashboards to PCs and menus both diegetic and otherwise helps the entire world feel diverse, detailed, and cohesive. While everything feels of a kind and everything is working towards the same design goals, the sheer amount of variety was shocking.

The biggest thing that stuck out to me about Night City itself within just a few hours of playing was how vertically oriented it was. Not just in the “there are tall buildings” sense, though there certainly are tall buildings – I’m talking about the way that Cyberpunk uses verticality to tell stories. The first time that you end up high enough above the skyline to see rooftops will inevitably be during one of your first encounters with Night City’s elite. The hustle and bustle of street life fading away as an elevator climbs up the side of a building and you emerge into a world you aren’t familiar with was astounding. That claustrophobic feeling of being surrounded by monoliths isn’t only alleviated by attending to the rich, though – for similar reasons, my first journey out of the city limits and into the “badlands” will stick with me. Cyberpunk successfully manages its mood and tone by controlling the kind of environments you’ll find yourself in, and while that may seem like a simple, sensible, universal design decision, its consistent application helped ground the world for me in a way that made it feel more real than most of its contemporaries.

Something else that makes Night City feel real is how Cyberpunk implements its setpieces. In a decision that reverberates throughout the rest of the game, CD Projekt was clearly all-in on the notion of immersion and seamless transitions. While it was consistently surprising and exciting to find bombastic moments embedded in the world’s side content (one standout involves Night City’s equivalent of SWAT descending from the sky to stop a robbery in an otherwise non-descript shop downtown), it never took me out of the world. And, on the other end of the experience, the number of memorable, exciting story moments that were located in parts of the city that you had wandered by before helped make the world feel almost fractal, this idea that every building and every corner could house new adventures or heartbreaks.

One thing that did take me out of the experience, unfortunately, were a few of the celebrity (or “celebrity”) cameos. While I think that the core cast was well-cast, with Keanu Reeves as Johnny Silverhand in particular being an inspired choice, the game, unfortunately, wasn’t immune to the tendency to include recognizable faces just because they were recognizable. Grimes plays a role in a forgettable side quest that felt dangerously like it only existed because she wanted to be in the game. There are also an almost concerning number of streamer cameos (“over 50 influencer and streamers from around the world,” according to CD Projekt), and while most of them completely went by me, the few that did hit for me only served to disrupt the world. The only perceived positive here is that most players won’t have any idea who these people are.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only thing that broke immersion in the game. Due to what I can only assume are particularly harsh memory restrictions imposed by the game’s release on last-generation hardware, the game has some of the most aggressive NPC culling that I’ve ever seen. While NPCs don’t strictly only exist in screen space, it often feels like they do, as simply spinning the camera around can result in an entirely new crowd existing in place of the old one. This is obviously rough when it comes to maintaining immersion in crowded spaces on-foot, but it gets worse when you’re driving. Driving on an empty road, rotating the camera, and finding that three seconds later there was an entire legion of cars waiting for your camera to discover them, far too close to slow down, was always a deadly surprise. It doesn’t help that your cars take a while to slow down.

Cyberpunk’s approach towards cars in general is interesting. While I certainly had trouble with them when I began playing, I eventually began to get into their groove. If you want to learn how to drive effectively in Cyberpunk, you have to learn how to drift. After the game’s latest substantial patch, the team at CD Projekt finally fixed my largest problem with the game’s driving – the minimap was simply too zoomed-in, making it difficult to begin to make the right decisions on when and how to turn when traveling at speed. Now that that's resolved, however, whipping and spinning through the streets is fun, and the cars feel appropriately weighty. I’ll still occasionally boot up the game just to cruise around its streets and listen to the radio.

Speaking of the radio, did I mention that Cyberpunk 2077 has one of the greatest game soundtracks that I’ve ever heard? The radio is filled with great original songs from some pretty great musicians, but that’s not where the soundtrack’s beauty starts and it certainly isn’t where it ends. The original soundtrack (composed by P.T. Adamczyk, Marcin Przybylowicz, and Paul Leonard-Morgan) was consistently beautiful, moving, and intense. The world feels gritty and grimy but ultimately beautiful and worth saving, and a great deal of that emotion comes from the soundtrack. While the heavy use of industrial synths could’ve lent itself towards music that existed to set tone instead of form lasting memories with memorable melodies, the sparkling backing tones and inspired instrumentation helped keep me humming some of its tracks for months after last hearing them in-game. I’m no musical critic, I don’t know how much I can say about this soundtrack, so I’ll just reiterate: it’s genuinely incredible.

It certainly helps that the encounters that so many of those tunes are backing up are exciting as well. I was expecting middling combat from the company that brought us The Witcher 3, and while the experience wasn’t perfect, it was competitive with (and, in many ways, better than) the closest games to it than I can point to, Eidos Montreal’s recent Deus Ex titles. Gunplay feels tight, shotguns feel explosive, and encounter spaces are diverse and full of alternate paths and interesting cover. My first playthrough was spent primarily as a stealth-focused gunslinger, using my silenced pistol to cover up the mistakes that my feet made when trying to avoid getting caught. Trying to sneak into, around, and through environments helped emphasize how complex the environments actually were. While it’d be easy to run into a wealth of the game’s content with your guns loaded and ready to fire, that may contribute to a perceived lack of depth in the game’s world design. I’m trying to write this without considering what other people have said about the game, but this particular point has been something of a sticking point for me – there are individual, completely optional buildings in Cyberpunk that have more interesting, considered level design than some entire video games, and the experience of evaluating and utilizing them was consistently mechanically engaging and exciting.

The sheer number of abilities that the player has can be almost overwhelming. While leveling does encourage the player to specialize into certain traits, especially when said traits can also serve as skill checks for the dialogue system and some traversal opportunities, every trait houses a bundle of skills that each house a sprawling leveling tree. Far from the kind of “three-path EXP dump” that you’ll find in a great number of AAA titles, Cyberpunk’s leveling experience can be legitimately intimidating. It’s difficult to plan the kind of character you want to play as when you’re trying to project eighty or a hundred hours forward for a character that will be constantly encountering new kinds of challenges. I certainly didn’t begin my playthrough by wanting to be a stealth-focused gunslinger – in fact, I was originally aiming for a melee-focused hacker build. While I was drawn to what I was drawn to, hearing stories from other players about the kind of builds that they ultimately considered to be overpowered made one thing exceedingly clear: Cyberpunk is a game that rewards every kind of play, possibly to its own detriment.

Cyberpunk’s main story is notably short. I wouldn’t consider this to be a problem, considering the sheer amount of engaging, exciting, heartfelt side content, but it might be the core of the difficulty scaling plateauing so early on. As you progress deeper into the game you’ll find that almost every build, as long as you are willing to commit to something, is more than viable. Look around long enough and you’ll find people saying that every single build is overpowered. For me, that fed into the central power fantasy in an exciting way. By the time that I rolled credits a hundred hours in I was more or less unstoppable, walking into rooms and popping every enemy almost instantly. For others, this was a problem – it can be frustrating to feel like all of your work to become stronger wasn’t met with an appropriate challenge when the time came to put it into practice. This is a difficult problem to solve, and I don’t have a solution. I’ll fondly remember my revolver-toting, enemy-obliterating V, though, so I can’t complain.

Regardless of the scaling, however, the content you play through to arrive at that pinnacle of power was consistently, surprisingly robust. While the differentiation between “gigs” and “side quests” is confusing (word for the wise: gigs are generally shorter and more gameplay-centric missions that are designed by CD Projekt’s “open world” team while the side quests are made by the same team that made the main quests and are generally longer and more narrative-centric), both kinds of side content are lovingly crafted and meaningful. Of the 86 gigs in the game, every single one of them takes place in a unique location with a hand-crafted backstory and (almost always) a wealth of different approaches. These don’t exist separately from the rest of the game’s design philosophy, even if they are made by a separate team, and you’ll often find that decisions made outside of gigs will reverberate into them (and, sometimes, the other way around). I’ve played a great deal of open world games, and never before has the “icon-clearing content” felt this lovingly-crafted and interesting. While the main quests will take you traveling across the map, the side content is what really makes it feel dense and real. You’ll be constantly meeting different kinds of people who are facing different kinds of problems – and, hey, occasionally you’ll be meeting someone who has no problem at all, someone who just wants to make your world a little bit brighter.

It’s surprising, then, that one of the most obvious ways to integrate that kind of content in Cyberpunk is so sparsely-utilized. “Braindances,” sensory playback devices used to replicate experiences as disparate as sex, meditation, and murder, play a critical role in some of the game’s larger quests, but they almost never show up in the side content. You would imagine that the ability to freely transport the player into any kind of situation in a lore-friendly way would’ve been a goldmine for side content, but its use is limited. This isn’t even a complaint, really, I’m just genuinely surprised – I wouldn’t be surprised if they used them more heavily in 2077’s expansions or sequels, because they feel like an untapped goldmine.

Another thing that the game surprisingly lacks is the inclusion of more granular subtitle options. While the game does let you choose the important stuff – whether or not you want CD Projekt’s trademark over-the-head subtitles for random NPCs, what language you want the subtitles to be in, what language you want the audio to be in – it doesn’t include something that I’ve grown to consider a standard: the ability to turn on subtitles for foreign languages only. As the kind of player who avoids subtitles when possible, I went through most of Cyberpunk with them off. Unfortunately, a tremendous number of important cutscenes in the game take place in languages other than English, and I didn’t know that I was supposed to understand what these characters were saying until I was embarrassingly far into one of the prologue’s most important scenes.

NOTE: I was pleasantly surprised to discover after replaying the ending of the game earlier today that they've fixed this issue in a patch. Nice!

I can only complain about the game’s language support so much, because there’s something important that lies between the player and the story they’re there to experience: a fucking incredible English localization. Ironically, it’s so good that I can’t help but imagine that most players won’t even think about it. It’s easy to notice and talk about an excellent localization when it’s from something like a JRPG, something with a clearly different style from what you’d expect from a work made in English, but never once in my entire playthrough did I even briefly consider the idea that it was natively written in anything other than English. I knew that CD Projekt was a Polish studio, but I just assumed that they wrote in English and localized it backwards. The language is constantly bright and surprising, the jokes land, the characters have memorable quirks, everything feels natural, and the voice acting is legitimately some of the best that I’ve ever heard in a video game. Both versions of the main character’s voice were damn-near instantly iconic for me, landing up there with Commander Shepard in the upper echelon of protagonist VO. I can’t praise it enough.

That said, even if the localization was incredible, it’d be hard to appreciate if the meat of the story wasn’t up-to-snuff. I was ecstatic to discover, then, that Cyberpunk 2077 has an incredible story. Every great story starts with a great cast of characters, and Cyberpunk hit it out of the park with that. The core cast of side characters are some of my favorite characters in years. Judy, Panam, River, and Kerry are all memorable, full, charming people. Kerry Eurodyne in particular is responsible for my favorite scene in a game since the finale of Final Fantasy XV. The quest “Boat Drinks,” the finale of Kerry’s quest line, is quietly emotional and intensely beautiful. He, and the other characters like him, are more than the setting they’re in, and the way that the game slowly chews away at the harsh and bitter exterior that the world has given them as it reaches to their emotional, empathetic core consistently astounds. Night City is a city full of noise, violence, destruction, and decay, but you don’t have to participate in it. You don’t have to make it worse. You can be different, and you can be better. You don’t get there alone, you can’t get there alone, and Cyberpunk is a game that revels in how beautiful the world can be if we are willing to find the light and excitement in the people around us.

Of course, Cyberpunk is a video game, it’s an RPG, and the story is more than a linear progression of memorable moments. Something that struck me while making my way through Cyberpunk’s story was how expertly and tastefully it implemented choice. I’m used to games that give you flashing notifications and blaring alarms whenever you're able to make a decision that matters, so I was initially confused by how Cyberpunk didn’t seem reactive to the things I said and did. The game would give me a few options in conversations, I’d select one of them, and then the story would progress naturally. However, as I continued, I began to notice small things. One character would remember me here, a specific thing I said twenty hours before would be brought up by someone there, an action that I didn’t even know I had the choice to not take was rewarded. The game slowly but surely established a credibility to its choices, a weight to your words, this sense that everything that you were saying, even beyond the tense setpiece moments that you’d expect to matter, would matter. It was only after going online after completing the game that I realized just how different my playthrough could’ve been. While nothing ever reached the level of the kind of divergent choices that The Witcher 2 allowed, there were still large chunks of the game that are entirely missable. Three of the game’s endings can only be unlocked through the completion of (and, in one case, specific actions in) specific quests, and multiple memorable quests were similarly locked behind considerate play. This isn’t really a game that will stop you from doing one thing because you chose to do something else, most of the choice-recognition is simply unlocking new options for the player to take, but it always feels natural and never feels like a game providing you an arbitrary fork in the road just for the sake of making it feel artificially replayable. CD Projekt has already said that they made the choices too subtle in Cyberpunk, but I deeply appreciate the game as it is now – more games should make choices feel more real.

It helps that the dialogue system backing up some of those choices is dynamic and the cutscene direction backing those scenes up is consistently thrilling. The decision to lock you in first-person for the entire game was an inspired one, and it resulted in a bevy of memorable scenes made possible by those interlocking systems. There are the obvious ones – being locked in a smoky car with a skeptical fixer, getting held at gunpoint by a mechanical gangster with his red eyes inches away from your own and a pistol’s barrel just barely visible as it presses against your forehead, having to choose between firing your weapon and talking down someone with a hostage when in a tense, escalating situation. There are also a million smaller ones, situations where the scale of the world becomes part of the magic. The first time that I sat down in a diner and talked with someone I had to meet or the first time that I rode along through the bustling downtown of Night City as a politician sized me up will stick with me because the perspective of the camera and the pacing of the real-time dialogue interface combine to make almost everything more powerful. There’s so much effort put into it – so many custom animations, so many small touches that you’d only see if you were staring intensely at every frame. All of that effort paid off, and the controversial decision to strip third-person out of the game was ultimately proven to be one of the smartest decisions that CD Projekt has ever made.

Another decision that helped power an exciting, engaging story was how the game freely manipulates the time and weather during key story moments. It’s a small touch, it’s one that you won’t notice unless you’re looking for it, but every once in a while you’ll walk into a place during a crystal-clear day and come out five minutes later to discover that it’s a cold, windy, rainy night and you have a city to burn. Along with the first-person limitation, this initially feels like something that could only harm immersion, but when it’s backed up by a story that motivating and scenes that thrilling you’d be hard-pressed to notice it outside of the flashes of telling yourself that this scene or that scene is the best that you’ve played in a long time. This also helps avoid a problem that games like the Grand Theft Auto series consistently face – instead of letting scenes happen at any time, compromising direction, or doing something like a timelapse, sacrificing immersion, Cyberpunk manages to always keep you in the action while also presenting the action in its most beautiful and appropriate form. There are moments where it truly feels like it’s meshing the kind of scene direction that’d be at home in a Naughty Dog game, the gameplay of Deus Ex, and the storytelling of the WRPG greats, and in those moments there is nothing else on the market that feels quite like it.

I sure have talked a lot about this game’s story, considering the fact that I have barely brought up its central hook. The early twist (unfortunately spoiled by the game’s marketing), the placement of a rockstar-turned-terrorist-turned-AI-construct firmly in your brain after a heist goes wrong and your best friend dies, helps establish a tone that the rest of the game commits to. Johnny Silverhand starts as an annoying, self-centered asshole with no real appreciation for how dire your situation is, but by the end of the game he had more than won me over. Reeves’s performance was really stellar, and the relationship between him and V is incredibly well-written. More than that, his introduction helps spur on a shift in the way that you engage with the world. The first act is full of hope, aspiration, the belief that you can get to the top if you hustle hard enough and believe. After you hold your dying friend in your arms and are forced to look your own death in the eyes, though, things begin to turn. Maybe the world is fucked up, maybe it’s fucked up beyond belief. But there Johnny is, telling you to fight. Why? Every time you fight, things get worse.

But the game continues to ruminate on this, it continues to put you in situations where fighting not only fails to fix the problem, but it makes it worse. Despite that, it’s positive. For me, at least, Cyberpunk’s worldview slowly came into alignment, and it’s one that I can’t help but love. Cyberpunk 2077 is a game about how important the fight is, how important believing in something is, even if you’re facing impossible odds, even if there’s no happy ending. It’s a story that posits that giving up is the worst ending of all, that your only responsibility is to what’s right and to the ideals that you and the people you love want to live up to. The game uses every story it can tell, every character it can introduce you to, and every encounter it can spin into a narrative to drive that home. And, when the ending comes, it was phenomenal. All of the endings were powerful, effective, and meaningful to me, but I’m more than happy that I went with what I did.

Cyberpunk 2077 is an excellent video game. It’s not flawless, but no game is, and at its core it's one of the most fun, beautiful, narratively engaging, and heart-filled games that I’ve ever played. I couldn’t recommend it highly enough, and I sincerely hope that everyone who has skipped out on it because of what they’ve heard is able to give it a shot someday. Maybe they’ll love it as much as I do. Wouldn’t that be something?

[silver-wield]

Omg. Your body language analysis is so on point it makes me go uwu. If you're still doing it, will you make one for the scene where Cloud catches Tifa while Barret shoots his damnest at the heli? I have my own analysis but very curious what's your take on it.

Heya, I'm guessing you don't mean the scene with the hand catch, but the one after it where they reach Barret's position on the stairs. Although I have many thoughts about Rude too and why he first of all directed Reno's attention to Tifa, but then noped them away when Reno was about to shoot her. He had an interesting microexpression – teeny facial tic – that hinted something different to the OG “he's crushing on her” angle.

A lot of these “action touches” get discounted by you-know-who because in those situations it's impossible not to touch? I don't get the reasoning and I'm not gonna try and figure out just what counts and what doesn't. It's non-optional. Isn't that the only argument that matters?

Ok, spoiler warning for ppl who haven't played (I tag FF7R spoilers as final fantasy 7 remake spoilers) and it's gonna be a long one so prepare to scroll.

Also, this is one person's interpretation of the scene, so if you disagree that's cool and we'll agree to disagree.

You're also gonna have to excuse the janky quality on some of the screens, I'm grabbing them from Youtube and it's frustrating af trying to get the exact moment I want.

Other analyses if anyone's interested.

Shinra HQ vision scene (Cloti/plot analysis) 

Chapter 3 (Cloti reblog) 

Tifa character analysis 

Aerith Resolution (plot analysis/theory) 

Train graveyard (not really an analysis, but I got some sweet screenshots of Cloti) 

Clotiscrew tunnel analysis 

Cloti reunion analysis 

The Promise Analysis 

Andrea's approval (Cloti ask response) 

Now, strap in and enjoy the ride.

Quick recap. Cloud and Tifa are reunited after that hand catch scene (smug? Me? Nau) and they're heading up to find Barret after seeing Jessie “die”. The mood is not good. This is not romantic, okay? This is war.

Ok, so already we have touchy touching here. You can argue it's high tension/stress moment and Cloud is making sure Tifa's safe, but he doesn't do that with Barret, is all I'm saying.

Cloud's got hold of her entire arm, not just her wrist or hand, he's got hold of her as securely as possible giving they're in motion. He doesn't want to lose her. She's got her arm on him, braced and using his body as a shield, which he is clearly fine with because he positions her partly behind him while he turns to check the threat from the stairs – possible further collapse of the platform they're now on. He's protecting her. Obvs. I shouldn't have to spell this out. It's not romantic, but it's telling of their trust and reliance on each other as partners. This is a clear pair.

Ok, so moving on from Cloti – cause action scene and this isn't a romance game – we get Tifa hearing Barret behind her. She turns and there's her concern for her friend. Obviously, she cares. It's her entire motivation for leaving the safety at the bottom and hauling her ass up those stairs.

Her face here hits me hard in the feels. She's so grim and worried and doesn't want to lose anyone else. She's caught up to Cloud, but then she lost Jessie – right in front of her and she couldn't do a thing about it. Now, she sees Barret facing down a helicopter.

Take that in. It's a dude – ok he's got a machine gun on his arm – fighting military spec weaponry on a fucking helicopter. Of course she's frightened and worried that she's about to see him get shot. Someone else she couldn't save.

Remember, FF7 has themes of loss and failure. The heroes don't always win or if they do there's a cost. How much of that threads into Remake is still to be seen, but since this scene is following canon we can assume it stands for now.

Tifa's character is often motivated by the desire to not lose people. She even says as much to the Shinra middle manager that she doesn't want anyone else to die. She stops Cloud killing the security agents and Johnny. This is a girl who fights because she wants people to live, not die.

Ok, so now we've got her running to reach Barret, leaving the safety of her bolt hole beside Cloud, who immediately turns and is all wtf when he sees her playing chicken with a chopper. Tbf, Barret doesn't sound that pleased about it, either. It's a crazy impulsive move likely driven by the desire to not lose her friend. If they're together they can stop whatever's coming. Tifa is very teamwork oriented if you recall all her actions from chapter 3 and how demoralised she was when she had to agree to disagree with Avalanche.

Cloud for his part doesn't take too long to dive to the rescue again. I think by now he's pretty much fulfilled that childhood promise and this is way more than just helping out a colleague or friend. He's not hesitating for a second to put himself in front of her with nothing but a sword for a shield.

Sorry, I just stopped the vid on this moment and it looks so damn cool I couldn't resist adding it. All it does is reinforce the above statement that Cloud has zero reservations of putting himself between Tifa and certain death. He's her hero without even stopping to think about it. The framing is stunning. Barret in the background, Cloud in the middle distance and Tifa in the foreground. Cloud has lined himself up with Tifa so that she's as protected by his position as he could possibly get. That takes skill. Tifa's half crouched to make herself a smaller target, but Cloud's body language is open, defiant. He's basically saying “come at me”.

Ah and now I'm sure some people will be all “but Cloud left her in the middle of the platform”. Well, yes, it's called diversion. He's the bigger target, the better target. And by making the chopper follow his progress, he's taken its sights away from Tifa's position. It now has less chance of hitting her when it next fires. Remember, Cloud knows tactics. He's not a dumdum. You can see that on his face as he's deciding his next move. The chopper won't wait for him to stop and explain what he needs to do, it's gonna fire. He's gotta move quickly. He also needs to trust that Tifa can get herself out of trouble. So many people's complaints about how she's not a damsel and should take care of herself. Well, this is Cloud trusting her not to be a damsel. He helped her out, and now he's gotta rely on her helping herself too. If he took her by the hand at this moment and dragged her along with him, she probably would've died. Tifa got herself to his position alone, she's clearly capable. He knows how much ass she can kick.

After that we've got the typical checking for danger and guy banter. I'm loving the development of Cloud and Barret's relationship. They went from outright hating each other to friends over the course of this game. It's beautiful and develops even further in their resolution – I love their one, it's so sweet and sad and such a guy bonding moment. Male friendship is important too, especially to Cloud who doesn't have many friends.

Now, despite the banter, Cloud's head turns at this point, back to Tifa. He's made sure the immediate area is safe, checked in with Barret and now it's back to his primary focus.

I love that Barret calls himself the leading man. It reminds me of Balthier in FF12.

And you'll see that Barret is still in the middle of that line while Cloud is stretching his hand out for Tifa. Could be a “I gotta grab my teammate” move, but I mean, really? Are we that delusional? He didn't have to do any of this. He could've relied on Tifa to get herself over there and not put out a hand for her. Barret didn't grab him. You could say that Barret doesn't like Cloud enough for that, but it's a high action moment. They're comrades and being shot at. Any helping hand is appreciated. Maybe Barret thought Cloud was capable enough not to need help. But then wouldn't the same apply to Tifa? Why does she need helping just cause she's a woman? She can kick ass.

And what about Barret? His attention isn't on Tifa at all. His focus is the helicopter, so he's either relying on Tifa to be ok without that level of help or he's expecting Cloud to support her.

Yes, she is literally throwing herself into his arms. That's how much she trusts him to catch her. Again, Cloud is going for a full arm grab – a hand or wrist isn't secure enough in this situation and he wants to keep her safe.

Tifa. Well, she looks scared. Shocker. She just got shot at by a helicopter. Ofc she's scared and leaning on Cloud. She's taking strength and reassurance from him. I mean, she could've just grabbed his arm and pulled herself to safety. There's no need for this depth of touch.

You'll notice this all happens within miliseconds while Barret says that leading man line. This is very quick action, very decisive. No hesitation on anybody's part.

I mean, this is full upper body contact between them. I don't know what else to say about it. There's no need to get this close. He could've pulled her over and then let go. He didn't. They both prolonged contact. This is relief they're ok for the moment. They’re united in how they feel.

Oh look, eye contact. I've pointed out before that Cloud doesn't do eye contact with people very well, but he does with Tifa, no matter the situation. Looking at this I'm like damn get a room. It's an intense look between them and even though there's shit hitting the fan around them you can see they have attention for each other, too. He's pulled her to safety and now he's meeting her gaze to gauge if she's ok. She nods. He nods. Back to the action. They don't have time for a drawn out romantic bit. They've got more serious things to think about, but even during the most high tension action scenes they have this energy about them that speaks to their close bond and affection. He's comfortable with her touch in every situation – if I'm wrong about this then someone point it out to me so I can see plz. He's still got his hand on her after they separate from their action hug and then when he drops his hand he braces it against the pipe beside her. Still close to her, though not actually touching.

After Barret asks if they're ready, Cloud looks around then looks at Tifa again. Did he need to do that? Idk, but he didn't look at Barret before they hauled ass.

Conclusion:

Kinda obvious. Even in high tension situations Cloud has part of his attention on Tifa. He's hyper aware of where she is and whether she needs him at any given time. It's sweet af how much he focuses on being her hero without even really knowing why. This instinctive need to protect her comes from the real!Cloud part of him. The one that made the promise to her. The one that has a crush on her.

Some people can say these kind of moments don't count because Cloud has no choice(?) but to touch her, but actually, he has no reason to touch her the amount he does. There's ways to execute these moments without this much unnecessary touching. He does it this way because of an instinctive need and desire to touch her this much. It's what he wants to do.

#final fantasy 7 remake spoilers #final fantasy 7 remake analysis #cloti #action romance scenes #battle couple #there's really no need for them to be this touchy #unless they wanna be #they act like a couple already

[into-the-afterlife]

Valerie Welles: My First V

So I realised that, despite my love for her, I've never actually written up a blog post about my original V! She's my profile pic, but if you want a full look at her outfit, here it is:

I wanted this V to have a singular, signature look. My Vikram's the fashionista out of my Vs, and I have tons of screenshots of his many outfits. But Valerie, like myself, is rather single-minded when it comes to fashion.

Full Name: Born as Valerie Patterson, she drops the surname at a young age and is nicknamed V by the other kids she grew up with. After Jackie dies, she legally changes her last name to Welles, to honour him as the brother she never had.

Background: Streetkid. Quite literally. She's abandoned by her parents on the street at a young age, then gets involved with petty crime and eventually Valentino work with a group of kids she falls in with. After a Valentino job goes horribly wrong, and her first ever girlfriend is tragically killed along with the rest of her friends, she leaves for Atlanta, swearing to always work alone and to truly become a great. The second resolution sticks. The first stays around until she realises how horribly lonely she's become.

Skills and Notable Body Modifications: She favours the sneaky end of the skill tree, and is really good at netrunning, using pistols and revolvers, blades and buttering people up. I gave her Mantis Blades and Double Jump, and she's the V who netted me the trophy for having a modification literally everywhere the game allows you to have one. Appearance-wise, she has grey, catlike eyes, septum, bridge and eyebrow piercings, pink hair, tattoos all around her chest and upper back and the Johnny & V wrist tattoo. Oh, and pubic hair shaped like lightning. I couldn't let that option pass me by.

Weaknesses: Overly pragmatic, focused on the present over the future and impulsive. One of her biggest early conflicts with Johnny is that while she doesn't like corps, she can't imagine a life without them. She tends to see systems of oppression as inevitable, and something to be dodged around rather than changed. This is partially due to her lack of formal education. While she is literate, a self-taught netrunner, and got some basic Catholic catechism as a child, going to Atlanta killed curiosity beyond survival for her. She's extremely intelligent, but it's almost all directed toward street smarts and social skills.

Ending: Temperance. Oof.

Sexuality and Relationships: Valerie is bi, poly, kinky and cheerfully brash and slutty. She can be a sub, if she trusts her partner enough, but ninety percent of the time, she likes to dom. She's in a 'V' relationship (see what I did there) with Judy and Johnny. Johnny is absolutely fine with this; Judy doesn't have issues with it, jealousy-wise, but she is highly suspicious that Johnny is only in a relationship with V to soften her up and make her easier to take over.

Gender Identity: Ambiguous, and not something V has poked at much herself. She's fine with she/her pronouns, and likes feminine clothes, and doesn't mind being assumed to be a woman, exactly...but it doesn't quite capture how she feels about herself. If she was asked, she'd list merc, friend, partner, edgerunner, lover of whiskey, and a thousand other labels long before she'd list 'woman', and even then she's more likely to refer to herself as a 'person' rather than anything else. It's one of the reasons why she has a somewhat futch gender presentation. But V is pragmatic, and doesn't spend a lot of time philosophizing when there's gigs to survive and street cred to earn.

If I write something about F!V, unless I specify otherwise, I'm by default writing about this Valerie. She's the V I fell in love with Night City alongside, and she's an OC I'm extremely fond of.

#oc: valerie welles #my writing #v #female v #cyberpunk 2077 #cp2077 #v cyberpunk #cyberpunk v

[moved-attre]

Here is my review of Cyberpunk 2077! It is a bullet point list of what I liked, and did not like about the game. I mean no offense in my writing, and am, of course, willing to be educated if I am wrong about anything! But please do not send me anonymous hate. I know many fans and haters of this game can be very, uh... So take it all with a grain of salt, and form your own opinions.

This is very long and likely boring so if you manage to make it to the end, I will be very impressed! Also, I may ramble or repeat myself, sorry. There’s more bad points than good, since the game is very glitchy and I couldn’t not mention the glitches I have experienced.

Obviously, this contains major spoilers! 👁👄👁

I’ll start off by saying, this is a game where you will likely not get what you expected. If you expected Cyberpunk 2077 to be a game filled with features that were never before seen, to revolutionise the gaming industry as we know it and become the most iconic video game ever made... You will not get that. If you expected it to be the worst, most irredeemable video game ever created that you’ll hate... You will not get that, either. If you expected a game that is a fairly standard RPG with some impressive graphics when played on a high spec PC, albeit with some bad glitches and a wonky story with lots of potential, then you’ve got it!

Pros:

The majority of the voice acting, such as in V, Johnny and Viktor, was very good and emotional. Viktor in particular made me tear up! And the way V manages to sound almost like Johnny with the subtle accent change was amazing!

The character’s such as Takemura, Jackie, the LIs, Johnny, Viktor, Misty (I could go on) and even many random NPCs were interesting! I wanted to know them and loved their relevant missions. The best ones were unromanceable, of course, but that’s what imagination is for.

THE ALDECALDOS! I love them! A found family, and I wish there was more to do with them other than Panam’s missions and a few side missions. I love found family, and I’m disappointed V couldn’t form their own, so I’ll take what I can get and love the Aldecaldos, even if V can’t join them until the very end. Panam had the best missions of all the LI’s, even if the last one felt very abrupt. (At least, on her friendship route.)

Night City felt alive. There was always plenty going on, it felt like a real city, and it could be beautiful.

Jackie and Corpo V’s friendship was lovely. I loved their “To this!” inside joke, and I loved how Jackie roasted V but would jump to their defence in a second. It didn’t feel forced at all.

There’s lots of environmental storytelling. The atmosphere of a city choking to death under it’s own pollution/corruption was very apparent in the areas not lived in by the rich. Lots of homeless characters, violence, drugs, absolute poverty, trash (The dump! I felt sick just looking at it, and I couldn’t even smell it! Poor V, though.) and general apathy from a lot of the residents really sold the concept.

Johnny and V’s dynamic was the best part of the story! I hated him at first, but slowly came to enjoy his commentary and advice. His interactions with V were very funny at times, and thoughtful at other times. He was an interesting perspective for the player to consider, while still being an asshole you could dislike for much of the story. He has some really emotional scenes and I played a V that viewed him as a friend, so it was really nice hearing him call V the closest person he’d ever had. They became so devoted to each other! CDPR did good with this element, but I can’t help wishing for more. The dynamic had so much more to give, and a romance/happy ending could have worked.

And to add on, the mission where Johnny takes over V’s body to go on a bender was great! I loved all the moments to play as Johnny in V’s body. All the symbolism between them was so good. Every mission matters, and you can replay to look closer at details! He also comments on other side missions with no personal relevance to him, which was neat.

All the enemies had unique names. A minor detail, but it made me feel some guilt over killing them. 🤣 I think all character’s had unique names, which is such a nice detail.

The soundtrack was incredible, I loved every original piece and radio song. I have several saved on Spotify, which is big praise coming from me! I very rarely listen to video game soundtracks.

V can adopt a cat! 🐈‍⬛ It was adorable, and Johnny’s interaction with it made me tear up!

The size of the map was good, not too big or too small. I got about 100 hours of play in by exploring, which is pretty good to me! I got lost a few times, but always found something interesting to do in the meanwhile. I loved the Badlands especially. 

Some of the side missions, particularly the more mysterious ones involving investigating deaths and the cyberpsychos, were very enjoyable! I’m a big slut for mystery, and there were some interesting cases to figure out. I wish we could’ve done missions like that with River, though, especially once he becomes a PI.

I was complaining about the lack of aliens in CP2077, but I suppose we did get a couple space themed missions which was pretty fun. I still want to go experience going into orbit, though. 👽 Or the moon!

Separating voice and body in the CC was a good idea, even if it was handled a little strangely. I’ll talk about this more in the ‘Cons’ section below!

Act 2 was my favorite part of the game, but it blended weirdly with Act 3 and that put me off. I am nostalgic for Act 1, but not eager to replay it because it felt so slow... I’m not sure on this point! I liked Act 2 because the story picked up and I was excited for more, but the more I got wasn’t as I expected. So, yes, Act 2 was good.

The scenery is very beautiful, and sometimes the outside lighting is absolutely perfect. The Arasaka parade mission was lovely to look at. I always stop the car and watch the sunrise/sunset, and I like going out to the Badlands to look at the stars!

An addition to that, is the lighting in some main quest missions. Very noir! It made for some beautiful screenshots. (Of which I sadly can’t share because my game doesn’t record well on medium settings. 😳)

The motorcycles are fun to drive! Mainly because I can zoom in between cars and Jackie’s motorcycle has a lot of sentimental value, as well as other vehicles like Johnny’s Porsche and Jake’s car. You can open the trunk to dump bodies in, which was a cool detail., and each one drives differently!

There could be amazing attention to detail, such as making Jackie look like his mother. I expected his mother to be a randomly generated NPC, but she was completely unique. It’s the minor things like that which stood out to me the most.

The scanner was a fun tool and very useful! I liked being able to find alternative ways to do a mission, it felt more realistic than the standard “massacre everybody, pick up an item and get out” fetch quests normally seen in RPGs. I could sneak in a tunnel or a side door! Perhaps irritating and unnecessary to some, but I liked it. I love utilising every possible option.

The interface color changes if you have Johnny controlling V’s body. Another small but good detail! The game is good with the minor details.

The sex scenes were not... awful. I expected much, much worse! I expected fully animated first person porn. Instead, I thought they were fairly realistic and intended to be romantic. Still very awkward, though, and unnecessary.

When they didn’t glitch, the animations were very good. Not as impressive as I hoped, probably because of glitches, but in line with other AAA games like Horizon Zero Dawn, I suppose? I noticed Judy’s animations in particular as being good, and Johnny had lots of unique ones too!

The clothing options are very fun, I like the holographic items and “Bitch” clothes, hehe. Also including Hijabs! 🧕 Great idea, and more games should do that.

The diversity of the NPCs was welcome. I enjoyed seeing Native American, Asian, Black and Latinx NPCs who weren’t there just to suffer! They would occupy important roles in the story, such as Fixers or friends/romance options for V, so they were pretty much unavoidable! It felt very natural, and they helped Night City feel more realistic.

Adding to that, the different cultures included were interesting too! I liked the Haitian characters in Pacifica.

The photo mode is pretty good. Not as good as I expected, the camera angle presets were useful but the filters weren’t very good. I liked that the photo mode could be used in cutscenes, though! It was standard, and I hope more bits will be added in for it.

A lot of the glitches are hilarious, but I recognise not all will share that opinion so I’m just adding this down here. The T-Posing NPCs are a highlight for me. Call that the Skyrim effect.

Cons:

No NB gender options/No pronoun options. Would they/them have been so difficult to implement?

No body or height sliders. There’s so many fat character’s in the game! Why can I not make my V fat? Or muscular?

Gender restrictive hairstyles and clothes. Come on, guys, it’s 2020/2077! Aren’t we beyond gender restrictive appearance options?

No tattoo parlours, no plastic surgeons and no hairstylists for V to change their appearance. I don’t understand why a CC was included at all, since we spent the majority of the game in first person. It reminded me of Far Cry.

The main story started off strong, albeit slow, picked up in Act 2, then felt very rushed in Act 3. The point of no return was very abrupt! 

The celebrity cameos felt very gimmicky. The one exception to this is Keanu Reeves, who did a very good job as Johnny. Genuinely brought tears to my eyes at times... but Grimes was just embarrassing! Why was she there! A talented VA could have done Lizzy Wizzy much better, giving her actual emotions instead of just monotone “boredom”.

I don’t know what the point of owning apartments is. You can only sleep in V’s bed, what is the point of looking in the mirror? V has no use for their terminal in their apartment, they never get any messages after the first time they meet Johnny. It was so unnecessary, especially when there’s several across the map. I can access the stash of weapons and clothes from my car! Why would I ever need to go home? Judy gives me her apartment and I’m like, girl, I’m never visiting unless you have a mission to give me.

Also, there are no penalties for not showering or sleeping. I wanted character’s to comment on that! Call me stinky or tell me I look exhausted!

V doing side missions makes no sense, and no explanation is given for why we can do them. Why would V, who is dying and has precious few days left to live, be driving for hours on end to deliver packages and shoot random criminals? When they could be figuring out how to survive the biochip! Who the hell would care about a some extra money or buying every available car for sale, when they’re dying of something that could be preventable?

Some side missions were either very poorly done or obviously majorly glitched, since it felt like they skipped important parts and I was often very confused at the end of them! For example, the Corpo V side mission was so short! I expected to be able to hunt down Abernathy and get revenge for V and Jenkins, but instead, I shoot some random assistant I don’t even remember? And that’s it? Done in 2 minutes! If that! What is the point of that? I didn’t even have fun! Also, what happened to Garry? I wanted to save him but V just never follows up on it.

And, I wish we got closure with T-Bug. The fact that V never bothers to find her body and give her a proper burial was just poor form. 

The endings were not... good. There are technically 6 different endings, all wrapped up into 3 parts. In my opinion, the best ending is the one where V kills themselves and has a very “Arthur Morgan watching his last sunset” vibe. It made me cry. Another good ending is having Johnny take over V’s body forever, as you can really see how much Johnny has changed as a person thanks to V’s influence. But they still felt very... eh and the story just never got that boost it needed, ending before it could take off. In the “best” ending, the Nomand ending with Panam, V ”survives” but has only another few months to live. So they die off screen. Satisfying? Uh, no. Not at all. There’s no possible ending where V has any hope of survival, but I much preferred being there with V until the very end. I disagree with the people calling Johnny’s ending the “bad” ending, because it really isn’t! I ignore all of this of course, and my V is living happily ever after.

I kind of hate that CP2077 has this illusion of options when some are clearly intended to be chosen more than others. Judy and Panam have the best endings in term of romance. Why bother with River and Kerry? Kerry is more of a fling than an actual romance, and is met very late in the game at a point where you can ignore him completely and just end the game, and River’s romance is so glitched that many people can’t even do it fully, and in every ending he dumps you, so it feels like none of it mattered to him despite him being the most “domestic” of the possible LI’s...

Takemura’s ending! He died in my playthrough, because the game didn’t tell me I could save him. That really annoyed me. Also, I recognise that V is in no place to lecture him, and there is some wisdom to his quote: “You speak against corporations yet offer no valid alternative.” But, Goro, bro... anything is better than fascist mega corporations keeping most of the city in absolute poverty, while waging devastating wars against other mega corporations? I wish we could have opened his eyes a little. There’s a good, even ground between Takemura believing Corps to be doing the best for humanity and Johnny being willing to kill 12k people for a revolution. This game went a little “capitalism is bad, but the alternative is worse!” at times, in my opinion. I wish more could have been done against the corporations, instead they just kind of... exist... in the background. And I know, “Realism! “ because we live with massive corporations like Amazon in our lives and can do fuck all about them but we’re not V. V is an absolute unit who survives death multiple times... I wish there had been two paths, like do Johnny’s path and work against the system or do Takemura’s path and work with the system? Sort of like The Witcher 2?

You know how in Saints Row, The Boss has homies they can call on for help? I wanted V to have homies to help them out in fights. It felt pointless building trust with the Fixers only to not have them help out at all with fights against the NCPD/Militech/Arasaka in their territories. 

The stealth mechanics are not good. They are funny! But not very good. Often, It’s better to just attack and save yourself the trouble of sneaking only to get caught by a guard who can see through the back of his head.

The fact that you cannot get arrested and have someone bust you out of jail. Maybe RDR2 set my expectations too high, but I thought this would have been included.

I’ve read about the cut content, and I’m really disappointed they weren’t included in the game. Wall running would have been amazing! And the police hiring mercs to hunt V down? I would have loved to see it! 😔

Driving cars is terrible. Just awful. Sometimes, you crash. Other times you’re flung up into the air and break through the sky into the void, spinning for all eternity.

River’s glitched romance deserves a special mention. The relationship just drops off suddenly and you cannot interact with him properly again. It does not affect the main story at all, so you wonder, what was the point? The text messages also glitch and V will sent messages that you can’t control, leading to disappointing dialogue, like with Joss.

The romances in general were just not all that impressive. I was expecting something great, considering there was only 4 and thought they’d really affect the main story, but I’d only recommend Panam and Judy. I would have played the game just as well without romances, and they felt very unnecessary but I wanted to do one to get the most possible story content. I think we should all leave romances in RPG’s as the exception, not the norm. Some studio’s can do them well, other’s cannot. CDPR cannot, in my opinion...

Obviously the many glitches and bugs, several of which are game breaking. I usually have to reload a save at least once an hour, because an NPC won’t talk to me or I can’t move the mouse to select different dialogue options! Or my gun won’t equip, so I die.

The AI in general is very bad. Sometimes cars will stop in the middle of junctions for no reason, causing you to crash or mount the sidewalk to get past, meaning you’ll likely run someone down and get a police warrant. NPCs just walk from one end of the road and back again, over and over on a loop. It’s very creepy!

The lighting, mostly inside buildings. Everything is pitch black! Why does V not own a flashlight? The amount of enemies I’ve barrelled into and alerted because I couldn’t see is too much.

The lack of dialogue choice, it was less interactive than what I’d been told to expect. There was only two or three options, with one only ever rarely being unique to one of V’s three possible background choices and most will yield the same results with a few exceptions, like avoiding combat.

V’s personality is already decided by the game, and is not really customisable. Do not expect full control over your V’s personality, as they are very much a canon character and exist outside of your (limited) choices. I didn’t expect Baldur's Gate 3 levels of customisation, but I did expect something more like Dragon Age 2’s dialogue wheel? Nice, Sarcasm and Angry? You know?

Obviously, the seizure inducing scenes were very dangerous. I get a headache whenever I have to do a braindance, and I wish it was skippable!

Accessibility as a whole is very much an afterthought in this game, I think. The subtitles are in “speaking English”, so instead of: Hey, how are you? It’s: Heyyy, how’re ya? It is often difficult to understand, and sometimes I just couldn’t work out what was being said.

It’s nitpicky but I wanted to do a pacifist route and I realised you can’t, you need to kill certain character’s... 

The main “villains” such as Yorinobu and Adam Smasher were very forgettable, and V had no personal stake in taking them out. I honestly forgot all about them. Takemura was talking about revenge and I’m like, who? Who are you talking about? Why are we kidnapping Hanako Arasaka, again? Johnny, why would I bother killing Adam Smasher? If they’d personally murdered Jackie, then yeah, I’d understand! But all V needs is to remove the chip and I don’t know... I just didn’t feel anything.

So, to summarise: I think CDPR were out of their depth. The long, very long, troubled development process was an indication of this before the game was even released, and the story I’ve experienced in the game is proof enough. I don’t think they knew what they wanted from this game, and as a result, we have a game that is honestly very confusing and frustrating with a story that always got close to gripping, but never quite makes it. All in all, I found this game to be pretty average. When the bugs are ironed out, I will think better of it. But as it stands, if I had to score it, I would give it a 6.5/10 or maybe 7/10. Good concept, somewhat misguided execution. The best part of the game was the Johnny/V dynamic, but I wasn’t satisfied with how it ended. They needed more time together! Anyway, it will be interesting to see what happens next. 

#cp77 spoilers #cp77 critical #cyberpunk 2077 #I’ve already been vagued about a few times for my CP2077 opinions so I expect more to happen now I’m posting this hehe